Prof. Robert LAURINI (aka Roberto) is presently Professor Emeritus
at KSI, USA; researcher at INSA-Lyon, University of Lyon, Fance;
honorary 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 19 countries. He was recently
elected "Fellow
of the Knowledge Systems
Insitute" of Chicago, Illinois, USA. and IARIA fellow.
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. Now his interest is focused on artificial intelligence for smart cities. He has supervised or co-supervised 44 PhD students, some being co-awarded in Italy, Mexico and Tunisia.
He has authored or 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". And also How to Prepare a Successful Master's or Doctoral Thesis in France, Guide for International Students, with Y.-F. Livian, June 2019. The last one is "Knowledge Management for Regional Policymaking", co-edited with Peter Nijkamp, Karima Kourtit, Louafi Bouzouina (Springer Verlag).
He also taught 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.
