Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rainer Wasinger

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rainer Wasinger works as Professor for Mobile Informatics at the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (WHZ). He has expert competency in the disciplines of HCI, Software Engineering, User-centred design, and mobile computing. During his career, he has designed, developed, and tested many user-centred systems; led the development of such systems; and taught in the fields of software development and interaction design at multiple Universities across the globe. Much of his work is focused on mobile and ubiquitous computing (including the Internet of Things). He is strongly committed to life-long learning and is passionate in applying his skills in teaching and technology to create lasting benefit to the community.

Consultation times:
During semester: Appointments please by email.

A collection of his projects and publications can be found in the Forschungs-Informations-System (FIS) of the WHZ.

Rainer joined the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau as a Professor in August 2017. Prior to this, he worked for a number of years as senior lecturer in ICT at the University of Tasmania, where he was also a member of the HIT (Human Interface Technology) lab. He also spent over 5 years working and teaching at The University of Sydney, and prior to that, he worked as a research fellow at Macquarie University, Australia. On this side of the globe, he has also worked in Germany for a number of years as a research scientist in the IUI (Intelligent User Interfaces) department at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH), during which time he also completed his PhD at the University of Saarland. He obtained his first bachelor in Science (B.Sc) in 1999 and completed a second bachelor with honours in Electrical Engineering in 2001. Both undergraduate degrees were awarded by the University of Sydney, Australia.

Rainer has taught across a wide range of ICT subjects at Universities across the globe. His subjects have catered for beginner through to expert, and undergraduate through to postgraduate. At the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau, his teachings are in Operating Systems, visual programming languages (incl. Lego Mindstorms), mobile application development, and HCI/UI. Prior to this at UTAS, he taught C programming, mobile application development, and games fundamentals. He is skilled not just in traditional face-to-face teaching, but also in cross-campus teaching via video-conference and video-stream, and increasingly in blended approaches. He is also experienced in unit design, where he continues to undertake additional life-long training in the foundations of university learning and teaching.

Rainer is currently teaching the following courses:

• Betriebssystems, Alternative Programmiermethoden, Grundlagen der Informatik, Betriebs- und Informationssysteme, Objektorientierte Entwicklung mobiler Systeme, Mensch-Computer-Interaktion, und Moderne UI Technologien.

Rainer’s research interests are in HCI and software engineering where he works on socio-technical systems that recognise the interplay between human elements and technical elements of a system. Much of his work centres on mobile, wearable, and ubiquitous computing. Relevant topics include interaction design, user-interface design, prototyping, experimentation, and connectivity for the billions of devices that are the Internet of Things.

Rainer takes an applied approach to his research, and the domains that he is most active in are education, health, and intercultural communication. One of his interests - in the cross-disciplinary fields of cognition, technology, and education - investigates the effective use of technology (like displays) for teaching and learning purposes. He is particularly passionate about incorporating principles of higher-order thinking skills together with personalised and collaborative learning approaches, and then applying this in real-world classrooms. Another theme is health and wellbeing, where he is actively pursuing and growing a number of initiatives that combine mobile technology with pressing topics like sedentary behaviour, exercise, and the need for a balanced diet.

Rainer is always keen to work at the intersect where technology is used to improve our lives, whether that be in education, health, or other socio-economic sectors like tourism and economics.