focuses on surgical education and research for development. Dr. Beveridge earned B.A., M. Phil., and M.D. degrees and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Gilberto Câmara is the director for earth observation at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). He holds a B.S.E.E. from the Aeronautics Technological Institute, São José dos Campos, and an Ms.C. and a Ph.D. in computer science from INPE. He has written some 100 scientific papers and four books on design of geographical information systems, spatial databases, spatial analysis, and remotely sensed image processing. He is a consultant to the most important Brazilian funding agencies and teaches and supervises graduate students in INPE’s graduate programs in remote sensing and computer science.

Leslie Chan is an associate director of Bioline International, a not-for-profit electronic publishing collaborative designed to improve global access to research published in developing countries. A trustee of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development since 1997, Dr. Chan is active in promoting partnerships between educational and research institutions in the hope of narrowing the knowledge gap between the South and the North. He is one of the original drafters and signators of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, a worldwide movement that encourages open institutional archiving and free access to scholarly publications. As a lecturer in the Division of Social Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, Dr. Chan teaches courses in new media, civic engagement, and international communications. He is frequently invited by international organizations to conduct workshops on knowledge management, electronic publishing, and instructional technology.

Liu Chuang is the director of the Global Change Information and Research Center, within the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She serves as the cochair of the CODATA Task Group on Preservation and Archiving of Scientific and Technical Data in Developing Countries, member of the ICSU Task Group on World Data Centers, associate director of the Data Committee of China Association of Geographical Information Systems, secretary general of Remote Sensing and Data Information Network, and member of the Chinese National Committee of International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. Dr. Liu Chuang was an information scientist and China Project Leader at the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) from 1994 to 1998; visiting professor of University of British Columbia, Canada, from 1992 to 1993; and associate professor of Peking University from 1989 to 1991. She served for UNDP/FAO and Asia Development Bank as a consultant and technical assistant during 1995 to 1998. She received her Ph.D. in geography from Peking University, China, and her master and bachelor degrees in geography in China. She has received awards from START (USA), CIESIN (USA), MOST (China), Peking University (China), and ISPRS (Japan) based on her scientific achievements.

Robin Cowan is professor of the economics of technical change at Maastricht University. He began his official affiliation with MERIT in 1996 as a professorial fellow. He studied at Queen’s University in Canada and at Stanford University where he received a Ph.D. in economics and an M.A. in philosophy. Robin Cowan was assistant professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario until 1998. His current research focuses on technology competitions and standardization, the dynamics of consumption, and the economics of networks. He is also doing research on the changing nature of the economics of knowledge and intellectual property rights in the new economy. In the past he has done consulting research for the OECD on the economics of standards and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on technological lock-in and renewable energy technologies. Recently, he has completed two research projects on “Intellectual Property Rights in a Knowledge-Based Economy” with Elad Harison for the Dutch Advisory Council for Science and Technology Policy. Professor Cowan is also an adjunct professor at the Economics Department at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

David Dickson is the founding director of the Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net), a Web-based news and information service set up in 2001 that covers science, technology, and the developing world. A graduate in mathematics from the University of Cambridge, he has formerly been science correspondent of The Times Higher Education Settlement, the Washington correspondent of Nature, the European correspondent of