WHEN: FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2012
WHERE: PGH 232
TIME: 10:30 AM
SPEAKER: Dr. Ioannis Pavlidis, University of Houston
Host: Dr. Stephen Huang
TITLE: Academic Life – Rewards and Perils
ABSTRACT
In this talk I will analyze the structure of the academic profession in U.S. from my perspective and contrast it with the R&D profession in the high-tech industry. I will place particular emphasis on the role of research funding and scientific publications within the context of the tenure track process. This nexus is the cornerstone of scientific production and most of the times works well, but sometimes fails due to flawed ethics and distorted priorities. I will describe some illuminating examples of success and infamous examples of failure, in an effort to isolate the root causes. I will close the talk with some thoughts about how to navigate the current system and what could be done in the future to improve it.
Biography
Dr. Pavlidis is the Eckhard-Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science at UH. He is actively involved in ethics initiatives in the area of scientific publishing; a notable one was the introduction of the open review system, during his 2008 Program Chairmanship of the IEEE AVSS Conference. Dr. Pavlidis runs an interdisciplinary lab and has a multi-disciplinary background that touches upon biomedicine, psychology, computing, and engineering. He has been the Principal Investigator (PI) in many research grants from NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Dr. Pavlidis is also on the executive committees of several refereed conferences.