Officers

• Chair, Hanan Samet, University of Maryland
• Vice-Chair, Walid G. Aref, Purdue University
• Secretary, Chang-Tien Lu, Virginia Tech
• Treasurer, Markus Schneider, University of Florida
• Newsletter Editor, Egemen Tanin, University of Melbourne

Biographies of Officers

Hanan Samet, University of Maryland, USA

Dr. Hanan Samet is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland where he leads a number of research projects on the use of hierarchical data structures for database applications involving multimedia data such as spatial and image databases. His research group has developed the SAND spatial browser, the VASCO system of JAVA applets for visualizing and animating spatial indexes (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hjs/quadtree/index.html), and the MARCO system for map retrieval by content which enables pictorial queries on a symbolic image database system. He is the author of the recent book "Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures" published by Morgan-Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 2006 (http://www.mkp.com/multidimensional), which received an Honorable Mention Award (one of two with one first place winner) in the 2006 best book in Computer and Information Science competition from the Professional and Scholarly Publishers (PSP) Group of the American Publishers Association (AAP). He is also the author of "Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures" and "Applications of Spatial Data Structures: Computer Graphics, Image Processing and GIS" published by Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1990, which are the first two books on spatial data structures. He has a Ph.D from Stanford University. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and the International Association of Patter Recognition (IAPR). In 1989-1991 he served as the Capital region representative on the ACM Council.  He is the recipient of the 2009 UCGIS Research Award.  received best paper awards in the 2008 SIGMOD Conference, the 2008 SIGSPATIAL ACMGIS'08 Conference, and the 2007 Computers & Graphics Journal.  His paper at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE) was selected as one of the best papers for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. For more details, see http://www.cs.umd.edu/~hjs.

Walid G. Aref, Purdue University, USA

Dr. Walid G. Aref is a Professor of computer science at Purdue. His research interests are in developing database technologies for emerging applications, e.g., spatial, spatio-temporal, multimedia, bioinformatics, and sensor databases. He is also interested in indexing, data mining, and geographic information systems (GIS). In 2001, he received the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation and in 2004, he received a Purdue University Faculty Scholar award. Professor Aref is a member of Purdue's Discovery Park Bindley Bioscience and Cyber Centers. He is on the editorial board of the VLDB Journal and is a senior member of the IEEE. He served as the Program Committee Co-Chair of the ACMGIS Symposium on Geographic Information Systems in 2001. For more details, see http://www.cs.purdue.edu/~aref

Markus Schneider, University of Florida, USA

Dr. Markus Schneider is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. He holds a doctoral degree in Computer Science from the University of Hagen, Germany. He is the co-author of the book Moving Objects Databases, published by Morgan-Kaufmann in 2005 as well as two other books in this field. His research interests include spatial databases, spatio-temporal and moving objects databases, GIS, applied computational geometry, and extensible databases. He is on the editorial board of GeoInformatica and a recipient of the 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. For more details, see http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mschneid.

Chang-Tien Lu, Virginia Tech, USA

Dr. Chang-Tien Lu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He received an M.S. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota. He served as Program Co-Chair for the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence and the 2007 IEEE International Workshop on Spatial and Spatial-temporal Data Mining. Dr. Lu's research work focuses on emerging requirements for storing, analyzing, exchanging, visualizing, and disseminating spatial (and spatio-temporal) data in geospatial applications. His research group has developed several web-based spatial analysis and visualization systems for managing and mining various kinds of spatial information. Specific projects include discovering spatial anomalies, identifying recurrent or unexpected events, and predicting future trends. His research projects have been sponsored by the Department of Defense, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Virginia Transportation Research Council. For more details, see http://www.cs.vt.edu/~ctlu/.

Egemen Tanin, University of Melbourne, Australia

Dr. Egemen Tanin is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Melbourne. His research interests include spatial databases, distributed data management, and database visualization. He has obtained his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees at the University of Maryland at College Park on accessing and browsing large databases over the Internet. His work on browsing large collections of satellite images was later used by the Global Change Master Directory of NASA. He has also developed one of the first P2P spatial indices and this work is now being commercialized for online virtual worlds by NICTA Victoria Labs. He has served on the program and organizing committees of many international conferences and workshops. His work is sponsored by the ARC and NICTA. For more details, visit his webpage at http://www.csse.unimelb.edu.au/~egemen.