Univ.-Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Christoph Meinel (born 14 April 1954, Meißen, Germany) is a German scientist and university professor of computer sciences. He is president and CEO of the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) for IT Systems Engineering at the University of Potsdam (Germany), which is ranked a top university department in computer sciences in Germany (CHE-Ranking 2009). His actual research interests and activities is concentrated on Internet Technology and Systems and on innovation research (Design Thinking research). It is particularly focused on Internet security and security engineering (highest network security, safer Internet, SOA-Security and Trust), on innovative froms or teaching and learning (Web3.0, e-learning, tele-lecturing, e.g. tele-TASK), and on secure telemedicine. In 2006, he hosted together with Hasso Plattner the first German “National IT-Summit” of the German Federal Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.
1974-79 Christoph Meinel studied Mathematics and Computer Sciences at the Humboldt-University Berlin were he received also his PhD degree in 1981. 1988 he defended his State Doctorate (“Habilitation”) at the Institute of Mathematics of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. After visiting positions at the universities of Saarbrücken and Paderborn, in 1992 he was appointed a full professor (C4) for computer science at the University of Trier (Germany). In that time his research activities were concentrated in computational complexity theory and efficient data structures (esp. binary decision diagrams - BDDs) for chip design. In the midnineteeth he extended his research focus to Internet and Web-technologies, particularly he startet applied research and development in IT-Security and Teleteaching. In that time he founded the Institut für Telematik e.V., which was supervised by the Fraunhofer Society for applied research. There he invented technologies like Lock-Keeper and Tele-TASK. 2004, when he was appointed scientific director and CEO of the HPI he continued his research work in these fields. Meanwhile Lock-Keeper is licensed by Siemens AG and tele-TASK is regularly used for recording and Internet-broadcasting lectures of HPI and several other universities. Beside he is a teacher at the HPI School of Design Thinking and program director of the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program. Beside of his teaching activities in HPI and Potsdam university since 2002 he is a visiting professor both at the University of Luxembourg and at the School of Computer Science of the Technical University of Beijing (China).
Christoph Meinel is author or co-author of 8 text books and monographs (e.g. "Digitale Kommunikation",[1] "WWW – Kommunikation, Internetworking, Web-Technologien",[2] "Design Thinking – Innovation lernen, Ideenwelten öffnen",[3] "Mathematische Grundlagen der Informatik",[4] "Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen im VLSI-Design. OBDDs – Grundlagen und Anwendungen"[5]), and of various conference proceedings. He has published more than 350 per-reviewed scientific papers in highly recognised international scientific journals and conferences. He holds various international patents (e.g. Lock-Keeper licenced by Siemens AG) and leads the tele-TASK design team.
Christoph Meinel is the chairman of the national German IPv6 council, the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program, the steering committee of the HPI Future SOC Lab, and the advisory board of SAP Meraka UTD in South Africa. In between 1996-2007 Meinel was member of the scientific board of the IBFI Schloß Dagstuhl and speaker of the special interest group on complexity of the German computer science society Gesellschaft für Informatik. He is also member of various other international scientific boards and program committees, and has organised several symposia and conferences.
Christoph Meinel is chief editor of the two scientific E-journals ECCC-Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity and ECDTR-Electronic Colloquium on Design Thinking Research, of the IT-Gipfelblog, an ongoing blog about ICT in Germany, and of the tele-TASK portal with several thousands of multimedia lecture recordings by tele-TASK.