Keynote and Invited Speakers
Noha Adly
Director
International School of Information Science
(ISIS)
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department
Library of Alexandria
Dr. Adly is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Cambridge University, UK in 1995. She was a Research Associate at AT&T Cambridge Research Laboratory (1995-1997) and a Visiting Researcher (1997-2000).
Since 1997, Dr. Adly has been a Consultant for information systems to several firms. She has also served as Consultant for Bibliotheca Alexandrina for the design and installation of its network and its information system as well as the design and implementation of the library information. She is currently the Director of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department and the International School of Information Science (ISIS) research center of Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Dr. Adly is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society as well as several other scientific, social and humanitarian organizations. Her research interests are distributed systems, database systems and digital libraries. Dr. Adly is also author/co-author of more than 25 publications in peer reviewed journals and scientific conferences in the field of computer science and engineering.
James K. Baker
Distinguished Career Professor,
Carnegie Mellon University
Director,
Center for Innovations in Speech & Language
I am interested in all aspects of speech and language technology, including speech recognition, speech synthesis, translation, summarization, information retrieval and search. I have also developed a model for a new form of entrepreneurship and venture capital called "Bootstrap Capital."
The Center for Innovations in Speech and Language (CISL) at Carnegie Mellon University is dedicated to making fundamental advances in speech and language technology. It is innovative to the degree that it attempts to explore methodologies that are beyond the bounds being explored by other research labs. The major projects include the 100 Languages Project, which is attempting to develop advanced speech recognition, speech synthesis and translation systems in at least 100 languages, and the Million-Hour Speech Project, whose goals is to collect and annotation at least a million hours of speech. Among the methodologies being explored are the Modular Knowledge Architecture, Socratic agents, representing speech as a mostly smooth manifold, verification by synthesis, and abductive reasoning. CISL is exploring fundamental concepts in knowledge acquisition and learning, going beyond mere training of parameters.
In today's world there is an urgent need for better communication, regardless of barriers of language, cultural differences and distance. This pressing need and the ubiquitous nature of speech and language create an unlimited number of opportunities for useful and interesting research as well as business opportunities for numerous applications.
1982-2000 Founder, Chairman & CEO of Dragon Systems, Inc., which grew to nearly $70 million in annual revenue and which introduced the first general purpose, natural language continuous dictation system, Dragon NaturallySpeaking. NaturallySpeaking won over 100 industry awards and was consistently the technology and market leader in desktop automatic dictation systems. It achieved what for decades had been regarded as the “holy grail” of speech recognition.
1972-75 (CMU PhD thesis: Modeling Speech as a Hidden Stochastic Process as a Means of Automatic Speech Recognition) Developed the Dragon recognition system, introducing the concept of modeling speech as a hidden Markov process, which eventually became the overwhelmingly dominant method for large vocabulary speech recognition.
N. Balakrishnan
FNA, FASc, FNAE, FNASc, FTWAS, FIETE
Prof. N. Balakrishnan received his B.E (Hons.) in Electronics and Communication from the Coimbatore Institute of Technology, University of Madras in 1972 and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science in 1979. He then joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering as an Assistant Professor. He is currently the Associate Director of the Indian Institute of Science and a Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering and at the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre.
His areas of research where he has over 230 publications in the international journals and international conferences, include Numerical Electromagnetic, High Performance Computing and Networks, Polarimetric Radars and Aerospace Electronic Systems, Information Security, Digital Library and Speech processing.
He has received many awards including the Padmashree by the President of India, 2002, Homi J. Bhabha Award for Applied Sciences, 2004 and the Alumni Award for excellence in Research for Science & Engineering by IISc, 2001. He was the NRC Senior Resident Research Associate at the National Severe Storms Lab., Norman, Oklahoma, USA from 1987-1989. He was a visiting research scientist at the University of Oklahoma in 1990, Colorado State University in 1991 and a Visiting Professor, Carnegie Mellon University since 2000. He is an Honorary Professor in Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and National Institute of Advanced Studies.
He is a Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy (currently the Vice President), Indian Academy of Sciences (currently the Treasurer), Indian National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences and Institution of Electronics & Telecommunication Engineers.
