July 12, 2009 – July 14, 2009

Faculty Summit 2009

Location: Redmond, WA, USA

Speaker Biographies

  • Mark R. Abbott is Dean and Professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University (OSU). He received his B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974 and his PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis, in 1978. He has been at OSU since 1988 and has been Dean of the College since 2001.

    Dr. Abbott’s research focuses on the interaction of biological and physical processes in the upper ocean and relies on remote sensing and field observations. Dr. Abbott is a pioneer in the use of satellite ocean color data to study coupled physical/biological processes. He advocated the inclusion of chlorophyll fluorescence bands in MODIS (the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on EOS Terra and Aqua) and developed next-generation ocean primary productivity algorithms that used chlorophyll fluorescence data to estimate the physiological health of upper ocean phytoplankton. He is presently funded by the Office of Naval Research to explore advanced computer architectures for use in undersea platforms. Dr. Abbott has also advised the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation on issues regarding advanced computer technology and oceanography.

    In 2006, Dr. Abbott was appointed by the President to a six-year term on the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation and provides scientific advice to the White House and to Congress. Dr. Abbott was appointed in 2008 by Oregon Governor Kulongoski as vice chair of the Oregon Global Warming Commission, which is leading the state’s efforts in mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to climate change.

  • Sandy Andelman is Vice President and Executive Director of the Tropical Ecology, Assessment, and Monitoring (TEAM) Network, based at Conservation International. She previously served as Deputy Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Through her leadership of TEAM, she has pioneered the creation of a global monitoring and forecasting system for biodiversity and ecosystem services—an early warning system for the state of tropical forests worldwide. The TEAM Network is using standardized protocols to provide real time data to understand how tropical forest ecosystems are being impacted by global climate change and land cover change and to improve conservation decisions. Trained as an ecologist (she holds a Ph.D. from the University of Washington), Andelman collaborates with economists, computer scientists, and land-use change modelers. She has led and participated in several multi-million dollar ecoinformatics research projects. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and other public and private sources. Traditionally, ecological studies have involved one or a few scientists working at a single site, making very focused measurements over only a few years. This scientific model is losing relevance in today’s rapidly changing world, where environmental threats made by people happen across very large geographic and temporal scales—magnitudes too large for a single scientist at one site to comprehend. Ecology needs to scale up to provide the knowledge needed to address global climate change and other environmental threats. Andelman wants to help create a new culture of ecology: one that is relevant to our increasingly connected world. She envisions dynamic, diverse networks of scientists that transcend organizational and national boundaries, collaborating across the globe. Using unified methods, innovative informatics, and mobile technologies, she aims to create global public data resources and forecasting and problem-solving tools to tackle some of the world’s most important environmental problems.

  • Victor Bahl is a Principal Researcher and founding Manager of the Networking Research Group in Microsoft Research, Redmond. He is responsible for directing research activities that push the state-of-art in the networking of devices and systems. He and his group build proof-of-concept systems, engage with academia, publish papers in prestigious conferences and journals, publish software for the research community, and work with product groups to influence Microsoft products. His personal research interests span a variety of topics in wireless systems design, mobile networking, and network management. He has built and deployed several seminal and highly cited networked systems with a total of more than 7,600 citations. His research has been incorporated into core Microsoft products, industry standards, and numerous non-Microsoft commercial products. He has authored more than 85 papers in highly-selective conferences and 114 patent applications, 60 of which have issued; he has delivered close to two dozen keynote and plenary talks; he is the founder and past Chairperson of ACM SIGMOBILE; the founder and past Editor-in-Chief of ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review; and the founder and steering committee chair of the Mobile Systems Conference. He has served as the General Chair of several IEEE and ACM conferences including SIGCOMM and MobiCom, and is serving on the steering committees of seven IEEE and ACM conferences and workshop; he has served on the board of more than half-a-dozen journals; on several NSF and NRC panels, and on more than six dozen program committees.

    Dr. Bahl received Digital’s Doctoral Engineering Fellowship Award in 1995 and SIGMOBILE’s Distinguished Service Award in 2001. In 2004, Microsoft nominated him for the innovator of the year award. He became an ACM Fellow in 2003 and an IEEE Fellow in 2008. When not working, he loves to read, travel, eat in fine restaurants and spend time drinking with friends and family.

  • Magdalena Balazinska’s research interests are broadly in the fields of databases and distributed systems. Her current research focuses on building data management systems to help us monitor our physical and digital worlds at a fine grain and in real time. To achieve this goal, she is building a stream processing engine that integrates live sensor data with the rich, historical data that accumulates over time. She is also exploring techniques to enable monitoring systems to handle dirty sensor data. She is working in particular with inaccurate and often ambiguous RFID data. Before joining the University of Washington, Magdalena Balazinska received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in February 2006 and a B.E and M.S. from École Polytechnique de Montréal in March and May 2000, respectively.

  • Dennis Baldocchi is a Professor of Biometeorology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are on understanding vegetation-atmosphere interactions, with a specialty on measuring fluxes of carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and energy exchange from leaf to canopy to landscape scales.

    He has a PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in Bio-Environmental Engineering, a BS degree from the University of California-Davis in Atmospheric Science, and he is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Society.

  • Roger Barga is a Principal Architect in Microsoft Research, where he leads the Advanced Research Services and Tools (ARTS) team. The ARTS team is responsible for developing innovative tools and services using Microsoft products and technology to revolutionize and accelerate research, and it provides strategic and tactical hands-on technological leadership to projects across External Research. Roger joined Microsoft in 1997 as a Researcher in the Database Group of Microsoft Research, where he directed both systems research and product development efforts in database, workflow and stream processing systems. He has developed ideas from basic research, through proof of concept prototypes to incubation efforts in product groups.

  • Gill Bejerano is Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology and Computer Science at Stanford University and is a pioneer of Human Genome research. He is the discoverer of “Ultraconserved Elements”, a human genome phenomenon that defies our understanding of molecular evolution. Gill has also done influential work in applying Markovian models to biosequence analysis. Dr. Bejerano’s lab strives to understand the many thousands of genomic regions involved in gene regulation during human development. Their major interests are to (1) study the origins and evolution of these regions, (2) how they encode their individual as well as combined roles, (3) how they contribute to human disease, and (4) how they contribute to species adaptation.

  • Hrvoje Benko is a Researcher at Microsoft Research, where he has been working on sensing technologies and novel form factors for surface computing. His interests include touch and gesture-based interfaces, 3D interactions, display technologies, and augmented reality. Prior to joining Microsoft, he completed a BS at Lehigh University in 2001, and a PhD at Columbia University in 2007. Learn more about his work.

  • Carl Bergstrom is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington, and a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. His research interests range from animal communication to disease evolution to population epigenetics to bibliometrics to whatever the other members of his group are working on at the moment.

