After studying mathematics and physics at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, Andreas U. Schmidt received his doctorate in mathematics in 1999 with a dissertation on mathematical physics. He changed his field of research and worked as a postdoc at the GMD Institute SIT in Darmstadt (now Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT) in 1999/2000. There he dealt with the problem of the unambiguous representation of digitally signed data and XML signatures. Andreas then received a two-year research grant from the German Research Foundation for projects in mathematical physics, which took him to Durban, South Africa in 2000/01 and to Pisa, Italy in 2001/02. After returning to Fraunhofer SIT, he worked as a project manager on various topics of applied and mobile IT security. In 2008/09 Andreas was Head of Security Research at the CREATE-NET Research Center in Trento, Italy. Together with Jerry Artishdad, he founded Novalyst IT AG in 2007 and has lead the company since then. More on his personal Homepage