Dr. Alexander Willner is the head of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) Center at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) and the head of the IIoT research group at the chair of Next Generation Networks (AV) at the Technical University Berlin (TUB). In joint collaboration with the Berlin Center of Digital Transformation (LZDV) he is working with his groups in applying standard-based Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to industrial domains. With a focus on moving towards the realization of interoperable communication within the Industry 4.0, the most important research areas include industrial real-time networks (TSN), middleware systems (OPC UA), distributed AI (Digital Twins) and distributed Cloud Computing (Edge Computing) including management and orchestration.

Prior research positions include the University Bonn, he holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) in computer science from the University Göttingen and the Technical University Berlin respectively. His research interests are on distributed information systems, linked data, communication middleware and service-oriented architectures. He is active in relevant standardization activities and alliances and gives a corresponding lecture at the Technical University Berlin; and in the past at the Humboldt University of Berlin as well.

At various occasions Dr. Willner also acts as ambassador for the science capital Berlin.

See my personal web page.