Visual Analytics Beyond Borders

VAC Consortium Meeting, November 12-13, 2008; Richland, WA

Fall 2008 VAC Consortium Meeting Speaker Bios

Larry Becker, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Intelligence Applications Track

Larry Becker is an experienced manager and contributor to technical programs concentrating on National Security issues. Since July 1998, Mr. Becker has held numerous positions as principle investigator, relationship, project and line management at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He is currently the Technical Group Manager for the Cyber Technology and Analysis Group. He previously served as the Manager of the International Technology Assessments (ITA) Group, National Security Directorate where he was responsible for nuclear, chemical, biological and technology development analysis of foreign countries.

Previous to his employment at PNNL, Mr. Becker spent twenty-one years as an Officer in the United States Air Force.

Rachael Brady, Duke University FODAVA Panel

Rachael Brady is the Director of the Visualization Technology Group at Duke University and a Senior Research Scientist of Computer Science, Senior Research Scientist in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor of Visual Studies. Brady is interested in how technology can aid data exploration and analysis. She began her career by designing signal detection algorithms and creating remote instrument control systems for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence projects at UC Berkeley and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 1990, Brady began work on interactive volume rendering and image analysis software for use in biological and medical data at the NCSA. She co-authored the Crumbs volume rendering virtual reality software that has been used by biologists, astrophysicists geologists, architects, and dancers. Brady joined the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke in September 2001, where she is the founding director of the Visualization Technology Group. She has been actively involved in the visualization community for 18 years and is currently serving on the IEEE vgtc, the IEEE VisWeek committee, the IEEE VR committee, and the IEEE VisWeek Executive Committee.

Neville Clarke, FAZD Center Health Track

Dr. Clarke is Director of the Department of Homeland Security National Center of Excellence on Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense. He is founding director of the Texas A&M University System Institute for Countermeasures Against Agricultural Bioterrorism and served as Interim Director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security, which links the broad resources of the multiple universities and agencies of the Texas A&M University System to address both food and agriculture and the broad homeland security agenda. Dr. Clarke has been actively involved in agricultural biosecurity since 1996, serving as advisor to the USDA, developing new projects at Texas A&M, and participating as a member of the Defense Intelligence Agency BioChem 2020 Group, which is a panel of scientific experts that assesses vulnerabilities to terrorist activities. His area of personal research is the development and application of decision support systems to assess the impact of technology and policy options affecting food and agriculture, recent applications of which have been directed to agricultural biosecurity at state and national levels. Dr. Clarke is Director Emeritus of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, one of the largest broad-based public research organizations in the U.S. for food and agriculture. As a career Air Force R&D officer, he served as director of the Air Force’s medical research program for five years, where he was responsible for initiating the modern development of aircrew and air base protection against CBW weapons. Dr. Clarke was a member of the USAF Chief of Staff’s Scientific Advisory Board and Chairperson of its Aerospace Medical Panel. He is a fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council’s Board on Agriculture and served as its Vice Chairperson for three years. He is author or co-author of more than 100 scientific publications.

Tim Collins, Purdue University Law Enforcement Track

Collins is the Managing Director of the Purdue Regional Visualization and Analytics Center. In this position, he is responsible for overseeing the day to day operations and directing the business development activities of this DHS University Center of Excellence. Previously, he was the Managing Director of the Purdue Homeland Security Institute (PHSI) and the Director of the Center for Military and Law Enforcement Technology, Tactics, and Training at Purdue University. He is an accomplished security professional having a 20 year operations background in public safety, corporate security, and the military. His business expertise includes program and project management, business development and strategic planning. He is an expert in strategic alliances, business partnerships, negotiations and analysis of homeland security markets.

He is retired from the Indiana State Police reaching the rank of Regional Investigative Commander. In this capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the investigative mission within a 12,000 square mile, 21 county region in northwest Indiana. Shortly after September 11, 2001, he directed a team in the development, design, and implementation of the first comprehensive counter-terrorism training program in the United States for street level officers. In 1999, he led a multi-agency, multi-state task force investigating the criminal destruction to 41 radio communications towers covering almost 13,000 square miles and 3 states. This successful investigation received a Law Enforcement Program of the Year award by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In 1996, he attended the FBI National Academy, an elite leadership and management school offered to less than one-half of one percent of all law enforcement officers. As a State Trooper, he was a certified Hostage Crisis Negotiator involved in dozens of incidents requiring successful negotiation. In addition, his experience includes assignments as an Air Force Officer, both as an aircraft global navigator aboard a KC-135 (Boeing 707) and as an Operations Manager in the highly technical Command and Control arena. His professional affiliations include being a Board Member to the Great Lakes Regional Homeland Security Foundation, a delegate for the Extension Disaster Education Network, the American Society for Industrial Security, the FBI National Academy Associates, the Indiana State Police Alliance, the Indiana Defense and Homeland Security Working Group Committee, the Indiana Higher Education Homeland Security Advisory Board, and the Indiana Campus Safety and Preparedness Committee.

Collins received his B.S. and MBA degrees from Purdue University.

Kris Cook, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory VAC Consortium Director

Kris Cook is the Coordinator of the Regional Visualization and Analytics Centers (RVACs) and Partnerships Coordinator for the National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC). She has led research and development efforts in information visualization and visual analytics for over ten years. She led the development of the initial version of the IN-SPIRE visual information analysis software, which is now in use in both government and commercial industry. She is co-editor of Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics, published in 2005 by IEEE Press.

David Ebert, Purdue University Health Track Leader

David Ebert is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, a University Faculty Scholar, Director of the Purdue University Rendering and Perceptualization Lab (PURPL), and Director of the Purdue University Regional Visualization and Analytics Center (PURVAC), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security's Regional Visualization and Analytics Center of Excellence. Dr. Ebert performs research in novel visualization techniques, visual analytics, volume rendering, information visualization, perceptually-based visualization, illustrative visualization, and procedural abstraction of complex, massive data.

Ebert has been very active in the visualization community, teaching courses, presenting papers, co-chairing many conference program committees, serving on the ACM SIGGRAPH Executive Committee, serving as Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, serving as a member of the IEEE Computer Society's Publications Board, serving on the National Visualization and Analytics Center's National Research Agenda Panel, and successfully managing a large program in external funding to develop more effective methods for visually communicating information.

Dieter Fellner, Fraunhofer Institute International Panel

Dieter Fellner is a professor of computer science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and the Director of the Fraunhofer Institute of Computer Graphics (IGD) at the same location. Previously he has held academic positions at the Graz University of Technology, Austria, the University of Technology in Braunschweig, Germany, the University of Bonn, Germany, the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, and the University of Denver, Colorado. He is still affiliated with the Graz University of Technology where he chairs the Institute of Computer Graphics and Knowledge Visualization he founded in 2005.

Dieter Fellner's research activities over the last years covered algorithms and software architectures to integrate modeling and rendering, efficient rendering and visualization algorithms, generative and reconstructive modeling, virtual and augmented reality, graphical aspects of internet-based multimedia information systems and digital libraries. In the latter field he has coordinated a strategic initiative funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) from 1997 till 2005 which financed approx. 50 researchers per year in 21 research groups.

Dieter Fellner is author of the German long-time standard book on computer graphics (1988, 2nd ed. 1992) and together with A. Endres he has written a book on digital libraries (2000). In the areas of computer graphics and digital libraries Dieter Fellner is a member of the editorial boards of leading journals and a member of the program committees of many international conferences and workshops.

He is a member of EUROGRAPHICS where he serves in the Executive Committee, ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) where he serves as a member of the extended Board of Directors and as Chairman of the Graphics Chapter (Fachbereich Graphische Datenverarbeitung).

Furthermore, Dieter Fellner is an advisor for the German Scientific Council, the German Research Foundation, and the European Commission (as a member of ISTAG).

Shannon Ferrucci, Mercyhurst College Project Briefings

Shannon was born and raised in upstate New York. She graduated from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY in May 2007 with a B.A. in Criminology and Crime and Justice Studies and a concentration in human services. Currently, a second-year graduate student at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, Shannon is working towards a M.S. in Applied Intelligence with an expected graduation date of May 2009. She is presently employed at Mercyhurst College’s Center for Intelligence Research Analysis and Training and is involved in a variety of law enforcement and business intelligence contracts. She attended NVAC’s Inaugural Data Visualization workshop this summer and recently was part of one of two winning teams in the 2008 ODNI Open Source Innovation Challenge. After graduation she hopes to pursue a career in intelligence analysis and eventually go on to obtain a Ph.D. in a related field.

Brian Fisher, Simon Fraser University Project Briefings

Brian Fisher is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) at Simon Fraser University and Associate Director of the Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre (MAGIC) at the University of British Columbia. He is also a member of the SFU Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences, and the UBC Brain Research Centre and Institute for Computing, Intelligent and Cognitive Systems. His research focuses on the cognitive science of human interaction with information systems, with the goal of developing new theories, methods, and methodologies for development and evaluation of technology to support human understanding, decision-making, operation management, and collaboration.

Richard Fujimoto, Georgia Tech FODAVA panel

Richard Fujimoto is a Professor and Chair of the Computational Science and Engineering Division of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received the Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the University of California (Berkeley) in 1980 and 1983 (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering) and B.S. degrees from the University of Illinois (Urbana) in 1977 and 1978 (Computer Science and Computer Engineering).

Professor Fujimoto’s research is concerned with the execution of discrete-event simulation programs on parallel and distributed computing platforms. This research has included work on platforms ranging from mobile distributed computing systems to cluster computers to supercomputers. This work has included several application areas including transportation systems, telecommunication networks, multiprocessor systems, and defense systems. He lead the working group that was responsible for defining the time management services for the Department of Defense High Level Architecture (HLA) effort (IEEE Standard 1516).

Howard Greenblatt, Metatomix Project Briefings

As CTO, Howard oversees the company's technology adoption strategy, and its application across the Metatomix Platform. Howard is a professional Software Engineer with over twenty five years of experience in the fields of Data Management Systems, DataWarehouses, Data Mining and Intelligent Database Access. Areas of expertise include Semantic technology, A. I., Data Visualization and Enterprise Systems Architecture. Howard has designed, developed and implemented a vast array of software systems ranging from financial analytic applications on Wall Street, to intelligent E-Commerce software. At Metatomix his primary role has been in the development and integration of the company's semantic and rules based technologies and holds three patents associated with that work. Prior to Metatomix he was the Chief Technology Officer at Athlete.com, an online community for kids focusing on sports and athletics. He was also the President and CEO of Matrix Consulting for ten years, which provided software consulting services in the field of advanced data management. Howard holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Concordia University in Montreal.

Daniel Keim, University of Konstanz, Germany International Panel

Daniel A. Keim is full professor and head of the Information Visualization and Data Analysis Research Group at the University of Konstanz, Germany. He has been actively involved in information visualization and data analysis research for more than 15 years and developed a number of novel visual analysis techniques for very large data sets. He has been program co-chair of the IEEE InfoVis and IEEE VAST symposia as well as the SIGKDD conference, and he is member of the IEEE InfoVis IEEE VAST steering committees. He is coordinator of the German Strategic Research Initiative (SPP) on Scalable Visual Analytics and the scientific coordinator of the EU Coordination Action on Visual Analytics.

Dr. Keim got his Ph.D. and habilitation degrees in computer science from the University of Munich. Before joining the University of Konstanz, Dr. Keim was associate professor at the University of Halle, Germany and Technology Consultant at AT&T Shannon Research Labs, NJ, USA.

Joe Kielman, Department of Homeland Security DHS Representative

Joe Kielman serves as Science Advisor in the office of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology for DHS. He is Director of Research Futures for the Command, Control and Interoperability Division and serves as Acting Director for Transition for the Human Factors Division at the Science and Technology Directorate. Prior to joining DHS, Dr. Kielman worked for 20 years at the FBI. Joe has an undergraduate degree in Physics and graduate degrees in Biophysics and did his postdoctoral research in Genetics.

Dario Leslie, Counter Terrorism Science & Technology Centre, United Kingdom International Panel

Dr. Dario Leslie has a BSc and PhD in Medical Microbiology and has worked across a range of disciplines in UK defence science for the past twenty years. Dr Leslie currently works in the UK Ministry of Defence’s Counter-Terrorism Science and Technology Centre where he is programme leader for Innovation and Threat Studies. In the former context he seeks innovative approaches to technical challenges across the CT S&T portfolio, in the latter he seeks understanding of the threat terrorism poses to us and the way that threat may materialise. The analysis and visualisation of complex datasets is of interest in both domains – firstly as an area rich in innovation and creativity, and secondly as a tool to understand the terrorist threat.

Alan MacEachren, Pennsylvania State University Health Track

Alan M. MacEachren obtained his Ph.D. in Geography at the University of Kansas in 1979. He is Professor of Geography, Affiliate Professor of Information Sciences & Technology, and Director of the GeoVISTA Center at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also Director of the North-East Regional Visualization and Analytics Center (NEVAC), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security's Regional Visualization and Analytics Center of Excellence.

MacEachren’s research foci include visual analytics, geovisualization, geocollaboration, interfaces to geospatial information technologies, spatial cognition, human-centered systems, and user-centered design. He is author of more than 100 publications, including the books How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization and Design, Guilford Press, 1995 and Some Truth with Maps, AAG, 1994; and is co-editor of additional journal special issues and books (including Exploring Geovisualization, Elsevier, 2005). MacEachren served as chair of the ICA Commission on Visualization and Virtual Environments (1999-2005) and was named honorary ICA fellow in 2005. He also served on the U.S. National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board Committee on the Intersections Between Geospatial Information and Information Technology (2001-2002) and of the National Visualization and Analytics Center R&D Agenda panel (2004-2005).

Charles Magruder, Centers for Disease Control Health Track

Charley Magruder is a medical epidemiologist who serves as a coordinator of health information exchange activities at CDC’s National Center for Public Health Informatics. He is currently serving as a project officer for a five year, thirty-eight million dollar effort in New York, Indiana, Washington and Idaho that focuses on the role of public health in health information exchange activities.

Prior to coming to the CDC, Charley worked several years as a local health department director and health officer. After completing his residency in General Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, he spent four years as the Chief of Preventive Medicine at Womack Army Medical Center, located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In civilian life, he worked four years as the Director and Health Officer of the Wichita/Sedgwick County, Kansas Health Department. During this time, he began to address surveillance needs associated with bioterrorism preparations and worked with the NACCHO IT committee on these and other informatics issues pertinent to local public health.

Richard May, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory NVAC Deputy Director

Throughout his career, Dr. May has focused on designing new technologies and protocols to generate and interact with complex, massive data sets. Over the course of his career, Dr. May has conducted research in video and image processing, information visualization, virtual and mixed reality and visual analytics. In the early 1990s, he transitioned his research from visualizing science to interacting with the visualizations, to better understand the complex nature of the problems being studied. This new focus led to research in both the logical and physical aspects of interacting with electronic information and eventually to looking at analytical processes and visual analytics.

As Deputy Director for the Department of Homeland Security's National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC), Dr. May develops opportunities to transfer technologies to meet the needs of regional preparedness experts and coordinates visual analytics research across government and academic partners. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Washington State University and his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Washington.

Rob Nelson, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Cyber Security Track

Rob Nelson is a Software Engineer and Analyst for the Operational Analysis Center (OAC), which he joined in August 2002. Since joining the team, he has developed the categorization and summarizations processes that are used for data analysis and reporting. He is also the primary developer for the data collection software used to retrieve data from the OAC databases. In addition to his development efforts, Rob assumes analysis duties, provides technical reviews of OAC analytical products, and leads the OAC development team responsible for developing and integrating analytical tools.

Prior to joining the OAC, Rob worked on several software development projects including network communications and database systems development. His projects included integration of radio frequency identification equipment, biometric access control systems, and a smart card system.

Rob joined PNNL in 1998 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science with a minor in Electrical Engineering from Washington State University.

Haesun Park, Georgia Tech FODAVA Panel

Prof. Haesun Park received her B.S. degree in Mathematics from Seoul National University, Seoul Korea, in 1981 with summa cum laude and the University President's Medal for the top graduate, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 1985 and 1987, respectively. She was on the faculty of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, from 1987 to 2005. From 2003 to 2005, she served as a program director for the Computing and Communication Foundations Division at the National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, U.S.A.

Since July 2005, she has been a professor in the Computational Science and Engineering Division in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. Her current research interests include numerical algorithms, pattern recognition, bioinformatics, information retrieval, and data mining. She has published over 100 research papers in these areas. Prof. Park has served on numerous conference committees and editorial boards of journals. Currently she is on the editorial board of BIT Numerical Mathematics, SIAM Journal on Matrix Analysis and Applications, and International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications.

Bill Pike, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Cyber Security Track Leader

Dr. Bill Pike is a research scientist at PNNL specializing in knowledge representation and visualization, collaborative tools, and information fusion. Dr. Pike holds a Ph.D. in Geography, with an emphasis on Geographic Information Science, from Penn State. At PNNL, he conducts research for the National Visualization and Analytics Center on analytic applications for the intelligence community, including reasoning support systems and knowledge representation and dissemination tools. He has designed knowledge-sharing and collaboration support applications for scientific cyber-infrastructure projects, and his group decision making tools have been used by clients in emergency medicine, social services, and technology forecasting, among others. At Penn State, he developed new techniques for training Bayesian networks on incomplete data. He has published over 20 peer reviewed book, journal, and conference publications, including papers in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, the Proceedings and the National Academy of Sciences, and Spatial Information Theory. Among other synergistic activities, Dr. Pike has served on the conference committee for the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology Symposium as the Doctoral Colloquium co-chair and as a review panelist for National Science Foundation geospatial analysis proposals.

Bill Reynolds, Least Squares Software Intelligence Track

Dr. William N. Reynolds is president of Least Squares Software. Least Squares has been conducting R&D into analytic methods and tools for the last decade. Least Squares focuses on developing relevant, useable approaches to analysis that are informed by deep understanding of analytic tradecraft. Under Dr. Reynolds direction, Least Squares developed the Landscape-Decision tool for understanding complex political systems. Landscape-Decision has been deployed at two agencies and produced intelligence for national command level customers.

Bill Ribarsky, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Project Briefings

William Ribarsky is the Bank of America Endowed Chair in Information Technology at UNC Charlotte and the founding director of the Charlotte Visualization Center. He is Principal Investigator for the DHS SouthEast Regional Visualization and Analytics Center. He received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Cincinnati.

His research interests include visual analytics; 3D multimodal interaction; bioinformatics visualization; virtual environments; visual reasoning; and interactive visualization of large-scale information spaces. Dr. Ribarsky is the former Chair and a current Director of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee. He is also a member of the Steering Committees for the IEEE Visualization Conference and the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference, the leading international conferences in their fields. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics and is currently an Editorial Board member for IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications. Dr. Ribarsky co-founded the Eurographics/IEEE visualization conference series (now called EG/IEEE EuroVis) and led the effort to establish the current Virtual Reality Conference series. In 2007, he will be general co-chair of the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Symposium.

Dr. Ribarsky has published over 110 scholarly papers, book chapters, and books. He has received competitive research grants and contracts from NSF, ARL, ARO, DHS, ONR, EPA, AFOSR, DARPA, NASA, NIMA, and several companies.

Lee Rock, US-CERT Cyber Security Track

Lee Rock is the lead strategic analyst on the US-CERT Einstein program and has been with US-CERT for over two years. He has been in the information assurance field for over a decade working as a contractor for the Department of Justice and Department of Defense. Prior to coming to US-CERT, he was the team lead for the United States Air Force Headquarters CERT team at the Pentagon.

Larry Rosenblum, National Science Foundation FODAVA Panel Chair

Larry Rosenblum is Program Director for Graphics and Visualization at the National Science Foundation. His research interests include mobile augmented reality (AR), scientific and uncertainty visualization, VR displays, and applications of VR/AR systems. His research group has produced advances in mobile augmented reality (AR), scientific and uncertainty visualization, VR displays, applications of VR/AR systems, and understanding human performance in graphics systems.

Rosenblum is on the editorial boards of IEEE CG&A and Virtual Reality. He has guest edited special issues/sections of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A), Computer, and Presence on visualization, VR, and ARHe. He also has served on both the editorial board and advisory board of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. He was the elected Chairman of the IEEE Technical Committee on Computer Graphics from 1994-1996 and is currently Director of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee. Rosenblum received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Ohio State University in 1971.

Rosenblum received an IEEE Outstanding Contribution Certificate for initiating and co-founding the IEEE Visualization Conference. He serves on the program, conference, and steering committees of numerous international conferences. He is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of the IEEE Computer Society, ACM, and Siggraph.

Jean Scholtz, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Project Briefings

Dr. Scholtz has worked in human-computer interaction and evaluation for the past 20 years. Currently, Dr. Scholtz works part time at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory having retired from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 2006. At PNNL, she works on evaluation efforts for several projects, including the National Visualization and Analytics Center and the Technosocial Predictive Analytics Project. In previous positions she was on the Computer Science Faculty at Portland State University, Portland, OR where she started a master degree program in human-computer interaction. She was a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) running programs in Information Technology, Collaboration, and Ubiquitous Computing. She also worked for Intel Corporation, both in their Usability Laboratory and as Manager of the Human Factors Service in the Personal Conferencing Division. Dr. Scholtz holds a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska.

Corporal Steve Shephard, National City Police Department Law Enforcement Track

Corporal Steve Shephard has been a full-time sworn police officer with the National City Police Department, National City, CA, for approximately nine years. During his time as a police officer in National City, he has contacted and interviewed over 900 people that have claimed to be and are documented as gang members. He has investigated over 500 crimes committed by gang members and made numerous arrests of those individuals.

In June 2004, Corporal Shephard was selected and assigned to work on the newly formed Gang Enforcement Team (GET). he received intensive training on gang culture, trends, identification and documentation of street gang members, search warrants, and other law enforcement tactics and procedures in dealing with criminal street gangs. His duties as a member of the GET Team include monitoring, contacting, interviewing, and documenting gang members on a daily basis.

Corporal Shephard has also been involved with and a user of the ARJIS PDA device since 2003. During that time he has used the PDA device to identify numerous subjects who have attempted to conceal their identity and avoid arrest. he has used the PDA device to identify dangerous suspects of crimes committed and to identify suspects with outstanding warrants. The PDA device has even assisted in identifying suspects in the United States illegally (previously deported felons).

John Stasko, Georgia Tech FODAVA Panel

John Stasko is Associate Chair and Professor of the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has been a faculty member since 1989. He is the Director of the Information Interfaces Research Group and his primary research area is human-computer interaction, with a focus on information visualization and visual analytics. The research group is examining ways to help people benefit from, and take advantage of the large quantities of available information to enrich their lives. Stasko is also the Director of the Georgia Tech component of the Southeastern Regional Visualization and Analytics Center, sponsored by DHS.

He has been author or co-author of over 110 journal articles and conference papers, and he is on the editorial board of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, and Information Visualization. He was General Chair in 2007 and Papers Co-Chair in 2005 and 2006 for the IEEE Information Visualization (InfoVis) Conference, and he will be Papers Co-Chair for the IEEE VAST Symposium in 2009.

Jim Thomas, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory NVAC Director

Jim Thomas is a PNNL Lab Fellow for the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is the Director of a Department of Homeland Security founded National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC) that also provides funding for 5 Regional (university led) Visualization and analytics Centers (RVAC). He has received several national and international science awards including the most recent honor of being ranked as AAAS Fellow, “PNNL Director’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in Science and Technology”, “Top 100 Scientific Innovators” (Science Digest) and twice the Research and Development's Industrial Research 100 Significant Scientific and Industry Accomplishments” Top 100 Innovators in Science and Industry”. In addition, twice he was awarded the Federal Laboratories Consortium Technology Transfer Award for innovation in transferring research technology to industry and universities. Jim has also served as 2003 and 2004 IEEE Visualization Conference Co-Chair, 1987-1992 Chair ACM SIGGRAPH, 1998-2002 Editor-In-Chief for IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, Founder of ACM User Interface Science and Technology Conference, and has over 120 publications and sets on several advisory boards.

Tim Thomas, University of Washington Intelligence Analysis Track

Dr. Thomas is a Research Scientist at the CIA, currently on a two-year assignment as the Officer-in-Residence at the Department of Technical Communications at the University of Washington, Seattle WA. He is also a member of the Emerging Media Group at the Director of National Intelligence’s Open Source Center in Reston, VA. Dr. Thomas has a Ph.D. from Tulane University in the area of Physiological Psychology. He has served as a staff scientist in the Computer Applications Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and has many years experience leading research projects as a member of the Advanced Technology and Programs Office at the CIA. His primary research focus has revolved around the exploitation of large textual datasets, but he has also addressed many specific issues concerning computational support to intelligence collection and analysis.

