Paul J.M. Havinga is associate professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and CTO of Ambient Systems B.V., in Enschede, the Netherlands.

His research themes have focused on: wireless sensor networks, ambient intelligence, distributed systems, energy-efficient wireless communication, and mobile computing. The common theme in these areas is on the development of large-scale, heterogeneous, wireless, distributed systems. Research questions cover architectures, protocols, programming paradigms, algorithms, and applications.

This research has resulted in over 200 scientific publications in journals and conferences. He is regularly invited for keynote presentations on this work. He is editor of several journals and magazines. He is involved as program committee chair, member, and reviewer for many conferences and workshops. He regularly serves as independent expert for reviewing and evaluation of international research projects for the EU, the US, and international government.

He has a significant experience as project manager in several international research projects on wireless sensor networks. In 2001 he initiated the first European project on wireless sensor networks. In 2004 he founded the company Ambient Systems B.V., partly based on the results of that project.