Raphael Volz is a German educator, inventor, and entrepreneur, serving as a full professor of applied informatics at the University of Pforzheim since 2012. In this capacity, he teaches and conducts research primarily in the fields of data science and artificial intelligence, with particular emphasis on machine learning, knowledge graphs, and natural language processing.

He holds a doctorate summa cum laude from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (formerly University/TH Karlsruhe), awarded in 2004 for his research on Web Ontology Reasoning with Logic Databases. He also works in natural language processing, employing machine learning techniques to extract knowledge graphs from text. His academic impact is reflected by his h-index of 40 (as per Google Scholar).

His entrepreneurial journey began in 2008 when he founded a consultancy focused on technology-driven product innovation, which would later be acquired by Moonshots GmbH in 2022. The following year, in 2009, he launched nogago, an outdoor navigation app that gained considerable traction in the BlackBerry ecosystem (†). More recently, he has established two luxury holiday properties, Villa Johanna (2023) and Villa Sophie (2019/sold in 2024), offering high-end vacation experiences in the northern Black Forest. 

Beyond these ventures, Volz maintains a hands-on approach to software development, a commitment dating back to his contributions to significant open-source projects like the OWL API and KAON. He is a vocal proponent of making all government-funded software and data publicly available under open-source licenses.

Outside of academia and business, Volz balances rural family life — raising four children and keeping chickens — while sometimes performing as an organist in local churches, a tradition he has kept up since 1990.