Keynote Speakers

José Miguel Salles Dias
José Miguel Salles Dias, father of two lovely girls and a beautiful boy, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sciences and Information Technology of Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE) in Lisbon since October 2000. Professor Dias lectures undergraduates and graduates at ISCTE in variety of courses such as: Computer Graphics and Augmented Reality, Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering. His collaboration extends to working in (ADETTI) ADETTI R&D Center of the ISCTE institute.

Since November 2005, he has become the Director of Microsoft in Lisbon. At Microsoft, he heads the Microsoft Language Development Center (MLDC), a branch of the Speech and Natural Language product group based in Redmond, USA. The main mission of the MLDC is to develop natural human-computer communication, using Portuguese speech and natural language, for Microsoft products.

He is a member of the editorial board of the on-line Virtual Journal, and of the Eurographics Computer Graphics Educational Materials Source, all dealing with Computer Graphics. He is the Vice-President of the Eurographics Portuguese Chapter and he is member of several Programme Committees of National and International conferences in Computer Graphics, Virtual and Augmented Reality. He is regularly commissioned by the EC for R&D project evaluations and reviews. Since 1992, he has participated in 8 National and 25 International R&D projects in the areas of Computer Graphics, Augmented Reality, Telematics, Cooperative Work, Digital Rights Management, Industrial Product Design, ISO JPEG2000 and Grid Computing, where he has raised 3.900 K€ in European R&D funds and, 170 K€ in National R&D funds, for ADETTI/ISCTE. He is author and co-author of 80 peer-reviewed publications, 56 of which in books, journals or international conferences proceedings, being 15 indexed in ISI.

Gerhard Schmitt

Gerhard Schmitt was born in 1953. He is Vice President of ETH Zurich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Professor for Information Architecture.

As Vice President for Planning and Logistics, he directs the development of ETH’s strategy and planning, in cooperation with the 15 scientific departments and the central administration. He is responsible for Human Resources and for providing the infrastructure for ETH’s 8’000 employees and 12’700 students in more than 200 buildings on two major campuses. In 2000, he initiated the development of a third, virtual campus, named ETH World with an international master plan competition. It provides the future information infrastructure for learning and teaching, research and services. It has become since then Switzerland’s largest wireless LAN. In 2003, he initiated the concept and 2004 the development of the master plan for Science City, ETH’s new campus in Zurich. Construction began in 2005.

As Professor, Gerhard Schmitt established the Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) curriculum, research program and infrastructure at ETH since 1988. He now concentrates on the definition and design of information architecture. With his PhD students, he systematically researches and develops aspects of this emerging field. In his previous teaching at ETH, his courses in design computing and programming placed emphasis on new design methods and media. His research focused on the development of intelligent design support systems, using artificial intelligence methods. He was instrumental in the definition of the Blue-C research project at ETH, a next generation Virtual Reality Environment.

He taught Computer-Aided Architectural Design and conducted CAAD research at Carnegie Mellon University from 1984 to 1988. He was Visiting Professor at the GSD at Harvard University in 1993 and 1994, at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, at DTU, the Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby and at the Technical University of Delft. Major research and academic contacts exist with MIT, Sydney University and EPF Lausanne.

He was Dean of the Faculty and Department of Architecture at ETH 1994-1996, president of ETH’s Informatics Commission 1989-1997, and president of the Swiss Computer Graphics association 1996-1998. He is vice president of the board of the HMT, the Zurich Academy for Music, Theater and Ballet, and past president of the foundation board of the Studienzentrum Pfäffikon, a distance learning university institute.

Gerhard Schmitt has authored numerous articles and several books, the latest being Information Architecture, Architektur mit dem Computer, and Architectura et Machina. He received the Doktor-Ingenieur and Diplom-Ingenieur Degrees from the Technical University of Munich and the Master of Architecture Degree from the University of California in Berkeley.