Andrew Vallerand, Defence R&D Canada International Panel

Dr Andrew L. Vallerand is the new Director of Public Security Technical Program of Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) Center of Security Science, a program that supports 21 Departments and Agencies with Homeland Security Research, Technology and Analysis (RT&A).

With a career spanning 20 years of contributions in RT&A, Andrew specializes in the research, design and implementation of innovative Applied Physiology, Human Factors, Modelling & Simulation and Capability Assessment S&T.

At various Defence R&D Canada labs and labs overseas, he has established investment guidance and directions for Human Factors, Modelling & Simulation and Capability Assessment domains, led major Science & Technology (S&T) initiatives, mentored staffs and graduate students, and spearheaded several major S&T programs nationally as well as Internationally through the 5-nation TTCP, the CA-US bi-lateral PSTP, and NATO Panels.

He is now leading Homeland Security “S&T Clusters” across the Whole-of-Government of Canada to address Capability gaps. Finally, he has always remained engaged with Academia, by retaining responsibilities as Adjunct Professor at various Universities.

[Andrew is married, has two children and a black Labrador, his jogging partner year-round.]

Carrie Varley, PNNL Cyber Track

Ms. Varley joined Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in September 2000. Since coming to PNNL, she has been involved as an analyst in a wide variety of projects, including those related to visual analytics, cyber, nuclear non-proliferation, and counterintelligence. Ms. Varley is a member of the PNNL team responsible for developing and judging data for the Visual Analytic Science and Technology (VAST) contests since 2006. She is the author of multiple technical analytical papers focused on international technology assessments, and is a member of a nationally recognized team engaged in nuclear materials proliferation analysis. Ms Varley was a main contributor to the Deception Detection project focused on developing a visual deception detection capability for electronic text. In addition, Ms. Varley has been involved with the Development of Serious Gaming Technology for Cognitive Enhancement in Predictive Analytics as part of the Technosocial Predictive Analytics Initiative. She holds a BA from Utah State University, and was a member of the United States Army, and the Washington State National Guard as an intelligence analyst.

Michael Warner, Quantum4D Project Briefings

Michael Warner is Founder and CEO of Quantum4D, a software platform that provides users with a portal to a dynamic, evolving 3D model of the economy and markets. The basic design of the system was inspired by work done for major banks and various technology startups. Prior to founding Quantum4D in 2001, Michael worked as an information architect and ontologist, designing internal software systems and web-based platforms that leverage the structure of information in analysis and presentation to the end user. Prior to this, he worked in financial services and security groups at Sun Microsystems. He began his career working on development projects for the World Bank/USAID and teaching business in developing countries for Georgetown University (CIED). Warner graduated magna cum laude from Kenyon College before pursuing a master’s in philosophy focused on information and systems theory at the University of Washington.

Mark Whiting, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Project Briefings

Mark A. Whiting is a chief scientist for the Knowledge Systems technology group at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He has been employed at PNNL since 1983 and has a current focus on Homeland Security R&D.  Mark is the project manager for the Threat Stream Generator Project for NVAC and has led the team that creates the contest datasets for the IEEE VAST symposium since its inception. Mark's areas of expertise include the "science of the artificial," knowledge representation, and information analytics.

Bill Wright, Oculus Info, Inc. Intelligence Applications Track

William Wright is a Senior Oculus Partner. A researcher, innovator and practitioner in visualization since the late 1980’s, he founded Visible Decisions in 1992 and co-founded Oculus Info Inc. in 2001. His current research interests include intelligent, mixed initiative, information visualization and visual analytic systems that enhance human understanding and decision making. Oculus does research, design and development of innovative visualization systems for analysis and decision-making in complex, information-rich environments. Two of Oculus’ solutions include GeoTime® for analysis of many thousands of events in time and space, and nSpace2 ® a web-based, SOA compliant, advanced intelligence analysis tool. Oculus has won the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology contest in 2006, 2007 and 2008. For the research, development and deployment to the Army of the 4D collaborative workspace component of the Army’s new Command and Control system, Oculus received the DARPA Award for Significant Technical Achievement in 2004 and the Award for Sustained Excellence in 2005. Wright is the author of more than twenty papers on visualization for analysis and decision-making.