About Matt

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I am originally from Northern Ireland/Ireland/UK and hold both Irish and British citizenship, which has come in handy since Brexit. I'm interested in various things, none of them too out of the ordinary: electronics and computer tinkering, cycling, electronic music, MIDI and synthesizers, woodworking, gardening, lego, open data, long-distance train, bus and boat travel, (preventing) global warming, economics and last but not least the relevance of religion for our modern, hectic lives.

I've had a bumpy, or certainly varied "career", spending many years working in academic departments:

• With Adar Pelah at the University of York on video-based Rehabilitation Technology,
• with Eli Peli at the Schepens Eye Research Institute working at first on video enhancement for the visually impaired and later on simulation of headlight glare using a real time connection to a driving simulator and an array of really bright white LEDs (which back then were fairly new),
• on traffic modelling at the Chair for Traffic Engineering and Control at TUM, mostly on traffic simulation in various forms.

The first two had some overlap with gaining MEng and MSc degrees in Electronics, while the last provided an option to completed a German Dr.-Ing. doctorate, something to this day I am ashamed to say I have not finished up.

With the move to traffic engineering, I was trying to find a way to apply my tech. skills to transportation in general, which I had begun to find fascinating after the years in Boston with good, but somewhat limited public transport options while at the same time having so much potential for more (a strong biking community, many abandoned or underused railway lines, and a river).

After academia (again, with some overlap), I leaped into freelancing, personal projects, startups and in general trying to "get out there" into the open source, open data and civic tech world in the ever more internet-connected world. I'm a co-founder of Code for Munich, Smartlane and Hawa Dawa where I currently work.

I was lucky enough to meet Birgit in 2005 whilst in Boston. We married in 2010, and in 2011 I became a father to Ronja, who was joined in 2014 by Silas. Especially since then, life has been an interesting and sometimes difficult juggling game which I have not yet perfected!

I like to blog about these things:

• Travel in general, in a diary form, probably of little interest to anybody else
• Thoughts and tips for more environmentally friendly mobility and travel within and between cities: planning, connections, comfort, safety - with a strong bias towards anywhere west of Germany as far as Ireland
• Quick and simple tips on technical problems where I feel like I can put a succinct solution online that might not have been there before
• Stuff about craft and electronics projects with the kids

I feel like I'd also like to add some book reviews, but I haven't managed that yet, so we'll have to see.