He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet (SAC-C), Member of the National Security Advisory Board, Part-Time Member of the telecom Regulatory Authority of India, and Member, Board of Governors of IIT Delhi. He is the editor of International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering and the International Journal on Distributed Sensor Networks.. He is a consultant to several Defence and Governmental Agencies. He is one of the Directors of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and TICEL Bio Park, Director of CDOT- Alcatel Research Centre at Chennai, a member of the Council of CDAC, member of the council of many universities and CSIR Laboratories and Chairman, All India Board of Information Technology Education of AICTE (till 2005).
Prof N. Balakrishnan has given critical inputs in many major National initiatives in IT Planning and in Information Security. He played a key role in the shaping of the Information Security and Cryptanalysis Research Plans and Radar Cross Section Prediction and Management, of DRDO, Technology Facility Organization of India and the CERT-IN of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology. He is also the National Co-ordinator of the Indo-French Cyber University and Indo-US Digital Library Projects (www.ulib.org and www.new.dli.ernet.in ).
Jaime Carbonell
Allen Newell Professor of Computer Science and Director, Language Technologies Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Jaime Carbonell is the Allen Newell Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and the founder and director of the Language Technologies Institute at CMU. Dr. Carbonell received his B.S. degrees in Physics and in Mathematics from MIT in 1975, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Yale University in 1976 and 1978, respectively.
Dr. Carbonell,s research interests span several areas of artificial intelligence, including: machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, machine translation, analogical reasoning, high-performance planning, information retrieval, fact extraction from the Web and from free text, and automated summarization (where he invented MMR search-diversity technology).
He served as executive editor of Machine Learning (1988-1991), and serves on several editorial boards, including that of Artificial Intelligence. He also has served as chair of SIGART (1983-1985), the special interest group on AI of the ACM, and was president of C-STAR-ii, the international organization for speech-to-speech translation (1993-1995). He is a fellow of the AAAI, and has served in the AAAI executive council (1990-1994).
Daniel J. Clancy
Director
Google Book Search Project
Dr. Daniel J. Clancy, PhD, is the Engineering Director for the Google Book Search Project. This project is working to bring off-line books content on-line and make it searchable to allow discovery of books. Google is working with both publishers and libraries as part of this project. Prior to coming to Google in January 2005, Dr. Clancy was the Director of the Exploration Technologies Directorate at NASA Ames Research Center. The Directorate supports over 700 people performing both basic and applied research in a diverse range of technology areas intended to enable both robotic and human exploration missions. Technology areas include Intelligent Systems, High-end Computing, Human-Centered Systems, Bio/Nanotechnology, Entry Systems and others. In this role, Dr. Clancy played numerous roles at the agency level including participating in the team that developed the agency’s plan to return men to the Moon and eventually Mars. Dr. Clancy received his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in artificial intelligence. While in school, Dr. Clancy also worked at Trilogy Corporation, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Xerox Webster Research center. Dr. Clancy received a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University in 1985 in computer science and theatre.
Hisham El-Sherif
Chairman
IT Investment
Dr. Hisham El Sherif received his Ph.D. from MIT in Business and Engineering. He is currently the Chairman of IT Investments; holding direct investment company with subsidiaries in networking and telecommunications, software development, IT system integration, media and e-business. His position as a Founder and Chairman of Nile Online, had a major role in driving the building of the Internet backbone in Egypt. Dr. El Sherif was also a Co-founder and Chair of the Advisory Board, for 14 years (1985-1999), of the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre. Under his leadership, IDSC was selected as one of the top 100 IT organizations in the world.
Dr. El Sherif is a creative builder of institutions and organizations, among them RITSEC, a regionally recognized leader in software engineering, multimedia, education, training, culture-ware and the information highway.
Extending his message beyond national boundaries, Dr. El Sherif is a commissioner of the Washington-based Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC). He actively served and contributed to the global development agenda jointly with the World Bank (Info Dev), UNDP, WIPO, WTO, ITC, UNCTAD, ILO, etc.. In addition, he has initiated and helped implementing more than 700 programs and projects in Egypt, the Middle East, the US and Europe.
Dr. El Sherif has been appointed as the Chairman of the Advisory Board of the renowned Egyptian Museum, Chairman of the Egypt Internet Society, member of Council of the Motherhood and Childhood and Chair of Children with Special Needs Initiative. Also a member of the Opera Fund, Egypt Culture Fund, the National Board of Archaeology, as well as the board of the Future Generation Foundation (FGF). Moreover, he served as a member of the US-Egypt President's Council until 2002 and has been a professor at the American University in Cairo since 1983.
