Jan
2011
24
“ICT for Inclusion” Forum – Speakers’ biography
Welcome Addresses
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Alvis Ancans joined the international relations unit of the European Commission’s Information Society and Media Directorate General in march 2007. His main duties include fostering ICT research cooperation between the EU and Asian countries, notably, India, Japan, Korea and ASEAN. Before joining the Commission, Alvis worked as the political specialist at the U.S. Embassy in Riga, Latvia. He holds a master’s degree in international relations from the fletcher school of law and diplomacy, Tufts University. |
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Dr. Alexander Alamil Lim graduated with a PhD. degree in Solar Energy/PV Systems at Murdoch University in Western Australia. He has over 20 years experience as Instructor, Assistant professor and Associate professor at University of Philippines Los Banos. From 1996 to 1999 he worked as Programme Coordinator and obtained the diploma in Science Teaching from the UP Open University. During the years 1999 – 2004, Alexander Lim occupied the position of Deputy Executive Director in Philippine Council for Advanced Science and Technology Research and Development. Then, in 2004 he joined the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta as Senior Officer at Science and Technology Division and was appointed in 2007 Head of Coordination Unit at the Bureau for External Relations and Coordination (ASEAN Secretariat). Since 2009 Alexander Lim has occupied the position of Assistant Director and Head of Science and Technology Division in ASEAN Secretariat. |
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Roger Torrenti graduated in 1976 from Ecole Centrale de Paris, one of the French “engineers high schools”. He began his career as a research engineer at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), where he developed a specialized knowledge in energy technologies. Two of his research results were patented in 1977 and 1978. He also had the opportunity to be involved in international working groups, from 1979 onwards, within the IEA (International Energy Agency) and EC projects. In 1979, he was given the management of an applied research institution linked to Ecole Nationale des Mines de Paris and the French Ministry for Industry. Its core activities concerned the use of information technologies in energy systems. There, Roger developed his specialized knowledge of the energy and IT fields (one of his research results was patented in 1981) and his international experience (he was involved in international research projects and the organization of international conferences). In 1984, Roger Torrenti founded Sigma Orionis (formerly Sigma Consultants), and he is still its CEO and main shareholder. He is often invited by national or international institutions to act as an expert in his specialized fields of technological knowledge. He has, for example, been acting (since 1990) as an evaluator or reviewer in many European Commission Programs. His passions include mountain climbing, philosophy, photography, modern art, and basketball. |
European Developments in the area of ICT for Inclusion
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Dr. John Gill OBE DSc FIET has worked for over 39 years in the area of scientific and technological research for people with disabilities. His research has included the design of fonts, public access terminals, tactile communication, orientation systems, automated production of braille and large print, and access to telecommunication systems and services. He has visited 40 countries and written over 250 publications. |
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Bridgette Wessels is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research into Socio-Digital Worlds. Her research focuses on social innovations through the development and use of the Internet within Information Society contexts. She was expert on EU Fifth Framework IST programme, the UK Office of Science and Technology, Department of Trade and Industry as well as the Royal Society cybertrust programmes. She was expert on Web 2.0 at the EuropPCom conference on ‘Communicating in Europe: Communicating on Europe’ in October 2010. She is expert on Social Media for the MEP 2.0 workshops of the European Parliament. |
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Dr. Channa Gunawardena is a Management Systems and Project Management specialist, with over 14 years experience in International Development projects. He is currently Director of Megaskills Research, a UK based consultancy group which has implemented approx 350 sustainable development projects world-wide. He has a PhD in “Management and Evaluation of Donor Funded ICT Projects in Developing Asia” with the renowned Lancaster University Management School of UK which included an in-depth review of performance, management and evaluation issues in projects funded by the EU and ADB in the Asian region. He has been involved in over 30 major projects across approximately 20 countries in Europe, Asia and Africa as a project manager and expert. He has specific expertise in ICT for Development (ICT4D), Project Cycle Management, Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) and Sustainability/replication measures. In the area of ICT4D he has worked on sectors including agriculture, rural development, livelihood, entrepreneurship, eGovernment, environment and tourism. Much of this work has focussed on making ICT more inclusive and accessible particularly by SMEs, poor rural populations and women. |