  • Maureen Biggers is the Assistant Dean for Diversity and Education at Indiana University School of Informatics. She holds her bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York-Geneseo and her master’s degree and PhD from the University of Miami. Biggers comes to Indiana University from the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), where she has held the positions of assistant dean for diversity and community, and most recently, director of the Diversity Research Lab. She has extensive experience in research and programs related to the inclusion of women and underrepresented minorities in computing, as well as in student services. Prior to joining Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, Biggers served in various academic administrative and student-focused roles at several well-known universities, including Mercer University and the University of Miami (Florida). She also works extensively on a national level, and currently serves as project manager for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance for the Advancement of African-American Researchers in Computing, and as a member of the leadership team for the National Center for Women and Information Technology.

  • Guy Blelloch is a Professor of Computer Science and Associate Dean of Planning at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a BA from Swarthmore College in 1983 and a PhD degree from the Massachusetts of Technology (MIT) in 1988. His research interests are in programming languages and algorithms and how they interact with an emphasis on parallel computation. He worked on one of the early Parallel Machines, the Thinking Machines Connection Machine, where he developed several of the parallel primitives for the machine. At Carnegie Mellon, Blelloch designed and implemented the parallel programming language NESL, a language designed for easily expressing and analyzing parallel algorithms. Other work on parallelism has addressed issues in scheduling, algorithm design, cache efficiency, garbage collection, and synchronization primitives.

  • Johan Bollen is a staff researcher at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Research Library (Digital Library Research and Prototyping team). He was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of Old Dominion University from 2002 to 2005. His present research interests are usage data mining, computational sociometrics, informetrics, and digital libraries. He has extensively published on these subjects as well as matters relating to adaptive information systems architecture. He is presently the Principal Investigator of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded MESUR project, which aims to develop usage-based metrics of scholarly impact.

  • Tracy Camp is a Professor of Computer Science at the Colorado School of Mines. She is the Founder and Director of The Toilers (opens in new tab), an active ad hoc networks research group. Her current research interests include the credibility of ad hoc network simulation studies and the use of wireless sensor networks in geosystems.

    Her articles have been cited more than 2,500 times (as of June 2008). Dr. Camp has received 17 grants from the National Science Foundation. This funding has produced 12 software packages that have been requested from (and shared with) more than 1,300 researchers in 64 countries (as of June 2008). Dr. Camp is an ACM Distinguished Lecturer, an IEEE Senior Member, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist. In December 2007, Dr. Camp received the Board of Trustees Outstanding Faculty Award at the Colorado School of Mines, an award that has been presented only five times between 1998 and 2007. Dr. Camp is currently the elected Treasurer of ACM SIGMOBILE. Dr. Camp is also an NCWIT Seed Fund Award Winner for Inspiring AmbITion.

  • Ignacio Casas is a faculty Professor of Information Technologies at the Department of Computer Science, School of Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) Chile. He graduated in 1976 as a Civil Electrical Engineer from PUC Chile and has a M.Sc. and Ph.D. (1986) in Computer Science from University of Toronto, Canada.His main research interests are in the areas of BDT (Business Driven Technologies) and TEL (Technology Enhanced Learning) environments and tools. He served as CIO at PUC Chile from 1995 to 2005 and is responsible of introducing TEL systems in his university. Ignacio is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the 12-years-old RELATED network for the development and use of TEL in Latin America, and is the Executive Director of the LACCIR Federation Virtual Institute for the advancement of ICT applied research in the region. He is an active member of IEEE and Colegio de Ingenieros de Chile.

  • Jeffrey S. Chase is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Duke University. His research with Duke’s Network and Internet Computing Lab deals with efficient and reliable sharing of information and resources in computer networks ranging from clusters to the global Internet. His overall research area is operating systems/distributed systems. His current research focuses primarily on on-demand utility computing. His group also conducts research on network storage, end-system networking, and Internet service infrastructures. He has published more than 80 technical papers in refereed conferences and journals on topics including network storage, I/O prefetching, end-system networking, active storage, utility computing, Internet content distribution, massive-data computing, and automated management of large-scale server infrastructures. He has served on program committees for leading technical conferences in operating systems, distributed computing, file and storage technologies, and Web content delivery.

  • Trishul Chilimbi is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research leading the Runtime Analysis and Design (RAD) research group. His areas of interest are programming languages, compilers, runtime systems, computer architecture, and parallel and distributed systems. He is currently focused on improving the performance and energy-efficiency of Web services both from a client and data center perspective.

  • Fred Chong is Director of the Computer Engineering Program and Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of California at Santa Barbara. He received his BS (1990), MS (1992), and PhD (1996) degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His current work focuses on architectures and applications for novel computing technologies, including Energy-Efficient Computing, Next-Generation Embedded Architectures, Quantum Computing Architectures and Hardware Support for System Security.

  • Dr. Roger B. Dannenberg is an Associate Research Professor in the Schools of Computer Science and Art at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is also a fellow of the Studio for Creative Inquiry. Dannenberg is well known for his computer music research, especially in real-time interactive systems. His pioneering work in computer accompaniment led to three patents and the SmartMusic system now used by more than 100,000 music students. He is also co-designer of the Audacity audio editor. He played a central role in the development of the Piano Tutor, an intelligent, interactive, automated multimedia tutor that enables a student to obtain first-year piano proficiency in less than 20 hours. Dannenberg held a patent for large-scale interactive games controlled by crowd noise, and these “stadium games” have entertained many U.S. National Football League (NFL) fans. Other innovations include the application of machine learning to music style classification and the automation of music structure analysis. As a trumpet player, he has performed in concert halls ranging from the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York City, to the Espace de Projection at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM), and he is active in performing jazz, classical, and new works. His compositions have been performed by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and at festivals such as the Foro de Musica Nueva, Callejon del Ruido, Spring in Havana, the International Computer Music Conference, and the Conference on World Affairs.

  • John D. Davis is a Researcher in Microsoft Research’s Silicon Valley lab. His research interests include computer architecture, large-scale computing systems, embedded systems, non-volatile memory, application behavior and performance tuning, and hardware-software co-design and interaction. He received his BS in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington. He later spent two years as a faculty research assistant for the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland in College Park. Simultaneously, John worked on various bioinformatics projects at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute for the Department of Pathology. While pursuing his doctorate degree at Stanford, he also spent three years working on performance prediction in the Niagara Architecture Performance Group for Sun Microsystems. He received an MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

  • Jeff Dozier is a Professor in the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1974 after earning his PhD from the University of Michigan. He founded the Bren School and served as its first dean for six years. His research interests are in the fields of snow hydrology, Earth system science, remote sensing, and information systems. He has led interdisciplinary studies in two areas: one addresses hydrologic science, environmental engineering, and social science in the water environment; the other is in the integration of environmental science and remote sensing with computer science and technology. From 1990 to 1992, he was the Senior Project Scientist for NASA’s Earth Observing System when the configuration for the system was established, and he helped found the MEDEA group, which investigates the use of classified data for environmental research and monitoring. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Honorary Professor of the Academia Sinica, and a recipient of both the NASA/Department of Interior William T. Pecora Award and the NASA Public Service Medal.

