Nikolaus Klassen

Nikolaus Klassen, PhD, is fascinated by how the human brain selects data, applies a diverse mix of strategies to process it and creates the knowledge humans accept as true and act upon. He has explored this process in contexts as diverse as the writing of poetry 1500 years ago and the purchase of a pair of sneakers in our time. After studying History, he went into applied research and created a web-based platform for Knowledge Management in companies. For two years, he worked as a data analyst for Google. In this role, he explored how to use technology to extract insights from large and diverse data pools and also taught retailers how to work with data. Returning to university, he wrote his PhD thesis on how Early Christian poetry (4th and 5th century CE) re-used and adapted concepts and patterns of thinking from the non-Christian Roman world around it. After more than a year of family leave during which he was watching the brains of two little girls develop those strategies of data processing with breathtaking speed, he is now planning to return to working as a data analyst.