Visual Analytics: The Next Five Years

Fall 2009 VAC Consortium Meeting Speaker Bios

Enrico Bertini, University of Fribourg Research Panel

Dr. Enrico Bertini is a research scientist at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy, with a thesis on clutter reduction in Information Visualization. His main research interest is Visual Analytics, with a specific focus on large datasets, integration of automatic and interactive data analysis, and evaluation. He applied his research mainly in the domains of network security and business data.

Shawn Bohn, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Project Briefings Panel Moderator

Shawn Bohn is a Senior Research Scientist at PNNL specializing in Visualization, Information Fusion and Information Extraction and Presentation Techniques. Mr. Bohn has been involved and evolved the field of information visualization as early as 1993 being a key contributor to the Spatial Paradigm for Information Retrieval and Exploration (SPIRE) which received an R&D 100 award in 1996. Mr. Bohn was also recognized for his accomplishments associated with technology transfer of this technology and received an FLC award (1998). Mr. Bohn has key experience having worked in both Research and Industry; spending over ten years working for PNNL, six years at Amazon.com and was founding member of the start-up venture ThemeMedia (a spin-off of the SPIRE technology). Mr. Bohn has a MS and BS in Mechanical Engineering specializing in Simulation and Dynamical System from Brigham Young University.

Remco Chang, University of North Carolina at Charlotte Research Panel

Remco Chang is a research associate in the department of computer science at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, a member of the Charlotte Visualization Center, as well as the Southeast Regional Visualization and Analytics Center (SRVAC). His research interests include interactions in visualization, geospatial and urban visualization, visual analytics, and information provenance. Chang has a M.S. degree from Brown University in computer science and B.S. degrees in computer science and economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Nancy Chinchor, ChinchorEclectic LLC Emerging Needs Panel

Dr. Nancy Chinchor is a research scientist working for the Director of National Intelligence on Visual Analytics for New Media under the auspices of ChinchorEclectic LLC. Her background includes co-founding the field of text extraction in the 1990s under DARPA funding and her dissertation in 1981 was on the Morphology of American Sign Language. Her 1975 machine code is embedded in the airbrake system on the Metro subway cars in DC. Her 1973 B.S. from CMU is in Mathematics and her 1982 Ph.D. in Linguistics is from Brown University.

Kris Cook, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory VAC Consortium Director

Kris Cook is the Consortium Director 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.

Wendy Cowley, PNNL Project Briefings

Wendy Cowley is a Software Engineer who has been at PNNL for 18 years. She has been involved with visual analytics for nearly a decade in various capacities. She is involved with a number of projects including First Look and IN-SPIRE.

Jeff Dagle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Emerging Needs Panel

Jeffery E. Dagle joined PNNL in 1989 with B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Washington State University in 1989 and 1994, respectively. Mr. Dagle currently manages several projects in the areas of transmission reliability and control system security for the DOE Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Department of Homeland Security, and other clients.

Mr. Dagle is a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Washington. Significant career highlights include receiving the 2001 Tri-City Engineer of the Year award by the Washington Society of Professional Engineers, leading the data requests and management task for the August 14, 2003, Northeast Blackout Investigation Task Force, briefing President George Bush and Secretary Samuel Bodman on electric power grid research initiatives underway at Battelle in March 2005, supported the DOE Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration Division with on-site assessments in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in fall 2005, and recipient of two patents, a Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Award in 2007, and an R&D 100 Award in 2008 for the Grid Friendly™ Appliance Controller technology.

Edward Delp, Purdue University Project Briefings

Edward J. Delp was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received the B.S.E.E.(cum laude) and M.S. degrees from the University of Cincinnati, and the Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. In May 2002 he received an Honorary Doctor of Technology from the Tampere University of Technology in Tampere, Finland.

In 2008 he was named a Distinguished Professor and is currently The Charles William Harrison Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering. In 2007 he received a Distinguished Professor appointment from the Academy of Finland as part of the Finland Distinguished Professor Program (FiDiPro). This appointment is at the Tampere International Center for Signal Processing at the Tampere University of Technology. His research interests include image and video compression, multimedia security, medical imaging, multimedia systems, communication and information theory. Dr. Delp has also consulted for various companies and government agencies in the areas of signal, image, and video processing, pattern recognition, and secure communications. He has published and presented more than 400 papers.

