ICT Services for Developing Resilient Communities

Catherine Dibble, PhD -- Founder, President, and Senior Research Scientist

Catherine serves as President and as one of the Principal Investigators for Aiki Labs.   She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California Santa Barbara, specializing in agent-based computational geography and Geographic Information Science.   UCSB research followed a wonderfully interesting transition year of GIScience PhD studies in the Department of Geography at the University at Buffalo.

In addition, she attended the 1995 Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School and holds a BA with High Distinction, and an MA with advanced PhD work in Economic Theory from the University of Rochester.   Her economics background includes formal micro-economic theory and international trade theory, public finance (which includes theory and practice relating to overuse of shared resources (tragedy of the commons), externalities (pollution), and public goods), and game theory (especially axiomatic bargaining theory, a formal structure for evaluating fairness in resource allocation problems) with Professor William Thomson in the Department of Economics at the University of Rochester.

Professional experience includes computer science and many years as a professional software designer and developer.  She served as Director of Information Services for a software development startup (years 0-2), including national and international patents for health care analysis.   She has served on the International Steering Committee for the GeoComputation Conference Series since its inception in 1996, on the US National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Committee on Organizational Modeling from Individuals to Societies for 2005-2007, on an NSF Review Panel for Cyber-Infrastructure.

Dr. Dibble's accomplishments include a 1981 National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) simulation model to evaluate the baby boom's collective effects on the US Social Security System's balance of payments out to 2050; 1990 shared patents for clinical-complexity-adjusted evaluation of health care providers (Peer-A-Med®); a 1993 genetic algorithm (GA) to optimize the geographic location of facilities such as emergency centers, clinics, or vaccine stockpiles; the 1994 invention of a genetics-based machine learning relevance filter representation for expert detection of relevant events in terabytes of spatio-temporal surveillance data; the 1999 invention of a new measure to quantify the socio-economic influence of pandemic vulnerability of cities or the leadership effectiveness of individuals in an organization or social network; the 2000 implementation of a supervisory genetic algorithm (meta-GA) for multi-objective optimization of network structure; the design and funded development of four versions of the GeoGraph 3D spatial agent-based computational laboratory; a 2007 genetic algorithm for Disaster-Resilient Location-Allocation optimization; and the 2006-present quantitative evaluation of inter-city pandemic risks and spatio-temporal optimization of pandemic interventions.

Anthony Davis, PhD -- Chief Research Officer

Tony Davis's research interests are centered on computational linguistics and knowledge representation.  He has applied these in recent years to multimedia browsing and retrieval, and earlier to question-answering systems, information extraction, and ontology construction.   He has also taught courses on computational linguistics and information retrieval at Georgetown University, and is the author of several papers on lexical representation and semantic roles.   He holds a Ph. D. in Linguistics from Stanford University and a B.A. in Linguistics and Applied Mathematics from U.C. San Diego.

Kristofor B. Carle -- Chief Technology Officer

Kris attended the University of Maryland and completed a Bachelor's degree with a double major in Computer Science and Geography, specializing in GIS.   During college Kris worked as an operations manager and transit planner for Shuttle-UM transit system at the University of Maryland. Job duties involved planning transit bus routes and operations, and supervising 20 student dispatchers and bus operators.

After college, he was a core member of Professor Catherine Dibble's Research Lab Team, responsible for GIS modeling and analysis, simulation and optimization production runs on NCSA, RTI, and UMD super-computers and grids, analysis and visualization of simulation results, and systems administration for all the lab team computers and their local test cluster.

At Progressive Clarity http://www.progressiveclarity.com/, Kris worked on microtargeting consulting for non-profit organizations in Washington DC.   This involved development of custom tools for data gathering, data warehousing, data mining, and data exploration and visualization.   At the sister company Emergent Clarity he helped develop a dynamic social network visualization tool http://www.emergentclarity.com/software.php.

His academic and professional interests include transportation operations and networks, social networks and mobile communication technology, simulation and modeling, cloud and grid computing, data warehousing and visualization. He is passionate about using technology to solve real world problems, promote free and open knowledge, and design resilient communities and infrastructure and is proud to be part of Aiki Labs. Kris is obsessed with technology, and is usually found with his iPhone in hand.

Find more information about Kris at www.kriscarle.com

Mr. Craft, MA -- Chief Projects Officer

Mr. Craft is currently participating with teams of Scientists, Engineers, and Information Technology staff to conduct aggressive scheduled technology and process characterization program management.   He has over 20 years of Army Reserves/National Guard, including over 18 years in leadership positions as an officer.   Mr. Craft is an extraordinarily insightful leader of people, as demonstrated by three successful Army National Guard Company command assignments.   He has the innate abilities to lead and work with diverse groups of people while enhancing team building skills and minimizing conflict, and has often been praised for his skills for working with difficult teams and still managing success with projects.   Mr. Craft has a B.S. in Chemistry and a M.A. in Organizational Management.   He has decades of professional experience managing technical projects and supervising scientists and engineers in varied positions as Laboratory Manager, Laboratory Supervisor, and Project Manager.   He has worked with staff teams in several states, including MS, TN, AL, UT, OH, and MD, and is very comfortable working with people from diverse cultures and geographical areas.   Born on a farm in rural in Mississippi and working his way through undergraduate and graduate school and into a successful career within Corporate America, he has interacted with people from all walks of life.