Globally recognized for his achievements, Dr. El Sherif has received several outstanding awards, among them the World First Prize in Information Systems from SIM in 1998, the Franz Edelman award for Management Achievements and its Application in 1989 and the IFORS Operation Research Third World Prize Award in 1987. In addition, Dr. El Sherif was awarded the First Order Medal of Merit by the president of Tunis in 2004; the President of France awarded him the French Knighthood in 1991.
Usama Fayyad
Chief Data Officer and Senior Vice President
Yahoo, Inc.
Dr. Usama Fayyad is Yahoo!'s chief data officer and senior vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!'s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company's data analytics and data processing infrastructure. The analysis and management of data within Fayyad's group enables Yahoo! to ensure customer satisfaction and develop innovative products and services that are essential to consumers' lives. Fayyad also oversees the Yahoo! Research organization that includes offices in Sunnyvale, Burbank and Berkeley, CA as well as New York, Europe, and S. America. Yahoo! Research is building the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.
Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy consulting company. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of digiMine Inc. (now Revenue Science, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and analytics for some of the world's largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services.
Fayyad's professional experience also includes five years spent leading the data mining and exploration group at Microsoft Research and building the data mining products for Microsoft's server division. From 1989 to 1996 Fayyad held a leadership role at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where his work in the analysis and exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories, remote-sensing platforms and spacecraft garnered him the top research excellence award that Caltech awards to JPL scientists, as well as a U.S. Government medal from NASA.
Fayyad earned his Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1991), and also holds BSE's in both electrical and computer engineering (1984); MSE in computer science and engineering (1986); and M.Sc. in mathematics (1989). He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of data mining and Artificial Intelligence, is a Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, has edited two influential books on the data mining and launched and served as editor-in-chief of both the primary scientific journal in the field and the primary newsletter in the technical community published by the ACM. He regularly delivers keynotes and talks at government, industry and academic conferences around the world.
Hany Mahfouz Helal
Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research
Dr. Hany Helal has held the post of the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research since 2004. In March 1982 , he received Ph.D. of Engineering , Earth Sciences (Rock Mechanics and Engineering), from l’ Ecole des Mines de Nancy, Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, France. Prior to being a minister, he was President of l’Université Internationale de Langue Française au Service du Développement Africain ‘Université Senghor‘, a prestigious French university located in Alexandria, Egypt.
He held several other posts in national and international organizations. In December 2002, he was appointed UNESCO Consultant/Interim Administrative Director, International Centre for Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Sciences and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). Dr. Helal also acted as Cultural and Scientific Counselor in France, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Switzerland; and Director of Cultural, Educational & Scientific Office, Egyptian Embassy in France from June 1998 to September 2002.
Dr. Helal efforts and achievements were highly appreciated both in Egypt and world wide. He was awarded Grade d'Officier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques, Ministère de l'Education National, de l'enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche, and Grade de Chevalier dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Ministère de la Culture in France. In 1993, he received a special prize from the Egyptian Academy for Scientific Research and Technology in the field of Management and Conservation of Historical Sites.
Brewster Kahle
Director and co-founder
Internet Archive
Brewster Kahle is a digital Librarian, director and co-founder of the Internet Archive, which is now one of the largest digital archives in the world. Kahle has built technologies, companies and institutions to advance the goal of universal access to all knowledge. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982, he helped found a supercomputer company, Thinking Machines, that built systems for searching large text collections. In 1989, he invented the internet’s first publishing and distributed search system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server). WAIS Inc. created the online presence for many of the world's largest publishers, and was purchased by America Online in 1995. In 1996, he co-founded Alexa Internet, which provides search and discovery services included in more than 90 per cent of web browsers, and was purchased by Amazon in 1999. He is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a plaintiff in Kahle v. Gonzales (formerly Kahle v. Ashcroft), which challenges recent copyright term extensions. He was selected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 in 2005, the Upside 100 in 1997, the Micro Times 100 in 1996 and 1997, and the Computer Week 100 in 1995.
Tarek Kamel
Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt
His Excellency Dr. Tarek Kamel was appointed the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt in July 2004, where he is responsible for enhancing, developing and crystallizing the Egyptian Information Society and the Egyptian ICT Sector as a whole.
During the period from October 1999 to 2004, he held the post of a senior advisor to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology where he lead the formulation and implementation of a series of successful nationwide initiatives, that serve Egypt’s national plan of “Building its Information Society”, namely the IT Clubs Initiative (January 2000), the Free Internet Initiative (January 2002), the PC for Every Home Initiative (December 2002), and the Broadband Initiative (May 2004).
