Still cannot believe how awesome this looks.

Today, I am very proud to announce that I will spend (at least) the next 5 years being an assistant professor at the Software Engineering Research Group in Delft.

What will you be working on?

I will continue to research spreadsheets. As you might know, my group just got a large grand to work on this with a postdoc, a PhD student and a scientific programmer. But I also plan to broaden my horizon into other forms of end-user programming and testing.

Why stay in academia?

I reckon some might be a bit surprised by this news, as I am also involved in a start-up company (Infotron) and I have at some times expressed the desire to pursue Infotron as a career. I have given this a lot of thought, but in the end, I decided that I love being a researcher the most. I love to create software that is not there yet, I love to find real problems and solve them. And anyone who has been involved in start-up (or in any serious effort) knows it is all about execution. It is not enough to build something cool, you need to offer support, explain your decisions for the product and tell the same story over and over (and over). Turns out, this is not for me, with the third client I was already contemplating more new tools and caring less about their current problems, that, in my mind, has been solved. Sounds like a researcher? That’s what I thought too 🙂

I also considered working for a company, I got an amazing offer that made it very hard for me to say no, but I really enjoy my independence as a researcher and furthermore there is the appeal of the traveling to conferences and having the opportunity to work with really smart people. Research is just too cool to leave behind.

So what about Infotron?

We don’t know yet. For the moment I will be involved, but in the future, we hope there will be an Infotron that is independent of me, at least for the day to day operations.

If you want to get in touch or even collaborate in the future, please let me know.