Prof. Robert LAURINI (aka Roberto) is presently Professor Emeritus at KSI, USA; researcher at INSA-Lyon University of Lyon, Fance; president of the NGO "Universitaires Sans Frontières/Academics Without Borders". During his employed activities, he was intensively involved in international affairs. He speaks fluently French, English, Italian and Spanish. Among others, he has been member of PhD committees in 17 countries. He was recently elected "Fellow of the Knowledge Systems Insitute" of Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Previously, he was full distinguished professor at the National Institute for Applied Sciences (INSA-Lyon), and more precisely at the Computing Department and at the LIRIS Laboratory in which he was in charge of international affairs.
He carried out researches at the University of Cambridge, Martin Center for Architectural and Urban Systems, UK (1976-1977) and at the University of Maryland (Center for Automation Research, USA) (1986-1987). He was teaching at Computing Departement of the University Institute of Technology, Claude Bernard University of Lyon during several years. During five years, he was head of the Laboratory for Information System Engineering (LISI), shared by to the National Institute for Applied Sciences (INSA) and Claude Bernard University of Lyon, France. From 2001 to 2004, he was head of SIGMA / CASSINI, French CNRS Federation on Geographic Information Systems. Until recently, he was deputy head of the LIRIS Research Center for Images and Information Systems from January 2003 to December 2006, vice-president of the INSA Board of Regents from November 2002 to November 2006. From 2004 to September 2007, he was head of Lyon Research-Oriented Master Degree in Computing.
In November 1998, he received an ACM award for Technical Contributions and Leadership and a second in November 2010. He was chairman of the ACM GIS Symposium steering committee from 1998 to 2007.
He is also or was:
His main interests are spatial and multimedia information systems with applications to urban and environmental planning, and geographic knowledge engineering. See for more details about research activities. See also the specials links for supervised current and submitted PhD's in France and in Italy.
He has co-authored 7 books, out of which "Ingénierie des Connaissances Spatiales", "Fundamentals of Spatial Information Systems", "Les bases de données en géomatique", and "Information Systems for Urban Planning, A Hypermedia Cooperative Approach" and a book in French relative to international education of graduate engineers (issued April 2013): "La formation des ingénieurs face aux défis de la mondialisation".
He also teaches at the University of Venice (IUAV), Italy.
For several years, he has been working as a consultant for the inception of reserch laboratories and doctoral schools in computing in several countries. See more details on his activities on institutional and investigational engineering.