  • Carla Schlatter Ellis is a Professor Emerita of Computer Science at Duke University. She received her PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1979. Before coming to Duke as an Associate Professor in 1986, she was a member of the Computer Science faculties at the University of Oregon, Eugene, from 1978 to 1980, and at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, from 1980 to 1986.She has served on the board of the Computing Research Association (CRA) and is a member of the CRA Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W), past Co-Chair of the Academic Alliance of the National Center for Women and IT (NCWIT), and Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Computing Systems. Her research interests are in operating systems, mobile computing, and sensor networks.

  • Chris Franz is User Experience Manager for Microsoft Learning, a Microsoft group that develops training for professionals who support, implement, and develop solutions by using Microsoft technologies. Chris combines his experience as a teacher, instructional designer, and software program manager to design virtual environments for learning, interactive games, e-learning interfaces, and classroom board games. His academic background includes an MA in Psychology and MA in Communication and Information Science.

  • Dennis Gannon is the Director of Applications for the CloudComputing Futures Group. Prior to joining Microsoft,Dennis was a professor of Computer Science at Indiana University and the Science Director for the Indiana Pervasive Technology Labs and, for seven years, Chair of the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include large-scale cyberinfrastructure, programming systems and tools, distributed computing, computer networks, parallel programming, computational science, problem solving environments, and performance analysis of Grid and MPP systems. Dennis led the DARPA HPC++ project and was one of the architects of the Department of Energy SciDAC Common Software Component Architecture (CCA).He was a partner in the NSF Computational Cosmology Grand Challenge project, the NSF Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery and the NCSA Alliance. Dennis also served on the steering committee of the GGF, now the Open Grid Forum; and the Executive Steering Committee of the NSF Teragrid, where he managed the TeraGrid Science Advisory Board.

  • Michael Gillam, MD, is Director of the Microsoft Medical Media Lab (M3 Lab), an incubation lab for next generation healthcare informatics technology, which is part of the Health Solutions Group at Microsoft. He is a board-certified emergency medicine physician who completed his residency training at Northwestern University. Dr. Gillam was Director of Research for Azyxxi, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2007 and is now marketed under the Amalga™ trademark. Prior to Microsoft, he served as Director of Research for the National Institute for Medical Informatics in Washington, D.C. Dr. Gillam also served as the Informatics Director for the Department of Emergency Medicine at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare and taught at Northwestern University School of Medicine. Dr. Gillam is a published author in a number of peer-reviewed journals and dozens of conference abstracts. He is frequently invited to lecture at national conferences, speaking on emerging technologies in medical informatics. Dr. Gillam has directed projects spanning technologies including advanced data visualization, biosurveillance, electronic documentation, RFID tracking, automated patient facial image capture, enterprise search in healthcare, gesture based interface control, augmented and virtual reality, and medical robotics.

  • Rajesh Gupta is a Professor and holder of the QUALCOMM Endowed Chair in Embedded Microsystems in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of California, San Diego. He received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India, in 1984, his MS degree in EECS from University of California, Berkeley, in 1986, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1994. Earlier, he worked as a circuit designer at Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, California, as a member of three successful processor design teams; and on the Computer Science faculty at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and University of California, Irvine.

    His current research is focused on energy efficient and mobile computing issues in embedded systems. He is author/co-author of more than 150 articles on various aspects of embedded systems and design automation and four patents on PLL design, data-path synthesis and system-on-chip modeling. Gupta is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Fellow at University of California, Irvine, UCI Chancellor’s Award for excellence in undergraduate research, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, two Departmental Achievement Awards and a Components Research Team Award at Intel. Gupta served as founding Chair of the ACM/IEEE Conference on Models and Methods in Codesign (MEMOCODE) and founding Co-Chair of ACM/IEEE/IFIP Conference on Codesign and System Synthesis (CODES+ISSS). Gupta is Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Design and Test of Computers and serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on CAD and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. He serves as the Vice President of Publications of the IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation (CEDA). Gupta is a Fellow of the IEEE and a distinguished lecturer for the ACM/SIGDA and the IEEE CAS Society.

  • Mark Guzdial is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research interests are in learning sciences and technologies (especially computer-supported collaborative learning) and computing education research. He directs the National Science Foundation (NSF) Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance “Georgia Computes!” whose goal is to improve computing education from middle school through undergraduate across the state of Georgia, United States. He is the developer of the Media Computation approach to introductory computing, and with his collaborator, Barbara Ericson, he has written three textbooks supporting the approach. Dr. Guzdial has a joint Ph.D. in Education and Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Michigan. Before starting his Ph.D., he was a member of technical staff at Bellcore. He currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the ACM Education Board, and is a member of the leadership team for the National Center for Women in IT (NCWIT).

  • Gillian Hayes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She received her PhD from the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Her research is in Human Computer Interaction, with emphases on ubiquitous computing and computer supported cooperative work. She focuses on recording technologies for education and healthcare, investigating issues of usability, usefulness, and social impact of technology on feelings about surveillance, privacy, and control of data. Hayes is a recent NCWIT Seed Fund Award Winner for “Harnessing Hacking: Encouraging Inclusion through Creativity in IT Education for Latina Youth.”

  • Jane Hunter is Professor of eResearch at the University of Queensland, Australia, where she leads a research group that is developing tools and services for large-scale scientific data management. She currently works with networks of environmental scientists, molecular-biologists, social scientists, art conservators, and literature scholars on innovative approaches to data sharing, integration, analysis, visualization, and preservation. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Digital Curation, IEEE Multimedia, and the Journal of Web Semantics. She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee for Data in Science and the National eResearch Architecture Taskforce.

  • Wen-mei W. Hwu is a Professor and holds the Walter J. (“Jerry”) Sanders III-Advanced Micro Devices Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in the area of architecture, implementation, and compilation for parallel computer systems. He is the director of the IMPACT research group (opens in new tab). For his contributions in research and teaching, he received the ACM SigArch Maurice Wilkes Award, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award, the Tau Beta Pi Daniel C. Drucker Eminent Faculty Award, and the ISCA Most Influential Paper Award. He is a fellow of IEEE and ACM. Hwu serves on the Executive Committee of the MARCO/DARPA C2S2 (opens in new tab) and GSRC Focus Research Centers (opens in new tab). He leads the GSRC Concurrent Systems Theme. He is the hardware lead of the US$208 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Petascale Computer Project awarded to the University of Illinois and IBM in 2007. He directs the world’s first CUDA Center of Excellence funded by NVIDIA and co-directs the Intel-Microsoft UIUC UPCRC with Marc Snir. Dr. Hwu received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

  • Trey Ideker, PhD, is Chief of Genetics at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine. He also serves as Associate Professor of Bioengineering, Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. Ideker received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and his PhD from the University of Washington in Molecular Biology under the supervision of Dr. Leroy Hood. He is a pioneer in using genome-scale measurements to construct network models of cellular processes and disease. His recent research activities include assembly of networks governing the response to DNA damage, development of software for protein network cross-species comparisons, and network-based diagnosis of disease. Ideker serves on the Editorial Boards for Bioinformatics and PLoS Computational Biology, Board of Directors for US-HUPO and the Cytoscape Consortium, and is a regular consultant for companies such as Monsanto, Genstruct, and Mendel Biotechnology. He was named one of the Top 10 Innovators of 2006 by Technology Review magazine and is this year’s recipient of the Overton Price from the International Society for Computational Biology. His work has been featured in news outlets such as The Scientist, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Forbes magazine.

