The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), on behalf of the UK funding bodies, has announced that Professor Timothy O'Shea, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, has been appointed as the new chair of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), effective January 1, 2009. He will succeed Professor Sir Ron Cooke.
Professor O'Shea has worked in the US and for the Open University (OU). At the OU he founded the Computer Assisted Learning Research Group and worked on a range of educational technology research and development projects. He was appointed Principal of the University of Edinburgh in 2002, having previously worked as a research fellow in the University's Department of Artificial Intelligence during the 1970s.
JISC is responsible for supporting the innovative use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support learning, teaching, and research in the UK. It is best known for providing JANET (the high-speed computer network for the academic community), a wide range of innovation programmes and projects, support, content and advisory services, and a portfolio of high-quality resources.
