Alternative Short CV

Dirk Helbing was born on January 19, 1965. He studied Physics and Mathematics, but was always interested in other fields of science as well. In the year 2000, he became Professor and Managing Director of the Institute for Transport & Economics at Dresden University of Technology, and in 2007 he was appointed Professor of Sociology, in particular of Modeling and Simulation, at ETH Zürich. Since 2008, he is elected member of the German Academy of Sciences "Leopoldina". In 2014 Prof. Helbing received a honorary doctorate from TU Delft.

More than 300 publications in different scientific fields, and hundreds of public media reports reflect his wide field of interest, reaching from traffic science over crowds and disaster management to biologically inspired logistics. He also had projects with Xerox PARC, Volkswagen, SCA Packaging, Siemens, PTV,further companies, and various foundations.

Helbings team developed a traffic assistance system and patented the principle of a self-organized traffic light control, which implements massively parallel, decentralized control concepts for the optimization of traffic flows. The resulting increase of performance and the higher flexibility are based on latest developments in the understanding of complex systems. Companies and societies are other examples of such complex systems. This is also the reason why Dirk Helbing is interested in sociology.

As scientific coordinator of the FuturICT project, he is promoting the collaboration of natural, social and engineering sciences to address the challenges of the complex and strongly interdependent global techno-socio-economic-environmental systems we have created. He believes that we need to develop a global systems science, a new data science and a systemic risk calculus. Therefore, he is also the founding vice chairman of the ETH Risk Center.

Dirk Helbing is excited about everything that stimulates curiosity and intellect, in particular science, culture, and international exchange. Generally, he enjoys challenges and the exploration of unknown territory. Besides, he loves nature, in particular mountain hiking, skiing, jogging, and swimming, and he is a fan of a diverse and creative cuisine.