  • Mark Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also Professor of Energy Resources Engineering, by courtesy and Senior Fellow of the Woods Institute for the Environment, by courtesy. He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering with distinction, an A.B. in Economics with distinction, and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University, in 1988. He received an M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences in 1994 from University of California, Los Angeles. He has been on the faculty at Stanford since 1994.

    His work relates to the development and application of numerical models to understand better the effects of energy systems and vehicles on climate and air pollution and the analysis of renewable energy resources. He has published two textbooks, Fundamentals of Atmospheric Modeling and Atmospheric Pollution: History, Science, and Regulation, and more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. He received the 2005 American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award for “significant contributions to modeling aerosol chemistry and to understanding the role of soot and other carbon particles on climate.” His paper, “Effects of ethanol versus gasoline on cancer and mortality in the United States” was the top-accessed article in the journal, Environmental Science & Technology from April to September, 2007. His paper, “On the causal link between carbon dioxide and air pollution mortality,” was one of the top three most popular scientific studies of 2008, according to Environmental Research Web. His recent paper, “Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security (opens in new tab)” was the top-downloaded article for the journal Energy & Environmental Science in March 2009, with more than 4,000 downloads.

  • Harold Javid’s original field of investigation was optimization and nonlinear control system design. He earned his BS, MS and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois. Upon completing his Ph.D., he chose to move directly to industry in order to follow his passion for applying theory to significant practical problems. Examples of his results while working at Systems Control, Inc. in Palo Alto, California, and GE in Schenectady, New York, include Markov chain based dynamic optimization algorithms for hydroelectric power scheduling for public utilities in Colombia, real-time feedback control of steam turbines and coal gasification systems. In 1984, Harold became Director of Electronics for Acrowood Corporation where he led efforts to create real-time embedded optimizers and nuclear instruments for use in the lumber and pulp and paper industries. In 1988, he joined the Research and Technology Group in the Boeing Company where he led teams involved in developing industrial simulation tools. In 1998, Dr. Javid joined Microsoft as Group Manager for Visual C++ Support. After enjoying a number of different opportunities to exercise his managerial skill at Microsoft, Harold happily joined Microsoft Research where has enjoyed the sweet intersection of technical interests and program management activities. As Director of External Research Global Programs, he is focused on bringing synergy to Microsoft External Research’s global talent investment activities.

  • Dr. Kane is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University, and serves as the Lead Genomic Scientist in the Bindley Bioscience Center at Purdue University’s Discovery Park, with more than 20 years experience in genomics and bioinformatics. He earned a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology from Purdue University, and has experience in the pharmaceutical industry investigating the molecular and physiological aspects of drug metabolism and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as biotechnology industry experience in the development and utilization of DNA microarray technology in support of drug discovery and disease characterization.

  • Yasushi Kiyoki received his B.E., M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Keio University in 1978, 1980 and 1983, respectively. In 1983 and 1984, he worked at Electrical and Communication Laboratory of NTT. From 1984 to 1996, he was with the Institute of Information Sciences and Electronics, University of Tsukuba, as an Assistant Professor and then an Associate Professor. Since 1996, he has been with the Department of Environmental Information at Keio University, where he is currently a Professor. His research addresses multi-database systems, knowledge base systems, semantic associative processing, and multimedia database systems. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (IOS Press) and on Transactions on Databases in Information Processing Society of Japan. He has also served as the program chair for several international conferences such as the 7th International Conference on Database Systems for Advanced Applications and the European-Japanese Conferences on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (2004 – present).

  • Robert Kleinberg is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, where he joined the faculty in 2006. His research studies the design and analysis of algorithms, and their applications to networking, electronic commerce, information retrieval, and other areas. Prior to receiving his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Kleinberg spent three years at Akamai Technologies, where he assisted in designing the world’s largest Internet Content Delivery Network. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship.

  • Christopher James Langmead holds an undergraduate degree in Computer Music and Composition from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, a Master’s Degree in Computer Music and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Dartmouth. His research is now in Computational Biology, where he develops and applies a combination of techniques from Machine Learning and Model Checking to reason about the dynamics of complex systems.

  • Peter Lee is a Professor and Head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research contributions are in areas related to the foundations of software reliability, program analysis, security, and language design. A Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association, Peter Lee is called upon in diverse venues as a contributor in research, education, and policy making.

  • Dr. Sang Yup Lee is Distinguished Professor and LG Chem Chair Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He is currently the Dean of College of Life Science and Bioengineering, Director of Center for Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology, Director of BioProcess Engineering Research Center, and Director of Bioinformatics Research Center. He has published 290 journal papers, 43 books/book chapters, and more than 400 patents—either registered or applied. He received numerous awards, including the National Order of Merit, Merck Metabolic Engineering Award from Merck, and Elmer Gaden Award from Biotechnology and Bioengineering. He is currently Fellow of AAAS, Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology, Fellow of Korean Academy of Science and Technology, Editor-in-Chief of Biotechnology Journal, and Associate Editor and board member of numerous journals. His research interests are systems biology and biotechnology, industrial biotechnology, metabolic engineering, and nanobiotechnology.

  • Cynthia LeRouge, PhD, CPA is an Associate Professor at Saint Louis University in the Decision Sciences and Information Technology Management Department. She holds a joint appointment in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health, Saint Louis University. Dr. LeRouge has been recognized with teaching, research, and service awards. Her current research interests relate to health care information systems, and in particular telemedicine and consumer health informatics. She has more than 60 publications including academic journal articles, edited chapters in research-based books, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings. Dr. LeRouge has co-chaired health care mini-tracks for various information systems conferences. For the last year, she has actively worked as an executive board member of the Association of Information Systems special interest group for Healthcare Research and currently serves as the Chair. Dr. LeRouge has held various senior management roles in practice including roles in the software and healthcare industries prior to joining academe. She completed her PhD at the University of South Florida.

  • Golan Levin is an artist, engineer, and educator who is interested in new modes of interactive communication. Levin’s pedagogy seeks to give artists the confidence to program their own software creations from first principles, while offering scientists and engineers an opportunity to discover computation as a medium of personal expression. Levin’s classes focus on significant themes in contemporary electronic media arts, such as interaction design, form synthesis, digital fabrication, information visualization, and audiovisual performance. These function as “studio art courses in computer science,” in which the objective is to produce personally and socially relevant expressions, but the medium is software created by the students themselves. Levin’s own research investigates formal languages for visualization and interactivity; through performances, artifacts, and online environments, Levin applies creative twists to digital technologies that highlight our relationship with machines and make visible our ways of interacting with each other. At Carnegie Mellon University, Levin is Associate Professor of Electronic Art and Director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, a meta-laboratory that supports atypical, interdisciplinary, and inter-institutional research.

  • Philip Levis is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He researches software and networking for tiny, low-power, wireless sensors. He focuses on making these networks of sensors easier to deploy and maintain by researching ultra-simple algorithms that use robust local rules to achieve desirable global behaviors. Software he develops is used by hundreds of research groups worldwide and runs on millions of nodes.

