Ivan Herman
Who am I?
Originally, I am a mathematician (graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary, in 1979), but I turned into a computer scientist after my graduation. I joined the Computing and Automation Institute (SZTAKI) of Budapest in 1979. I then left Hungary in 1986; after having spent 3 years in a software house called “Insotech Consult GmbH” (which, unfortunately, went down the drain since…) in Munich, Germany, I joined the Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Sciences, CWI) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1988 as a senior researcher. I stayed at CWI until my retirement in 2021.
I’ve received a PhD degree in Computer Science in 1990 at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. All in all, I spent 21 years as a “traditional” computer science researcher, working mainly in computer graphics and information visualization. I then joined the staff of the World Wide Web Consortium (while maintaining my position at CWI until my retirement), in January 2001, where I served as Head of Offices until June 2006. Between June 2006 and September 2013 I was Semantic Web Activity Lead, and I am currently the technical lead of the Publishing@W3C If you want more details on my professional life, you can look at my “professional” CV.
Before joining W3C I worked in quite different areas (distributed and dataflow programming, language design, system programming), but I spend most of my research years in computer graphics and information visualization. I also participated in various graphics related ISO standardization activities and software developments. My “professional” home page contains a list of my publications, my public presentations, and details of the various projects I participated in the past. (B.t.w., just for the fun, my Erdős number is ≤4…)
In my previous life (i.e., before joining W3C…) I was member of the Executive Committee of the Eurographics Association for 15 years, and I was vice-chair of the Association between 2000 and 2002. I was, between 2007 and 2014, also member of SWSA (Semantic Web Science Association), the committee responsible for the International Semantic Web Conferences (better known as “ISWC”) series. I was one of the founders of Force11, an organization looking at the future of research communication and e-scholarship, and I was on its Board of Directors between 2011 and 2015. I was the co-chair of the 9th World Wide Web Conference, in Amsterdam, May 2000; between then and 2021, I was also member of IW3C2 (International World Wide Web Conference Committee), responsible for the World Wide Web Conference (recently renamed “The Web Conference”) series.
Some personal data
- Nationalities (for unusual family reasons I have been born with two of them…): French and Hungarian
- The Hungarian spelling of my full name is Herman Iván, whereas my French spelling is, simply, Ivan Herman.
- Gender: male
- Family: I am married and have a son, David.
- City of birth: Budapest, Hungary.
- Email addresses: ‘ivan’ on my own ‘ivan-herman.net’ domain, ‘ivan’ on the w3.org domain
- GnuPG public key: copy paste it from the text file
- I live in Aix-en-Provence, France.
- More about the private me, as well as a set of links to most of my photos.