PERSONAL DETAILS

Surname:	Louka
Other names:	Michael Nicholas
Date of birth:	16.02.1971
Place of birth:	Rugby, Warwickshire, U.K.
Nationality:	British
Civil Status:	Married
Languages:	Fluent in English and Norwegian
Home address:	Porfyrveien 8 1784 Halden Norway
Telephone:	(+47) 69 18 85 38 (home) (+47) 41 31 77 68 (mobile) (+47) 69 21 22 54 (work IFE) (+47) 69 21 53 72 (work Østfold College)
E-mail:	Michael.Louka@c2i.net (home) Michael.Louka@hrp.no (work IFE) Michael.Louka@hiof.no (work Østfold College)

EDUCATION

SECONDARY SCHOOL

Place: Lawrence Sheriff (Grammar) School, Rugby, Warwickshire, England.
Dates: September 1983 - July 1989.
Examinations taken: 10 'O' (Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, English, English Literature, French, Latin, History, Technical Drawing), 1 'GCSE' (Business Studies), 1 'AO' (Mathematics), and 3 'A' Levels (Mathematics, Physics, English).

While at LSS, I was a participant in the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme and hold Bronze, Silver, and Gold awards. I was a group leader and expedition leader for all of my group's qualifying expeditions.

OTHER PRE-UNIVERSITY (SECONDARY) EDUCATION

Place: Sagavoll Folkehøgskole, 3810 Gvarv, Norway.
Dates: August 1989 - May 1990.

Courses taken include 'Nature and outdoor life', computing (mainly MS-DOS and word processing), leadership skills, Norwegian language and literature, and photography.

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Place: Department of Mathematical and Computing Sciences, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 5XH, England.
Dates: October 1990 - July 1994.
Course: Computing and Information Technology.
Degree: BSc. Hons (First Class), with Associateship of the University of Surrey (Distinction).

Topics covered (up to final year) include:
Programming Principles (Pascal), Discrete Mathematics, Specification, Analysis & Design of Information Systems, Mathematical Modelling, Statistics, Economics, Organisational Sociology, Accounting, Marketing, Project Management, Functional Programming (Miranda), Programming Foundations (including algebraic theory, formal specification, automata, object-oriented specification, design & programming), Databases (with Oracle SQL), Human-Computer Interaction, Cognitive Psychology, Knowledge-based Systems, and Computer Architecture.

Third year professional placement:
OECD Halden Reactor Project, Halden, Norway
(see under 'Professional Experience' below for details).

Final year options:
Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Topics in Databases, Simulation and Modelling, Information Strategies, and Information Systems Planning.

Final year dissertation:
"A review of hypermedia methodologies and techniques, and the design and implementation of a hypermedia demonstration".

This project examined design and implementation issues within the field of hypermedia (multimedia hypertext), in particular user interaction and methods of structuring multimedia information to facilitate understanding and navigation. Supervisors were Dr. Terry Hinton (Surrey) and Prof. Børre Ludvigsen (Østfold University College, Norway).

PRE-GRADUATION PART-TIME WORK

Employer: Lumonics Lasers Ltd., Rugby, England.
Position: Storeroom assistant.
Dates: January 1987 (one week 'work experience').

Employer: Curry's Ltd., Rugby, England.
Position: Salesperson.
Dates: Autumn 1988 - Spring 1989 (Saturdays and Christmas vacation).

Employer: Royal Christiania Hotel, Oslo, Norway.
Position: Office Assistant.
Dates: July - August 1990.

Employer: I CAN, London, England.
Position: Desktop publishing (Contract).
Dates: September 1991.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Employer: IFE / OECD Halden Reactor Project (HRP), Halden, Norway.
Position: Student / Programmer.
Dates: August 1992 - July 93.

Worked on the development of the Picasso-3 UIMS (User Interface Management System). Skills gained include compiler construction using lex and yacc, programming interactive 2D graphics using the X11 libraries, designing complex object-oriented systems, and programming in C++.

Employer: IFE / OECD Halden Reactor Project (HRP), Halden, Norway.
Current position: Section Head
Dates: August 1994 - present.

I returned to Halden after graduating in 1994.

In the period 1994-96, I worked on the development of the Picasso-3 UIMS and an object-oriented communication system (SWBus). I also did consulting and development work for ScandPower AS, Ericsson Radar AS, and Statnett SF.

In early 1997, I was transferred to the newly established Halden Virtual Reality Centre at IFE. Since 1996, I have worked on a number of projects related to the use of desktop VR technology for training and control room design. Since autumn 1998, I have also had project management duties.

Since 1st January 2001, I am the section head of Halden VR Centre, with responsibility for a team of about ten researchers, 3D modellers, and software developers.

 

Employer: Østfold University College, Halden, Norway.
Position: Guest lecturer / Examiner.
Dates: 1996 - 2000.

Guest lecturer (Virtual Reality). External assessor/examiner and mentor for third year projects (Software Design) in June 1997, June 1998, June 1999, and other exams (December 1998, May 1999, July 1999, December 1999). Lecturer for short course in Web programming (HTML, CSS, DOM, SGML, XML, VRML, etc.) autumn semester 1999. Complex Systems lecture in November 1999.

Employer: Østfold University College, Halden, Norway.
Position: Lecturer ("Associate Professor" - 20% position).
Dates: May 2000 - September 2002.

Employed part-time (20%), primarily to lecture in the 'design and implementation of virtual worlds' at postgraduate level. Also taught course on mark-up languages.

COMMITTEE WORK

• Spring 1997-1998. Member of IFE's Internet Committee. Helped to specify IFE's new Internet presentation and supervised its implementation.
• Autumn 1997-1998. Member of Technical Advisory Committee for the Halden Industriforening (Industry Society) INTERREG Internet project, administered by CognIT AS.
• September 1998-present. Member of IT Forum Halden's working group for cooperation between the Halden IT industry and Østfold College.

COURSES ATTENDED

• Dunchurch Management Course
  August 1988, GEC Management College, Dunchurch, England.
• Software Project Management
  March 1992, Cranfield IT Institute Ltd, Guildford, England.
• Virtual Reality
  5 April 1995, NITO/Hewlett-Packard, Oslo, Norway.
• SGML
  18-19 May 1995, Naggum Software, Halden, Norway.
• Java for Programmers
  20-24 April 1998, Skrivervik Data, Oslo, Norway.
• Clarus Oxygen
  17-18 June 1998, Prosolvia Clarus, Halden, Norway.
• The Truth about VRML Multi-User Systems
  23 February 1999, ACM/VRML '99, Paderborn, Germany.
• Introduction to Java 3D
  21 February 2000, ACM/Web3D-VRML '2000, Monterey, USA.
• Introduction to X3D
  22 February 2000, ACM/Web3D-VRML '2000, Monterey, USA.
• introduction to MPEG-4
  22 February 2000, ACM/Web3D-VRML '2000, Monterey, USA.

CONFERENCES/SEMINARS ATTENDED

This is a selection of conferences and seminars that I have attended:

• OECD EHPG Meeting on Man-Machine Systems Research 1993
  7-12 March 1993, HRP, Storefjell, Norway.
  
• Operator Support Systems for the Process Industry
  25-27 May 1993, NFA/NIF/IFE, Halden, Norway.
  
• OECD EHPG Meeting on Man-Machine Systems Research 1994
  30 October - 4 November 1994, HRP, Bolkesjø, Norway.
  
• Virtual Reality Seminar
  6 April 1995, Open Human Digital AS, Oslo, Norway.
  
• Software Engineering
  12 October 1995, Skrivervik Data AS, Oslo, Norway.
  
• OECD EHPG Meeting on Man-Machine Systems Research 1996
  19-24 May 1996, HRP, Loen, Norway.
  
• VR in Geosciences
  24-26 June 1996, Østfold Research Foundation, Halden, Norway.
  
• Interfaces '97
  28-30 May 1997, Montpellier, France.
  
• OECD EHPG Meeting on Man-Machine Systems Research 1998
  16-20 March 1998, HRP, Lillehammer, Norway.
  
• Digitisation of the Military
  29-30 April 1998, IFE, Halden, Norway.
• OECD HRP Workshop on Virtual Reality Applications in the Process Industry
  17-18 September, HRP, Halden, Norway.
• VRML '99
  23-26 February 1999, Paderborn, Germany.
• CAD-CAM Expo '99
  16-18 March 1999, IDG Expo, Oslo, Norway.
• OECD EHPG Meeting on Man-Machine Systems Research 1999
  25-28 May 1999, HRP, Loen, Norway.
  
• Web3D/VRML 2000
  21-24 February 2000 2000, Monterey, California, USA.
  
• Safety in a Human-Technology-Organisation Perspective
  23-24 March 2000, HRP, Halden Norway.
• TIEMS 2001
  19-22 June 2001, The International Emergency Management Society, Oslo, Norway.

KEY COMPUTING EXPERTISE

Virtual Reality, VRML, Hypermedia, Internet/intranet technology, Website design and administration, user interface design, HTML, CSS, XML, CGI, Apache, Perl, Java, Java 3D, NetBeans, CVS, JavaScript, C, C++, Pascal, Modula-2, Prolog, Ada, Miranda, Lex, Yacc, Make, Ant, TCP/IP sockets/networking, object-oriented software analysis, design, and development, distributed object computing, expert systems, Unix (Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX, HP-UX, and NetBSD), Linux, NetBSD, Mac OS, MS Windows 2000, SQL and relational database systems, Adobe Photoshop, Cosmo3D, OpenGL, PTC DIVISION, Oxygen (Prosolvia/Opticore), Picasso-3 and SWBus.

MEMBERSHIP OF ORGANISATIONS

• Association for Computing Machinery (ACM/SIGGRAPH)
• Amnesty International
• British Computer Society (BCS)
• Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN)
• Norwegian Mountain Touring Association (DNT)
• MacWeb3D organisation
• Open VRML Advancement League (OVAL)

OTHER INTERESTS

Listening to music (virtually all genres, recorded and live), hi-fi, hiking, cinema, theatre (particularly Shakespeare), art and literature, travel, history, good food and drink. Author of a number of pieces of freeware software (mainly VR/VRML related).

Go to Michael's Home Page