About the Contributors

252 About the Contributors

about the contributors

Gunther Kreuzberger works at the Ilmenau Technical University. Having received a masters degree in computer science in 1996 for the implementation of a neuro-fuzzy system, his research then focussed on multi-agent systems for therapy planning. In 1998 he joined the Institute of Media and Communication Science and became a senior lecturer and executive assistant to the collegiate administrative committee. As a lecturer he is nowadays in charge of lectures and seminars in the fields of digital communication, electronic documents and interactive media such as digital games or iTV. His research interests cover higher education courses on interactive media/ digital games, collaborative IT-enhanced life-long learning, and media applications for children as well as elderly people.

Aran Lunzer is a British researcher in Human-Computer Interaction, currently employed at Hokkaido University as an Associate Professor with special responsi- bilities for overseas research liaison. After undergraduate studies in Engineering at Cambridge University, he worked from 1986 to 1991 on software technology for IBM UK Laboratories, then returned to full-time study to obtain his PhD in Com- puting Science from the University of Glasgow. From 2002 to 2004, between spells in Japan, he was an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Aran’s research is focused on what he calls “subjunctive interfaces”, which are interfaces that support users in examining and comparing alternative results dur- ing trial-and-error use of software applications. He believes this is a necessary but generally lacking form of support in domains such as simulation, design, and data retrieval. In 2008/9 he has been building and refining a subjunctive interface for a cancer treatment simulator, as part of a large EU Integrated Project.

Roland Kaschek studied mathematics at the university of Oldenburg (Ger- many). He received a joint Soviet-German PhD grant for study in Novosibirsk and Moscow in 1986-1987, and obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University of Oldenburg in 1990. After that he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria); at that time he worked on various aspects of information systems design, database design and business process design. From 1999 to 2002 he was an informatics consultant with UBS AG in Zurich (Switzerland), working on software architecture, software quality and data warehousing. Then until 2008 he was Associate Professor with Massey University in Palmerston North (New Zealand), where he continued to deal with information systems design issues and in particular became involved in Web information systems design and eLearning. He was then appointed Full Professor with the KIMEP in Almaty (Kazakhstan) until 2009, and was additionally a guest lecturer or professor with universities in Austria, Brazil, Germany, Thailand, and the Ukraine. Currently he is a mathematics and informatics teacher at Gymnasium Gerresheim in Düsseldorf (Germany).

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Aylin Akaltun, nee Aksac, studied Computer Science and Engineering at Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel in Germany (2002 - 2009) and was awarded a diploma in 2009. Her major interests are database theory and database management systems, knowledge management systems (representation and reasoning) and development of Service-oriented architecture. Currently, she works as software engineer at COR & FJA which is one of the leading software and consulting com- panies for insurers, banks and company pension schemes providers in Germany.

Christian Erfurth has been holding teaching and research positions in the Friedrich Schiller University (FSU) Jena, Germany, since 2000. He is PostDoc at the computer science department. His research interests include distributed systems, software architectures, model-driven development, and agile development processes. Christian Erfurth holds a Diploma in computer science. He finished his PhD on proactive navigation of mobile agents in the year 2004, which was awarded in 2005. He has organized national and international workshops. Christian Erfurth is the leader of the agent group at the department. At the moment he is also responsible

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Jun Fujima is pursuing research related to software design based on meme media architecture and its application to various research domains such as interfaces for information management and access, Web-based system design, and human-computer interaction. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree at Hokkaido University, Japan in 1999 and 2001 respectively. Then he obtained his PhD in Electronics and Information Engineering at Meme Media Laboratory in Hokkaido University in 2006. From 2006 to 2009, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Hokkaido Univer- sity. He is currently a research programmer in the Children’s Media Department of Fraunhofer IDMT, Germany.

Tom Gedeon is Chair Professor of Computer Science at the Australian National University. He has worked previously at Murdoch University and the University of New South Wales. His BSc and PhD are from the University of Western Australia. He is a former president of the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly, has been nominated for VC's awards for postgraduate supervision at three Universities, and has a number of journal board roles. Tom's research focuses on the development of automated systems for information extraction, and for the synthesis of the extracted information into humanly useful information resources (hierarchical knowledge), mostly using fuzzy systems and neural networks, as well as by cognitive modeling based on biologically plausible information flow constraints. Application areas of the research include mining, security and medical applications, particularly in the construction of intelligent interfaces which understand human eye gaze as well as facial expression and other human behavioural cues.

