Roland is Co-Founder of Thoring Design. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Information Systems, Free University Berlin, in 2005. His research interests include Knowledge Management, Information Services, Business Intelligence, Web 2.0, as well as Social Computing and Collaborative Causal Models.

Prior to his doctoral research he worked as an IT Consultant in San Francisco, USA in the field of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. He holds an MSc in Economics from the Free University Berlin.

Roland has consulted global companies like DaimlerChrysler, Siemens, and Unilever, as well as varied small and medium-sized companies and government organizations. He is the co-founder of SPEECHA, a podcast community site that uses advanced techniques like geo tagging of audio and video content, a sophisticated recommendation engine and social network features to let users find the podcasts they like.

In 2006 he started as an Assistant Professor for Information Systems at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Roland provides the scientific and technological background for our design projects. His expertise includes the use of research methods, as well as the development of complex socio-technical systems.