Details

I am Holger, from Hamburg (Germany) living in Seattle (Washington, State, USA) with my beautiful wife, Natalia Cohen (who is also part of the cruise). I have been a Research Scientist in Computer Graphics, HCI and recently AI with a focus and passion on solving user problems. I have worked for many years at Adobe and Google Research/Deepmind. I also co-founded a start-up right out of university – which was a crazy experience: Challenging, rewarding, successful and tearful. I am mostly drawn toward helping the “underdog” user. While at Adobe, I was very inspired by the idea of “democratizing creativity” and building creative tools not just for the creative elite, but for anybody that wants to express themselves creatively. Recently, I am quite excited about how AI can help in education – not just for students to cheat on their homework and for teachers to “outsource” their grading – but to figure out how AI can bring  basic and world-class education into corners of the world that currently don’t have access to it.

On a personal level, Natalia and I love to travel and meeting new people. We are very close to our families (in spirit more so than physical location) which means we spend a lot of time traveling to be near them, help each other and make memories.

I love being active (Volleyball, gym, running, hiking, …) and relaxing (games, dinner parties, TV binging, reading). I look forward to meeting lots of interesting people, exchanging ideas, learning, widening horizons, being inspired and having a good time 🙂