Speakers

Kobus Bernard, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Kobus Barnard is an assistant professor of computing science at the University of Arizona. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Simon Fraser University in the area of computational color constancy. He then spent two years at the University of California at Berkeley as a post doctoral researcher working on image understanding and digital libraries. His current interests include statistical modeling of complex, multi-modal data, image understanding and object recognition, and applying new algorithmic approaches to scientific data.

Doug Brown
Senior Manager, IBM

Doug Brown obtained a Bachelor of Science Degree in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, and an MBA from Pepperdine University. Mr. Brown started his career in software development, participating in numerous large systems development programs such as air defense systems and air traffic control systems. For several years, Mr. Brown was a consultant in the transportation management systems industry, leading efforts to design, develop, and manage Intelligent Transportation System management projects. Mr. Brown is now a senior manager at IBM, where he is responsible for the ease of use of IBM’s server and storage products.

Alexandra Durcikova, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of MIS

Alexandra Durcikova is a Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona . She received a M.S. degree in physics from Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1994, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, in 2004. Dr. Durcikova's research deals with issues related to Knowledge Management, specifically, implementation of knowledge repositories and their impact on employees efficiency and effectiveness.

Alon Efrat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Computer Science

Alon Efrat is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Arizona.  He earned a Bachelor degree from the Department of Applied  Mathematic at the Technion Haifa at 1991, and a PhD at Computer Science from Tel-Aviv University at 1998. He then spent a couple of years at Stanford University  at at IBM Almaden research center, as a post-doctorate research assistant.  He is interested in efficient algorithms for complex geometric structures, and their applications to sensor networks, video browsing, image processing, and Geographic Information Systems.

Salim Hariri
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Salim Hariri is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Arizona. He received his Ph.D. in computer engineering from University of Southern California in 1986, and an MSc from The Ohio State University in 1982. Dr. Hariri is the Editor-In-Chief for the Cluster Computing Journal that presents research techniques and results in the area of high speed networks, parallel and distributed computing, software tools, and network-centric applications. He is the Founder of the IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC) and the co-founder of the IEEE International Conference on Autonomic Computing.

Vincent Hsu
Distinguished Engineer, IBM

Vincent Hsu is a Distinguished Engineer at IBM System and Technology Group. His primary focus is on enterprise storage system architecture and solution. Vincent Hsu is a master inventor at IBM holding many patents on storage system architecture. Vincent Hsu received his ECE MS degree in 1990 and MBA degree in 2006 both from the University of Arizona.

Glen Jaquette
Distinguished Engineer, IBM

Glen Jaquette is Lead Architect of Tape and Tape Subsystems and an IBM Distinguished Engineer at the IBM Tucson site. He leads the Architecture Team for the Tape and Tape Subsystems group which includes tape drives, tape automation, tape controllers including the IBM virtual tape server (VTS).He has a BSEE from UC Davis (1983) and a MSEE from The University of Arizona (1988). He started working for IBM in San Jose in 1983 on Disk Drives. He transferred to Tucson in 1986 to work on Optical Disk Drives. Since 1996 he has worked in Tape Development. He is the Inventor on 73 issued and 27 pending U.S. patents assigned to IBM.

Mike Kaczmarski
Distinguished Engineer, IBM

Mike Kaczmarski is an IBM Distinguished Engineer leading product integration efforts in Tivoli as the Chief Integration Architect.  Deeply involved in bringing Tivoli Storage Manager to market from its birth in IBM research, Michael worked on storage products for over 12 years.  He has Master degree in Computer Science from National Technological University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Management Information Systems from The University of Arizona.