  • Jennifer Listgarten is a Researcher in the eScience group at Microsoft Research. Her work focuses on the development and application of novel statistical and machine learning methods for the analysis of high-throughput, biologically-based data, with particular focuses, past and present, including microarray expression, mass spectrometry-based proteomics, HIV vaccine research, transplantation, and genetics. Prior to joining Microsoft, Jennifer completed a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Toronto.

  • David Lobell is a Senior Research Scholar in the Program on Food Security and Environment. His research focuses on quantifying the risks that climate changes pose to crop production and food security, and identifying attractive adaptation options that can reduce these risks. This work includes modeling climate changes in agricultural regions, particularly the changes resulting from land use activities, and modeling the response of cropping systems to climate.

    A second area of active research is the application of remote sensing, GIS, crop models, and climate forecasts to agricultural decision making at a range of spatial scales. Much of this research is aimed at identifying opportunities for reducing the gap between average and potential yields in major agricultural regions. His current remote sensing projects include studies in Northwest and Central Mexico, the Northern Great Plains, and South Asia.

    Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Lobell was a Lawrence Post-doctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2005 to 2007. In addition to the Lawrence Fellowship, he is a past recipient of EPA, NASA, and NSF Graduate Research Fellowships. He received a PhD in Geological and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University in 2005, and a Sc.B. in Applied Mathematics, Magna Cum Laude, from Brown University in 2000.

  • Jiao (Maggie) Ma received a PhD and MS in Human Factors Engineering/Industrial Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2005 and 2002, respectively. Her research interests are in Human Factors Engineering, specifically, aviation human factors, user-centered design in aviation and healthcare, and human error investigation. Currently, Dr. Ma is the Principal Investigator for a Microsoft Research-funded project titled, “Use Smart Phones to Promote Diabetes Self-Management: Robust Elderly in Urban and Rural China.” She also leads a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-funded research project on expanding the Line Operations Safety Audits (LOSA) from flight operations to aviation maintenance and ramp operations domains. Previously, Dr. Ma received funding from the National Cancer Institute, Anthems/WellPoint Inc., and Saint Louis University. She has produced more than 25 peer-reviewed journal/proceeding papers and FAA technical reports. As an assistant professor, Dr. Ma currently teaches undergraduate courses in flight science and aviation management and graduate courses in aviation safety management.

  • Tom McMail is passionate about innovation, education, and technology as means for improving the human condition. After his first university training (in Psychology and Psycholinguistics), he taught and later became a social worker, recruiting students for Head Start, engaging with severely disadvantaged rural populations. He has also worked as a professional musician and composer, plays more than 20 instruments and has taught improvisation, as well as music theory and composition. After returning to school for a degree in Computer Science, he worked in the electronic gaming industry and later became a producer and developer of educational software. He has spent more than 12 years at Microsoft in a variety of roles. At MSN, he was responsible for introducing new technologies and techniques in support of worldwide Internet events and also created innovative plans for online community. After joining Microsoft Research, he transformed his outreach team by redirecting their regional efforts in technology deployment through a more strategic approach, by directly addressing academic concerns about declining enrollments, gender disparity, and software security as well as other issues. He introduced Tablet PCs to universities, driving experimentation to find best uses of technology to transform education. He was instrumental in introducing programs by employing both Gaming and Robotics as change agents for reinvigorating curriculum in computer science, thereby greatly increasing student interest in computing careers and education.

    At Microsoft Research in the External Research group, Tom is currently responsible for External Research programs in North America.

  • Jennifer joined Microsoft in 2003 after graduating from Yale University. She spent four years as a Program Manager on the Microsoft Office Word team, creating new features (equations and bibliographies) for the academic community. For the past two years, Jennifer has worked as a Program Manager in Office Labs, where she prototypes concepts that may boost productivity. Her current project, Skill Tracker, explores whether elements of game play inside of Office can motivate users to learn more features and explore more of the application’s capabilities.

  • Jane Ohlmeyer is Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Modern History at Trinity College, Dublin. She is an expert on the New British and Atlantic Histories and has published widely on a number of themes in early modern Irish and British history. Her books include Civil War and Restoration in the Three Stuart Kingdoms (Cambridge, 1993), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641-1660 (editor, Cambridge, 1995), and Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (editor, Cambridge, 2000). She is currently writing a book on the Irish peerage in the seventeenth century for Yale University Press. Professor Ohlmeyer has considerable expertise in overseeing major editorial projects and helped to secure funding for the digitization and online publication of the ‘1641 Depositions’. She is also the Principal Investigator for the Trinity College Dublin element of ‘Humanities Serving Irish Society, which was awarded €10.78M as part of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI 4). She chairs the Irish Manuscripts Commission’s Digitization Taskforce and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences-Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities [DARIAH] committee. She is the Irish representative on DARIAH, the European Digital Libraries and on the European Strategic Framework for Research Infrastructures, Humanities and Social Sciences working group.

  • David Patterson was the first in his family to graduate from college and he enjoyed it so much that he did not stop until he received a PhD (University of California, Los Angeles, 1976). He then joined University of California, Berkeley, where he and his colleagues developed Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC), Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), and Network of Workstations (NOW). He was elected Chair of the Computer Research Association and President of the Association for Computing Machinery and served as Chair of Berkeley’s Computer Science Division. He is currently Director of both the Reliable Adaptive Distributed systems. He has published about 200 papers and 5 books, and he has been awarded 30 honors for research, teaching, and service, including election to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He was named a Fellow of the Computer History Museum, ACM, IEEE, and both AAAS organizations.

  • Ken Perlin (opens in new tab) is a professor in the Department of Computer Science (opens in new tab) at New York University (opens in new tab) (NYU), directs the NYU Games For Learning Institute (opens in new tab). He was also Founding Director of the Media Research Laboratory (opens in new tab) and Director of the NYU Center for Advanced Technology. His research interests include graphics, animation, user interfaces, science education, and multimedia. He received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his noise and turbulence procedural texturing techniques, which are widely used in feature films and television; the 2008 ACM/SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award (opens in new tab); the TrapCode award for achievement in computer graphics research; the New York City Mayor’s award for excellence in Science and Technology; the Sokol award for outstanding Science faculty at NYU; and a Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. He has also been a featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art (opens in new tab).

    Dr. Perlin received his PhD in Computer Science from New York University, and a BA in theoretical mathematics from Harvard University. Before working at NYU, he was Head of Software Development at R/GREENBERG Associates in New York, New York. Prior to that, he was the System Architect for computer-generated animation at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. He has served on the Board of Directors of the New York chapter of ACM/SIGGRAPH, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Software Industry Association.

