by Martin Prime
Keith Jeffery takes over as ERCIM Executive Committee representative for the Rutherford Appleton Laboratories (RAL) on August 24, 1995. He said:
"Bob Hopgood has made a very great contribution to ERCIM; backed by Paul Williams (Director of RAL, now CEO of CLRC) he was not only the RAL representative but also chaired the Executive Committee for three years and managed to create an organisation so that ERCIM can achieve its aims and objectives. Indeed, within his period of office some quite fundamental initiatives have taken place, among them being ERCIM-organised proposals to the EC for funded research projects, consolidation of the fellowship programme with EC funding under the HCM programme, input to EC policy-making, HCM funding obtained for the ERCIM Graphics and Databases Research Groups and the induction of new members - especially recently from CEE countries. Surely, he is a hard act to follow!"
Keith has led the ERCIM Database Research Group since its inception in 1991 and is no stranger to the Executive Committee. His own Systems Engineering Division at RAL obtains much of its funding from EC programmes, and Keith has long been an active member of the international database research community. When asked about the role he will play he said:
"My two major tasks will be
"I see a strong position for ERCIM within the European R&D structure as essential and will work hard to ensure this. I am a great enthusiast for synergy between the ERCIM member institutes, with SMEs and with university groups."
"I have already been given special responsibility for bringing new members into ERCIM on request; I guess the smooth induction of CRCIM, the Czech Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - based on my contacts in the Czech Republic - landed me with the job! Seriously, it is a great pleasure to work with people who wish to join ERCIM and who see it is a valuable partnership. There are some potential new members in the pipeline, so I shall be kept busy."
"My own research interests centre on the engineering of advanced information systems - involving not only database technology but encompassing hyperlinked multimedia, information retrieval, document systems, workflow, knowledge engineering, advanced user interfaces and software engineering."
Biographical Sketch
Keith Jeffery is currently Head of Systems Engineering Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in UK. His Division has groups working in Knowledge Engineering, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, User Interfaces, Workflow and Cooperative Work and Advanced Hypermedia Systems. Almost all the staff are funded by contract research and development projects, funded by the EC (European Commission) , EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and industry.
Previous positions included leading a database and office systems service group, running a group using computing for environmental science data storage, retrieval, analysis and modelling, and leading a team providing a computing service to the UK Geological Survey.
Keith holds a BSc in Geology, a PhD in Geology (with a very large computing content!) and is a Fellow of both the Geological Society of London and the British Computer Society. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Irish Computer Society. He is a trustee (and currently secretary) of the Endowment Board of the VLDB (Very Large Database) Conference, and is a member of the boards controlling the EDBT (Extending Database Technology) conference and CAiSE (Conference on Advanced Systems Engineering) conference. He is a member of the SOFSEM advisory board. He serves on several programme committees for international and national conferences, he reviews material for journals and books and reviews research proposals for several countries. He has numerous publications in refereed journals, books and conference proceedings. He holds the positions of Honorary Professor of Computer Science at Heriot-Watt University, and Honorary Senior Visiting Fellow in Computer Science at the University of Birmingham.
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