Participants

Organizers

Thomas Levy, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Anthropology and Judaic Studies Program, Associate Director, Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3), California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), UCSD, La Jolla, CA, USA. Principal investigator, Edom Lowland Regional Archaeology Project Jordan; co-director, MedArchNet-DAAHL project. Interests: GIS On-Site Digital Archaeology, cultural evolution, archaeology cyberinfrastructures. tlevy@ucsd.edu

Stephen Savage, Ph.D., Affiliated Professor and Director, Geo-Archaeological Information Applications (GAIA) Lab, IT Manager, Archaeological Research Institute, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University. Interests: GIS, Internet archaeology, spatial analyses, Levantine archaeology. shsavage@asu.edu

Chaitan Baru, Ph.D., Division Director, Science R&D, San Diego Supercomputer Center. Interests: application of advanced information technologies in support of the day-to-day conduct of science, in particular collaborative, inter-disciplinary science; Database systems, data integration and synthesis, design of distributed systems (cyberinfrastructure) in support of science applications, Grid benchmarking, spatiotemporal databases. baru@sdsc.edu

Industry

Paul Noceti is an Applications Engineer at NextEngine, Inc. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Loyola Marymount University, and has been with NextEngine for one year. He started in customer support and software testing and is now working with the sales department. Noceti has a wide knowledge base in the various fields which are moving into the adoption of 3D scanning technology. paul@nextengine.com

Worldwide Universities Network (WUN)

Louise Heery, WUN Acting CEO, Leeds University, Enterprise & Innovation Office, Leeds, UK

Jordan

Mohammad Najjar, Ph.D., Chair and CEO Friends of Archaeology and Heritage/Jordan. Formerly Director of Excavations and Surveys of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan., he is especially interested in the dynamics of settlement in Jordan from prehistory to Ottoman times. Jordan representative for 'Discover Islamic Art' Museum with No Frontiers' project (www.museumwnf.org). m.najjar@foah-jordan.org

Fawwaz Ishakat, BEng, trained as a surveyor at Charles University in what is now the Czech Republic. One of Jordan's foremost field surveyors linked to archaeological projects, he teaches at the Queen Rania's Institute of Tourism & Heritage, The Hashemite University, Jordan. He is especially interested in the application of GPS methods to cultural heritage projects in Jordan. fawwazi@excite.com

Israel

Avraham Faust, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Director, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University; social archaeology of Iron Age Israel; database of published salvage excavations in Israel (created together with Zeev Safrai); Director of Tel 'Eton (Tell 'Aitun) excavation. fausta@mail.biu.ac.il

Aren Maeir, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University; Israel coordinator of Digital Atlas program; in-depth knowledge of archaeology of Israel; Director of Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project; Co-Director, joint Bar-Ilan University/Weizmann Institute of Science program in Archaeological Science. maeira@mail.biu.ac.il

Rafi Greenberg, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. Interests: development of data base on excavations in West Bank; Director of Beth-Yerach excavations. grafi@post.tau.ac.il

Adi Keinan, M.A., doctoral student, Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University. Interests: development of data base on excavations in West Bank. adi_keinan@hotmail.com

Jessie Pincus Ben-Avraham', M.A., doctoral student, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University. Interests: combining GIS and remote sensing in archaeology. jessie@mnemotrix.com

Moti Haiman, Ph.D., Lecturer, Israel Antiquities Authority/Bar-Ilan University. Interests: expert on survey (particularly in Negev) and GIS applications; former director of surveys in the Israel Antiquities Authority. haiman_or@bezeqint.net

Gal Avraham*, M.A., doctoral student, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University. Interests: combining GIS and spatial analysis in archaeology. gal.avraham@gmail.com

Itzick Shai, Ph.D., Lecturer, Institute of Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University. Interests: in-depth knowledge of archaeology of Israel and ANE. i_shai@yahoo.com

Yigal Levin, Ph.D., Lecturer, Dept. of Jewish History, Bar-Ilan University. Interests: in-depth knowledge of history and historical geography of the ancient Levant. leviny1@mail.biu.ac.il

Norway

Nils Anfinset, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen. He has taught at Birzeit University in Palestine and carried out long-term archaeological field work in the Jericho area. Anfinset is especially interested in late prehistory, ethnoarchaeology, and ancient metallurgy. He hopes to bring Palestinian research organizations in to the MedArchNet project and develop EU interest in the project. nils.anfinset@ark.uib.no

Oystein LaBianca, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Department of Behavioral Science and Associate Director, Institute of Archaeology , Andrews University . He also is a Visiting Researcher at UNIFOB Global, a research arm of the University of Bergen . As senior director of the Tall Hisban Archaeological Project in Jordan , his research has sought to correlate changes over time in Hisban's food system with various imperial projects in the region-starting with those of the ancient Egyptians over three thousand years ago and ending with the British and Americans. His research has been funded by the American Schools of Oriental Research; the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Geographic Society; the Research Council of Norway and the U.S. Department of State's Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Heritage Preservation. LaBianca played a key role in securing the multi-year Global Moments in the Levant grant from the Research Council of Norway and is interested in helping to promote MedArchNet-DAAHL in the European Union.

