Dr. Frank Boukamp is a passionate educator currently working in the higher education sector. He is also a hopeless technology enthusiast.
After receiving his Dipl.- Ing. degree in Computer-Aided Civil Engineering from Bauhaus University in Germany and a PhD in Civil Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (USA), Frank dedicated himself to teaching construction- and project-management courses and researching in the area of IT, data modelling and decision making.
Eventually, Frank moved to Australia, where he first worked as a senior lecturer and eventually program manager for the Construction Management program, before moving to the Project Management program at RMIT University’s School of Property, Construction and Project Management. You can find more details here.
So, why is Frank’s tag-line “Explore…Break… Learn… Educate.”?
Frank believes that we best learn about technology by exploring the technology and trying to adopt it without being afraid to break it. By breaking it (which may not always happen), we better understand the technology’s limitations. This learning from experience best places us to then educate others based on the gained experience.
Also, these are his favorite activities. ;-)
Research
Dr. Boukamp’s research focuses on leveraging semantic knowledge in IT solutions for project management, decision making in interdisciplinary environments and teaching, with a focus on leveraging emerging and evolving technologies, such as integrated project models, IoT-based sensors, and Augmented/Virtual Reality.
Ever since ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, Frank’s research and technology adoption efforts have focused on large language models (LLM), with a focus on educating people about the need to understand generative AI basics and a focus on adopting local, private generative AI solutions.
For 9 years, i.e., until February 2024, Dr. Frank Boukamp was a founding Committee Member of MelBIM, a not-for-profit group based in Melbourne, Australia that seeks to bring together the built environment community of Victoria, to share and exchange thoughts and knowledge relating to technology and innovation across the AEC+FM industry, with a particular focus on BIM.
