Team

CCAER

Head of Board

Gernot Müller is a Professor for Economics with a focus on Quantitative Methods and Transport/Logistics. He is currently the Chairman of the Examination Board for the Faculty of Economics and Society. Prof. Müller has vast experience as a Senior Economist in transport and logistics projects, furthermore, he has been active in projects for the telecommunications, postal, energy, and water sectors. His current research agenda focuses on topics such as business strategies of logistics firms in the Lower Rhine region, selected issues of European transport policy, as well as the econometric support for other research projects.

Board Members

Bild Prof. Dr. Hasan Alkas	Hasan Alkas is a Professor of Microeconomics with a focus on International Markets. He is active in the areas of Regulatory, Institutional and Organisational Economics, Applied Game Theory, and Innovation Management. He has practical experience as a Senior Economist at the Scientific Institute for Infrastructure and Communication (WIK), working as a Principal Economist at the European Commission, and in leading positions at Deutsche Telekom, being responsible for Regulatory Economics, Strategy, and Pricing. Prof. Dr. Alkas holds a degree Diplom-Volkswirt from the University of Bonn, a Master of Science from the University of Sussex, and a Doctorate from the University of Cologne. He has several international publications on regulation, pricing, costing, pandemic models and investment theory of real options.
Bild Prof. Dr. Ralf Klapdor	Ralf Klapdor is a Professor of Business Administration with a focus on International Taxation. He studied economics in Duisburg and then worked as a research assistant. During that time, he completed his doctorate on the topic of "Efficient tax system through a European model agreement?" His research focused on international taxation and the analysis of current tax law changes. He completed his tax advisor exam in 1999 and then worked as an independent tax advisor and in project business for international tax consulting firms. Prof. Dr. Ralf Klapdor has published numerous monographs and journal articles on various aspects of taxation. His current research focus includes the topic of innovation in transportation systems, as for example, the ongoing Monocab project.
Bild Prof. Dr. Ute Merbecks	Ute Merbecks is a Professor of General Business Administration with a focus on Corporate Finance. She studied economics at the Ruhr University Bochum and received her doctorate from the Ruhr University Bochum, obtaining a doctorate in economics. Later, she successfully completed her habilitation procedure and received the venia legendi for business administration. As part of her professional activities, Professor Dr. Ute Merbecks has worked as a consultant in the M&A sector and for family offices. Her research interests lie in sustainable finance, sustainability accounting, circular economy, and company pension schemes.
Bild Prof. Dr. Thomas Pitz	Thomas Pitz is a Professor of Economics with a focus on Game Theory. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical University Darmstadt. He wrote his thesis on the simulation of action types in social systems at the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science. Afterward, he worked for many years on several research projects on Game Theory, Experimental Economics, and Distributed Artificial Intelligence at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the Laboratory for Experimental Economics in Bonn, and the Vernon Smith Laboratory at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. His main research interests are interdisciplinary applications of Analytic Philosophy, Game Theory, Experimental Economics, and Distributed Artificial Intelligence. His research projects are related to analyzing geopolitical crises, social conflict scenarios, human traffic behavior, and learning theories in economics.
Bild Prof. Dr. Thomas-Patrick Schmidt
Bild Prof. Dr. Philipp Schorn
Bild Prof. Dr. Oliver Serfling	Prof. Dr. Oliver Serfling is Professor of Economic Policy and Development Economics at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. He is the academic director of the Master's program Sustainable Development Management. He has led various international consortia with a focus on capacity building in the higher education sector and researches, teaches and publishes on current development policy topics and methodological issues in survey research.
Bild Prof. Dr. Jörn Sickmann	Jörn Sickmann is a Professor of Economics with a focus on industrial economics and corporate finance. As a doctoral student and research assistant, he worked as the Chair of Economic Policy at the TU Ilmenau and studied economics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His research focuses on industrial and competition economics issues in network industries with a particular focus on the areas of telecommunications, digitization, and artificial intelligence as well as the digital transformation of transport networks. Another area of interest is behavioural science and experimental research on financial and network economics issues.

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeitende

Bild Margarete Drießen	Margarete Drießen holds an economics degree from the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her professional career began as an executive assistant at a medium-sized company. She then worked in corporate restructuring, and after that, she transitioned into the controlling department in the metal recycling industry. She spent several years working at Sparkasse Rhein-Maas in the area of accounting and management, where her primary responsibilities included supporting the accounting department, participating in regulatory reporting, and conducting sales control. Her academic focus at Hochschule Rhein-Waal is on accounting.
Bild Dr. Wolf Gardian	Wolf Gardian successfully completed his studies in Economics at Bielefeld University in 2011, earning the degree of Diplom-Volkswirt (equivalent to a Master's degree). Since then, he has held various positions as a research associate at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. As a research associate in Economics with a focus on coordinating the laboratory infrastructure for experimental economic research, he manages, oversees, and conceptually develops the university’s experimental economics lab facilities. Wolf Gardian conducts research in the areas of fraud detection, mobility research (particularly multimodal transport concepts), and mechanism design. He also teaches courses in mathematics, economic simulations, and microeconomics. In 2025, he successfully completed his PhD on the topic of fraud detection in relation to Benford’s Law
Bild Sonja Lehmann	Sonja Lehmann obtained degrees in Business Management and Psychology (B.A.) from Furtwangen University and in Consumer Psychology and Market Research (M.Sc.) from Harz University. As a consumer psychologist by training, she previously tested innovations by conducting empirical studies within the automotive context which further sparked her interest in emerging technologies, specifically in the realm of AI, and their implementation in the mobility sector. Her research focuses on the investigation of future multimodal mobility concepts considering psychological, economic and ethical questions dealing with the accessibility and user-centric design of such concepts.