Curriculum Vitae for Lars Holm Nielsen

Lars Holm Nielsen
München, Germany

Nationality: Danish

Profile
	Hard-working, fast-learning project manager with an 11 year track record of delivering successful web based products in a fast-paced newsroom environment. Experienced in setting up and managing development teams/environments, as well as working on a multitude of concurrent projects in all areas such as scalable web architecture, site operations, web/software engineering, team management, strategy and new product development.

Work Experience
Aug 2007 — present full-time	Web & Advanced Projects Coordinator, Education and Public Outreach Department European Southern Observatory, Germany, http://www.eso.org Intergovernmental organisation for astronomical research that builds and operates a suite of the world's most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes. 750 employees, €135M budget. Management of Web & Advanced Projects team (7 staff/contractors). Project manager and lead developer of 6 major django-based websites: eso.org, spacetelescope.org, iau.org, astronomy2009.org, portaltotheuniverse.org, internal web-based digital signage system - features include e.g. media archives, webshops, a member database and an astronomy news aggregator. Increased number of web visitors with 70% by relaunching spacetelescope.org. Successfully planned and executed a digitization and metadata-tagging project of 25 years of unarchived press releases, images, videos, brochures and other public outreach products. Improved quality and productivity of web publishing (from 500 to 3000 tasks/year) by introducing issue tracking, workflows and a tailored web content management system among other measures. Product management of 3 iPad/iPhone apps: Hubble Top 100 Images (>250.000 installations), ESO Top 100 Images, Portal to the Universe App. Technologies: Python, Django, JavaScript, C++, Objective-C, iOS, PHP, Apache, RabbitMQ, MySQL, Memcache, Mercurial, CVS, SVN, jQuery, XMP, HTML5, Active Directory.
Feb 2007 — Jul 2007 full-time	Internship, Mathematical & Computational Sciences IBM Research, Switzerland, http://www.zurich.ibm.com Development of a system for expert knowledge elicitation from a large number of experts for use in Bayesian networks. Technologies: Java EE, Eclipse Rich Client Platform, IBM DB2, Spring Framework, IBM WebSphere
Apr 2002 — Aug 2007 part-time	Web Development Freelancer, Hubble European Information Centre European Space Agency, Denmark/Germany, http://www.spacetelescope.org Information Centre for The Hubble Space Telescope (international project between NASA and ESA). Lead developer of graphic-designer-friendly image processing tool, used to easily create stunning astronomical colour images from raw scientific observations with high dynamic range. Implemented video podcast delivery infrastructure, serving 100 TB/month. Responsible for web infrastructure during the International Astronomical Union General Assembly 2006 when Pluto was re-classified as dwarf planet. Handled more than 350 requests/sec during peak load. Entrepreneurial experience from setting up and running a one-man company. Technologies: C++, Adobe Photoshop APIs, PHP, Perl, Apache
Aug 2002 — Jan 2004 part-time	Web Developer Tycho Brahe Planetarium, Denmark, http://www.planetariet.dk Tycho Brahe Planetarium is Denmark’s most advanced centre for popularizing astronomy. Project management and implementation of company website in eZ publish CMS, with features such as ticket reservation system, credit card payment and live sky information. Technologies: PHP, MySQL, Apache, eZ publish, Linux
Jul 2000 — Aug 2000 full-time	Testing Assistant, Datacom Network & IP Services Ericsson, Denmark, http://www.ericsson.com
Feb 2000 — Aug 2002 part-time	Web Developer Xenux ApS, Denmark

Education
2004 — 2007	B. Sc. in Computer Science, Roskilde University, Denmark, http://www.ruc.dk/en/
2002 — 2003	Studies in Astronomy, Copenhagen University, Denmark, http://www.ku.dk/english/

Courses
(selection)	Professional: Tiba Project Management Basics University: Stochastic Simulation, Statistical Design & Analysis of Experiments, Advanced Topics in Databases, Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems, Language Engineering with Java and XML, Project Management, Discrete Mathematics.

Awards
	Platinum Award ($15.000 scholarship), International ThinkQuest Internet Challenge 1999. Java Award, ThinkQuest Denmark 2001 Haslev Gymnasium & HF Jubilee Scholarship 2002

Publications
(selection)	Selected university projects: Probability Elicitation in Bayesian Networks: Automatic Generation of Questionnaires Integration of Program Analyses in Eclipse Practical Aspects of Solving Set Constraints Credibility of Science Communication: An Exploratory Study of News Releases in Astronomy Type Analysis of PHP-Scripts Open source software: Python XMP Toolkit, http://code.google.com/p/python-xmp-toolkit Python AVM Library, http://code.google.com/p/python-avm-library FITS Liberator, http://code.google.com/p/fitsliberator Full list of publications available on http://www.hankat.dk/publications.html

Conference Talks
(selection)	ESO Gone AVM. Astronomy Visualization Metadata Workshop 2010, Los Angeles (October 25-26). Managing Astronomy Outreach Web Content. Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2010 Conference, Cape Town (March 15-19).

Additional activities
	Elected member of the youth council in the city of Ringsted, Denmark (2000 – 2001). Chairman of student council at Haslev Gymnasium & HF, Denmark (1999 – 2000). Chairman of Ringsted Computerklub, arranging net parties for 250+ people (1998 – 2000).

Hobbies
	Mountaineering, Backcountry skiing, Windsurfing, Rock Climbing, Football, Books, Photography.

Languages
	Danish (mother tongue), English (fluent), German (level B2), Swedish/Norwegian (basic)

References will be provided on request.