David Ela -- Consulting Expert for Finance, Marketing, and Strategy

David Ela is a second year MBA candidate at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Management.   Most recently, David was the Marketing Manager for GeniusRocket.   While at GeniusRocket, David helped the company build a premium service offering; he also developed a number of marketing initiatives, including improving online communications and clarifying the company's value proposition. David is interested in entrepreneurship and marketing and enjoys working with start-ups to bring their products and services to market.  He is particularly interested in using Web 2.0 technologies to target specific groups with a customized message in order to connect with the consumer at the individual level.  David also embraces working with not-for-profits on branding issues and on developing self-sustaining sources of revenue.

Dennis Sweitzer, PhD -- Ad hoc Statistical Consultant

Dennis lends Aiki his statistical experience as needed in effectiveness evaluation, simulation and technical statistics.

Dennis Sweitzer, Ph.D., is a Principal Statistician in pharmaceutical R&D. He has 17 years of experience, primarily in phase III & IV clinical trials, and has coauthored or contributed to numerous publications regarding schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and asthma. He has a special interest in applying advanced statistical methods (such as simulation) to the planning, management and analysis of clinical trials.

Sharon Sweitzer, MEd -- Learning Consultant for Open Web Learning (OWL)

Sharon is the Learning Consultant for the OWL project.   She has nearly twenty years experience exploring and developing relationships across cultures; teaching, collaborating, and leading individuals and organizations to higher levels of appreciation, collaboration, and performance.   She brings a diverse set of teaching experiences to Aiki Labs, both in traditional classrooms at superb public and private schools, and in non-traditional home-school and cyber-school settings (both for her four children and for multi-family educational co-ops for sixty other children).  She spent her childhood in the jungles of the Congo and Brazil, where her parents were leading humanitarian projects.  She has traveled to Europe, Israel, and Africa, and is active in local community, education and political organizations.  Sharon has an MEd in Elementary Education from Millersville University, and keeps up-to-date on learning technologies through additional MEd Studies in School Library & Information Technologies at Mansfield University (degree expected 2010).   Beyond learning, Sharon is passionate about environmental sustainability and is a small business agricultural entrepreneur.

Jindra Cekan, PhD - Partner for International Grants and Projects (see Affiliates)

Judy Pez -- Consulting Expert on School Libraries and Electronic Resources

Kaitlyn Summers -- 2009 UMD Honors Graduate in Environmental Sciences & Policy

Jindra Cekan, PhD (Please see above for Jindra's role as Aiki consultant for Int'l Projects.)

Jindra is a U.S.- Czech national who has worked for two decades in international development with private voluntary organizations, consulting companies, and academia.  Dr. Cekan's work, and her publications, are in the areas of Monitoring and Evaluation and Knowledge Management, Food Security and Livelihoods, and HIV/AIDS Prevention and Care as well as Sanitation and Hygiene.  Her expertise lies in the areas of project design; grant writing and management; monitoring & evaluation, and qualitative assessments and tools; training and facilitation; and strategic planning.

Currently she is the Principal at Cekan Consulting LLC and a co-principal at Data Harvest.  She has been a lecturer at Tufts University and Harvard University.   Dr. Cekan received a PhD in Economics and Political Science from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1994 and was a Research Associate at UK's University of Cambridge from 1990-1992.

DongMei Chen, PhD

DongMei is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography, Queen's University, Canada.    She Received a B.A. in economic geography from Peking University, China; a Masters in GIS and Remote Sensing application from the Insitute of Remote Sensing Application, Chinese Academy of Science, and a Ph.D. in Geography from the joint doctoral program of San Diego State University and the University of California Santa Barbara.  Before she joined the faculty at Queen's University in 2002, she worked for ESRI --- a world leading GIS company --- as a GIS product specialist for over a year.  She has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in GIS, spatial analysis, environmental modeling, and programming.

DongMei's research interest focuses on the understanding and modeling of interactions between human activities and the physical environment by using GIS and remote sensing techniques and spatial modeling approaches from local to regional scales.  She was a recipient of the 2000-2001 International Geographic Information Foundation Best Student Paper Award, and of the 2004 John I. Davidson President's Award from the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.  She has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.  Recently she has been working on developing geosimulation tools for simulating spatio-temporal spread of infectious diseases.  More details about DongMei and her research laboratory can be found at the Queen's University Laboratory of Geographic Information and Spatial Analysis.

