Abstract: This talk will provide an introduction to the RAPAI systems developed for the School of Information Sciences. RAPAI, which stands for "Role Assured Publicly Accessible Information", is a project that was begun as an experiment to involve undergraduates in the development of a large system with a security related focus. Initially, a team of undergraduates developed a client server application, using RMI, that provided for authenticated role based access to resources. The program grew in scope and focus to become an embedded information system with several automated features. This talk will address the growth of the project, the evolution of the design, design issues, and current developments.

Speaker's Bio:Michael Spring is an Associate Professor of Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. His research involves the application of technology to the workplace with particular attention large scale electronic document processing, distributed systems, visualization, intelligent agents, and interface design.

He received his Bachelor's from the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining the Department of Information Science and Telecommunications, Dr. Spring served as Director of the University External Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Spring has authored numerous articles and book chapters in the areas of office automation, text and document processing, information technology standardization. He is the author of two books Electronic Printing and Publishing: The Document Processing Revolution and Hands on PostScript.

He has led research projects in the areas of on-demand publishing, intelligent text conversion, and document database publishing including the development of a research test bed for exploring issues related to collaborative authoring of network based documents. Current research efforts include computer-based augmentation of collaborative authoring, intelligent agents and augmented interfaces, and visualization and virtual information spaces.