  • Based in Microsoft’s Platform Evangelism Group in Redmond, Washington, Michael Platt is Senior Director of Mobility Evangelism and responsible for setting the Microsoft mobility strategy for developers worldwide. He has extensive experience in the architecture and development of mobility applications and solutions in both developed and emerging markets. A 15-year Microsoft veteran, Michael has more than 35 years of experience in the IT industry with IBM and Microsoft in research, design, development, pre-sales, and consultancy positions. He has extensive design, architecture, speaking, and presentation experience with Fortune 100 companies, at Microsoft events such as Tech Ed, Professional Developers Conference, and strategic architect forums and industry events. Michael’s present focus is on providing a comprehensive end-to-end mobile platform for developers in developed and emerging markets.

  • Associate Director of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Rita M. Powell earned the EdD in Higher Education Management from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. Her thesis, Sundials in the Shade: a Study of Women’s Persistence in the First Year of an Undergraduate Computer Science Program in a Selective University, took a qualitative, ethnographic approach to investigating women’s experiences, satisfaction, and persistence in the computer science major. Powell develops and implements educational initiatives to enhance student learning and conducts research in education in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Powell also mentors the Women in Computer Science (undergraduate) and the CISters (graduate) organizations. Powell is a National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Seed Fund Award Winner for Women in Computer Science Outreach to High School Girls.

  • President of Earth2Ocean, Inc., Dr. Prager is a well-respected marine scientist and author, widely recognized for her expertise and ability to bring science to the laymen. She is the chief scientist for the Aquarius Reef Base program in Key Largo, Florida, which includes the world’s only undersea research station; a freelance writer; and consultant for clients such as the world-renowned Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, the President’s U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, and Celebrity Cruise Lines. Dr. Prager has built a national reputation as a scientist and spokesperson on earth and ocean science issues and is a sought-after speaker for public-oriented events and as an expert by the media. She has appeared on “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” Fox News, CBS’ “The Early Show” and news, “CNN American Morning,” “Larry King Live,” and “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” Dr. Prager was also featured in an ABC News Special, “Planet Earth; Miami’s NBC EcoWatch Coral Crisis;” and has been in shows for the Discovery Channel.

    Dr. Prager focuses much of her time on bringing earth and ocean science to the public through writing, working with the media, creating innovative partnerships, and special events. About her latest book, just published by the University of Chicago Press, Chasing Science at Sea: Racing hurricanes, stalking sharks, and living undersea with ocean experts, an early reviewer wrote, “As an unorthodox handbook for would-be ocean scientists, this title is invaluable.” She has written articles for scientific journals, public-oriented magazines, and several other books including Furious Earth: The Science and Nature of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Tsunamis and The Oceans both published by McGraw-Hill. Comments on The Oceans have been superb: Jean-Michel Cousteau describes it as a “must have” for all those interested in the oceans. Dr. Prager has also published a series of children’s books with the National Geographic Society, the first SAND received the 2000 Parents Choice Award, Volcano was released in September 2001, and Earthquakes in March of 2002. She has also published a children’s fiction novel, Adventure on Dolphin Island.

    Dr. Prager has participated in research expeditions to places such as the Galapagos Islands, Papua New Guinea, Caribbean, Bahamas, and the deep waters of the Florida Reef tract. She obtained a BA from Wesleyan University, Connecticut; an MS from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science; and in 1992, a PhD from Louisiana State University.

    In 1992, as a faculty scientist at Sea Education Association (SEA) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Dr. Prager taught oceanography to undergraduates, teachers, and senior citizens in a unique educational program in which classroom learning is supplemented by extensive hands-on experience in oceanographic research at sea. She left SEA in 1995 to become the resident director of the National Undersea Research Center in the Bahamas. In 1997, she joined the U.S. Geological Survey where she split her time between scientific research in marine geology, oceanography, and coral reefs and public education. During 1998, the International Year of the Ocean (YOTO), Dr. Prager co-chaired the subcommittee on research, exploration, and education for the National Ocean Conference presided by the President and Vice President. In 2000, she became the Assistant Dean at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science; she remains an adjunct faculty member at the school. She is a frequently requested speaker at aquariums, national meetings, and schools. Dr. Prager was a member and then Chairman of the Ocean Research and Resources Advisory Panel for the federal government and was hired by the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy to help write their report to Congress and the President submitted in 2004. She continues to focus her efforts on developing innovative ways to share her passion for the oceans and the environment with others.

  • Tara Prakriya joined Microsoft in 1997 to work on the MSN platform. She led early adoption of the Microsoft .NET Framework as the Product Unit Manager of the content management platform. She was also a Program Manager for the ad system and the content and user data warehouse. Ms. Prakriya joined the Windows group in 2002, where she was the Product Unit Manager for Mobile PCs in Windows Vista and then the Product Unit Manager for Tablet PC in Windows Vista. She then turned to incubating education products for emerging markets. Projects ranged from solutions for K-12 schools to distance skills training in the private sector. Ms. Prakriya is currently the General Manager for Microsoft’s Technical Strategy Group. Previously, she worked at Merck & Company’s U.S. Human Health Division IT focusing on financial data warehousing.

  • Jaime Puente is a Senior Research Program Manager of Microsoft External Research and is responsible for Microsoft Research’s external engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean. Microsoft External Research is a key part of the Microsoft Research program and works closely with academia, governments, and research institutions to help solve some of the world’s most challenging scientific and social problems. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Jaime spent 13 years as a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Ecuador. Jaime Puente was a Fulbright Scholar for his early engagement with academia. It was during his time as a Fulbright Scholar that he started to lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields exploring how academia and industry needs intersect. His educational background includes a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University, and a Masters of Business Administration and an Electronics Engineering degree both from ESPOL in Ecuador. Jaime Puente is currently a doctoral student in the Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences at NOVA Southeastern University in Florida, United States. His main research interests are in computing for the developing world and educational technologies.

  • Raul Ruggia is a Computer Engineer (University of the Republic – Uruguay) and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Paris VI (France). He works as Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of the Republic of Uruguay, where he lectures on Information Systems, supervises graduate students, and currently directs research projects on Data Quality Management, Bio-Informatics, and Interoperability. Formerly, he worked on design tools and data warehousing areas, participating in Latin-American projects (Prosul), Ibero-American projects (CYTED), and European projects (UE @LIS program). He has also supervised technological projects on environmental and telecommunications domains, jointly with Uruguayan government agencies.

  • Peter Seligmann is one of today’s most dynamic leaders in the global conservation movement, where he has brought innovation and action to the forefront of biodiversity protection for more than 25 years. In 1987, he co-founded Conservation International (CI), and as Chairman and CEO, he has positioned CI at the cutting edge of conservation, creating lasting solutions to biodiversity and sustainable development challenges.

    Seligmann holds a master’s degree from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Science and honorary doctorates in Science from Michigan State University and Rutgers University. In 2001, he was awarded the Order of the Golden Ark from the Netherlands. Seligmann serves on the board of the Wild Salmon Center in Portland, Oregon, and the Mayor’s Environmental Council in Washington, D.C. He also serves on several corporate boards, as well as on the advisory councils of the Jackson Hole Land Trust, Ecotrust, and other not-for-profit organizations, including the Japanese Keidanren’s Nature Conservation Fund. In 2000, President Clinton named him a member of the Enterprise for the Americas Board.

