Girts is an enthusiastic programmer who likes to program himself and teach programming to others. He is the program coordinator for Computer Science bachelor program (specialization: Application development) in NTNU campus Ålesund. His industrial and research interests have evolved around software development for various applications and environments: from PostgreSQL databases and responsive websites to low-level C programming for low-power microcrontrollers. Girts received a PhD degree in computer science from the University of Latvia in 2014 with PhD thesis "Software design rules for Wireless Sensor Networks". He was active in research as a PhD student and has co-authored more than 10 well-cited research articles. Since 2015 is Girts focusing more on teaching. He has taught different subjects, including operating systems, object-oriented programming, mobile and distributed applications, and system development. Currently Girts is teaching computer networks (IDATA2304), Mobile applications (IDATA2503), Web technologies (IDATA2301) oand Application development (IDATA2306)
In the free time he likes to program hobby projects, creater online courses and videos, read books and go hiking in the mountains. Some of Girts' book favorites:
- Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B. Peterson
- Money: Master the Game, by Tony Robbins
- Permanent Record, by Edward Snowden
- Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, by Ashlee Vance
- The Phoenix Project - A Novel about IT, DevOps and Helping your Business Win, by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford
- Ghost Boy, by Martin Pistorius