As a result of his continuous and substantial contributions to the Egyptian ICT Society he was chosen as board member of Telecom Egypt in the year 2000.
Moreover, His Excellency's pioneering efforts in several distinguished ICT associations and institutions led to his assignment as Vice President and member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society (ISOC) in Virginia from May 1999 to May 2002, meanwhile being a professor of Computer Networks at the Electronics Research Institute and serving as the secretary of the Egyptian Internet Society.
His Excellency was appointed Manager of the Communication and Networking Department at the Cabinet Information & Decision Support Center (IDSC/RITSEC) 1992-1999, based on his strong academic background represented in his fellowship Ph.D., acquired from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD) at the Technical University of Munich, 1989-1992.
During 1992-1993, he initialized Egypt’s first connection to the Internet, and steered the introduction of commercial Internet services in Egypt.
Mark S. Kamlet
Senior Vice President
Professor of Economics and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Mark S. Kamlet is provost and senior vice president of Carnegie Mellon University and professor of economics and public policy.
He received a B.S. in Mathematics from Stanford, and an M.S. in Statistics, M.S. in Economics and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at Carnegie Mellon since 1976. He has served as head of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, associate dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and for eight years served as dean of the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management.
Kamlet's research areas are in the economics of health care, quantitative methodology, and public finance. He has over 75 published papers, and has received the outstanding publication award from the Association of Public Policy and Management for his work on the federal budgetary process.
He has served on a U.S. Public Health Service panel to produce national guidelines on applying cost-effectiveness analysis in health care; and on three National Institute of Health consensus panels to make recommendations on national policies relating to prenatal genetic testing; neonatal screening; and end-of-life care. He currently serves on the Institute of Medicine's Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice, IOM's Committee on Poison Prevention and Control and NIH's Public Access Working Group.
Kamlet is chairman of the board of directors of Carnegie Learning, Inc., past chairman of the board of Carnegie Technology Education, Inc. He is on the board of organizations in the Pittsburgh region including: Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the Institute for Transfusion Medicine, Western Pennsylvania Hospital and Highmark Inc. He served on the committee that drafted the rules and procedures for the new Allegheny County Executive and County Council, chaired the transition team for Allegheny County in the area of information technology, and chaired the first advisory board for the County Chief Executive on economic development.
Maode LAI
Professor and Chairman
School of Medicine, Zhejiang University
Mr. Maode LAI, born on August 20,1960, graduated from Zhejiang Medical University, China (BM1982,MM1987) and Luebeck Medical University, Germany (MD1990). He is Professor (1994) and Chairman (1995), Department of Pathology Zhejiang University School of Medicine and has more than 100 academic publications both in Chinese and English. He has been appointed vice president of Zhejiang Medical University (1996-1998) and Zhejiang University (1998-) for ten years since 1996. Now he is also Vice Chairman, Chinese Society of Pathology and Vice Chairman, Chinese Society of Colorectal Cancer.
Anton Mangstl
Director
Library and Documentation Systems Division
General Affairs and Information Department
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
A specialist in Information and Knowledge Management as well as Agronomy, Dr. Mangstl serves as Director, Library and Documentation Systems Division, General Affairs and Information Department, for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Dr. Mangstl oversees FAO’s World Agricultural Information Centre (WAICENT),established in recognition of the intrinsic value of information in fighting global hunger and achieving food security. Through this framework, FAO is able to effectively disseminate its vast wealth of vital information. Dr. Mangstl’s Division concentrates on WAICENT capacity building and partnership activities, promoting best practices in information management, sharing information management systems and tools, and leading partnership initiatives, such as the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) e-learning modules.
Dr. Mangstl has been involved in the Organization’s latest endeavor to effectively transform FAO into a Knowledge Organization. This transformation allows the Organization to learn from and give a voice to the agricultural community regarding a wide range of issues affecting Food Security and Agricultural Production today.
Dr. Mangstl is responsible for FAO’s “Bridging the Rural Digital Divide” Programme, and has been instrumental in facilitating the successful public/private partnership initiative, Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA), which now enables over 100 of the world’s poorest countries to access leading food and agriculture journals for little or no cost.
