Curriculum Vitae

Karsten Schroer is doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Management, Economics, and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne, where he conducts research on smart information systems for sustainable electricity and mobility systems at Professor Wolfgang Ketter’s Chair for Information Systems for Sustainable Society. 

Karsten holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering with Business Management from the University of Birmingham, which he completed with Distinction in 2013. His Bachelor Thesis was later published in Applied Energy. In 2014, Karsten was awarded a post-gradual DAAD scholarship to take up his Master’s degree at the University of Cambridge, where he studied for an MPhil in Industrial Systems, Manufacturing and Management at the Department of Engineering. He graduated with Distinction and was awarded The Frederick Alfred Warren Price for the highest mark overall in the course.

Upon completion of his graduate studies, he joined a leading top-management consultancy where he gained two years of practical experience advising international clients in the utilities, oil & gas and chemicals sectors. Apart from traditional strategy work (market entry, strategic restructuring, etc.) his main focus was on digitalization initiatives for both efficiency gains such as smart predictive maintenance as well as top-line growth, especially concerning the development of new business models. He was also engaged in developing and bringing to market an offering around machine learning applications for the utilities industry.

In 2018 Karsten joined Professor Ketter’s Chair at the University of Cologne where he focuses his research on how data science and machine learning can be leveraged to facilitate a sustainable energy and mobility future. His particular research interests lie in the areas of electrical, shared and autonomous mobility and the integration of distributed energy resources into the electricity system. In these domains he is mainly concerned with market-based coordination mechanisms and intelligent agent design and simulation. Methodologically, this work relies strongly on big data analytics and machine learning techniques. He is also interested in the behavioral aspects of sustainability – in particular how information system artifacts can be designed that nudge consumers into more sustainable behavioral patterns.

Karsten is a tutor for the Bachelor’s course in “Data Science and Machine Learning” (DSML) and the advanced Master’s course in “Information Systems for Sustainable Society” (IS3). He also supervises Bachelor’s, Master’s and MBA theses in his areas of expertise.