Dr. Ron Hira, Ph.D., P.E., is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University. Ron is also a research associate with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. Prior to joining Howard, Ron was an assistant and then associate professor and acting chair in the Department of Public Policy at Rochester Institute of Technology. He specializes in policy issues on technological innovation, offshoring, high-skill immigration, and the American engineering workforce. Hira has written widely on offshoring, high-skilled immigration, innovation, and the decline of the middle class. Hira is co-author of the book, Outsourcing America (AMACOM 2005; 2nd edition 2008), which was a finalist for best business book in the PMA's Benjamin Franklin Awards. The Boston Globe called Outsourcing America an "honest, disturbing look at outsourcing." The Washington Post described the book as a "thorough and easy to grasp primer on the wrenching outsourcing debate." In 2012, along with Prof. John Ettlie, Hira organized a National Science Foundation workshop on the Globalization of Engineering Research & Development. The result of the workshop is being turned into a book. Previously, Ron worked as a control systems engineer and program manager with Sensytech, NIST, and George Mason University (GMU). He has been a consultant to numerous public and private organizations. Ron completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Columbia University's Center for Science, Policy, and Outcomes. He holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University (GMU), an M.S. in Electrical Engineering also from GMU, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University. He is a licensed professional engineer, a senior member of IEEE, and served as Vice President for Career Activities of IEEE-USA, the largest engineering professional society in America.
Rahul Telang is professor of Information systems and Management at the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University and at the Tepper School of Business (Courtesy). He has been at the Heinz College since 2002 and predominantly teaches in the School of Information Systems and Management. Professor Telang’s is broadly interested in how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and associated digitization of information impact consumers, business and policies. Within this thread, his interest lies in two major domains. First is Digital Media Industry with a particular focus on how digitization (and associated piracy) in copyrighted industries is affecting the incentives of content provider, distributors and users. His research is directed towards understanding and shaping an optimal copyright and intellectual property policy in the Digitization Era. He was the recipient of Sloan Foundation Industry Study fellowship and a number of Google Faculty awards. He is also co-director of a center IDEA (Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics). He has worked extensively with industry and policy makers on variety of issue surrounding digitization of Media. His second area of work is on economics of information security and privacy. His key interest is in understanding the incentives of various parties (users, firms and hackers), why markets fail, how to create a useful policy framework and how to measure the effectiveness of such policies. His work explored the controversy surrounding vulnerability disclosure, vulnerability markets and their role in generating optimal outcomes. Recently, he has been examining the role of data breach disclosure laws on identity thefts. He was the recipient of NSF CAREER award for his work on economics of information security. He is also part of Cylab and Institute for Infrastructure Protection (I3P). Currently, he is working on a large NSA funded project on examining home users’ security and privacy behavior. Some of his other work has explored the role of broadband in schools, ICTs in for form of EMR (Electronic Medical Records) in hospitals, issue of number portability, exclusivity and so on in mobile industry.
Rob Bray is a Research Fellow in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University. Prior to his commencement at the university he had long career in the Australian Public Service as a policy analyst and researcher. In 2010 he was awarded the Public Service Medal in recognition of his work on poverty and hardship. Rob's current research includes the measurement of well-being and the role of the welfare system and its interelationship with participation. Recent publications include the first report of the Evaluation of New Income Management in the Northern Territory, and on the characteristics and outcomes of young carers in Australia.
Professor Rodney Stewart is the Digital Utility Transformation Professor at Griffith School of Engineering, Griffith University, located in Queensland, Australia. He conducts research on the applications of advanced technology (e.g. smart meters, network sensors, energy storage) and big data informatics for purpose of re-engineering the water and energy utility sectors. In the water utility sector he has completed a number of high resolution smart water meter studies that provided the 'big data' to underpin detailed water end use studies, demand management strategies, bottom-up forecasting models, just-in-time pipe network infrastructure planning, water-energy nexus studies, post-meter and network leakage studies, to name a few. In the electricity sector he is working on the necessary demand forecasting and power control systems that will provide cost-efficient power supply to customers through optimising existing and newly introduced renewable energy sources being added to the network through coupling them with distributed energy storage in an intelligent micro-grid arrangement. His goal is to conduct the necessary evidence-based research to demonstrate the numerous applications and benefits of intelligent water and electricity networks in order to accelerate the current slow rate of transformation of national and international utilities to the digital era.
Rod has been a senior executive at the Commonwealth Bank for the last decade after earlier stints as Chief Economist for the Business Council of Australia, Head of Economic Policy in the Victorian Cabinet Office, and as a Professor of Economics at La Trobe University. He is currently working on a book on the Australian economy.
Richard Gunderman is Chancellor's Professor of Radiology, Pediatrics, Medical Education, Philosophy, Liberal Arts, Philanthropy, and Medical Humanities and Health Studies at Indiana University. He received his AB Summa Cum Laude from Wabash College, MD and PhD (Committee on Social Thought) with Honors from the University of Chicago, and MPH from Indiana University. He is an nine-time recipient of the Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award, and received the 2012 Robert Glaser Award, the highest teaching award of the Association of American Medical Colleges. He is the author of nearly 500 scholarly articles and has published eight books. More importantly, his students are widely published and have gone on to win many awards and achieve professional distinction.