Dr. Delp is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the SPIE, a Fellow of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T), and a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. In 2004 he received the Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for his work in image and video compression and multimedia security. In 2008 Dr. Delp received the Society Award from IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS). This is the highest award given by SPS and it cited his work in multimedia security and image and video compression. In 2009 he received the Purdue College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Award for Research.

Lee Ann Dudney, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Emerging Needs Panel Moderator

Lee Ann Dudney is the Manager of PNNL’s Information Analytics group. She has led a broad range of information technology (IT) efforts since joining PNNL in 1983, including managing various IT research, software engineering, and IT infrastructure groups and projects. Ms. Dudney serves on the PNNL Technosocial Predictive Analytics Initiative advisory board as Executive Secretary, University of Idaho Computer Science Department advisory board and Washington State Educational Service District 123 board of directors. She graduated with summa cum laude honors in Computer Science from the University of Idaho.

Carol Dumaine, U.S. Department of Energy Keynote Speaker

Carol Dumaine serves as head of the Energy and Environmental Security Directorate in the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy. Her current efforts involve leveraging collaborative, open international networks and existing expert communities to enhance foresight and resiliency on global energy and environmental security risks and opportunities. Prior to this, she was director of the CIA’s Global Futures Partnership, a strategic “think-and-do tank” that promoted unclassified global knowledge-sharing and networking across government and non-government sectors. Ms. Dumaine began her career as an intelligence analyst and served as an analyst and manager in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. She has degrees from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

David Ebert, Purdue University Center of Excellence Panel Co-Chair

David Ebert is a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, a University Faculty Scholar, a Fellow of the IEEE, Director of the Purdue University Rendering and Perceptualization Lab (PURPL), and Director of the Purdue University Visualization and Analytics Center (PURVAC), which leads the Visualization Science team of the Department of Homeland Security’s Command Control and Interoperability 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.

Dr. 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 IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors, and successfully managing a large program in external funding to develop more effective methods for visually communicating information.

Alex Endert, Virginia Tech Project Briefings

Alex Endert started his Ph.D. studies at Virginia Tech in 2008. Along with his advisor, Dr. Chris North, he works primarily in the field of large, high-resolution visualizations. During his recent internship at PNNL, he conducted research in visual and cyber analytics, focusing on ways to improve analysts’ interactions with large, high-resolution workstations. This focus revealed new technologies for involving the user more closely with the visualization through the use of aggregation, visual encodings, human factors, sensemaking, and persistence of information within the virtual space. Alex received his B.S. in Computer Science from the College of Charleston.

Brian Fisher, Simon Fraser University Research Panel

Brian Fisher is Associate Professor of Interactive Arts and Technology and Cognitive Science at Simon Fraser University and the 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 visual information systems, with the goal of developing new theories, methods, and methodologies for development and evaluation of technology to support human understanding, decision-making, and coordination of operations. This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Command, Control and Interoperability Center of Excellence for applications in disaster relief and anti- terrorism with matching funding from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada and by the Boeing Company on understanding aircraft safety, reliability, and maintainability data with matching funding from the Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems Network of Centres of Excellence (Canada).

Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Project Briefings

Mark Hasegawa-Johnson is Associate Professor of ECE, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Senior Member of the IEEE and ACM, Associate Editor of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and General Chair of the Fifth International Conference on Speech Prosody (www.speechprosody2010.org). He is author or co-author of 109 peer-reviewed conference and journal articles, 26 printed abstracts, four patents, and a chapter in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Telecommunications. His ten current doctoral or post-doctoral students study aspects of speech technology including audio salience, universal access, computer-assisted language learning, speech perception, auditory modeling, semi-supervised learning, noise robustness, pronunciation modeling, and speech information retrieval.