Dr. Mangstl leads the follow-up for the World Summit on the Information Society for action line ( C.7 Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Applications, E-Agriculture) and serves on related international committees and groups. In 2001, Dr Mangstl was awarded Honorary Professor by the National Agriculture University of Ukraine, Prof. h.c. (UA).
Prior to joining FAO in 1996, Dr. Mangstl was Director of the Centre for Agricultural Documentation and Information, Bonn, Germany. Earlier, he was Deputy to the Head of the Working Group on Crop Production and Informatics,Centre for Life and Food Sciences in Agriculture, Freising-Weihenstephan ( Germany).
Magdy H. Nagi
Head of Information and Communication Technology Sector
Library of Alexandria
Dr. Nagi is a Professor in the Computer Science department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Karlsruhe, in 1974, where he served as Lecturer for two years and as a Consultant to its Computer Center from 1974-1990. During this period he also served as Consultant to many companies in Germany such as Dr. Otker, Bayer, SYDAT AG, and BEC.
On the national level he was a Consultant to many projects under the umbrella of either the University of Alexandria or the Faculty of Engineering for designing and/or implementing automation projects for governmental authorities or public sector companies, such as the Ministry of Interior, the Health Insurance Organization (HIO), the Social Insurance Organization (SIO), and the Customs Authorities.
Since 1995, Dr. Nagi has served as Consultant to Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Among his activities are the design and installation of Bibliotheca Alexandrina’s network and its information system as well as the design and implementation of the library information system, namely a trilingual information system that offers full library automation. He is currently serving as the Head of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Sector and the Director of the International School for Information Science (ISIS) at Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Dr. Nagi is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society as well as several other scientific organizations. His main research interests are in operating systems and database systems. He is author/co-author of more than 80 papers.
Yunhe PAN
Computer Science Professor
Zhejiang University
Professor Yunhe PAN, born in 1946, was graduated from Tongji University (1970), and Zhejiang University (1981) and received a master's degree there. He is a professor of computer science at Zhejiang University. From 1995 to 2006, he served as President of Zhejiang University. He is currently a member of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council in China, Chairman of the Chinese Association of Image and Graphics, Vice Chairman of Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, Vice Chairman of Chinese Association of Mechanical Engineering. He was elected a Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) in 1997 and Vice President of CAE in Jun. 2006.
Professor Yunhe PAN is one of the pioneers in the fields of ICAD and Computer Arts in China. He has introduced AI into computer graphics and CAD technology, proposed the models of synthetic reasoning and imagery thinking and successfully developed several new practical ICAD/CAM systems, including the ICAD System for Art Pattern Creation, the Automatic Advertising System, the ICAD Systems for Building Layouts and the Pipelines Planning System, etc. Ha also has made remarkable achievements in the fields of Virtual Reality and the techniques of Computer-Aided Product Innovation
Professor Yunhe PAN has won 12 national, provincial and ministerial scientific and technological progress awards, published over 300 papers and 6 monographs and textbooks.
Raj Reddy
Professor of Computer Science and Robotics
Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Raj Reddy is the Mozah Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Stanford in 1966. He has been a member of the Carnegie Mellon faculty since 1969. He served as the founding Director of the Robotics Institute from 1979 to 1991 and the Dean of School of Computer Science from 1991 to 1999.
Dr. Reddy's research interests include the study of human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His current research interests include Million Book Digital Library Project; a Multifunction Information Appliance that can be used by the uneducated; Fiber To The Village Project; Mobile Autonomous Robots; and Learning by Doing.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was president of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence from 1987 to 89. Dr. Reddy was awarded the Legion of Honor by President Mitterand of France in 1984. He was awarded the ACM Turing Award in 1994, the Okawa Prize in 2004, the Honda Prize in 2005, and the Vannevar Bush Award in 2006. He served as co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1999 to 2001 under Presidents Clinton and Bush.
Ismail Serageldin
Director
Library of Alexandria
Dr. Serageldin is the Director of the newly established Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, and chairs the Boards of Directors for each of the seven research institutes and three museums affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Previously he served as Vice President of the World Bank (1992-2000), Chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, 1994-2000), Chairman of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP), a micro-finance program (1995-2000), Chairman of the Global Water Partnership (GWP, 1996-2000), and Chairman of the World Commission for Water in the 21st Century (1998-2000). Dr. Serageldin worked in a number of capacities at the World Bank (1972-2000) and has published and lectured widely. He holds a Bachelor of Science in engineering degree from Cairo University, and a Masters' degree and a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has received 15 honorary doctorates. Dr. Serageldin currently serves as Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and as chair and member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific, and international institutions and civil-society efforts. He has written more than 50 books and monographs (edited or authored) and 200 articles, book chapters, and technical papers on various topics.
