Herr Dr. Kern was head of C-LAB on side of the industrial partner since January 1st, 1997. With Herr Dr. Kern, C-LAB loses a very committed chairman, who really lived the idea of an innovation laboratory. Herr Dr. Kern successfully brought C-LAB through challenging times, from Siemens AG via Siemens Business Services GmbH & Co. OHG through to Atos IT Solutions and Services GmbH.
In his time as chairman of C-LAB, a very clear focusing on the main topics of C-LAB, which are Collaboration, Computing, and Communication, happened. In course of this, the overly successful topic of EMV-fair design was given to the Fraunhofer-Institut for Reliability and Microintegration IZM (today FhG ENAS). This happened in form of the foundation of the project group AIS (today a department) in Paderborn. Furthermore, in 2000, the results of the European GEN-Initiative (GEN = Global Engineering Networking) were given to INCONY AG in course of a Management Buy Out.
Herr Dr. Kern knew in ecellent ways to bring the interest of the respective industrial partner in line with the long term scientific ambition of the University of Paderborn. Especially, he managed to bring the use of long term cooperation with an outstanding university to the top of the industrial partner and sustain it there. With a lot of diplomatic skill, paired with assertiveness, he represented the respective industrial partner of C-LAB in the board of the EUREKA-project ITEA. Here, he gave a lot of important impulses for the European research politics on the area of software-intensive systems.
For the regional development of information and communication technologies, Herr Dr. Kern showed a lot of engagement. For multiple years, he was chairman of Innozent OWL, the open network of innovative companies, research facilities and economy-close organizations in the region of Ostwestfalen-Lippe on the area of IKT. Not least thanks to him, a binding of regional IKT-competence happened with Innozent OWL and therefore a bigger, also over regional, visibility was reached.
The succession as industrial-side chairman of C-LAB is taking over Herr Jörg Wehling on June 1st. With Herr Wehling, a former employee of C-LAB is taking over the leadership of C-LAB. Herr Wehling started his business career in 1989. In 1994, he entered into the then CADLAB (today C-LAB) and then changed into the operative business of Siemens Nixdorf. He was internationally active in the area of Integration and process harmonization. Today, he is Line Manager and responsible for “Cloud & Enterprise Process Integration” at Atos.
C-LAB is sending many thanks to Herr Dr. Kern for his relentless commitment which he did for C-LAB, and wishes the best for his future.