    Seligmann’s work has been featured by ABC’s “Nightline,” CNN, and Fortune magazine. A strong advocate of building partnerships, Seligmann has forged groundbreaking joint projects between the environmental community and other sectors, including government and industry. In 1998, Conservation International established the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, and in 2001, the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business. In 2000, CI launched the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund in collaboration with the World Bank and the MacArthur Foundation.

    Under Seligmann’s leadership, CI has pioneered conservation tools that are economically sound, scientifically based, and culturally sensitive. He has guided CI to become a major international conservation leader, with field offices in more than 30 countries, and major influences in science and business.

  • Director of Test, Windows Core Security, Microsoft Corporation, Ross Smith began his Microsoft career in Product Support in 1991 and has been a test lead, test manager, and test architect. He is experimenting with how gaming can improve productivity among next-generation workers, and the impact of games and social networking tools on management education and requisite skills for new managers. His work has been mentioned in The Economist and in the recent book, Changing the Game: How Video Games are Transforming the Future of Business.

  • Senior Director, University Relations, Microsoft Research Asia, Lolan Song started her career at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, more than ten years ago as a systems engineer. She then moved to Tokyo to cover Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong SAR. Lolan was responsible for various mission-critical business application systems including sales, marketing, customer support, human resources, and operations. She successfully managed a number of key projects and earned solid technical and managerial experience. Lolan built a regional IT team from scratch. She recruited people, made IT strategic plans to support Microsoft business rapid growth, and managed a multi-million-dollar budget. Lolan was promoted to senior regional IT manager to cover 12 subsidiaries in Asia before she moved back to Redmond in 1999.

    As a Senior Program Manager in Redmond, Lolan managed systems design, development, testing, and operations support for a key system used by Microsoft.com, one of the busiest corporate Web sites in the world. Later, a Senior Business Manager, Lolan managed the global technical community initiative. She worked with teams based in Asia, the Europe and Middle East region, and Latin America to extend the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) program to the world and make the program one of the most successful in the global technical communities.

    After 19 years living abroad, Lolan Song returned to Beijing in August 2004 as the University Relations Director for Microsoft Research Asia, making her responsible for University Relations in the entire Asia region. Lolan is very passionate about her work. She wants to devote her energy and experience to help younger generations reach their full potential.

  • Desney Tan is a Researcher in the Visualization and Interaction Area at Microsoft Research, where he manages the Computational User Experiences group. He also holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle.

    Desney’s research interests include Human-Computer Interaction and Physiological Computing. He spends much of his time applying signal processing and machine learning to recognizing noisy signals, specifically those in or on the human body, and using them in interesting ways. However, his research interests are wide reaching and he has worked on projects in many other domains.

    Desney received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) in 1996, after which he spent a couple of years building bridges and blowing things up in the Singapore Armed Forces. He later returned to Carnegie Mellon University, where he worked with Randy Pausch and earned his PhD in Computer Science in 2004. In 2007, Desney was honored as one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review’s “Young Innovators Under 35” for his work in brain-computer interfaces.

  • Charles P. (Chuck) Thacker joined Microsoft in 1997 as Director of Advanced Systems to assist in the establishment of the Microsoft Cambridge Research Lab, where he was involved in recruiting, defining the research agenda, publicity, and establishing the lab’s operating procedures. At the end of this two-year assignment, he returned to the United States and worked on the first Tablet PC. In 2005, he returned to Microsoft Research, where he is building a group to engage in computer architecture research at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus. Before joining Microsoft, Thacker worked for the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and later at the Digital Equipment Systems Research Center. He served as project leader of the MAXC timesharing system, and as the chief designer on Alto, the first personal computer to use a bit-mapped display and mouse for user interface. Thacker is also the co-inventor of the Ethernet local area network, the DEC Firefly multiprocessor workstation, and the AN1 and AN2 networks. He has published widely and holds numerous patents in the areas of computer architecture and networking, and has led a number of seminal projects in these areas.

    Thacker was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and is a distinguished alumnus of the Computer Science Department at the University of California. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, which in 2004 awarded him the Charles Stark Draper Prize (with A. Kay, B. Lampson, and R. Taylor) for the development of the first networked distributed personal computer system. In 2007, Thacker received the IEEE’s John Von Neumann medal, which is awarded for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology, for his central role in the creation of the personal computer and the development of networked computer systems. In 2007, Thacker received an award from the Computer History Museum for his work on the Alto and “innovations in networked personal computer systems and laser printing technologies.”

  • Kristin M. Tolle, PhD, is the Senior Research Program Manager for Microsoft External Research in the Health and Wellbeing team. Since joining Microsoft, Dr. Tolle has applied for several patents and worked for several product teams, including the Natural Language Group, Microsoft Visual Studio, and Microsoft Office Excel. Prior to joining Microsoft, Kristin was a Research Fellow for the National Library of Medicine and a Research Associate at the University of Arizona Artificial Intelligence Lab where she managed the group on medical information retrieval and natural language processing. Her research interests include natural language processing, automatic ontology capture, medical data mining, medical data confidentiality, body sensors, body sensor networks, and medical information retrieval. Her External Research activities include computational challenges associated with genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and devices, sensors, and mobility as technologies for the enablement of global public healthcare.

  • Michael P. Totten is Chief Advisor for Climate, Water and Ecosystem Services at Conservation International. He engages institutions in adopting public and private strategies for shrinking, greening, and offsetting the ecological footprints (energy, emissions, land, and water) of goods and services throughout their lifecycle. He is principle co-author of the new book, A Climate for Life, an interdisciplinary perspective on preventing catastrophic climate change and human-triggered species extinction, and ending poverty while greening robust economic growth. Totten received the Lewis Mumford Prize for Environment in 2000 for pioneering the creation of interactive multimedia CDs and Internet tools for spurring ecologically sustainable green development. Totten is a board member of the Center for New American Dream, board advisor of Environmental Building News, and past board member of the American Solar Energy Society. He has made more than 2000 visual presentations (opens in new tab) and written scores of publications (opens in new tab).

  • Bryan Traynor graduated from University College Dublin medical school in 1993 (MB, BCh, BAO). Between 1993 and 1996, he completed an internal medicine residency in Dublin and Boston, obtaining his membership of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (MRCPI) in 1996. He then specialized in neurology and obtained his medical doctorate (MD) on the epidemiology and genetics of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in Ireland in 2000. He moved to Boston in 1999 and completed a three-year neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He was a Clinical Fellow in neuromuscular diseases between 2002 and 2004, and he specialized in both clinical and laboratory-based research of ALS. During this time, he also obtained a master’s degree in medical science (MMSc) from Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This program focused on clinical investigation, drug discovery and development. Dr. Traynor was appointed as both a staff neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in the Harvard Medical School in 2004. In July 2005, he moved to the National Institutes of Health, where he works on the genetics and genetic epidemiology of ALS. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he sees ALS and dementia patients at the neuromuscular clinic.

    He has published several papers on ALS and dementia and has been co-investigator or principle investigator on several clinical trials. He is a steering committee member of the European ALS Epidemiology Consortium (EURALS) and a member of the Scientific Review Committee of the ALS Association.