Nayel Shafei
Founder and CEO
Enkido, Inc
Dr. Nayel Shafei (pronounced: Nile SHA-FEE) is the Founder and CEO of Enkido, Inc., the only broadband telecommunication carrier offering end-to-end broadband applications at 40 Gigabit/second. George Gilder in his 2000 book, “Telecosm”, assigns a chapter on Dr. Shafei as one of the premier architects of the fiber optics industry. Prior to Enkido, Dr. Shafei was one of founding executives of Qwest Communications, specifically the Executive Vice President of Products responsible for building and managing the 25,000-mile network and all services offered on it. Additionally, he was the Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Qwest, Dr. Shafei was Vice President/General Manager of AlliedSignal Communications Systems. Dr. Shafei holds both a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated summa cum laude from Cairo University. He is a frequent lecturer at MIT, Stanford University, Cornell, Technical University of Berlin, and International University of Japan and National University of Singapore. Dr. Shafei has interests in parallel processing and multi-lingual computing.
In the year 2002, Dr. Shafei was chosen to 11-member evaluation Board of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Shafei is a frequent adviser to the FCC, and the Japanese Telecom Regulators, where he is a fellow of the Tokyo-based Glocom Institute. He also consults for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Dr. Shafei served as a board member of several companies including HSCC and Softcomm (acquired by Intel).
Dr. Shafei is frequently featured in media, domestically and internationally. He was interviewed in CNN, “World Business Review” by Gen. Alexander Haig, and in several public TV programs in the US and Japan. He also was featured in the front business page of the New York Times, Herald Tribune, Frankfurter Algemeine and Forbes, Telephony, Interactive Week. Intel has featured Dr. Shafei in several advertising campaigns in magazines and TV.
Michael I. Shamos
Distinguished Career Professor, Institute for Software Research
Director, eBusiness MSIT degree program
Director, Universal Library
Michael I. Shamos is Distinguished Career Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the eBusiness Technology degree program and serves as a Director of the Universal Library, sponsor of the Million Book Project. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Shamos has lectured extensively on the implications of copyright on digital collections.
Dr. Shamos holds seven university degrees in such fields as physics, computer science, technology of management and law. He has been associated with Carnegie Mellon since 1975. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale and law degree from Duquesne University. Since 1980, he has served as examiner of electronic voting systems for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Shamos has been an intellectual property attorney since 1981, concentrating in computer-related patent and copyright matters. He is admitted to the bar of six courts and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He has been an expert witness in recent Internet cases involving the Motion Picture Association of America and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Zhipan Wu
Vice-President
Peking University
Zhipan Wu is the Executive Vice-President of Peking University and Director of the Financial Law Institute of PKU, Professor of Law, LL.D. Supervisor, Eisenhower Foundation Fellow (1997). Born on 12 Dec. 1956, in Tianjin Municipality, P. R. China. LL. B., 1982, Peking University; LL.M., 1985, Peking University; Ph. D. 1988, Peking University. The winner of May First Excellence Medal in Beijing 1999 and the Nominee of the China’s Distinguished Young Jurist 1995.
President of the Research Association of China’s Intellectual Property in Universities and Colleges; President of the Research Association of China’s Economic Laws; Expert Counsel for China’s Supreme People’s Court; Advisor for the Drafting Committee of China’s Commercial Bank Law of the People’s Bank of China; Expert for the CSRC Listing Division; Member of the Legal Education Directory Commission of the Ministry of Education; Expert Advisor for Beijing Municipal People’s Procurator, Haidian District People’s Court, and Haidian District People’s Procuratorate; Standing Director of the Institute of Law of China and of the Institute of China’s Civil and Economic Law; Co-ordinate Professor of Nan Kai University; Vice-chairman of the National Committee of Legal Education of the National Law Academy, China.
Yueting Zhuang
Computer Science Professor
Zhejiang University
Yueting Zhuang is a professor of Computer Science at Zhejiang University. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Zhejiang University. He was a visiting scholar at University of Illinois of Urbana-Champaign from 2006 to 2007 . Dr. Zhuang’s research interests include digital library, multimedia analysis and retrieval, video-based human animation and pattern recognition.