Krishna S. Nathan
Vice President, Storage Systems Development, IBM

Dr. Krishna Nathan is Vice President, Storage Systems Development where he is responsible for the development of IBM storage products including disk, tape and software.  He joined IBM in 1991 at the T.J. Watson Research Center, and held various research and management positions in pen computing, handwriting recognition, mobile and handheld platforms and related applications. From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Nathan was director for consumer voice systems in the software group, where he led world-wide sales, marketing and development of IBM's consumer line of speech products.  In 2002 Dr. Nathan returned to IBM Research as director of the Zurich Research Laboratory and later vice president of services.  Prior to assuming his current role, he was vice president of Technology where, among other things, he was responsible for driving the technology roadmap for the company. Dr. Nathan holds a doctorate in electrical sciences from Brown University and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paul Portney
Dean, Eller College of Management

Paul R. Portney became Dean of the Eller College of Management in July 2005. He also holds the College’s Halle Chair in Leadership. From 1972 through June of 2005, Portney was with Resources for the Future (RFF), an independent and non-partisan think-tank in Washington, D.C. that specializes in energy and the environment.  From 1979-1980, Portney served as Chief Economist for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He has held visiting teaching positions at both the University of California at Berkeley (1977-1979) and Princeton University (1992 -1994). Since 1999, he has been a member of the board and has chaired the finance and investment committee for the Johnson Foundation, one of the charitable arms of the Johnson family of Racine, Wisconsin.  In 2006 he joined the board of the Harris Private Bank of Arizona N.A.

Sudha Ram, Ph.D.
Director of Advanced Database Research Group and Professor of MIS

Sudha Ram is McClelland Professor, Management Information Systems in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona. She received a B.S. degree in mathematics, physics and chemistry from the University of Madras in 1979, PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta in 1981 and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , in 1985. Dr. Ram's research deals with issues related to Enterprise Data Management. She was awarded Eller Professorship in 2001 and received "Honorable Mention" for the University of Arizona Graduate Education and Mentoring Award in 2001. Recently, she received IBM Faculty Development Award and UA Leading Edge Innovator in Research Award in 2007.

Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Jeff Rodríguez is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Arizona. He is Co-Director of Connection One, a National Science Foundation industry/university cooperative research center, and a member of the UA Biomedical Engineering Interdisciplinary Program. In addition, he is currently the ECE Director of Graduate Studies. He received a Ph.D. degree (1990) and B.S. degree (1984) in electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and an S.M. degree (1986) in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research area is digital image processing and analysis. Application areas of interest include biomedicine, homeland security, and data communication. He is director of the Signal and Image Laboratory (SaIL), where he supervises a number of graduate students on a variety of research projects. Prof. Rodriguez has served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing and was General Chair of the 2007 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Image Processing. In addition, he is a member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Image and Multidimensional Signal Processing and has served on numerous other IEEE-related committees.

Jerzy Rozenblit, Ph.D.
Professor and Head, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Dr. Jerzy Rozenblit is Raymond J. Oglethorpe Endowed Chair and Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The University of Arizona. He is a Professor of Computer Engineering as well as Professor of Surgery in the College of Medicine. During his tenure, he has established the Engineering Design Laboratory with major projects in design and analysis of complex, computer-based systems, software engineering, and symbolic visualization, and computer-guided, minimally invasive surgical training.  The projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, US Army, Siemens, Infineon Technologies, Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, NASA, Raytheon, and Semicon­ductor Research Corporation. He has extensive teaching experience and conducts a vigorous graduate program as evidenced by many successful PhD and MSc students and Best Teacher awards. Dr. Rozenblit is active in professional service in capacities ranging from editorship of ACM and Society for Computer Simulation Transactions, program and general chairmanship of major conferences, to participation in various university and departmental committees.

Greg Van Hise
Storage Architect, IBM

Greg Van Hise is an architect for Tivoli Storage Management Software and has over 20 years experience in the storage industry. His current architecture responsibilities include TPC and ITSM SPM. Greg is also involved in SNIA and recently chaired the SNIA ILM Initiative. Prior experiences include architecture and development responsibilities for Tivoli Storage Manager and DFSMShsm.

Leon Zhao, Ph.D.
Professor and interim Head of MIS

Dr. J. Leon Zhao is a Professor and Honeywell Fellow in the Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Business Administration (1992) and an M.S. degree in Business Administration (1990) from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Agricultural Engineering (1985) from the College of Engineering, University of California, Davis, and a B.S. degree in Engineering (1982) from Beijing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization. Before joining University of Arizona in August 1999, he was an Assistant Professor in the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the College of William and Mary, respectively. He has also worked as a Staff Scientist in the Computing Sciences and Applications Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California and as a Research Engineer in the Corporate Systems Development Division, Honeywell Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota.