Staff

Nigina Tawakalsada is the Chancellor and Managing Director at Gisma University of Applied Sciences. She brings over nine years of experience in operations, leadership, and financial management.

Peter has vast experience as a non-executive director, general manager, and strategy consultant, having worked with firms such as KPMG and Boston Consulting Group. He became Vice President and General Manager of a media company after a decade of consulting. Additionally, Peter has started a few businesses in management consulting, advertising, and mobile marketing. Since 2012, Peter has been a lecturer at the London School of Business and Finance and an independent director of the board of SNG Romgaz SA. He focused on improving good corporate governance practices and sustainability at Romgaz SA, leading him to complete his doctoral thesis in Corporate Governance and board effectiveness in 2020 (cumulative GPA: 3.8 out of 4). He is currently a Principal Lecturer at the London School of Business and Finance and a visiting professor at EDHEC Business School (France), SKEMA Business School (France), and GISMA Business School in Berlin. Peter specialises in areas such as corporate governance, ethics, strategy, sustainable business development, marketing, and M&A. He has published academic papers and articles on board effectiveness and sustainable business development and is an active member of the Romanian chapter of the Association of Independent Directors (AAI) and Chapter Zero.

Prof. Dr. Fotis Papageorgiou is Professor of Social Sciences at GISMA and serves as the University’s Vice President (Academic). He completed his studies in Psychology, Philosophy and Politics in Greece (Panteion University) and the United Kingdom (Essex University) and is a licensed psychologist. In parallel to lecturing, he’s held senior management posts in Higher Education.

Prof. Dr. Mahmoudreza Babaei (Reza) is a Professor of Data Engineering at GISMA University of Applied Sciences. At GISMA he teaches both Data Engineering and Computer Science programs. Prior to joining GISMA, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Center of Human & Machine (CHM) department with Prof. Iyad Rahwan at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS) in the Social Computing Research group with Prof. Krishna P. Gummadi. His research focuses on Social Networks, Data Mining, Graph Theory, Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Reinforcement Learning (RL). Outcomes of his studies include consistent publications in highly competitive international conferences (e.g., ACM WSDM, AAAI, IJCAI, AAAI ICWSM, AAAI/ACM AIES, ACM FaccT) and journals (e.g., IEEE Trans. on Comp. Soc. Sys. and IEEE Trans. On Knowledge and Data Eng.)

Professor Maurits van Rooijen is the Chairman of GISMA’s Board of Governors, Chief Academic Officer (CAO) of Global University Systems, and Rector of the University of Europe for Applied Sciences, Germany. In addition to these roles, he is the Board Chair for IBAT College Dublin, Ireland. He was awarded the Constance Meldrum prize for Vision and Leadership from the European Association for International Education (EAIE) and the Insignia d’Ouro of the Universidad Santiago de Compostela.

Dr. Mohammad joined GISMA in February 2021. Dr. Mohammad received his PhD from TU Berlin, where he was researching semi-supervised data cleaning approaches. Prior to coming to TU Berlin, he was a data scientist at HomaPlus. He earned his MSc degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Tehran and his BSc degree in Computer Engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology. He published a couple of research papers, most notably, two papers on his data cleaning systems, namely Raha and Baran. He also received the ACM SIGMOD most reproducible paper award for implementing and releasing these systems.

Prof. Dr. Peter Konhäusner, Professor of Digital Entrepreneurship, at GISMA Business School University of Applied Sciences. By profession, he is a consultant and managing partner in a PR & marketing company in Berlin. Having been an entrepreneur for more than 20 years, he now enjoys transferring practical experiences to students through presenting interesting methods and theories. Dr. Konhäusner’s main research topics include entrepreneurship and business administration, marketing as well as digitisation. Besides teaching, reviewing exams and supervising bachelor and master theses, Dr. Konhäusner works as an independent consultant internationally. Especially assisting start-ups and SMEs in growing more prominent, finding the right marketing strategy and overcoming difficult times. Being a managing partner in the PR & marketing agency BC Communication enables Dr. Konhäusner to put his extensive expertise in a corporate context to work, as the agency’s main topics include crowdfunding campaigns and digitization of companies. The small team works together with many expert freelancers who are hired on an on-demand basis. Before teaching, the GISMA Professor finished his studies at the Economics and Business Administration University in Vienna as well as at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, and ran a media publishing house for over 15 years.

Prof. Dr. Phungmayo Horam is a resource economist, and his work focuses on the application of economics and management science for providing solutions for sustainable business practice and innovation. He completed his PhD at Humboldt University Berlin and has several years of experience in designing sustainable cities for the Future-Megacities project sponsored by BMBF and advisory work for technology and knowledge transfers in India, Germany and the UK. He takes great pleasure in working with students and sharing his experience to develop independent and innovative thinking. In his free time, he enjoys playing badminton, cycling and facilitating discussions on a sustainable future through various formal and informal forums.

Prof. Dr. Ralf Frank is a Professor of Organisational Transformation at GISMA. He started his professional career in Marketing and Business Development at Case International Harvester in 1992. He has been Managing Director and Secretary General of DVFA, German Society of Investment Professionals and a renowned training school for investors and financial analysts in Frankfurt, for more than 15 years. Dr. Frank has extensive experience in organisational transformation, sustainability and digitalisation. Dr. Frank received his Doctorate of Business Administration from Universität Hamburg. He holds an MBA from Sheffield Hallam University, and an MA in English, Communicational Sciences and Politics from Universität Essen. He is a trained Systemic Therapist & Consultant.