Johann-Christoph Freytag

Research is most exciting when it leaves the university and finds direct application in the world of business. This is the guiding principle behind Johann-Christoph Freytag’s work at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He is Managing Director of the Department of Computer Science and Professor for Databases and Information Systems.

“I never actually wanted to become a professor,” explains Freytag. “I always felt very comfortable in private enterprise.” And that’s exactly where he went after completing his studies in computer science in Hamburg and at Harvard University. At the IBM Almaden Research Center in California, he worked on the Starburst database project – the venture that produced the technology found today in IBM’s database production. In 1987, he moved to the European Computer Industry Research Center in Munich, and in 1990 he set up the Database Technology Center for the company Digital Equipment (DEC) in his capacity as head of their research group. 

One of the World’s Top 20 Database Scientists

Johann-Christoph Freytag has been active at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin as a professor for databases and information systems since 1994. And yet, even at the university, he never lost touch with private industry. Freytag gave industry seminars all over the world for large companies and made an international name for himself with a number of publications. He now holds a firm position as one of the world’s leading scientists in the field of databases and has received scores of awards, including the IBM Faculty Award in 1999, 2001, 2002 and 2003, the IBM Shared University Research Grant in 2001 and the HP Labs Innovation Research Award in 2009 and 2010 for his work in the field of request handling in database systems and cloud computing.

There is one thing in particular that Freytag would like to achieve in Berlin, and that is to bring research and business even closer together. “For example, we encourage young scientists by supporting start-ups,” explains Freytag, who provides personal advice to young entrepreneurs at the Humboldt-Innovation (HI) tech and transfer office.

Freytag also notes that Berlin is home to many middle-sized companies that are eager to implement small, target-oriented projects together with scientific partners. “To our industrial clients, for example, we offer strategic product development advice.” Freytag and his team receive contracts from large corporations, such as Siemens and IBM, but also from middle-sized Berlin-based companies. The team has developed software product prototypes for a number of companies but, as Freytag explains, “I’m not interested in simply offering a service. For me, it’s all about the transfer of technology. Together with partners in industry, we want to work on solutions, but also on long-term technological development and industrial-focused research.”

Among such long-term research projects – i.e. ones that find application in real business practice – are tech developments for the Semantic Web, which Freytag describes as “new technologies that make web content easier to find using content analysis.”

“The Most Creative Minds Are in Berlin”

Freytag is convinced of Berlin’s strengths as a leading location for science. “There are many IT firms here with tremendous development potential. Furthermore, sectors such as the film industry are especially well-represented here, and they are very interesting for us.” Bioinformatics have also played a major role in the past several years in Berlin. As Freytag notes: “I worked for many years in Munich, and that city certainly has larger industrial companies, but the most creative minds are in Berlin.”

With the goal of taking full advantage of Berlin’s potential, Freytag teamed up with Prof. Dr. Robert Tolksdorf from the Freie Universität Berlin to support entrepreneur Rainer Thiem in founding Xinnovations, a Berlin-based innovation forum for net-based information technologies. At the annual Xinnovations conferences, which are organized by all three men, representatives of both science and business get together to exchange current ideas and suggestions so as to generate joint projects. As Freytag notes: “We organize this conference out of sheer passion and a commitment to our ultimate goal, which is to make the latest knowledge emerging from the scientific community available to business – and the other way around, of course.”