Interview with Paul De Bra

Abstract

Prof. dr. Paul De Bra is Full Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He holds a doctorate in mathematics and computer science from the University of Antwerp, Belgium (1987), with a thesis on Horizontal Decomposition in the Relational Database Model. During 1988 and 1989 he was a post-doctoral researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, studying principles and technology for WYSIYWYG interfaces for document processing. Since December 1989 he has been working at the TU/e, first as an associate professor, and since August 1996 as a full professor and chair of the Information Systems group. Since he started working at the TU/e the research has shifted to the area of hypertext and hypermedia, with research in adaptive Web-based systems. He initiated and led the AHAM (reference model), AHA! and GRAPPLE projects on adaptive Technology-Enhanced Learning, the NWO CHIP project on adaptation and personalization in Cultural Heritage, and numerous other activities to stimulate research and development of adaptive hypermedia technology and applications. He is scientific director of the Dutch Research School for Information and Knowledge Systems and is president of User Modeling Inc. (the non-profit organization for User Modeling and Adaptive Systems). In "real" life Paul De Bra plays, repairs, composes and arranges for the accordion (and takes pictures at conferences too). "Paul De Bra" and "accordion" currently yields 76 hits on YouTube whereas "Paul De Bra" and "hypertext" yields 0. (On Google the hypertext query is more successful.)