Panel Session 3: International Collaboration

The e-Research ´vision´ is of collaboration between researchers on a global scale. This panel will review existing funding agency mechanisms for fostering and supporting collaboration, and consider whether and how these might need to be adapted in order to bring this vision to fruition.

Each panel member gave a five minute position statement addressing the panel´s topic. The panel then moved onto an open discussion question and answer session.

Panel Members

Tom Rodden

Professor Tom Rodden is the Director of the Equator Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration which is a £10 million pound project and involves directing over 100 researchers spread across 8 sites exploring physical/digital interaction (collaboration extends from 2000-2006). Author and co-author of approximately 40 journal papers, 100 refereed international conference papers, 10 book chapters, two edited books and one book, in areas ranging from distributed systems to social science methods. He is a member of numerous conference Programme Committees in the areas of HCI, CSCW, Software Engineering, Distributed Systems and Virtual Reality, often as European representative or chair. The General Chair of UbiComp 2004 held in Nottingham, attracting around 450 international delegates, and currently Papers Co-Chair for CHI 2006 to be held in Montreal.

Tom's research focuses on the development of new technologies to support users within the real world and new forms of interactive technology. He is particularly interested in the overlap between users, the social sciences and e-Science.

Wanda Ward

Wanda E. Ward is Deputy Assistant Director of the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE; 1999- present) at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), where her interests and responsibilities include promoting the social, behavioral and economic sciences in a diverse, global 21st century. Throughout her tenure at NSF, Ward has served in a number of science and engineering policy, planning, and program capacities. These include: Acting Assistant Director, Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (2004-2005); Assistant to the Deputy Director for Human Resource Development, Office of the NSF Director (1997-1999); Senior Staff Associate for Policy and Planning, Office of the Assistant Director, Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR; 1994-1997).

Since joining the Foundation, she has also led or served on several NSF and interagency task forces, working groups, commissions and committees. These included: Co-Chair, Subcommittee on Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, the President's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on Science (COS , 2004-2005); NSF representative to the Interagency Working Group on the U.S. Science and Technology Workforce of the Future, NSTC COS (1997-1999); Executive Liaison to the Congressional Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering and Technology Development and to the congressionally-authorized Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE). She took the B.A. in Psychology and the Afro-American Studies Certificate from Princeton University and the Ph.D. in Psychology from Stanford University. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Rob Ackland

Robert Ackland holds a PhD in Economics from the Australian National University and works there as a Research Fellow in the Research School of Social Sciences. After spending over 10 years working as an applied economist in areas such as migration research and poverty analysis (working at the World Bank between 1994-97), Robert's research interests now lie at the intersection of information science and empirical social science. As part of an Australian Research Council-funded research project, he is developing new methods for quantitative analysis of social and economic phenomena on the Internet.

Noshir Contractor

Noshir Contractor is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Science of Networks in Communities (SONIC) Group at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His research program, funded continuously for the past decade by major grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, is investigating factors that lead to the formation, maintenance, and dissolution of dynamically linked knowledge networks in profit, non-profit, government as well as non-government agencies, involved in enabling emergency response networks, transnational immigrant networks, food safety networks, public health networks, environmental engineering networks, community networks, and other networks in the public interest.

Nikos Kastrinos

Nikos Kastrinos is currently the policy officer in the Directorate General for Research of the European Commission. Joined the European Commission in 1997, and worked on Technology Assessment, R&D Policy Coordination and Strategy, and now in policy development for the social sciences and humanities. He was previously a Research Fellow with University of Manchester and conducted research and consultancy for the EC, the UK DTI and DoE, the Greek Ministry for Industry and UNIDO on R&D policy, innovation and technology strategy and technology assessment.