Italy

Giuseppe Roma, Ph.D., Professor of Christian and Medieval Archaeo and Director of the Department of Archaeology and History of the Arts, in the School of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Calabria. Interests: Mediterranean archaeology in the classical periods. Dr. Roma would like to help extend the MedArchNet project to Italy and interest EU partners in this project.

United Kingdom

Sue Sherratt, Ph.D. Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. Primary research in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages of the Aegean, Cyprus and the wider Eastern Mediterranean, particularly in all aspects of trade and interaction within and beyond these regions. She is also interested in exploring the ways in which the Homeric epics and the archaeological record can most usefully be combined. The web-based ArchAtlas project (http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/Home.php) was founded by the late Andrew Sherratt in 2003, and transferred to the Department of Archaeology in 2005. Since his death, Sue has acted as "Consultant", along with Debi Harlan and Toby Wilkinson, exploring ways in which ArchAtlas can continue to develop as a useful tool for research and teaching. The project aims to provide a visual summary of spatial processes in prehistoric and early historic times, such as the spread of farming, the formation of trade contacts, and the growth of urban systems, and to illustrate the development of settlement history at a variety of different scales, from inter-continental to micro-regional. The intention is to integrate geo-referenced information on settlement patterns, material cultural distributions and route networks with environmental data and satellite imagery in order to allow the interactive generation of series of maps on different scales.

Deborah K. Harlan, Ph.D., Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. Interests: Web design and interactive database developer for ArchAtlas.

Toby C. Wilkinson, Ph.D., Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. Interests: database developer for ArchAtlas.

United States

Eric C. Kansa, Ph.D., is executive director of the Information and Service Design (ISD) program at UC Berkeley's School of Information. He has a background in anthropology, archaeology, and in open access data sharing for the field sciences. He is cofounder and former Executive Director of the Alexandria Archive Institute, and led development of Open Context, an online system for sharing collections and field research in archaeology and natural history. His research focuses on open dissemination strategies, information architectures for the social sciences, and intellectual property frameworks for online scholarship. Eric is currently Convener of the Society for American Archaeology's Digital Data Interest Group. ekansa@ischool.berkeley.edu

Bethany Walker, Ph.D. , Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History, Grand Valley State University, MI, she has extensive field experience in Islamic archaeology in the southern Levant, especially Jordan. A member of the University of Bergen's Global Moments in the Levant project, she is applying innovative social models to problems in Islamic archaeology. walkerbe@gvsu.edu

Aaron Burke, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and History, UCLA. Specializes in Bronze Age Archaeology of the Levant; Archaeology of Ancient Israel; Hebrew Bible and Archaeology with research interest in Ancient Near Eastern Warfare; State Formation; Phoenicians; GIS and Archaeology. He has initiated a major field project called 'The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project' associated with the Israel Antiquities Authority and Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. burke@humnet.ucla.edu

Calit2, San Diego Supercomputer Center and UCSD Faculty

Maurizio Seracini, Ph.D., Director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) at UC San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), and adjunct professor of structural engineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering. He is a pioneer in the use of multispectral imaging and other diagnostic as well as analytical technologies applied to the understanding and conservation of works of art and structures. mseracini@ucsd.edu

Ramesh Rao, Ph.D., Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, Professor and Director of the San Diego Division of the California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Qualcomm Endowed Chair in Telecommunications and Information Technology. Interests: architectures, protocols and performance analysis of wireless, wire line and photonic networks for integrated multi-media services. rrao@ucsd.edu

Larry Smarr, Ph.D., founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and Harry E. Gruber professor in the Jacobs School's Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD. Smarr is Principal Investigator on the NSF OptIPuter LambdaGrid project and on the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation-funded project to develop a Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis (CAMERA). Smarr served as chair of NASA's Earth System Science and Applications Advisory Committee and was the first chair of the newly formed NASA Science Advisory Council. lsmarr@ucsd.edu

Falko Kuester, Ph.D., is the Calit2 Professor of Visualization and Virtual Reality and also holds faculty appointments in Computer Science & Engineering and Structural Engineering, in UCSD's Jacobs School of Engineering. He was recently appointed Associate Director, Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3). Interests: scientific visualization and virtual reality, image-based modeling and rendering, distributed and remote visualization. fkuester@ucsd.edu

