Detlef Hohl holds a Master's degree in chemistry from Technical University of Munich and a PhD in theoretical physics from Technical University of Aachen (Germany). Before joining Shell in 1997, he was senior scientist at the German National Laboratory Forschungszentrum Jülich.

Detlef started at Shell’s Bellaire Technology Center in seismic imaging research, then moved to Promise seismic inversion R&D, and became R&D team leader for Quantitative Reservoir Management in 2006. From 2010-2017 he was General Manager Computation and Modeling where he led a project portfolio in data analytics, computational engineering and materials science, geoscience and petroleum engineering.

Detlef is adjunct professor at Rice University (Computational and Applied Math) and University of Houston, and visiting scholar at the UK National data science laboratory Alan Turing Institute. He held various temporary and visiting positions at NCSA, SISSA Trieste, NIST and Stanford University.