Matthias Kaiserswerth was born in Heidenheim (Baden-Württemberg/Germany) in 1956 and grew up in Regensburg. He received degrees in Computer Science from Erlangen University in Germany and McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and his PhD from Erlangen University in 1987. In 1988, he joined IBM's Zurich Research Laboratory as a Research Staff Member, participating in a series of research projects in the field of network technology. In 1995, he became manager of a team working on the integration of various networking applications as well as aspects of network security. In 1997, he began concentrating solely on network security while on assignment at IBM Research in the U.S., where he was manager of the Networks and Security department in 1998/99. On his return to the Zurich Research Laboratory, he was appointed manager of the Computer Science department in 1999, and laboratory director June 2000. Matthias Kaiserswerth is also active in academia and is an Honorary Professor of applied computer science, network security, and cryptography applications at Erlangen University.