Paul Havinga (1962-2024), smart sensor pioneer

Paul Havinga has passed away on 3 May, aged 62. Havinga was a pioneer in (wireless) sensor technology (link in Dutch), both as a professor at the University of Twente’s Pervasive Systems group and through his involvement in multiple spinoffs. He co-founded Ambient Systems in 2004, Inertia Technology (wireless motion sensing) and Smart Signs Solutions (indoor navigation, link in Dutch) in 2008 and Locus Positioning (indoor tracking) and Terrateq (environmental and animal monitoring) in 2015. Part-time, he also was a principal scientist at TNO ICT.

Havinga’s research focused on wireless sensor networks, the Internet of Things, sensor data analytics and energy-efficient wireless communication. The common denominator was the development of large-scale, heterogeneous, wireless, networked embedded systems. In 2001, he initiated the first European project on wireless sensor networks. Many research projects followed, all addressing different aspects of wireless sensor networks and the IoT.