About Me
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Welcome! My name is Burkhard Ringlein. Currently, I’m a Postdoctoral Researcher at IBM Research – Europe, Zurich. My research is focusing around accelerated computing, domain specific architectures – including custom programming languages and compilers – distributed reconfigurable architectures and infrastructure automation. You can find some of my research here and more information about the current projects here.
Besides this, since more than 10 years, I spend some of my free time to participate in the civil society discourse around the digital transformation and its regulation, because I have the strong feeling this belongs to my duties as knowledgeable (and relatively privileged) citizen. I think, in the end, our society can only implement the solutions that were proposed, hence the success of us as society depends on the proposal and critical evaluation of as many solutions as possible. And consequently, on the participation of as many brains/citizens as possible.
As part of this volunteer engagement, I serve as board member of LOAD e.V. and I’m engaged in debates around internet and digital policies. At LOAD, we analyse current topics around digital politics, find solutions in interdisciplinary teams and then contribute these proposals to the wider public debate. In my political participation, I try to live up to the fundamental liberal values of individual freedom, personal responsibility, refusal of ideology, and an unprejudiced interest in innovation.
I received my PhD (Dr. Ing.) in December 2022 from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg. From 2012 until 2018, I had a scholarship from the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation for Freedom and managed a working group around digitalisation.
I’m a supporter of the Republik Magazin, because independent journalism matters. I also support the DEMOCRACY app, to make German democracy a little bit more transparent. I’m a member of the MIDATA cooperative and support their approach of collecting and handling sensitive personal data to use them for the common good while ensuring individuals have the full control over their personal data.
Finally, I try to spend parts of my free time to help as paramedic with the Samariter (and previously in Germany with the ASB).