Invited Speakers

Professor Heinz Rüther

Wednesday 22nd September 10am: Spatial documentation of Africa's Herbage site. Methods and experiences.

Prof. Heinz Ruther, Dipl Ing Bonn, PhD Cape Town, PrS(SA)

Professor Heinz Rüther, Emeritus Professor at the University of Cape Town, graduated in 1969 with the Degree of Diplom - Ingenieur at the University of Bonn and obtained his Ph.D. in photogrammetry at the University of Cape Town in 1982.

He is a Fellow of the University of Cape Town, a Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineers, a Member of the South African Academy of Science and an Honorary Member of ITESSA. He is a past Council member of ISPRS, present Chair of the Financial Commission of ISPRS and Vice President of the African Association for Remote Sensing of Environment. From 1990 to 2002 he was the Head of the Geomatics department at the University of Cape Town. Prof. Rüther is committed to the advancement of Geomatics /Survey education in Africa. As external examiner he has served as external examiner at six African Universities and he organised education oriented conferences in Africa. Presently he co-chairs the FIG working on Education Networking in Africa.

Professor Rüther has worked on photogrammetric and surveying projects in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and especially Africa. He has extensive experience in the areas of digital photogrammetry, close range photogrammetry, precise engineering surveying and deformation analysis. He has supervised numerous MSc and PhD research projects and published more than 100 papers in scientific journals and at international conferences.

He is also active in the area of environmental monitoring through remotely sensed imagery and a as result of this interest he has worked on environmental projects in various African Countries. At present he is the Scientific Coordinator of the lake Rukwa Basin Integrated Project in Tanzania. His present special interest lies in the area of close range digital photogrammetry and 3D-modelling of architectural structures and the documentation of heritage sites. He served on the executive of CIPA (the International Committee for Photogrammetry in Architecture and is present National CIPA delegate for South Africa).

His experience in Heritage documentation and recording goes to back to the recoding of archaeological and historical sites in Germany. Since 1972 he has documented numerous sites in Africa in close cooperation with the department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town. In 1995/96 he documented the Laetoli hominid track way in Tanzania for the Getty Conservation Institute and subsequently a Umayyad Mosque and a Canaanite gate in Israel. His recent work included the recording of a rock art site in the Tassili mountains in Algeria for the African Trust for Rock Art ( TARA, Nairobi). He is now involved in the documentation of the Word Heritage Sites of Kilwa, Tanzania and Lalibela, Ethiopia as well as the historical section of Lamu in Kenya.

ALBERT GAUTHIER

Thursday 23rd 5:30pm: Digital Preservation Research: An Involving Landscape

Scientific Officer, INFSO.E3, European Commission

Albert Gauthier works at the European Commission in Luxembourg, at Directorate General Information Society and Media. The mission of his unit is to promote and manage research, development and innovation activities related to cultural heritage and digital libraries. Their research projects explores leading-edge information and communication technologies for accessing and experiencing cultural and scientific resources.

The research is closely aligned with the work of cultural and memory organisations (such as archives, libraries and museums) and contributes to the i2010 Digital Libraries Initiative. Work also investigates how digital resources created today will survive as the cultural and scientific heritage of the future, through research into the preservation of digital content.

Professor Franco Niccolucci

Friday 24th 9:30am: Seeking truth in the labyrinth of cultural semantics

Professor, Chair of STARC IGB

Franco Niccolucci received a degree in Mathematics from the University of Florence in 1970. After being Assistant Professor at the University of Pisa, he became Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence in 1974, where he taught until 2007.

In 2000 Professor Niccolucci founded a research lab named VAST-Lab located at PIN, a research institution in Prato, Italy. With this Lab he participated in several EU-funded projects, among others CHIRON and COINS where he was the scientific coordinator, and EPOCH, an 8 million EU-funded FP6 project where he was the Executive Director.

He joined the Cyprus Institute in October 2007 as Professor, and later was nominated as Chairman of the Interim Governing Board of STARC. Professor Niccolucci was an evaluator for cultural heritage projects for the European Commission and the governments of Greece, Israel and Luxembourg. He is the author of several books and over 100 papers on digital heritage, and has chaired a number of international conferences on the subject.