Manoochehr Ghiassi is a professor of Information Systems, a Breetwor fellow, and director of the MSIS program at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA. He received a B.S. from Tehran University, and an M.S. in Economics from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He also holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering both from the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. His current research interests include artificial neural network, business intelligence, software engineering, software testing, supply chain management, and simulation modeling. He is a member of the IEEE, and the ACM.

Zhen-Sheng Guo is a doctor-course student at Knowledge Media Laboratory, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, Japan. He is an international student from China. His research interests include 3D geographic information systems, new frameworks for integrating legacy system

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David Hawking is an Information Retrieval researcher. Between 1998 and 2008 he was a research scientist at CSIRO. In July 2008 he took up a full-time position at the Funnelback enterprise search company in the role of Chief Scientist. His interests lie in the areas of enterprise and Web Search. He is particularly interested in search evaluation in realistic contexts, distributed search techniques, enterprise/ intranet search, improvement of search through exploitation of context, personal search and search efficiency. He is a member of the editorial board for the Informa- tion Retrieval journal (INRT). David holds an Adjunct professorship in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University and supervises PhD students at both ANU and the University of Sydney.

Christoph Igel, born 1968 in Saarbrücken (Germany). 1989-1996: Studies of political science, science of history, sport science and education science at Saarland University (Germany). 1997-2003: Scientific assistant with the Department of Hu- man Movement and Training Science at the Institute of Sport Science of Saarland University (Germany). 2002-2008: Deputy Head of the Competence Center “Virtual Saar University” at Saarland University (Germany). In 2007: Habilitation (formal qualification as university lecturer) at the Faculty of Psychology and Sport Studies at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Germany). Since 2009: Scientific Director of the Competence Center “Virtual Saar University” at Saarland University (Germany). In 2009: Chief Learning Officer 2009 in Germany (awarded by the journal “Wirtschaft & Weiterbildung” (economy and continuing education). From 2010: Managing Director of the Centre for e-Learning Technology at Saarland University and German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (Saarbrücken, Germany).

Klaus Peter Jantke, born in Berlin, Germany, studied Mathematics at Humboldt University Berlin. He graduated with an honours degree in Theoretical Computer Science and received both his doctorate and his habilitation at Humboldt. Jantke won the Weierstrass Award for his diploma thesis and the Humboldt Prize for his PhD. Klaus Jantke started his academic career as a full professor at Kuwait University and simultaneously at Leipzig University of Technology, aged 35. Since then he has been teaching at several German Universities such as Chemnitz, Cottbus, Darmstadt, Ilmenau, Leipzig, and Saarbrücken. He sees himself as a logician in the school of Heinrich Scholz and Karl Schröter. Jantke's scientific interest ranges from universal algebra and algorithmic learning through digital games to qualitative and quantitative research into the impact of media. Fraunhofer Society, Germany's largest research institution with currently 17,000 scientists and 60 institutes in operation, decided

Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 256 About the Contributors to establish its own children's media research center. In January 2008, Klaus Jantke was put in charge of developing this research center in Erfurt, Germany,

Alexander Krumpholz is Research Engineer at the CSIRO ICT Centre. He joined CSIRO in 2001 and contributed to several projects before joining the ICT Centre’s Information Retrieval group led by David Hawking. Alexander is also a Ph.D. student at the Australian National University studying structural aspects of medical literature retrieval. Alexander investigates ways to exploit structure embed- ded in a document collection or metadata describing aspects of such a collection to improve the retrieval quality. In his current project he is developing a system that brings relevant medical publications to a medical practitioner’s attention. The relevance is based on the user’s current context, e.g. a patient’s record.

Patrick Maisch studied law at Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel, Germany. He is author of various commercial applications and web solutions. Since 2008 he is postgraduate at the Department of Computer Science, in the group of Prof. Bernhard Thalheim.

Shin-ichi Minato is an Associate Professor of Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University. He also serves a Project Director of ERATO (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology) MINATO Discrete Structure Manipulation System Project, executed by JST (Japan Science and Technol- ogy Agency). He received the B.E., M.E., and D.E. degrees from Kyoto University in 1988, 1990, and 1995 respectively. He had been working at NTT Laboratories since 1990 until March 2004. He was a Visiting Scholar at Computer Science Department of Stanford University in 1997 (for one year). He joined Hokkaido University in 2004. He started the ERATO Project from Oct. 2009. His research topics include efficient representations and manipulation algorithms for large-scale discrete structure data. He published "Binary Decision Diagrams and Applications for VLSI CAD" (Kluwer,1995). He is a member of IEEE, IEICE, IPSJ, and JSAI.

Cosimo Spera is the Chief Executive Officer of Zipidy Inc., a Fulbright Scholar and a NATO and MINE Fellow. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Yale University and the University of Siena, Italy and an MS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Siena. His current research interests include supply chain management, agent technology, adaptive and learning systems. He is a member of the INFORMS and MPS societies.

Nicolas Spyratos holds a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (Greece), a M.Sc. from the University of Ottawa

(Canada), a Ph.D. from Carleton University (Canada), and Thèse d'Etat from the University of Paris South (France). Since 1983 he is full professor of Computer Sci- ence at the University of Paris South, Orsay Center, and the head of the database group at the Informatics Research Laboratory (LRI). Prior to his present position he has worked for IBM in Greece, for Bell-Northern Research and the Federal De- partment of Communications in Canada, and for INRIA, the University of Orleans and the National Research Council (CNRS) in France. He is the author of over 150 publications in international conferences and journals and his current research interests include conceptual modeling, information integration and digital libraries.

Roberta Sturm, born 1977 in Bucharest (Romania). 1996-2001: Studies of sport science focusing informatics at University of Technology Darmstadt (Germany). 2001-2009: Scientific assistant with the Competence Center “Virtual Saar University” at Saarland University (Germany). In 2008: Doctoral Thesis: Web based knowledge management in sport science and sport. In 2009: Senior Business Consultant with the imc AG Saarbrücken (Germany). From 2010: Principal Researcher with the Centre for e-Learning Technology at Saarland University and German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (Saarbrücken, Germany). Major work fields: IT- and project manager of R&D projects regarding the use of new media, information- and knowledge management, new web technologies, communication and collaboration tools, assessment technologies, authoring- and IT-training systems.

Akio Takashima is an assistant professor at School of Computer Science, Tokyo University of Technology, Japan. He received a Ph.D degree in engineering from Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. His research interests include human computer interaction, interaction design, video interface, overview and detail in time, visualization, knowledge media, computer supported cooperative work, project based learning, and profile based education. He is currently a member of Tangible Software Engineering Education Project that aims to satisfy students’ needs in software engineering education.

Yuzuru Tanaka is a professor at the Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University, and the director of Meme Media Laboratory, Hokkaido University. He is also a visiting professor of National Institute of Informatics. His research areas covered multiprocessor architectures, database schema-design theory, hardware algorithms for searching and sorting, multiport memory architectures, database machine architectures, full text search of document image files, and automatic cut detection in movies and full video search. His current research areas cover meme media architectures, knowledge federation frameworks, and their application to e-Science based on meme media

Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. 258 About the Contributors application frameworks such as database and Web visualization frameworks and virtual experiment environment frameworks. He worked as a board member of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (1991-1994), a councilor of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (1995- ), a board member of Information Pro- cessing Society of Japan (1995-1996, 1999-2000, 2008-), an associate member of Japanese Academy of Science (2006-2008), and an advisory board member of NTT Research Laboratory (2004- ).

Bernhard Thalheim holds an MSc in Mathematics from Dresden University of Technology, a PhD in Mathematics from Lomonosov University Moscow, and a DSc in Computer Science from Dresden University of Technology. His major research interests are database theory, logic in databases, discrete mathematics, knowledge systems, and systems development methodologies, in particular for web information systems. He has been programme committee chair and general chair for several international events such as ADBIS, ASM, EJC, ER, FoIKS, MFDBS, NLDB, and WISE. He is currently full professor at Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel in Germany after working at Dresden University of Technology (1979-88) (since 1986 Associate Prof), Kuwait University (1988-1990) (Visiting Prof.), Rostock University (1990-1993)(Full prof.), and Cottbus University of Technology (1993- 2003)(Full prof.).

Shohei Yoshihara earned his masters degree in Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Hokkaido University in 2007. His master’s work focused on the research and development of a spreadsheet-based orchestration environment. He is currently employed by NEC Software in Japan.

Volkmar Schau is a research staff member of Computer Science at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. In 2000 he was invited to join the mobile agent working group at the university to study about agent technologies and toolkits. As a group member he was the key developer for TRACY2 mobile agent platform. Mr. Schau and his partners were awarded with a grant from a federal entrepreneur program supporting a spin-off. In 2003 the company “the agent factory GmbH” was es- tablished. Working as Chief Executive Officer Mr. Schau developed his product vision of human centered mobile social networks, based on mobile intelligent agents located at mobile devices, e.g. cell phones. In 2006 Mr. Schau was offered the op- portunity to follow his vision further by starting his PhD thesis at the university in Jena. The promising field for agent research induced Bell Labs Innovations to invite Mr. Schau in 2007 and 2008.