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Pierre-Yves Danet – Vice-Chair of the Network Electronic Media (NEM) European Technology Platform Pierre-Yves Danet is a graduate of a High French engineer school and began his career with CAP GEMINI as a project leader of CTS projects (CTS4 and CTS5) and as a test and service expert in ISDN. He was involved in many ISDN standardisation activities before taking on the position as Coordination leader for the ISDN user/network interface within France Telecom in 1996. Since 2004, Danet has held the position of deputy of the laboratory in charge of Home Services development at France Telecom R&D – where he is also the Coordinator of the IST ePerSpace project. In 2005, Danet became the France Telecom representative in the NEM (Networked Electro Media) platform where he belongs to the steering and to the executive boards and he leads one working group in charge of Networked multimedia content delivery (NMCD). In 2007, he became the Vice Chairman of the NEM platform in charge of strategy. In 2008, Danet took the lead of the edition of the Future Internet Strategic Research Agenda shared by 5 ETP (NEM, eMobility, NESSi, ISI and EPOSS). In 2010, he organised and chaired the Future Internet Assembly Smart Energy session and was invited by the Commission to setup a Cross ETP group in order to study the impact of ICT on the Grand Societal Challenges. |
Southeast Asian Developments in the area of ICT for Inclusion
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Dr. Seyed Mohamed Buhari is currently working as a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science at University Brunei Darussalam, Brunei Darussalam. His areas of research interests are Network Performance and Analysis, Unicode Rendering and Grid Computing. |
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Dr. Sackona Phoeurng was nominated by the Cambodian Government as a Secretary of State in charge of the External Relation and Research activities in the ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Cambodia in 2008. She is also the President of Administration Board of the Institute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC). Prior to this position, Sackona worked closely with the different universities network (English and French Speaking Universities) in the South East Asia region and other countries. She is the member of Steering Committee of Asean Universities Network from 2001 and member of Associative Council of French Speaking Universities Agency from 2004. In December 2010, she was elected as the President of Conference Rectors of Asia-Pacific. Sackona began her career at the Standard Department of the Ministry of Industry from 1887 to 1991. In 1991, she moved to the Institute of Technology of Cambodia as a lecturer on Physical Chemistry and Food Conservation. In 1995 she became Head of the Department of Chemistry and Food Technology. Since 2003 until 2008, Sackona took over the responsibilities and the direction of ITC as the general manager. Even now, she is a Secretary of State; she still gives lectures and conducts research activities in Microbiology field inside ITC and Pasteur Institute in Cambodia especially in the topic of Bio-security. She holds a Doctor Degree from the Bourgogne University in France. |
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Prof. Phal Des is the Director of the IT Center of Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP). He spent over 3 years of research in Auto-Learning and Auto-Evaluation, the Univertité Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. DES also is the program coordinator of Master of Science in Information Technology Engineering (MITE) and he has access to a wide network of people and resources in the field of IT Engineering. His focus is on training students, faculty and staff at RUPP in a variety of modern ICTs and engaging RUPP in participating in regional and international research projects and activities. He is involved in a project looking into building and developing applications based on Mobile Computing and 3G Wireless Networks for health care, education and heritage. In 2007 he was awarded a Obuchi/UNESCO fellowship to work for a project called “System Support for Mobile and Distributed Multimedia Computing“ at Institute for System Architecture, Department of Computer Science, University of Technology of Dresden, Germany. From 2005 to 2007 he worked on projects such as the Greater Mekong Sub-region Virtual University project and the “Open Source e-Learning” project of UNESCO Paris. During 2007-2008, he also worked on project e-health and e-education with WASEDA University and KDDI Japan, this project provided to people in rural area to communicate with doctors and teachers in Phnom Penh city. In 2009 he was awarded with the title of research fellow in e-media & Virtual Reality from Group T, National University College Leuven, Belgium. Now he is working on projects such as Mapping Healthcare Centres in Cambodia and Presumptive Diagnosis and Awareness for STDs via SMS for Young Cambodian in Rural Areas. |
