Speakers - W

Tyler O. Walters is the Associate Director, Technology and Resource Services, Georgia Institute of Technology Library and Information Center. He provides leadership, vision, and expertise in digital libraries and archives, new scholarly communication services, library collections and e-resource management, information technology management, and archives and records programs.

Mr. Walters is a co-Principal Investigator with the MetaArchive Cooperative, one of the eight original digital preservation partnerships with the U.S. Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (http://www.metaarchive.org,). He is also a founding board member and treasurer of the Educopia Institute, the not-for-profit organisation that manages the MetaArchive Cooperative and other future projects. Tyler is serving as Chair of the Host Committee for the 4th International Conference on Open Repositories in Atlanta, Georgia, May 18-21 2008. His other current appointments include membership on the Open Repositories Steering Committee, the National Science Foundation National Science Digital Library Sustainability Committee, and he is serving as an external review panelist for the Office of Accreditation, American Library Association. Tyler is also an active grant review panelist with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure. He was also a member of the 2006 ARL / NSF workgroup that produced the report, To Stand the Test of Time: Long-term Stewardship of Data Sets in Science and Engineering. The author of over 20 published articles and presenter at over 50 professional conferences, he is a past recipient of the Society of American Archivists Ernst Posner Award for best article in the American Archivist (1998). He holds a Master of Arts in Library and Information Science from the University of Arizona, a Master of Arts in Archival Management from North Carolina State University, and a B.A. in History from Northern Illinois University.

Paul Wheatley works for the British Library where he is Digital Preservation Manager and a member of the team responsible for ensuring the longevity of the Library's digital collections. Previously, he worked as a technology journalist and software developer. Over the last decade, Paul has played a leading role in a variety of international digital preservation activities. He has worked on the seminal Cedars and Camileon projects, the latter gaining international recognition for its role in rescuing the BBC Domesday system using emulation technology. He is educated in Computer Science.

Kam Woods is a Ph.D student in Computer Science and Research Assistant at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received an MS in Computer Science from Baylor University and BA with a major in Computer Science from Swarthmore College. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of software to facilitate long-term digital preservation.

Richard Wright is Technology Manager at the BBC Archives. Previously, he worked in acoustics, speech and signal processing for US and UK Government research laboratories, University College London, Royal National Institute for the Deaf and Cirrus Research (acoustical and audiometric instrumentation).

He was Project Manager for BBC for PrestoSpace (FP6 IST IP), Birth of Television (FP5 eContent) and Spoken Word (JISC/NSF). Richards is a former Head of EBU panel on Future Radio Archives, and of EC project PRESTO (Preservation Technology). He was BBC Project manager for EC projects Amicitia and Euromedia. Between 2001 and 2002 he was a member of EC (Delos)/NSF Working Group on Spoken Word Archives. He was also a. Member of Advisory Committee for "TRECVID" annual international video retrieval evaluation exercise.

Richard Wright was educated at the University of Michigan, USA and Southampton University, UK. He has a Ph D in Digital Signal Processing (Speech Synthesis) (1988), MA Computer Science (1972), BSc Engineering Science (1967).