Professional Staff

The following changes occurred in our professional staff:

1. Mr. Alex Wells, the Implementation Team's chief programmer, resigned from the Project in July 1996 for personal reasons. His contributions to the first two ADL prototypes were substantial, and he is greatly missed. Mr. Wells' unique mix of implementation and design skills were very difficult to replace, but we have found an able replacement in Mr. Kevin Lovette (see below).
2. The project has hired Dr. Michael Freeston as a senior project engineer in July 1996. Dr. Freeston is a well-known researcher in the area of spatial database systems and object oriented database systems and brings a great deal of expertise to the project concerning spatial indexing techniques. His primary research experience has been in the development of a practical technology for deductive database management systems, based on persistent logic programming. His work on the foundations of these systems, particularly on indexing methods for complex structures, has found wide application in the areas of low-level support for spatial, temporal and object-oriented databases. He is especially interested in applying this technology to geographic and environmental applications which can benefit from improved spatial indexing techniques and an integrated decision support capability. Dr. Freeston is a member of the Implementation Team, and is particularly involved with the distributed object re-design of the testbed.

3. Mr. Kevin Lovette was hired as the Chief Programmer for the Implementation Team, replacing Mr. Alex Welles. Mr. Lovette was formerly employed as a programmer in the private sector, and brings to the Project considerable skills in large-scale and object-oriented programming.

4. The project has hired Dr. Robert Nideffer as an engineer, with the main responsibility of designing and implementing a new interface for ADL. Dr. Nideffer will work half-time on the project until June, and then plans to work on a full-time basis until the end of the project. Dr. Nideffer completed a Ph.D. in sociology in 1994 at UCSB, with areas of emphasis in qualitative methodology, technology and culture, and media theory. He is now completing his MFA in Computer Arts, with a focus on Web-based interface design and delivery. He authored the first known doctoral thesis in the social sciences on CD-ROM, co-founded _SPEED_ : Technology, Media, Society, an award-winning web-based journal, art directed and production managed ``Life in the Universe,'' a CD-ROM/WWW project done in collaboration with physicist Stephen Hawking, produced or helped to produce numerous other CD-ROM/WWW projects, and has written/presented extensively about issues related to these experiences.

5. Patty Towne replaced Sandy Stevens as the project AA in February 1996.

6. Mary-Anna Rae has been serving as an assistant to the Project Director.

It is now clear that the project is sufficiently large and complex to require a project manager on at least a 50% time basis, and preferable on a 100% time basis. The Advisory Board of the Project, at its third meeting in January 1997 strongly recommended that such a person be hired. Mr. Christoph Fischer had successfully acted in this capacity before leaving the project in 1995, but was not replaced. We are currently conducting a search for such a person.