erikwittern@gmail.com +49 176 20 18 5661 @erikwittern wittern.net

CV John Erik Wittern

Lebenslauf John Erik Wittern

Industry experience

Co-Founder & CTO

GetCouped Technologies GmbH Hamburg/Berlin, Germany

Responsible for all aspects of the implementation and operation of the Coup platform facilitating R&D research.

GraphQL Lead Architect

IBM Hybrid Cloud Integration Hamburg, Germany

Leading team of developers in the US and Taiwan to bring GraphQL features to IBM's DataPower/API Connect product.

  • Design, prioritization and implementation of core features (incl. query validation, static analysis, schema views; in C++ / TypeScript / Rust).
  • Sharing knowledge and teaching colleagues about GraphQL (one-to-one & via presentations).
  • Productization of previous research results.

Research Staff Member & Technical Lead

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

Key researcher on web APIs and GraphQL within the Cloud Computing department: leading teams of researchers and software engineers, setting technical directions, and communicating goals, results, and broader technology trends to upper management – in addition to hands-on research and engineering. Projects include:

  • R&D of GraphQL API management facilities, resulting in my selection as IBM's technical representative in the GraphQL Foundation and my later role as IBM's GraphQL lead architect.
  • R&D of OpenAPI-to-GraphQL, an open-sourced library for migrating APIs to GraphQL. Includes overseeing related open-source process (testing automation, release management, customer support).
  • Design, implementation, and continuous operation of API Harmony, an API catalog in the IBM Cloud, which relies on mining web APIs and their use in open-source projects.

Apart from product adoption, my work has resulted in over 20 patents for IBM, and multiple award-winning publications in top international conferences and journals (publication / public speaking list provided upon request).

Research Scientist

FZI Research Center for Information Technology Berlin, Germany

Research and teaching in Cloud Computing and Software Engineering, including representation of the research group in EU multi-partner/industry-research consortium, contributions to research proposals, and supervision of master and bachelor students.

Research intern

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

Research on "Scalable Service Ecosystems", resulting in scientific paper and 4 patents, and laying the intellectual and technical groundwork for the later creation of API Harmony.

Intern in Inhouse Consulting

Deutsche Bank AG Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Working on group-strategic projects "Marketing & Communication and Realignment of Business Management" and "Global Banking Know Your Customer".

Intern in Global Business Services

IBM Deutschland GmbH Düsseldorf, Germany

Design of technical tests for RFID system; design of an dynamic Content Management System.

Education

PhD in computer science

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Karlsruhe, Germany

Received title "Dr.-Ing." (magna cum laude) for work on "Modeling and Selection of Software Service Variants" at the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) under supervision of Prof. Dr. Stefan Tai.

Diplom (MSc equivalent) "Wirtschaftsingenieurwesen" (engineering & management)

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Karlsruhe, Germany

  • Grade 1.5 ("very good”), focus on computer science
  • Working as a research assistant from December 2009 to March 2010

Technical eminence

  • Over 25 talks at international scientific as well as at developer conferences (e.g., API Conference 2019, API Strategy 2018, IBM InterConnect 2018)
  • Technical representative of IBM in the GraphQL Foundation since March 2019
  • Creator and co-maintainer of OpenAPI-to-GraphQL (>800 GitHub stars) and GraphQL Query Generator (>200 stars) open-source project
  • Member of program committees of numerous international top conferences (MSR, ICWE, ICWS ICSME etc.) and of the steering committee of the ESOCC conference since 2016
  • Co-organizer of international scientific events, including the 2nd Vienna Software Seminar "DevOps and Microservice APIs” in August 2019 and multiple workshops (MoTA 2016; M4IoT 2017 & 2018) at the Middleware conference
  • Book co-author "Cloud Service Benchmarking", published by Springer
  • Author of over 25 scientific, peer-reviewed articles in leading international conferences and journals (over 730 citations) and 20 patents
  • Reviewer of technical contributions to leading journals & national grant proposals (Canada, Israel etc.)

Awards / Honors

  • 5 IBM Innovation Plateaus – Recognition for submitting in sum 20 patents for IBM
  • IBM "A Level Accomplishment" for "Research Contributions to the API Economy and SaaS Transformation"
  • Distinguished Reviewer Award at the MSR Conference in 2019
  • ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Paper Awards at the ESEC/FSE 2020 and at the MSR 2018 conferences
  • IBM "Open Source Strategic Leader" accomplishment for work on OpenAPI-to-GraphQL

Side projects

  • MagicOS.co: Application for managing Old School Magic collections (React.js, Google Cloud)
  • numbie: Anonymous, ephemeral, real-time location sharing (Meteor, Heroku)
  • GravityQuest: Retro game, in the iOS app store from 2014 to 2017 (Phaser.js)
  • TechCrunch Disrupt: 3-times participant and developer in the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC Hackathon (awarded tickets to the main conference after evaluation of the outcome each time)

Social engagement

  • Volunteer judge at the Westchester Science & Engineering Fair (WESEF) in New York, 2015 to 2019
  • President of the UNICEF student organization at KIT from July 2008 to August 2010

IT skills

Programming: TypeScript/JavaScript/Node, C++, Rust, Python, Java, Ruby, HTML, CSS
Frameworks: React.js, Vue.js, Express, Google Firebase, Bootstrap etc.
Cloud technologies: GraphQL, OpenAPI, REST, serverless (OpenWhisk), Git, Docker, Kubernetes, Istio etc.

Languages

German (native speaker), English (business fluent), French (basic knowledge)

Hobbies

Tennis, Old School Magic, programming, reading, cooking