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richardeluceRick Luce,

Vice-Provost and Director of Libraries at Emory University

Richard E. (Rick) Luce is the Vice-Provost and Director of Libraries at Emory University (2006-). Prior to joining Emory, he was the Research Library Director at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1991-2006). Known as an information technology pioneer and organizational innovator, he managed a world-class scientific research library providing services to 26 nationally prominent research organizations. In 2005 he was awarded the Fellows’ Prize for Leadership at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the first ever awarded to a nonscientist.

His most recent publication A New Value Equation Challenge: The Emergence of eResearch and Roles for Research Libraries was part of the Council on Library and Information Resources Report titled No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century.

In 1999 Rick was a co-founder of the Open Archives Initiative to develop interoperable standards for author self-archiving systems. In October 2003 he co-organized the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, and in 2004, the Brazilian Declaration on Open Access.

Rick has been a member of many NSF Blue Ribbon panels in the areas of data driven science, cyber-infrastructure, and the role of research libraries. He been an external reviewer for: CISRO; Stanford University; the U.S. Department of Energy; DLESE (Digital Library for Earth Systems Education), and has consulted with over twenty organizations and given over 120 invited lectures, while also serving on several national boards, commissions, and publisher review boards.

Mr. Luce holds numerous advisory and consultative positions supporting digital library innovation, electronic publishing, and scholarly communication. He is a member of the National Academies Committee on Assuring the Integrity of Research Data in an Era of E-Science, and an executive board member of Coalition for Networked Information, and the Digital Library Federation. Previously he was the senior advisor to the Max Planck Society’s Center for Information Management (2000-2006) and an executive board member of the National Information Standards Organization (1998-2004). Luce is a faculty member of the Frye Leadership Institute, to develop the next generation of higher education leaders emerging from IT and library backgrounds.

mikebestDr. Michael L. Best,

Assistant Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Michael L. Best is assistant professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology where he is a researcher with their GVU Center. He is also a Fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Professor Best is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Information Technologies and International Development. He is a frequent consultant to the World Bank, ITU, and USAID. He holds a Ph.D. from MIT and has served as Director of Media Lab Asia in India and head of the eDevelopment group at the MIT Media Lab.

johnnickersonDr. John M. Nickerson,

Associate Professor, Department of Ophthalmology, Emory University

Dr. Nickerson’s interests are in retinal proteins and their expression in normal animals and in animal models exhibiting characteristics of human eye diseases

Whether as a treatment in human disease or as a laboratory tool, the delivery of nucleic acids into cells and expression of a gene are important. Many strategies have been proposed, and many, to some degree, function as promised.
Difficulties arise when migrating from a laboratory tool or proof-of-principle into a reasonable and effective therapeutic agent. Viruses and viral particles have been most effective so far, but they have drawbacks. Other approaches have not been as efficient.

The invasiveness of current gene delivery schemes has been secondary to their efficiency and their associated risks, such as immunogenicity. We are considering noninvasive technologies to circumvent many problems with present gene delivery approaches. We employ mouse models of human ocular genetic diseases in testing gene delivery.

KathyRoperKathy Roper,

Associate Professor, Building Construction Program, Georgia Institute of Technology

Professor Roper teaches Professional Trends in Facility Management, Facility Planning, Project Management & Benchmarking, and co-developed and teaches the Integrated Facility & Property Management Capstone course. She was awarded the prestigious International Facility Management Association’s Educator Award of Excellence – 2005 and the Distinguished Author Award of Excellence – 2007.