About Me
I am a software developer, and work in the Multi-Agent Systems department at the research company Profactor.
I had my first exposure to software development in a college for control engineering, and was hooked. In 1999 I began working at CSC Austria (formerly ServoData) as a Junior professional developer where I was involved in developing banking software. While it was a solid and well payed job, it did not satisfy my interests.
After working for a one year I quit and began studying Software Engineering at the university Hagenberg, which I can highly recommend. During my study I had the chance to do my internship at Industrial Research Limited in Auckland, New Zealand. I went back to Austria to write my diploma thesis at Joanneum Research.
In 2004 I started working at Profactor at the process and system intelligence department, with a focus on multi agent systems. Since then I have worked on multiple research projects with both universities and small and medium-sized enterprises as partners. Project work with both universities and enterprises is quite challenging because of the different interests and focus of the partners: we have to satisfy both worlds and deliver first class research in high quality software. To achieve this I am combining modern software engineering methods (agile software development, test driven development, extreme programming, etc.) with our research process.
Apart from my job, I have developed several open source tools in my free time. The most prominent are fxri (an interface to the Ruby documentation. fxri is part of the Ruby Windows Installer), Yace (a genetic programming tool), XDCC-Fetch, and several others.
Contact Information
- Martin Ankerl
- martin.ankerl@gmail.com
Disclaimer
Whatever you find on this website represents my opinion alone and is not necessarily related to the position of Profactor or any other company.
CoreWars
Some years ago I have played a bit with CoreWars, which is a very interesting programming game. corwars.co.uk seems is now hosting my site, because I am too lazy to integrate the data into my new homepage. Have a look at Yace, exhaust-ma and qMars here.
My First Research Project
I have recently met a really old friend of mine, with whom I have done quite a lot crazy things like building a professional bow and then hunting rabbits, abseiling from a bridge, diving, building remote controlled bombs, etc. (yes we were young and stupid, but it was great and I do not miss a second of this 
One of our most advanced projects and what I consider my first research project ever, was an electric driven bicycle that was equiped with a windscreen whiper motor and severy rechargeable buggy batteries:
This picture was taken in summer 1994, my friend Bernhard to the left, and me on the right. Believe me, it worked. Not only that, it totally rocked
A Bit More Information
I have worked on several open source projects.
I am also the creator of Yace (genetic programming of assembler like code, and exhaust-ma (which was the fastest interpreter for Redcode for a long time). In former times I made myself busy with C++, fairly low level optimization, template metaprogramming, etc. but right now I feel more at home with modern software engineering technologies.
Who Is Martin Ankerl?
I have studied software engineering and am currently working for Profactor in the multi agent systems group.
You can contact me with with martin.ankerl@gmail.com.