1966-1967: General Studies at the Leibniz Kolleg, Universitaet Tuebingen

1967-1969: Studies of Electrical Engineering at the Universitaet Stuttgart

1969-1970: Studies of Informatics at the Universitaet Karlsruhe

1970-1972: Studies of Informatics and Mathematics at the Universitaet Bonn, Diploma (MSc) in Applied Mathematics and Informatics

1972-1977: Researcher at the Computer Science Department, Universitaet Dortmund

1976: Dr. rer. nat. from the Computer Science Department, Universitaet Dortmund

1977-1993: with IBM in several technical and managerial positions in international software product development and research. His projects included mainframe operating systems, quality assurance (DOS/VSE and Unix), communications software, full-text information retrieval systems (IBM SearchManager), CIM repository systems, and a system for environmental impact analysis for the EXPO 2000 at Hanover, Germany.

1985-1991: Head of the IBM Institute for Knowledge-based Systems in the Scientific Center of IBM Germany, numerous AI research projects, the most important one being LILOG - Natural Language Processing and Text Understanding.

2000-2002: CTO at Lenze AG, responsible for hardware and software development from gear boxes, electrical motors, electronic drives and servos to automation software.

1993-2009: Chaired Professor for Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Universitaet Bremen heading the Artificial Intelligence Research Group. Founder and Director of the TZI - Center for Computing and Communication Technologies,with 160 full-time researchers in 2009.

since 1998: Affiliate professor at the George Mason University, Machine Learning and Inference Laboratory, formerly directed by the late Dr. Ryszard Michalski, and now by Dr. Janusz Wojtusiak.

since 2009: supervising PhD students, directing research projects, and acquiring new projects at Universitaet Bremen

2010-2019: “Wisdom Professor of Visual Information Technologies” at Jacobs University Bremen.

since 2015: Summit Professor at the CIUC, Tongji University, Shanghai, PR China