Keynote Address

2008 Keynote Speaker - Steve Knode

Currently engaged in an academic career as a professor at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC), Steve Knode is a retired Air Force officer who served twenty years in the USAF in a variety of analytical and decision making positions. He was an intercontinental missile crew commander, a tactical operations planner at major command headquarters, and served in Plans and Programs in the Pentagon. He obtained his PhD at Syracuse University in the area of Operations Research Management and also possesses an MS in Industrial Management from the University of North Dakota as well as BS in Mathematics from Duke University. He has an extensive background in artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, intelligent agents, virtual reality, decision support systems, quantitative methods and decision making. He has published and presented papers in several areas, relating emerging technologies to decision making and problem solving. He maintains a website,www.steveknode.com  where he tracks emerging technologies. Further, Dr. Knode consults with government and private sector officials from the State Department, Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, among others. He has lectured at conferences such as AFCEA, ASCUE, EIBT and INFORMS in the emerging technologies areas. Further, he has developed courses in several emerging technology disciplines. Currently, he is involved in teaching, development, and consulting in the areas of Intelligent Agents and other emerging technologies. He is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for BotKnowledge, a small company specializing in the development of Intelligent Agents for government, business, and educational institutions. He is a member of AAAI, IEEE, INFORMS, and AAII.


Dr. J-D Knode is a lecturer at Towson University, and an associate faculty at The Johns Hopkins University.  J-D has published and presented papers in several areas related to emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, ecommerce, ubiquitous computing, and the roll of these technologies in education, business, government, and culture.  J-D received his doctorate in digital communications design, with a research area in artificial intelligence and a specialization in teaching applications, from the School of Information Arts and Technologies at the University of Baltimore.  His research relates to the design, development, and deployment of intelligent applications.  J-D also earned an MBA (Consumer Behavior) and BS (Business Administration) from Salisbury University.