  • Sebastian Uchitel is a Professor at the Department of Computing, FCEN, University of Buenos Aires, where he obtained his MSc level degree in Computer Science and a researcher of CONICET, Argentina. He also holds a Readership at Imperial College London where he obtained his PhD in 2003. His research interests are in behavior modeling and analysis of requirements and design for complex software-intensive systems. His research focuses on partial behavior modeling, including scenario-based specifications, behavior model synthesis, and modal transition systems. His research also includes goal-oriented requirements engineering, reliability, software architectures, and service-oriented architectures. Dr. Uchitel is currently Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and the Requirements Engineering Journal, he was Program Co-Chair of the 21st IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2006) held in Tokyo and is the Program Co-Chair of the 32nd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2010). Dr Uchitel has recently been distinguished by the Leverhulme Trust and the National Academy of Hard and Natural Sciences of Argentina.

  • In 2003, John Unsworth was named Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with appointments as Professor in GSLIS, in the department of English, and on the Library faculty. During the previous ten years, from 1993-2003, he served as the first Director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (opens in new tab) (IATH), and a faculty member in the English Department, at the University of Virginia. For his work at IATH, he received the 2005 Richard W. Lyman Award (opens in new tab) from the National Humanities Center. He chaired the national commission that produced Our Cultural Commonwealth (opens in new tab), the 2006 report on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Science, on behalf of the American Council of Learned Societies, and he has supervised research projects across the disciplines in the humanities. He has also published widely on the topic of electronic scholarship, as well as co-directing one of nine national partnerships in the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program, and securing grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Getty Grant Program, IBM, Sun, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and others. His first faculty appointment was in English, at North Carolina State University, from 1989 to 1993. He attended Princeton University and Amherst College as an undergraduate, graduating from Amherst in 1981. He received a Master’s degree in English from Boston University in 1982 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia in 1988. In 1990, at North Carolina State University (NCSU), he co-founded the first peer-reviewed electronic journal in the humanities, Postmodern Culture (opens in new tab) (now published by Johns Hopkins University Press, as part of Project Muse). He also organized, incorporated, and chaired the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium (opens in new tab), co-chaired the Modern Language Association’s Committee on Scholarly Editions (opens in new tab), and served as President of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (opens in new tab) and later as chair of the steering committee for the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (opens in new tab), as well as serving on many other editorial and advisory boards. He was born in 1958, in Northampton, Massachusetts; in 1978, he married Margaret English, with whom he has three children: Bill, Thomas, and Eleanor.

  • Andries van Dam is the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He received a B.S. degree, with honors, in Engineering Sciences from Swarthmore College in 1960 and Ph.D. in Computer and Information Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. He has been a member of Brown University’s faculty since 1965, is a co-founder of Brown’s Computer Science Department, and was its first Chairman, from 1979 to 1985. He also was Brown’s first Vice President for Research from 2002 to 2006. From 1990 to 2001 he was a Principal Investigator in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center for Graphics and Visualization, a research consortium including Brown, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Cornell University, University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and the University of Utah, and was the Society for Technical Communication’s (STC) Director from 1996 to 1998. His research has been in computer graphics, hypermedia systems, post-WIMP user interfaces—for both virtual reality and for pen- and touch-computing, and educational software. He has been conducting research for more than four decades on systems for creating and reading electronic books with interactive illustrations for use in teaching and research.

  • Daniel Wigdor (opens in new tab) is the User Experience Architect on the Microsoft Surface project, where he leads a team developing fundamentals of touch and gestural interaction.

    Before joining Microsoft, he conducted research in advanced user interfaces and devices at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs, at the Initiative in Innovative Computing at Harvard University, and at the University of Toronto where he completed an MSc and a PhD in computer science, specializing in multi-surface direct-touch environments.

  • Andy Wilson is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, where he has been applying sensing technologies to enable new styles of human-computer interaction. His interests include gesture-based interfaces, computer vision, inertial sensing, display technologies, and machine learning. In 2002, he helped found the Surface Computing group at Microsoft. Before joining Microsoft, Andy obtained a BA at Cornell University in 1993, and a PhD at the MIT Media Laboratory in 2000.

  • David M. Zar is a Research Associate in Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. He has been working on PC-based, low-cost medical ultrasound since 1991. The Universal Serial Bus (USB) ultrasound probes he helped develop, which require only a laptop to form a complete ultrasonic imaging system, were named by Popular Science magazine as one of the Best 100 Innovations of 2006. The same year, the International Academy of Science named the USB probes one of the top 10 finalists for their “Technology of the Year Award.” Since early in 2008, he has spent much of his time investigating ways to enable smart phones and other mobile devices to be used for remote, diagnostic imaging.

  • Ilya Zaslavsky is Director of Spatial Information Systems Laboratory at San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on distributed information management systems, in particular on spatial and temporal data integration, geographic information systems, and spatial data analysis. Ilya has been leading design and technical development in several cyberinfrastructure projects, including the national-scale Hydrologic Information System, which develops standards, databases, and services for integration of hydrologic observations. He has also developed spatial data management infrastructure as part of several large projects, in domains ranging from neuroscience (digital brain atlases) to geology, disaster response (NIEHS Katrina portal), regional planning, and conservation. Ilya received his PhD from the University of Washington (1995) for research on statistical analysis and reasoning models for geographic data. Previously, he received a PhD equivalent from the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography, for his work on urban simulation modeling and metropolitan evolution (1990).

  • Dr. Feng Zhao is an Assistant Managing Director at Microsoft Research Asia, where he oversees multiple research areas including the systems, wireless and networking, hardware computing, and media communications groups. Prior to joining Microsoft Research Asia, Feng Zhao was a principal researcher at Microsoft Research Redmond, where he founded and managed the Networked Embedded Computing Group. During this time, he led the group to develop the Microsoft Research sensor mote, Tiny Web Service, SenseWeb and SensorMap, Data Center Genome, and JouleMeter. These technologies have been used to monitor Microsoft data centers for greater energy efficiency and service reliability. Feng Zhao also served as the Founding Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks and has authored or co-authored more than 100 technical papers and books. He was a Sloan Research Fellow in Computer Science and received a number of awards, and his work has been featured in news media such as BBC World News, Business Week, and Technology Review. Before joining Microsoft, Dr. Zhao taught at Ohio State University as a tenured faculty member and Stanford University as a consulting faculty member, and was a principal scientist and area manager at Xerox PARC. Dr. Zhao received a PhD in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

  • Jun Zhu is Professor, Director of Institute of Bioinformatics, and Vice President of Zhejiang University. He earned his PhD with a co-major in statistics and genetics from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, United States. His research interest focuses on developing genetic models and analysis methods for complex traits. A serials diallel cross models have been proposed for analyzing additive, dominance, additive × additive epistatic effects and their interaction effects with environment, and mixed-model based compositive interval mapping (MCIM) for complex traits. Additional research has focused on combining QTL mapping with bioinformatics methods to find functional genes. He has developed software, including QGAStation and QTLNetwork. These proposed methods and software have been widely employed in studying on the genetic mechanism of complex traits.