Jurgen Schulze, Ph.D., Project Scientist, Calit2 at UC San Diego. Interests: Scientific visualization, real-time rendering of large datasets, volume rendering and transfer function design, efficient use of programmable graphics hardware, human-computer interaction (immersive virtual environment, user interface design and evaluation and augmented reality for StarCAVE), digital cinema (4k video workflows, real-time display of 4K video, 4K video streaming). jschulze@soe.ucsd.edu

Ilya Zaslavsky, Ph.D., Research Scientist, San Diego Supercomputer Center. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data analysis specialist, with experience in university-level research, training and project management. Interests: spatial databases, Web-based GIS, and XML-based mediation between heterogeneous geographic sources and methods and software for exploratory social data analysis. zaslavsk@sdsc.edu

Alexandra Hubenko, MBA, International Management, and B.S., Materials Science and Engineering, is a program manager at the UC San Diego Division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and assistant director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3), where she provides program planning and project development and management. Hubenko also manages two large National Science Foundation-funded projects related to information technology research in disaster and crisis response. ahubenko@ucsd.edu

Laura Wolszon, Ph.D. (Biophysics) is Calit2's Manager of Strategic Partnerships. Her job is to identify innovative, multidisciplinary research projects and bring together academics with diverse expertise to solve the problems at hand, involving industry and international partners when appropriate. Wolszon has been an enthusiastic supporter of the MedArchNet project. Lwolszon@ucsd.edu

William H. C. Propp, Ph.D., Harriet and Louis Bookheim Professor of Biblical Hebrew and Related Languages, Department of History, Judaic Studies Program, University of California, San Diego; expert in comparative Semitic philology, biblical studies wpropp@ucsd.edu

David M. Goodblatt, Ph.D., Endowed Chair in Judaic Studies, Distinguished Professor of History, University of California, San Diego; Fellow, American Academy of Jewish Research; specialist in ancient Jewish History and pre-Islamic Middle East. dgoodblatt@ucsd.edu

Doug Ramsey, M.A., is the Director of Communications for the UC San Diego division of Calit2. He joined UCSD in 2001 after nearly three decades in international and business journalism. He was an anchor at CNBC; anchor and managing editor at Financial News Network; New York business correspondent for NBC News; senior editor of Newsweek magazine; Far East correspondent for The Economist of London; and started his career in Brussels writing for the Washington Post. dramsey@ucsd.edu

Vanessa Pool, M.A., is project manager at the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) at Calit2, UCSD. vpool@ucsd.edu

Samantha Romanin, B.A., is a project support coordinator in the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. sromanin@ucsd.edu

Graduate Students

Kyle Knabb, M.A., Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego. Interests: regional archaeological surveying, GIS and archaeology, and 3D visualization modeling of archaeological data in the StarCAVE environment. kknabb@ucsd.edu

Erez Ben-Yosef, M.Sc. in Geology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and MA in Anthropology, University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Ben-Yosef is a Ph.D. student at UCSD.ebenyose@weber.ucsd.edu

Neil G. Smith, M.A. Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego. Interests: On-Site Digital Archaeology, Pottery Informatics, GIS and Archaeology, Iron Age southern Levant. Smith received an NSF doctoral dissertation grant that enabled him to carry out his own surveys and excavation in southern Jordan. ngsmith@ucsd.edu

Marc Beherec, M.A., Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego. Interests: mortuary archaeology, historical Levantine archaeology, artifact databases. mbeherec@ucsd.edu

Ben Volta, M.A., Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego. Interests: Mesoamerican and Levantine archaeology, GIS, and 3D modeling of archaeological sites. Volta is working with CISA3 on a visualization project with data from Chichen Itza, Mexico. bvolta@ucsd.edu

Ian Jones, 1st-year graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at UCSD. Jones has a background in GIS applications in archaeology and will specialize in Levantine archaeology. ian.w.n.jones@gmail.com

Vid Petrovic, Ph.D. student in the Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of California , San Diego. Interests: point-based rendering, ultra-scale visualization. vipetrov@ucsd.edu

Aaron Gidding, 1st- year graduate student in the Department of Anthropology, UCSD. Interests: Levantine archaeology, digital photography and archaeology. agidding@gmail.com

Sidney Rempel, M.A., Ph.D. student at Arizona State University, Tempe. Interests: GIS and applied field geospatial data management. Rempel is currently focusing on comparative issues in settlement reintegration/non-integration between the northern and southern Levant at the end of the 3rd Millennium B.C. sidney.rempel@asu.edu