Curriculum Vitae for Lars Holm Nielsen

Lars Holm Nielsen
Sendlinger-Tor-Platz 5
80336 München
GERMANY

Cell phone: +49 151 2265 2416
Email: lars@hankat.dk

Birthday: June 4th, 1982
Nationality: Danish

Core Mission

Specialist in information systems, software and infrastructure for cutting-edge science communication – managing the development of interfaces between laypeople users and complex, rich outreach data with advanced backends.

Professional Experience

Web & Advanced Projects Coordinator at European Southern Observatory (2007 – present)
Leading the Web & Advanced Projects Team in the ESO education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD) consisting of 1 staff & 7 contractors. Responsible for development and maintenance of an efficient and reliable technical infrastructure, which enables the departments science communicators and artists to produce and distribute world-class astronomy outreach to the public. The primary focus of the work is on an online distribution platform based on Django/Python running on 5 major websites that is capable of handling large amounts of outreach data as well as sustaining high-load once an outreach product goes viral. Other smaller projects includes e.g. the FITS Liberator plug-in for Photoshop and Portal To The Unvierse, an one-stop-shop portal for astronomy news.

Freelancer at ESA/Hubble (2002 – 2007)
Leading a small group of developers at ESA/Hubble (The Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre) developing various systems for interacting with large amounts of outreach materials (texts, images, videos etc).

Internship at IBM Research, Zürich (2007)
Development of a system for expert knowledge elicitation from a large number of experts by use of a sophisticated statistical model.

Owner of Holm Nielsen IT (2006 – 2007)
Owner of one-man company providing consultancy services related to web and software development. Customer includes ESA/Hubble, Instituto De Astrofisica De Canarias, The International Astronomical Union and European Southern Observatory.

Web Developer at IMAX Tycho Brahe Planetarium (2002 – 2004)
Planning, project management and implementation of large website for Denmark's most advanced centre for popularizing astronomy.

Student Assistant at Ericsson Danmark A/S (2002)

Web Developer at Xenux ApS (1999 – 2002)

Education

2004 - 2007 Bachelor of Science, Computer Science, Roskilde University, Denmark.
2002 – 2003 Studies in Astronomy and Physics at Copenhagen University, Denmark.
1999 – 2001 High-school, Haslev Gymnasium, Denmark.

Skills

  • IT project management
  • Web infrastructure/application design and maintenance
  • Team management
  • Technical publication

Technologies

  • Languages: Java, C/C++, Python, PHP, Perl, Standard ML.
  • Platforms: Mac OS X, Linux, Windows.
  • Databases: MySQL, DB2, PostgreSQL, Oracle.
  • APIs: Django, Eclipse plug-ins/RCP, Java EE, WebSphere, ProjectZero, Adobe Photoshop plug-ins, Carbon and many Java API's.

Awards

2002 Jubilee Scholarship to a single graduated student from Haslev Gymnasium & HF, "...for hard work, abilities and good-conduct...".
1999 - 2001 Platinum Award (first prize) in the International ThinkQuest Internet Challenge 1999 including a $15.000 scholarship. Furthermore I received two Honourable Mention and a Java Award in ThinkQuest 2000 and 2001.

Activities and Memberships

2006 Press Officer Assistant during the International Astronomical Union XXVIth General Assembly in Prague (2500 participants). Work consisted of servicing requests from worldwide media and 200 on-site journalists (the huge interest from the media was caused by the demotion of Pluto as a planet).
2005 Member of Local Organizing Committee for the International Astronomical Union's conference: Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2005.
2000 Talk on development of websites for 600 pupils (in groups of 30) aged 12-15 at the exhibition InternettetNu, October 12-15.
2000 Elected member of the youth council in the city of Ringsted.
1999 - 2000 Chairman of student council at Haslev Gymnasium
1998 - 2000 Chairman of Ringsted Computerklub

Training

2009 Tiba Project Management Basic

University Theses

Probability Elicitation in Bayesian Networks: Automatic Generation of Questionnaires (in English); Integration of Program Analyses in Eclipse (in Danish); Practical Aspects of Solving Set Constraints (in Danish); Credibility of Science Communication: An Exploratory Study of Press Releases in Astronomy (in English); Type Analysis of PHP-Scripts (in Danish); The Differential Rotation of The Sun (in Danish).

Courses at the University

Stochastic Simulation, Statistical Design & Analysis of Experiments, Advanced Topics in Databases, Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems, Language Engineering with Java and XML, Digital Communication, Introduction to encryption and secure communication, Object Oriented Programming and Design, Project Management, Introductory Programming and Algorithms using SML, Discrete Mathematics, Linear Algebra, Statistics, Mathematical Analysis, and Classical Mechanics.

Languages

Danish (native), English (fluent) and German (fair).

Hobbies

Mountaineering, Rock Climbing, Backcountry Skiing, Running, Slacklining, Cooking, Football, Movies/Books.

References

Mr. Lars Lindberg Christensen
Head of Communication
European Southern Observatory
Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2
D-85478 Garching bei München
Germany
Email: lars@eso.org
Phone: +49 89 3200 6761
Dr. John Gallagher
Professor
Roskilde University
Universitetsvej 1
DK-4000 Roskilde
Denmark
Email: jpg@ruc.dk
Phone: +45 46 74 21 96
Dr. Eleni Pratsini
Manager, Mathematical & Computational Sciences
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
Säumerstrasse 4
CH-8803 Rüschlikon
Switzerland
Email: pra@zurich.ibm.com
Phone: +41 44 724 8111
Dr. Mads Rosendahl
Associate Professor
Roskilde University
Universitetsvej 1
DK-4000 Roskilde
Denmark
Email: madsr@ruc.dk
Phone: +45 46 74 38 46