For more information, contact Cindy Young, (937) 775-3232.

August 7, 1997

P. BRUCE BERRA NAMED DIRECTOR OF
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH INSTITUTE

P. Bruce Berra, Ph.D., has been named director of the Wright State University Information Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a cooperative research and development organization established last January.

ITRI will be comprised of partnerships between Wright State and Miami Valley's industrial and government organizations involved in the information technology field, such as the Miami Valley Economic Development Coalition. The institute is located within Wright State's College of Engineering and Computer Science and is associated with the WSU Department of Computer Science and Engineering, where Berra will have the title "distinguished professor of information technology." As director, he will initiate, stimulate, support and actively pursue research and development initiatives and collaborative projects both within the university and with area companies.

Berra comes to Wright State from Syracuse University, where he was a professor of electrical and computer engineering and a faculty member in computer and information science. He served for five years as director of the New York State Center for Advanced Technology in Computer Applications and Software Engineering (CASE) where he coordinated technological partnerships with 130 companies and organizations and had responsibility for an annual budget of $6 million.

His industrial experience includes service with Hughes, Bendix and IBM. He is currently president of PBB Systems, an AI/database consulting firm. Berra pursues research interests in multimedia information systems, parallel processing for very large data and knowledge bases and optical database machines.

ITRI will include research and development in such areas as human computer interaction, multimedia data base, software engineering, computer-enhanced reasoning and distributed computing, and will be multidisciplinary in nature. The institute's goal is to reduce the time it takes for university research results to reach the marketplace. Companies of all sizes and types will benefit through increased productivity, improved product quality, new product development and increased profitability.