Lex Akers
Associate Dean of Academic Programs, MU College of Engineering
Lex A. Akers is the associate dean for academic programs and James C. Dowell professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Missouri–Columbia. Prior to his appointment as associate dean, Akers served as chair of the CoE’s electrical and computer engineering department for six years. Akers has worked on metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) in both academic and corporate settings, and is internationally recognized for his development of MOSFET models and highly layered neural architectures. Akers has received research funding from the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Security Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation, as well as from Motorola, Intel, Honeywell and Rockwell International. He is a registered professional engineer in Missouri.
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Mike Bombich
Systems Engineer, Apple, Inc.
While briefly exploring the field of Aquatic Ecology, Mike Bombich discovered the joy of software development on the Mac OS X platform. His first application used digital photography to determine the size distribution of invasive Zebra mussels sampled from Lake Erie. Realizing that software development was more gratifying than research, Mike started writing software as an "indy Mac Developer" in December 2001. He continues to pursue the hobby today creating applications that automate and simplify everyday tasks. In January 2002, Mike joined Apple as a Systems Engineer. For the past seven years Mike has provided pre-sales technical consulting for Higher Education accounts in Missouri and Illinois.
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Mark Glaser
Executive Editor, MediaShift.org, Public Broadcasting System
A Missouri School of Journalism alum, Mark Glaser is a longtime freelance journalist whose career includes columns on hip-hop, reviews of videogames, travel stories, and humor columns that poked fun at the titans of technology. From 2001 to 2005, he wrote a weekly column for USC Annenberg School of Communication's Online Journalism Review, and he still writes the OPA Intelligence Report email newsletter for the Online Publishers Association. Glaser has written essays for Harvard's Nieman Reports and the website for the Yale Center for Globalization.
Glaser has written columns on the Internet and technology for the Los Angeles Times, CNET and HotWired, and has written features for the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, the San Jose Mercury News, and many other publications. He was the lead writer for the Industry Standard's award-winning "Media Grok" daily email newsletter during the dot-com heyday, and was named a finalist for a 2004 Online Journalism Award in the Online Commentary category for his OJR column.
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Jane Ellen Stevens
A freelance journalist, consultant and teacher who specializes in science and technology, Jane Stevens has conducted multimedia reporting for The New York Times, the Discovery Channel and MSNBC.com. Stevens consults with news organizations that are transitioning to the Web-centric world, including the Ventura (Calif.) County Star, the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, NPR and the San Diego Union-Tribune. She helped develop the multimedia reporting program at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism, in addition to developing multimedia reporting workshops for mid-career journalists through the Knight Digital Media Center. She has written for magazines such as Discover, International Wildlife, National Geographic, National Wildlife, Science, and Technology Review. Stevens is co-director of the Violence Reporting Project, which encourages news organizations to include a scientific and prevention/public health approach to crime reporting. In 2007, she led a team that developed TOPP.org (Tagging of Pacific Predators), a new approach to science journalism, and the Great Turtle Race 2007 (http://www.greatturtlerace.com), which was a collaborative effort with Conservation International, Leatherback Trust, Yahoo! and MINAE, Costa Rica's environmental agency.
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