Alfred Kobsa and P.K. Nair have received the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Research Award.  Presented by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to senior foreign scientists and scholars, it honors the lifetime academic achievements of the recipient. As part of the award, the recipients are invited to carry out a research project in Germany for up to one year.

Dr. Kobsa’s research lies in the areas of modeling and personalized systems, privacy, and information visualization. During his time in Germany, he will be studying privacy implications of the usage of radio frequency identification tags (RFID) in the retail industry at Humboldt University in Berlin. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna in 1985 and is presently Professor of Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at University of California, Irvine. Kobsa is founding editor of the Springer journal User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction: The Journal of Personalization Research.

P.K. Nair is an internationally recognized leader in agroforestry. He is a distinguished professor of agroforestry at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences as well as director of the Center for Subtropical Agroforestry in UF’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation. Nair has a Ph.D. in agronomy from Pantnaagar Agricultural University, India, and a Ph.D. in agriculture from Goettingen University, Germany. He was chair of the Global Organizing Committee for the 1st World Congress of Agroforestry in Orlando, FL (USA) in July 2004. P.K. Nair is co-author of the Springer book Tropical Homegardens: A Time-Tested Example of Sustainable Agroforestry and editor of the Springer book series Advances in Agroforestry.

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, based in Bonn, Germany, grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards annually to scientists and scholars from abroad with internationally recognized academic qualifications. Furthermore, award winners are invited to carry out research projects of their own choice in Germany in cooperation with colleagues for periods of between six months and one year. The award can amount to a maximum of EUR 75,000.  The foundation follows the tradition of the man who gave it its name, the naturalist, world traveler, and scholar, Alexander von Humboldt. Among past winners of this prestigious prize are nearly 40 Nobel Laureates.  

Contact
Joan Robinson
tel 0049 6221 4878130