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Dr. Anto Satriyo Nugroho is a researcher working for Agency for Assessment & Application of Technolog (BPPT), Indonesia. He received his B.Eng degree in 1995, M.Eng in 2000 and Dr.Eng degree in 2003, all in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan. From 2003 to 2007, he is working for Chukyo University as visiting professor in School of Cognitive and Computer Science (2003-2004) and School of Life System Science & Technology (2004-2007).He has received first prize award of 99 Fog Forecasting Contest which was organized by Neurocomputing Technical Group of The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Japan, and also received Best Paper Award in Konferensi Nasional Sistem & Informatika, 15 Nov.2 008, at Inna Sindhu Beach Hotel, Sanur Bali. He served as Guest Editor of Internetworking Indonesia Journal ‘s Special Issue on Data Mining. His research interest is in the field of pattern recognition, image processing, computer vision, and computational biology. From 2007 he serves as vice president of Indonesian Society for Softcomputing. Dr. Nugroho is a member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE). |
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Opaseuth Siharath obtained the Bachelor from Thailand in the field of electricity and master degree in Information Technology (IT) field. Since 1996 he has been working at Lao Telecome in telephone and Internet department and he has specialised in network field. He is in charge of controlling and monitoring the Internet network and services such as ADSL service, 3G service, lease line service. He is also much involved in the core network of Internet project developed by Lao Telecome. Before having joined the Lao Telecome he has been a lecturer at National University of Laos for 3 years and an advisor of a group of students. |
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Dr. Mark David Rice is a senior research fellow and a member of the Human Factors Engineering Programme at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore. This programme covers research issues in robotics, healthcare, ageing, user interface design and ethnography, with aims to promote multidisciplinary research across local universities, hospitals, as well as industry partners. Previously, he was employed at the University of Dundee (UK) where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. In 2002 he joined the Interactive Technologies Research Group at the University of Brighton (UK), and in 2005 completed a research placement at the Advanced Telecommunication Research Institute (Japan). During his research career, Mark has worked on funded projects by the Alzheimer’s Association (US) and Intel Corporation, and the European Commission (FP7). He has co-organized two international workshops on inclusive design at EuroITV 2008 and Interact 2009, and has been a board member of Scotland’s largest disability organization (Capability Scotland). Mark’s research interests span areas of human-computer interaction, gerontechnology, and accessible and assistive technology. This has included research on interactive systems for people with low vision, dementia, and more generally older people per se. |
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Dr. Piyawut Srichaikul graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Physics at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand. He then continued his studies with a master’s degree in Physics and a Ph.D. program in Solid State Physics at Auburn University, Alabama, USA. He started working with the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC), a statutory government organization under the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), the Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand since 1995 as a researcher and coordinator of the High Performance Computing Research and Development. Later he worked as the Division Director of NECTEC’s Computing Research and Development, Program Manager of NECTEC’s knowledge Engineering Technology and Assistant Executive Director of NECTEC’s Platform Technology Program, respectively. He now holds the positions of Research Unit Director of NECTEC’s Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology, and Division Director of NECTEC’s Platform Technology Management. |
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Dr. Mai Anh currently holds Member of Parliament cum Director of IT center – Ministry of Sciences & Technology. He is one of the few Pioneers who has been working and operating on the IT area in Vietnam since 1969 which includes teaching and popularizing DOS in Vietnam. Prior to working at Ministry of Science & Technology, he used to be member of working group for automatic calculation of Civil Engineering problem (CAD); in 1979 he cooperated with Vietnamese IT community in French; installed successfully the first PASCAL Compiler in Vietnam. After that, he was chief of project to develop Database for BA Scientists in the whole country. Besides, he used to be member of draft board of the IT Strategy in Vietnam in the period 1996-2000; One of the founders of Vietnam Association of Information Processing (VAIP) in 1988; Founder of Hanoi ICT Association in 1999. He also proposed the committee of Science, Technology and Environment of National Assembly the Legal Initiative in order to pass by the E-transaction Law. Furthermore, he was Chief of Law Editing Group; member of the Advisory Board of ASIA-ITC Program of EU (2000-2005). He graduated in Hanoi and received Dr. Engineer Degree from the Academy of Science in German in 1978. After 38 consecutive years of working and operating in IT industry, he made a remarkable contribution to the development of Vietnam IT industry not only as an expert but also a policy maker. |