Anne Kao, Boeing Research and Technology Tech Transition Panel

Anne Kao is a Technical Fellow in Boeing Research and Technology. She pioneered Text Mining in Boeing in 1995 and has been leading various Text Mining, and Text Analysis projects and tasks since 1991. The wide range of applications she has worked on includes Boeing survey data analysis, aviation safety, airplane maintenance and reliability, Network Centric Operations and Homeland Security. Her research also extends to Social Network Analysis and Knowledge Management. She is called upon for advice in Boeing and by the government in these research areas, and is leading multiple government funded and Boeing funded R&D projects. She is the co-editor of a book on Natural Language Processing and Text Mining by Springer in 2007, as well as a reviewer for various major ACM and IEEE conferences. Dr. Kao has a BA, MA and Ph.D. in Philosophy, specializing in philosophy of language, as well as an MS in Computer Science from San Diego State University.

Joe Kielman, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Highlighted Speaker

Joe Kielman serves as Science Advisor in the office of the Under Secretary for Science and Technology for the Department of Homeland Security. He is Director of Research Futures for the Command, Control and Interoperability Division, and is the Program Manager for the National Visualization and Analytics Center and the CCI Center of Excellence. Prior to joining DHS, Dr. Kielman worked for 20 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Joe has an undergraduate degree in Physics and graduate degrees in Biophysics and did his postdoctoral research in Genetics. In 2006, Dr. Kielman was awarded the Presidential Rank of Meritorious Senior Professional.

Jake Kolojejchick, Viz – General Dynamics C4 Systems Capstone Speaker

Jake Kolojejchick, Lead Technologist and Strategic Advisor at General Dynamics, is an entrepreneur and innovator. He specializes in product definition, design and development of solutions that apply information visualization and next generation collaboration technology to real world problems in a wide variety of domains spanning the spectrum from military command and control to pharmaceutical drug discovery.

In 1998, Jake co-founded MAYA Viz, a company that developed a collaborative visualization software product known as CoMotion®. Among his accomplishments, Jake led a team that played a leading role in the conception, development and initial deployment of a software application, built on CoMotion® for the U.S. Army. This application, known as CPOF, an acronym for Command Post of the Future is part of the Army Battle Command System which enables commanders and warfighters to react effectively on the battlefield, as well as, in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance efforts. CPOF allows users to share information, exchange ideas and collaborate in real-time from across the distributed battle space. In 2004, his quest to see the technology adopted took him to Baghdad with the Army’s 1st Calvary Division, an opportunity to assist the military in the adoption of this new technology.

Florian Mansmann, University of Konstanz Research Panel

Dr. Florian Mansmann is a research scientist and lecturer at the University of Konstanz in Germany, where he obtained his PhD. His thesis assessed Visual Analytics in the field of Network Security. His main research interests are in Visual Analytics with a focus on its application to Network Security & Monitoring, Data Mining, Spatiotemporal Data Analysis, and Sentiment Analysis. Mr. Mansmann is currently involved in the scientific coordination of the European Visual Analytics initiative VisMaster CA and the German DFG Priority Program Scalable Visual Analytics under the supervision of Prof. Daniel A. Keim.

Richard May, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory NVAC Director

Throughout his career, Dr. Richard 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 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.

Eric Myers, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Emerging Needs Panel

Eric Myers is the Director of the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC), Office of Health Affairs, Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He was selected for this position in January 2008 after serving as the Deputy Director and Program Manager for the National Biosurveillance Integration System (NBIS) since September 2006.

Before entering the federal government, Mr. Myers was a contractor for the firm of Booz Allen Hamilton and supported key defense and intelligence projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Northern Command. Prior to that, Mr. Myers retired from the U.S. Navy at the rank of Captain (O-6) after 27 years of service as an intelligence and operations specialist. His assignments included duty as the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (senior intelligence officer) for the U.S. Seventh Fleet, Director for Intelligence for the U.S. Pacific Command standing Joint Task Force-Maritime, and Director of the Defense Collection Coordination Center on the Joint Staff.

Mr. Myers received his BA in Political Science from Boston College and is a graduate of numerous military operations and intelligence training courses.

