Digital platforms hold huge potential to address societal challenges. By providing essential resources like software modules and data, digital platforms drive innovation in any industry.

Imagine a connected health platform that patients can use at home. The platform collects data from wearables and electronic patient data. Developers can use the platform to provide tailored lifestyle advice. However, this opens the door to potential misuse—patient data being sold illicitly or unsafe health advice from low-quality applications. This example illustrates my fascination with platform openness. When designing for openness, digital platforms enable innovations that benefit society. Yet, openness also creates massive risks for values such as safety, privacy and sovereignty.

My research focus is the design of digital platforms. I'm driven by new technological paradigms for platform design: multi-platform constellations, data platforms and decentralized platforms. My aim is to develop design-relevant knowledge at the crossroads of architecture and governance.

My mission is to move the field into four main areas:

1. Expand to new generations of digital platforms (e.g. data platforms)
2. Create design-relevant knowledge on how to open up platforms. This design knowledge should consider new technological paradigms (e.g. decentralization)
3. Incorporate societal implications of platform openness (e.g. privacy, sovereignty). Rather than idealizing these values, I aim to study how they interact with business models.
4. Move away from well-known examples (e.g. smartphones, game consoles) to new engineering domains (e.g. health, mobility)