Ralf Klinkenberg, founder and head of data science research at RapidMiner, is a data-driven entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience in machine learning and advanced data analytics research, software development, consulting, and applications in the automotive, aviation, chemical, finance, healthcare, insurance, internet, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail, software, and telecom industries. He holds Master of Science degrees in computer science with focus on artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics from Technical University of Dortmund, Germany, and Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA. In 2001 he initiated the open source data mining software project RapidMiner and in 2007 he founded the predictive analytics software company RapidMiner with Dr. Ingo Mierswa. In 2008 he won the European Open Source Business Award and 2016 he was awarded the European Data Innovator Award. In 2017 the German government invited him to the steering committee of the “Platform Learning Systems”, an initiative of the German government to promote the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence in industry and society. which he serves since then. He is passionate about learning in humans and machines as well as about how to leverage data to make organization more data-driven, more agile, more efficient and effective, and more successful using data mining and machine learning, both from a business and a technical perspective. Today RapidMiner has 550,000+ registered users in 150+ countries world-wide and is one of the most widely used predictive analytics platforms world-wide.