Lucy Nowell, U.S. Department of Energy Keynote Speaker

Dr. Lucy Nowell’s work in visualization and analytics is informed by her background in theatrical design and cognitive psychology, as well the computer science fields of information storage and retrieval, artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction. She was a pioneer in information visualization, designing one of the first visualization interfaces for a digital library, Virginia Tech’s Envision system. During her service as a Chief Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Lab, Dr. Nowell was a member of the team that designed and developed the award-winning OmniViz bioinformatics software and she contributed to patented user interface designs for ThemeRiver™ and AniViz (animated visualization). Dr. Nowell is newly appointed as a Program Manager the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) in the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, where she will manage a broad portfolio of computer science research projects, with a particular focus on Data and Visualization programs. She joined ASCR in April after a two-year term at the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Cyberinfrastructure, where she was a Program Director for Data, Data Analysis, and Visualization. Prior to her assignment at NSF, Dr. Nowell was a Program Manager with the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA), where she managed the programs on Novel Intelligence from Massive Data (NIMD), Geospatial Intelligence Information Visualization, and Advanced Research in Interactive Visualization for Analysis.

Haesun Park, Georgia Tech Project Briefings

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 Research Panel Moderator

Dr. Bill Pike is a senior 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 Pottenger, Rutgers University Center of Excellence Panel

William M. (Bill) Pottenger is CEO and founder of Intuidex, a manufacturer of solutions in the visual and data analytics space. Bill is also Director of Transition for the Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence on Control, Compatibility and Interoperability. He is also an Associate Research Professor at Rutgers University at DIMACS and in the Computer Science Department. Bill is active in research and development of technology, and has received over $6M in competitive research funding from the NSF, DHS, NIJ, ARL, industry, etc., has over 40 peer-reviewed publications, has served as editor and chair of several proceedings/symposia and made over 50 professional presentations/seminars. Bill is a member of ACM, IEEE, SIAM and has served as a program committee member/referee for numerous professional venues, journals, etc. Among other awards he is the recipient of the P.C. Rossin Endowed Assistant Professorship and a United States Air Force Certificate of Appreciation. Prior to coming to Rutgers, Bill completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and worked as a Research Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and at Lehigh University. Bill’s research interests include the fields of statistical relational learning and information extraction as applied in Higher Order Learning, a framework he developed for both supervised and unsupervised learning based on higher-order relations. He is also active in research in visual and data analytics and parallel and distributed computing. His company, Intuidex, Inc., creates leading-edge visual and data analytics and collaborative information management technology for use both at home and in business. Application domains of Intuidex technology include law enforcement and anti-terrorism as well.

Ron Rasmussen, Port of Seattle Emerging Needs Panel

Ron Rasmussen is a Lieutenant with the Seattle Police Department and has over 30 years of law enforcement experience. He has extensive experience in both tactical and business analysis methods for law enforcement and in law enforcement data and analysis systems. Ron’s association with PNNL and interest in visual analytics began in the late 1990s when he acquired the Starlight application for use in the Seattle Police Department’s Crime Analysis Unit. Ron is currently assigned to the Special Operations Section where he conducts research and analyzes deployment, organizational structure, and command and control systems for law enforcement.

Fred Roberts, Rutgers University Center of Excellence Panel Co-Chair

Dr. Fred S. Roberts is a Professor of Mathematics at Rutgers University, where he is a member of seven graduate faculties, in Mathematics, Operations Research, Computer Science, Computational molecular Biology, BioMaPS (Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program at the Interface between the Biological, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences), Industrial and Systems Engineering, and Education. In January 1996, he was named the Director of DIMACS, the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science and Technology Center and is a joint academic-industry partnership. In 2009 he became Director of the data sciences team for the new DHS Center of Excellence for Command, Control, and Interoperability.

In recent years, Dr. Roberts’ work on homeland security has led him to co-chair the NJ Universities Homeland Security Research Consortium, to serve on the Secretary’s epidemiology modeling group at the Department of Health and Human Services, the NJ Regional Homeland Security Technology Committee and the NJ Health Emergency Preparedness Advisory Council.

Stuart Rose, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Project Briefings

Stuart Rose is a research engineer at PNNL and has been developing innovative analytic and visualization capabilities in several distinct domains since 1999. Mr. Rose’s research is currently focused on methods of automatically identifying themes and trends in unstructured text and information streams to support insight into developing stories and changing science and technology landscapes. He has an MBA and MS in Management information Systems from The University of Arizona, and a BFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis.