Timothy Gulden, PhD

Tim is a research fellow with the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.  He completed his PhD at the School of Public Policy in December of 2004 with dissertation entitled Adaptive Agent Modeling in a Policy Context.  He has been a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution's Center for Social and Economic Dynamics (CSED) and attended the Santa Fe Institute's Complex Systems Summer School in 2002.  While at CISSM, he has worked on a wide variety of issues including the oversight of hazardous biological research, the security implications of various policies in response to climate change and the spatial and temporal dynamics of civil violence.  Recently, he has developed a novel method of estimating global economic activity at a very fine spatial scale.

Arnold B. Urken, PhD

Arnie is a Professor of Social Science at Stevens Institute of Technology. He has done historical, analytic, and experimental studies of voting systems. These studies include analysis of the properties of different voting methods, applications of voting to solve problems in computer science, planning distributed coordination of sensors in security operations, investigation of type-safe electronic transactions, and the use of voting methods to produce reliable detection of instability in power and electrical networks.  Dr. Urken has two patents on techniques for designing voting systems that can overcome network breakdowns and decision-making error to produce reliable collective outcomes.  He co-founded the first Independent Testing Laboratory for certifying computer-mediated voting machines (and closed the lab when vendors and the federal government refused to require stringent examination of source code).  He has served as a consultant on voting standards for professional standards groups and worked as a consultant in contested elections.  He co-authored a standard reference on the history of voting systems and contributes to social science, science, and engineering publications.   He served in U.S. Army Intelligence, taught strategy at the JFK Center for Military Assistance, and received a Joint Services Commendation Award. 

Martin Schmidt - University of Maryland PhD Candidate in the Department of Economics. 

Martin attended the Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School for Summer 2009.

Indy Hurt - University of Santa Barbara PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography. 

Indy climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya during Summer 2009.

Ayeh Bandeh-Ahmadi - George Mason University PhD Student in Computational Social Science.

Kovid Goyal, PhD

Kovid has many and varied interests.   Currently he works full time on e-books and the various challenges associated with making them happen.   He is the principal developer of calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com), a comprehensive suite of utilities for managing/converting/viewing e-books and news in digital formats.

In the past, he has worked on quantum computing, while getting a Ph.D. in the subject at Caltech.   His dissertation focused on developing designs for fault tolerant quantum computers.

Kristian Lindgren, PhD

Kristian is Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Energy and Environment at Chalmers/Göteborg University in Göteborg, Sweden.  He was born in Uppsala 1960, studied engineering physics at Chalmers and received his PhD degree in physical resource theory 1988.  After a post doc visit at Nordita in Copenhagen and research visits at the Santa Fe Institute, where he also has served as member of External Faculty, he got a position as associate professor at Chalmers 1992.  He was head of department for physical resource theory 1993-1998, and he was promoted to professor in physical resource theory 2003.

Kristian Lindgren is leading a research group in complex systems within the department of energy and environment.  He was one of the initiators for the international masters programme in Complex Adaptive Systems for which he was the main director 2000-2003.  He is director and examiner for the PhD education in complex systems at Chalmers.  Kristian is currently one of three directors for the European Center for Living Technology, located in Venice.

Kristian Lindgren is working in several research areas, from physics and information theory to computer science and theoretical biology, as well as studies of the global energy system. His research on the concept of information in physics lead to applications within the interdisciplinary research area that expanded under the 1980's under the name ”complex systems”.  Since 1990, Kristian Lindgren has developed a series of models for studying Darwinian evolution in chemical, biological, and societal systems, primarily for investigation of cooperation using the classical Prisoner's Dilemma from game theory.  Since 1996, he has also worked on development of energy-economic models for the study of regional and global energy system development under different climate targets and policies.

Michael Frank Goodchild, PhD

Mike is a British-American geographer with a PhD in Geography from McMaster University in Canada and a BA in Physics from the University of Cambridge in England.  He is currently a professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  After nineteen years at the University of Western Ontario, including three years as chair, he moved to Santa Barbara in 1988.  His most influential work has involved research on Geographic Information Science, for which further details are available on his home page and on Wikipedia.  Mike became a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2002 and received the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal in 2003. 

Peter C. Dibble, PhD

Peter holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester and has more than two decade's experience at the leading edges of system software.  He is the author of several books and numerous articles, and holds several patents related to real-time Java.  He is the maintenance lead and spec lead for the Real-Time Specification for Java.

Bruce A. Costa, PhD

Bruce is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Montana.  He received his B.S. in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from The University of Massachusetts/Amherst in 1979 and his PhD in Finance from Florida State University in 2000.   His academic research focuses on executive compensation and mutual fund performance. He joined the faculty at the University of Montana in August of 2000 and teaches courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level in corporate finance, investments, and personal finance.  He was presented the Outstanding Faculty Award for the Department of Accounting and Finance for the academic years 2001-2002 and 2007-2008.     Before returning to academics, Bruce worked in Boston as a manufacturing engineer for two years prior to entering the Navy.  Bruce spent 13 years in the Navy on active duty in various positions as a helicopter pilot, test pilot, and assistant navigator aboard the USS Saratoga during the Gulf War. He has flown over 25 different aircraft and has over 2800 hours of accident-free flying. In 1990 he was selected for membership in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots.