In Memoriam: Bernhard Katzy
It is with great regret and sadness that we heard that Prof. Dr. Bernhard Katzy has passed away. We knew that he was seriously ill, but still the message of his passing came as a great shock.
Professor Katzy studied Engineering Management in Aachen (Germany) and obtained his PhD in the area of Production Engineering. He did his Habilitation in General Management at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). From 1990 until 1994 he worked as a researcher at the laboratory for “Production Engineering and Machine Tools” in Aachen. After that he became lecturer at the “Institute of Technology and Management” of the University of St. Gallen and he lectured for two years at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. In 1999 he was appointed to professor “Technology and Innovation Management” at the University of Munich. On October 1, 2008 he was appointed to professor “Technology and Innovation Management” at the Faculty of Science of Leiden University as well. Professor Katzy was also the founder and director of the “Center for Technology and Innovation Management”, a foundation to stimulate the research in his research area of Technology and Innovation Management.
Professor Katzy was one of the pillars of the Leiden Master of Science “ICT in Business”: within this master he lectured the courses “Innovation Management” and “High Tech Entrepreneurship”. His scientific passion was to discover the mechanisms behind the knowledge-based economy. In projects he studied among others the cooperation and functioning of knowledge workers, their productivity and their organization in networking. He was the promotor of ten PhD students at Leiden University and he has supervised many Msc. students. Also he played an important role in setting up the Living Lab at Campus The Hague.
We remember him as an enthusiastic and passionate personality. He was creative and enterprising and he has made important contributions to the Computer Science Institute LIACS.
Our thoughts are with his family, especially with his wife Claudia who also works at LIACS. We wish them a lot of strength in coping with this big loss.