Claus D. Volko

Curriculum Vitae

1983 - 1989 Childhood - This was my care-free childhood. I was born in Vienna, Austria, Europe to a woman working as a teacher and a man working as an engineer. I spent most of my childhood watching cartoons and reading comic books.
1989 - 1992 Computer Games - In these years I got acquainted with computers. After returning home from school, I spent most of the time playing games, reading gaming magazines, and drawing sketches of my own games using pen and paper.
1992 - 1996 Learning to Program - These were the years which I spent teaching myself to program computers using Quick Basic, x86 Assembler, C++ and a couple of other languages.
In 1994 I released my first self-made computer game, "The Bad Bat", a simple 2D shooter game, and published my first ever article in a commercial magazine: a review of the Sega Mega Drive video game "The Story of Thor", in SEGA Magazin.
In 1995 I became a regular author for the PC-Heimwerker magazine, published the programming tutorial "The Real Adok's Way to QBASIC" and released the adventure game "Die Reise zum Mond".
1996 - 2001 Intense Work on Hugi - I became the main editor of the Hugi Magazine and spent all of my sparetime working on it (more than 20 hours per week). The magazine did not stop issuing when I graduated from high school in 2001, but I then did not spend as much time on it any more. Until 2014, 38 regular issues and several special issues were released, in German, English and Russian languages. This magazine developed to the world's most widespread electronical magazine on computer arts and the demoscene with about 7000 regular readers. Also see Wikipedia.
In 1997 I placed second (out of 149) in "7. Wiener Mathematik- und Denksportwettbewerb", a local mathematics and intelligence contest.
In 1998 I placed first (out of 23) in an international x86 Assembler size optimizing contest organized by the diskmag Pain and subsequently started organizing similar contests myself (Hugi Size Coding Competition).
2001 - 2004 Pre-Clinical Medicine - I spent these years studying biochemistry, cell biology and genetics in detail, as well as other subjects of the pre-clinical curriculum of medical school.
In 2001 I published a textbook on medical physics called "Physik verstehen - Zusammenhänge erkennen statt auswendig lernen".
2004 - 2008 Theory of Clinical Medicine and Medical Informatics - I spent these years studying pathophysiology, immunology and endocrinology in detail, as well as medical informatics and other subjects of the clinical-theoretical curriculum of medical school. In addition, I got myself acquainted with Jungian personality theory, the political philosophy of classical liberalism and the Austrian School of Economics.
During this time I spent about a year working on a game engine for a turn-based tactical role-playing game.
2008 - 2009 Break from Studies - I did an alternative service in lieu of a military service.
2009 - 2011 Clinical Medicine - I spent these years studying clinical medicine.
In 2010 I became a member of the board of Club Biotech, an organization of life science students that invited people such as Carl Djerassi, Susumu Tonegawa and Werner Arber to Vienna, where they delivered a lecture and had dinner together with the leading members of our club. In 2011 I was elected President of the club.
In these years I also developed a couple of novel computer games based on my own ideas, including "Adok's Magic Cube" and "Adok's Number Maze".
2011 - 2013 Computational Intelligence - I spent these years studying theoretical computer science in detail, focusing on automata theory, the theory of formal languages, computability theory, complexity theory, formal logics, algorithms, data structures, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
I was also a deputy member of the students' parliament at the Vienna University of Technology during these years (as a representative of the Young Liberals).
In 2012 I published the book "Enzyklopädie der Diskmags".
In 2013 I placed third (out of 86) in the "Equally Normed Numerical Derivation Test", an international high-range intelligence contest.
2013 - 2016 Start of Professional Life and Scientific Research - I was no longer a student and started earning my living myself, for a short while as an assistant physician, then as a software developer, while using my sparetime to participate in medical research projects. My first scientific paper was published in 2014; in 2015 was my premiere of first authorship. In 2016 my most important paper so far was published, "Model Approach for Stress Induced Steroidal Hormone Cascade Changes in Severe Mental Diseases", together with Pedro-Antonio Regidor and Uwe Rohr.
In 2013 my father died, leaving me with grief and bitterness but also with more freedom to spend my time on things that really interest me.
In 2016 I published the final version of my turn-based tactical role-playing game "Mega Force". Later in the same year, my friend and mentor Uwe Rohr died.
2016 - 2018 New Endeavours - I started living in my own four walls and without the guidance of the friends and relatives I had lost, I founded several innovative online projects including 21st Century Headlines and the Web Portal on Computational Biology. This eventually sparked my interest in Computational Systems Biology and Artificial Life.
In 2017 I joined the political party NEOS - The New Austria and Liberal Forum and ran for the Austrian National Parliament Elections as a candidate of NEOS but did not gather enough votes to obtain a seat in the parliament.
2018 - now Self-Actualization as a Creative Theorist and Philosopher - It seems that now, more than four years after my father died and one and a half years after I started living in my own four walls, I am developing to "who I was really born to be". This period started when I gave birth to the idea underlying a scientific theory which I called Symbiont Conversion Theory. I spent a couple of months working on the elaboration of this theory, and I additionally spent time studying the human immune system in even greater detail than during my time as a medical student.
However, that was not all I was doing. Instead of limiting myself to the scientific method, I actively embraced metaphysics, as I had basically already been doing as a small child, and published a paper (title: "The Synthesis of Metaphysics and Jungian Personality Theory") with a metaphysical theory of mine discerning three entities that make up a human being (the psyche, the body and the brain) and proposing a symmetry between the psyche and the body (i. e., the psyche also has some sort of metabolism, which seems to be related to dreams and fantasy, and that is why sleep deprivation and stress are so harmful). From these basic assumptions, I more or less managed to deduce Jungian Personality Theory as well as the scientific theory about immunity and stress hormones which my late friend and mentor Uwe Rohr and I published a paper about in 2016.