Dominique Guinard

Dominique "Dom" Guinard is a technologist, entrepreneur, author with a long hands-on experience in building the Internet of Things both in the cloud and on embedded Things. He is also a pioneer in Web of Things research and is particularly known for his early contributions to the Web of Things alongside with other researchers such as Vlad Trifa, Erik Wilde and Friedemann Mattern.^[1] Dominique is widely published author and a recognized expert in distributed embedded sensing and interactive devices, and their integration with enterprise applications using Web technologies.

Career

Dominique studied Computer Science at Université de Fribourg and graduated with masters degree in computer science with a minor in business administration. During his studies, he also worked at and co-founded several startups (Spoker, Dartfish, GMIPSoft), taught computer science and software developed at several private and public schools.

He also worked as an intern at Sun Microsystems working on RFID applications, and also did his master's thesis at Lancaster University working on distributed embedded sensors.

After graduating from university, he went on to get his PhD in Computer Science at ETH Zurich. During his time as a PhD he also worked as a Research Associate for SAP where he met Vlad Trifa. Both focused on the Internet of Things applications at SAP especially looking at the integration of real-world devices such as wireless sensor networks to business processes and enterprise software (e.g., ERPs).

The complexity of these integrations at the time lead them to look for simpler integration mechanisms. In 2007 they defined an application layer for the Internet of Things that uses Web standards called the Web of Things.^[2] Dominique wrote his Ph.D thesis on the Web of Things, particularly looking at the real-time aspects of Things on the Web.^[3] Towards the end of his Ph.D he experimented with applying the Web of Things concepts to Smart Supply chains and IoT applications in manufacturing environments at the MIT Auto-ID Lab with Professor Sanjay Sarma.

In 2011, Dominique co-founded EVRYTHNG together with Vlad Trifa, Niall Murphy and Andy Hobsbawm.^[4] The founding idea of EVRYTHNG was to create digital identities and Web APIs for all kinds of objects: from consumer goods to consumer electronics. As such, EVRYTHNG was the first commercial Web of Things platform. Dominique has been the CTO of EVRYTHNG since then, overseeing all the technical aspects of their award-winning platform.

In 2015, Dominique co-authored the Web Thing Model^[5] which was accepted as an official W3C member submission. The Web Thing model is a first attempt at creating a simple Web based standard for the application layer of the Internet of Things.^[6]

Publications

Dominique published a number of scientific articles in journals and conferences covering many aspects of the Internet of Things and the Web of Things.^[7] One of his most cited publications is "Towards the Web of Things: Web Mashups for Embedded Devices"^[1] which lays the foundations for integrating everyday devices and sensors to the Web.

In 2016, Dominique and Vlad co-authored a technical book summarising their decade-long experience in this field called "Building the Web of Things"^[8]. This book was the first to provide an applicable step-by-step guide about how to implement Web-based smart products and applications using Node.js and the Raspberry Pi.

References