Two prestigious awards were presented at IIT05

It is the only international conference in the region that focuses on providing a unified discussion platform for professionals, administrators, researchers, and students involved on innovation in IT.

Last night, the Organizing Committee of the IIT arranged for a Gala Dinner to celebrate the success of The Second International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology (IIT'05) and to honor outstanding scholars for their contributions in research and innovation in the field of Information Technology.

Two major awards were presented at the Gala dinner: the Cisco Research Excellence Award and the IIT'05 Distinguished Research Innovation Award. The Cisco award is a competitive award that recognizes research that is applied to the needs of the region. The award was presented by Dr. Mark De Simone, Vice President, Middle East and Africa (MEA), Cisco Systems Inc., to Dr Hazem El Khatib in recognition of his contribution in the field of Telematics. Dr El Khatib is leading a research team in UAE University's College of Information Technology to develop new practical embedded applications for mobile devices and develop portals for operation control centers for the purpose of providing Location Based Services. "I am most appreciative to Cisco for creating this award and for the UAE University for nurturing a culture that promotes research and development." said Dr El Khatib.

"The significance of this award is to recognize research excellence and to encourage higher education institutions to focus their scientific research activities on solving the problems of the region." commented Simone. Dr Hadef Al-Dhaheri, UAE University Vice Chancellor said: "We are honored and proud of Cisco's selection of our college of Information Technology at UAE University to establish this award," he added "this is a testimonial to the quality scientific research that is being conducted in our college of Information Technology."

The second award, the "Distinguished Research Innovation Award" was established by the conference's organizing committee to recognize world-class eminent scholars whose research achievements are helping to shape the future of Information Technology. This year, the conference awarded the prestigious Distinguished Research Innovation Award to Dr Krishna Nathan, IBM Vice President and Director of the Zurich Research Laboratory, which is IBM's main research center in Europe. The Zurich Laboratory is associated with several Nobel prizes since the lab's founding in 1956. Major breakthroughs such as the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, the Token Ring Network, and secure electronic transactions, currently supported by all major credit card companies, are testimonials to the Lab's leadership.

"I am honored to receive this prestigious award and happy to see such a focus on research in IT in this region," said Dr Krishna, he added, "It is only through the generation of knowledge that civilization contributes to the development of mankind."

Distinguished Research Innovation Award

Dr. Krishna Nathan Vice President & Director of the IBM Research Laboratory, Zurich

Dr. Krishna Nathan is Vice President, Services and Director of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory. He joined IBM in 1991 at the T.J. Watson Research Center, where he held various research and management positions in pen computing, handwriting recognition, mobile and handheld platforms and related applications. From 1999 to 2001, Dr. Nathan was director for consumer voice systems in the software group, where he was responsible for world-wide sales, marketing and development of IBM's consumer line of speech products. Immediately prior to his current appointment he was Executive Assistant to the vice-chairman of the board of IBM.

Dr. Nathan holds a doctorate in electrical sciences from Brown University and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.