Ben Sommers, Future Point Systems, Inc. Tech Transition Panel

Ben Sommers is the Vice President, Sales & Marketing at Future Point Systems. Ben joined Future Point in early 2008 with a proven track record of building successful technology businesses. Most recently at IBM, Ben managed a Western U.S. territory, working across all of IBM’s solution areas and focusing on software & Internet-based business clients. He led an extended team of IBM technical and service specialists, along with a valuable ecosystem of business partners. Previous to IBM, Ben has held key finance and investment positions at Windspeed Ventures, a venture capital firm, and at Robertson Stephens, a technology-focused investment bank. In addition, Ben worked in business development at an early stage enterprise software company, THINQ Learning Solutions (acquired by Saba Software, Nasdaq: SABA). Ben has a BA in Economics from Harvard University and an MBA from the University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business.

John Stasko, Georgia Institute of Technology Center of Excellence Panel

John Stasko is a Professor and the Associate Chair of the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is Director of the Information Interfaces Research Group there and his primary research area is human-computer interaction, with a specific focus on information visualization and visual analytics. His research group is examining ways to help people benefit from, and take advantage of the large quantities of available information to enrich their lives. He has been author or co-author of over 120 journal articles and conference papers on these topics and others. Stasko presently is or formerly has been on the editorial board of the journals ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 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 is Papers Co-Chair for the 2009 IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Symposium.

Chris Stolte, Tableau Software Tech Transition Panel

Chris Stolte is Tableau Software’s Vice President of Engineering and is responsible for product strategy, product design and engineering. Prior to co-founding Tableau, Chris spent six years researching the analysis and exploration of multidimensional databases at Stanford University, culminating in the Polaris system which was the basis for Tableau’s first products. This research resulted in fourteen landmark research publications and two large-scale visualization systems. Chris was also the CTO and co-founder of BeeLine Systems, a visualization software company that developed a revolutionary map rendering system and was purchased by Vicinity Corporation (NASDAQ: VCNT). Chris is a co-inventor on five software patents related to information visualization. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University.

Gael Tarleton, Port of Seattle Commissioner Emerging Needs Panel

Gael Tarleton has worked nearly 30 years to understand and help solve problems of critical national interest. She currently holds the elected office of Seattle Port Commissioner. Elected in 2007 to a 5-member Commission that oversees the largest port in the Pacific Northwest, she is leading efforts for Puget Sound ports to create a regional security strategy. Tarleton joined the University of Washington (UW) in 2004 in the College of Arts and Sciences and assisted the university’s creation of the Office of Vice- Provost of Global Affairs. Currently a part-time employee in the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering as Manager of Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives, she supports the Pacific Rim Visualization and Analytics Center (PARVAC), the Institute of National Security Education and Research (INSER), the National Center for Border Security and Immigration, and the UW Consortium for Safety and Security Education and Research (SASER). Tarleton started her career at the Defense Intelligence Agency where she worked for 9 years as a Soviet military intelligence research analyst. She subsequently joined Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), where she worked for 12 years. As a Vice President, she built and ran SAIC’s Russian subsidiary that performed on U.S.-funded science and technology partnerships in Russia and Eastern Europe, and directed research programs for the Departments of Energy and Defense, and the intelligence community. Tarleton serves as a volunteer Board member for several institutions: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s National Security Directorate Review Committee; the Foundation for Russian-American Economic Cooperation; and Earth and Space Research, Inc.

Gael earned her degrees at Georgetown University, including an M.A. in Government and National Security Studies and a B.S. in Foreign Service cum laude with a concentration in Russian Studies.

Jim Thomas, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory NVAC Founding Director

Jim Thomas is a PNNL Lab Fellow for the National Security Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. 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 sits on several advisory boards.

Michael Warner, Quantum 4D Tech Transition Panel

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.

Justin Wolf, Future Point Systems Project Briefings

Justin Wolf is Product Manager, Government Solutions for Future Point Systems, Inc. of Richland, Washington. He has over 20 years of experience in software and network engineering as both an engineer and manager at companies such as Sony Entertainment, Cisco Systems, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Systems and a Master of Science in Engineering Management.