New Director, Executive Director, Chief Scientist, and Professor Join KMDI
Dean Seamus Ross is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Konstantinos (Kostas) Plataniotis (left front) as the new Director of the Knowledge Management Design Institute.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Dean Seamus Ross is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Konstantinos ( Kostas ) Plataniotis ( left front ) as the new Director of the Knowledge Management Design Institute.
Dean Ross says “KMDI plays an important role in the world of digital media at the University, in Toronto, and in Canada. The Institute supports its faculty members and graduate students in collaborations that span science and technology, the social sciences and the humanities. I know that Kostas will provide the leadership, experience, and character to foster and grow this environment.”
KMDI Deputy Director since July 2009, Kostas is a Professor with the ECE Department at the University of Toronto. His research interests are: digital media, multimedia systems, biometrics, image & signal processing, and pattern recognition. He chairs the Communications Group at ECE and he is the Director of Research for the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute ( IPSI ) at U of T. He is a registered professional engineer in Ontario, and the Editor-in-Chief ( 2009-2011 ) for the IEEE Signal Processing Letters.
Of his full-time appointment, Kostas says he “would like to thank both Dean Seamus Ross and my predecessor Professor Ron Baecker for their strong academic leadership and the exemplary manner in which they executed KMDI’s integration with the iSchool family. Our Institute is membership rich, financially healthy, with a remarkably broad network of interdisciplinary connections, and blessed with exceptional graduate students. It is perfectly situated to act as research catalyst and be the focal point of UofT’s digital media agenda. I am honoured to serve as the next director of such an exceptional organization with a truly outstanding team of professionals.”
The Faculty of Information is also delighted to announce the appointment of Adriana Ieraci ( right front ) as KMDI’s Executive Director. Adriana assisted Ron in this capacity from August 2008 through March 2009, and brings great skill, enthusiasm, and warmth to this position.
Adriana runs her own consulting practice where she assists her clients in developing new strategies and products for a digital future. She has worked with a number of faculties and institutes both here at the university and elsewhere in Ontario as well as the provincial government, start-ups and non-profits.
“I thoroughly enjoy the richness of interests and the diversity of KMDI members. It is especially exciting when opportunities for collaboration come up and people come together to brainstorm and see what real and challenging problems to tackle together," Adriana says. "This is certainly where the future and energy of KMDI will lie and I am looking forward to working with Kostas and the KMDI team to help realize this future.”
The Founder of KMDI and the former Interim Director, Professor Ronald Baecker, says “Kostas and Adriana — two individuals with extraordinary professionalism, wisdom, energetic engagement, and humanity —will lead KMDI through its next phase of achievement and growth.” Prof. Baecker served as Interim Director for 16 months ( he was also KMDI’s Director during 1996-8 ).
Also new to the fold is Chief Scientist, Dr. Gerald Penn ( right back ), whose research primarily focuses on spoken language processing and discrete algorithms to support natural language technology. Previously, he worked as a research scientist at Eberhard-Karls-University of Tuebingen, Germany ( 1996 to 1999 ) and at Bell Laboratories in the United States ( 1999 to 2001 ) before joining the U of T's Department of Computer Science.
To round out new staff, Professor Peter Pennefather ( left back ) will be in charge of learning events such as lectures and colloquia. He is planning a series on sense-making, but also seeks proposals to co-sponsor talks and visits by scholars in KMDI’s constituent disciplines.
About the Knowledge Media Design Institute ( KMDI ) The Knowledge Media Design Institute is dedicated to the creative design of the knowledge media that will shape tomorrow and the insightful analysis of the digital media of today. We are an independent multidisciplinary community housed within University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information and are composed of over 150 University of Toronto faculty members, associates, and graduate students from the sciences, engineering, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. Our members work and collaborate at the frontiers of digital media innovation.
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