RFID Journal Awards 2012

The 2012 Judges

Each year, RFID Journal chooses judges with no financial interests in selecting one entry over another, and who will recuse themselves if they have a relationship with any specific end-user or technology companies involved with the award. At least five judges will evaluate entries in each category. Below are the judges for 2012.

NOTE: We are still confirming additional 2012 judges. If you are interested in participating, send an e-mail to awards@rfidjournal.com.

Most Innovative Use of RFID

Harold Boeck
Professor, Universite de Sherbrooke
Harold Boeck is a professor at the business faculty of the Universite de Sherbrooke. He shares responsibility for the master's program in Management of e-Commerce. His research interests focus on the use and impact of RFID within open-loop supply chain environments. He is also a member of the editorial board of the "International Journal of RF Technologies: Research and Applications," a new research journal focused on the business applications of RF technologies. Harold is a CompTIA RFID+ Certified Professional, a founder of Academia RFID, the first bilingual RFID training and certification center in Canada.

J.T. (Tom) Cain
Professor Emeritus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
Professor J.T. Cain received the B.S., M.S. and PhD degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964, 1966, and 1970. He is currently a professor emeritus of electrical engineering and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. His current research interests are in the system-on-a-chip, with emphasis on embedded and RFID Systems.  In addition to his research, he has been an active contributor to and office holder in a variety of professional organizations, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Computing Sciences Accreditation Board.

Jean-Pierre Emond

Professor, Packaging Science, University of Florida
Jean-Pierre Emond, Ph.D, is also co-director of the UF/IFAS Center for Food Distribution and Retailing and Director of the RFID laboratory. He is a founding member of the Global RF Lab Alliance (GRFLA) and member of the editing board of the International Journal of RF Technologies: Research and Applications. His main research sectors are dealing with RFID applications in packaging, handling and transportation of perishable and pharmaceutical products. He is currently leading 18 research and pilot projects related to RFID applications in the food, pharmaceutical and transportation industries.

Paolo Locatelli
Project manager and researcher, Fondazione Politecnico di Milano
Paolo Locatelli manages several information technology research projects for healthcare organizations. Since 2005, he has served as a contract professor of Information Systems and Process Reengineering at the Faculty of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. He is also a member of the IT faculty for Executive Courses at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano. For the past several years, he has worked on process reengineering and the design of workflow management systems based on mobile devices and RFID traceability platforms. He has also been involved in defining regional guidelines for Hospital Information Systems and Electronic Medical Records on behalf of the Region of Lombardy.

Florian Michahelles
Associate Director, Auto-ID Lab St. Gallen
In addition to his work at the Auto-ID Labs, Florian Michahelles is manager of the labs of Prof. Elgar Fleisch at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zürich. His research interests include following topics centered around RFID applications, extending the EPC network for sensing capabilities, technical approaches against anti-counterfeiting, and RFID applications for the end-consumer. In December 2004, Dr. Michahelles received his PhD from ETH Zurich for his research in participative design of wearable computing applications and the development of innovative business cases for ubiquitous computing. At this time, he was a researcher in the former group of Prof. Bernt Schiele at ETH Zurich, where he worked for the EU-funded Smart-Its project lead by Prof. Hans-Werner Gellersen and the ETH-funded Wearable Computing Poly Project lead by Prof. Gerhard Tröster.

Best RFID Implementation

Robb Clarke
Associate Professor of Packaging at Michigan State University
Robb Clarke's teaching duties include undergraduate and graduate courses on packaging operations and quality issues, material handling and distribution packaging, and RFID for Packaging. Clarke has a B.S. degree in packaging, an M.B.A. in marketing, a Ph.D. in engineering management, and a Willett Visiting Scholar research position in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, England. Prior to teaching, Dr. Clarke had a 17-year industrial career.  At Michigan State, his primary research is in automatic identification (particularly radio frequency identification) for manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution and handling. He is also Director of the independent, dedicated Auto ID Research and Testing Center at Michigan State University.


Tali Freed
Associate Professor, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department, California Polytechnic State University; Founding Director, PolyGAIT-RFID Research and Development Laboratory
Tali Freed received her Ph.D. from the U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Her B.Sc. and M.Sc. are in Industrial Engineering and Management, from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Freed’s primary areas of research are radio frequency identification, production planning and scheduling, and design of processes and information systems. Dr. Freed is the founding director of the Cal Poly multidisciplinary RFID Research and Development Laboratory. The lab is in the process of becoming Poly GAIT – The Cal Poly Center for Global Automated Identification Technologies. Dr. Freed, faculty colleagues and students have performed numerous development and implementation RFID projects for industrial partners. PolyGAIT's hands-on, project-based training has provided hundreds of well-trained engineers to the growing RFID industry.

Bill Hardgrave
Dean, Auburn University College of Business
Bill Hardgrave is the founder and director of the RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas, a facility created in June 2005 to perform research in three primary areas: technology deployment, data analytics and business cases for deploying RFID. Hardgrave has worked extensively on a variety of RFID projects with companies from the retail, manufacturing, transportation and information industries. He has also served as executive director of the Information Technology Research Institute at the university's Sam M. Walton College of Business in Fayetteville, where the new facility is located. Hardgrave's current RFID research focus includes the technology's influence on out-of-stocks and RFID-enabled efficiency gains for supply-chain processes; data analytics (filtering based on business rules); and technology deployment, including read rates and testing.

Dimitris Kiritsis
Computer-Aided Design & Production Lab, EPFL
Dr. Dimitris Kiritsis earned an undergraduate diploma in 1980 and a Ph.D. in 1987 in mechanical engineering from the University of Patras, Greece. Since 1989, he has been with the computer-aided design and production laboratory (LICP) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He is active in teaching and research in the domain of modeling methods and techniques for integrated product/process/resource planning, product life cycle information modeling and transformation to knowledge. His principal research has been in methods for integrated and dynamic manufacture, assembly and disassembly process planning, modeling and simulation using Petri nets, as well as product life cycle information modeling and management. Dr. Kiritsis is the initiator and scientific coordinator of PROMISE and is implementing other international research projects in the domains of integrated product design, computer-aided process-planning modeling and closed-loop product lifecycle modeling.

Nicola Restifo
Project manager and researcher, Fondazione Politecnico di Milano
Nicola Restifo has been involved in concept development, analysis, implementation of information technology projects for public administrations, with a focus on process reengineering and information systems in the healthcare sector. He has been supporting the management of large state-funded projects, and coordinating small IT development projects. He has also been involved in process reengineering and the design of workflow management systems based on mobile devices and RFID traceability platforms. These projects have involved hospitals and research institutions primarily in the region of Lombardy, Italy, and have dealt with transfusion medicine, biobanking, radiotherapy and drug administration.

Dr. Samuele Astuti
Project Manager, Lab#ID, Università Carlo Cattaneo—LIUC
Samuele Astuti earned his business and economics degree with magna cum laude at the Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC). In 2001, Dr. Astuti obtained a Master's degree in e-business and supply chain management, and in 2008, he completed his Ph.D. degree in company integrated management, with a specialization in supply chain collaboration, remote manufacturing and RFID. From 1998 to 2003, Dr. Astuti worked for well-known consulting firms Cap Gemini, Ernst & Young and KPMG Business Advisory Services, in the logistics, production-management, supply chain and health-care fields. He has researched automatic-identification systems since 2002, and has served as the project manager of the Lab#ID at LIUC since 2007. His competence areas are focused on RFID systems and supply chain collaboration.

Best Use of RFID in a Product or Service

Elgar Fleisch
Co-Chair, Auto-ID Labs, ETH Zürich / University of St. Gallen
Since October 2004, Elgar Fleisch has been the professor of information management at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zürich. He is also the professor for of technology management and director of the Institute of Technology Management at the University of St. Gallen (HSG). In 1994, Elgar started his work at the University of St. Gallen, focusing on Business Networking. In 2000, he was accepted as an assistant professor at the University of St. Gallen. Today, he conducts research on information management issues in the ubiquitously networked world, including the dynamics of information systems in conjunction with business processes and real world problems. Together with Prof. Friedemann Mattern of the Institute of Pervasive Computing at the ETH Zürich, he leads the M-Lab and co-chairs the Auto-ID labs, which specifies the infrastructure for the "Internet of Things." And he is a co-founder of Intellion AG and a memeber of several steering committees in research, education and industry.

Christian Floerkemeier
Researcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dr. Floerkemeier is a researcher at the MIT Auto-ID Lab. He has been involved in the standardization efforts of the Auto-ID Center and EPCglobal since he joined the Auto-ID Center in 2001. He was previously Associate Director of the Swiss Auto-ID Lab. Dr. Floerkemeier is one of the co-founders of the Fosstrak Project, which provides open source software based on the EPC Network specifications. Dr. Floerkemeier received his Bachelor and Master of Engineering degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Since 2006, Dr. Floerkemeier has been an associate director of the MIT Auto-ID Lab where he continues to lead new research in areas ranging from mobile commerce to RF simulation and robotics.

Stephen Miles
Research Affiliate, Auto-ID Labs at MIT
Stephen Miles leads the Auto-ID Network Research Special Interest Group, a research consortium at Auto-ID Labs formed to address industry requirements for exchanging Electronic Product Code and sensor data among participants in collaborative supply chains. He interacts extensively with the industry, including consulting in areas related to research in shared business processes, services-oriented architecture and netcentric operations. He is a frequent contributor to RFID Journal and speaks regularly at RFID and technical events.

Antonio Rizzi
Director, RFID Lab, University of Parma
Since 2005, Antonio Rizzi has been employed as full professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the Industrial Engineering Department of the University of Parma. His scientific interests are mainly related to logistics and supply chain management. In the last years, his research has focused on the application of advanced automatic identification and data sharing technologies for supply chain management, such as RFID. He has worked with major food companies in Europe testing RFID temperature sensors and with major Italian fashion houses to explore RFID's potential to reduce counterfeiting.

Pankaj Sood
Founder and Manager, McMaster RFID Applications Lab; Researcher, University of Cambridge
A researcher with the University of Cambridge, Pankaj Sood is conducting research on pricing of information. He is also the founder and advisor for the McMaster RFID Applications Lab (MRAL) where he advises on key research and industry projects that involved automated identification technologies and their applications for improving business processes. Prior to his move to University of Cambridge, Sood worked as the manager of MRAL where he was responsible for leading some of the key projects for MRAL and developing and maintaining collaborative partnerships with industry partners, key government organizations and other academic institutes. He has worked on and provided advice on RFID projects in multiple industries, including health care, retail and transportation. He is also actively engaged in looking at the privacy and security issues surrounding proposed RFID applications.

Best In Show

Gisele Bennett
Director, Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory – Georgia Tech Research Institute
Dr. Gisele Bennett is the director of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory, founder of the Logistics and Maintenance Applied Research Center (LandMARC) with the Georgia Tech Research Institute and a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She obtained her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech for her work in coherence theory applications to optical imaging systems. She also holds a certificate in Management of Technology from Georgia Tech. She is a topical editor for Applied Optics and associate editor for International Journal of RF Technologies: Research and Applications, holds a patent on Integrated Sensor Radio Frequency Identification (ISRFID) with Location. Her interest in RFID is in active tagging with integrated sensors and container security and monitoring systems.

Kevin Berisso
Director, AIDC Lab, Ohio University
Kevin Berisso holds a Ph.D. in Technology Management from Indiana State University. Having worked as a custom warehouse management software project engineer and then as a manufacturing engineer with Delphi Automotive, he has a wealth of practical industrial experience. As the current director of the AIDC lab (founded in 1988), Berisso has focused the lab on helping companies to apply existing “off the shelf” RFID technologies to specific business problems. He has presented at numerous conferences and workshops on RFID, as well as other automatic identification and data capture topics. In the classroom, he teaches an AIDC class, an RFID class, programming classes and robotics. During the summers, he is responsible for the annual AIDC Technical institute which held its 22nd offering this summer.

Erick C Jones
Executive Director of RFID and Supply Chain Lab
Dr. Erick C. Jones is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska and director of the University of Nebraska’s RFID Supply Chain Lab.  He received Bachelors degree in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and Masters and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Houston.  He has held various positions in industries as engineering specialist, engineering director and project manager. Dr. Jones expertise has led to become and expert in the field of supply chain optimization, distribution logistics and inventory control. His unique background led him to one of the first and largest academic RFID labs in the country. He has published one textbook on RFID and has edited two industry texts on the subject, and is currently working on a military handbook for RFID and other Automatic Information technologies which include GPS and satellite tags.  Also, his lab joined the industry academic consortium focused on Logistics sponsored by the National Science Foundation for several years. Currently, he has focused on RFID research for US Department of Transportation, Department of Defense Transportation Command, and with NASA JSC.

Marlin H. Mickle
Professor of Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh; Executive Director, RFID Center of Excellence
Professor Mickle is the 1988 Recipient of the Systems Research and Cybernetics Award of the International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics and Life Fellow of the IEEE. In 2005, he won the Carnegie Science Center Award for Excellence in Corporate Innovation and the Pitt Innovation Award. His research, development and educational activities have been supported by more than 115 grants and/or contracts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, National Science Foundation, United States Army, NASA, Department of Commerce, Electric Power Research Institute, Intel, Motorola, Texas Instruments, DARPA and other prestigious companies.

Justin Patton
Director, RFID Research Center at the University of Arkansas
Justin Patton received his undergraduate degree in physics from Hendrix College and is currently concluding his graduate degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Arkansas. He oversaw the set up of the RFID Research Center and now supervises day-to-day operations of the center, which is the only academic EPCglobal accredited RFID lab in the world. The RFID Research Center has conducted studies on the business benefits of RFID at Wal-Mart Stores and has worked with numerous companies on testing and evaluating the potential business benefits of RFID technology.

Special Achievement

Hong BongHee
Professor, Pusan National University, South Korea
Director, RF Lab, Research Institute of Logistics Information Technology, Korea
Hong BongHee is the director the RF Lab at the Research Institute of Logistics Information Technology (LIT) in Korea. He is a renown expert in RF research, most notably in the field of radio frequency identification, real time locating systems, sensor networks and ubiquitous computing. For his successful leadership at LIT, he was awarded the Excellent Enterprise and University Excellence Innovation awards in 2007. Since October 2007, he has been an associate editor of International Journal of RF Technologies: Research and Applications.  Professor Hong has been involved with RF research since he started his carrier as a lecturer in 1987 in the Computer Science and Engineering department at Pusan National University. His vision is to develop state-of-the-art middleware for automated logistics systems. Under his supervision, LIT has developed EPCglobal-certified middleware for Application Level Events and EPC Information Services.

Sue Hutchinson
Director of Industry Adoption, EPCglobal US
Sue Hutchinson joined GS1US in April 2003 and was instrumental in the formation of EPCglobal and the development of the UHF Gen2 air interface protocol. She brought with her more than 20 years of experience in high technology product management and technology transfer. Her specialties include product and portfolio planning, strategic market development, customer relationship management and predictive analytics. As director of industry adoption for EPCglobal US, Ms. Hutchinson is responsible for delivering tools and services for the many companies joining the EPCglobal community. Ms. Hutchinson has written and spoken extensively on the topics of RFID and visibility in the supply chain.

Paul Prince
Executive Editor, RFID Journal
Paul Prince has been executive editor of RFID Journal for more than six years, and is responsible for managing RFID Journal's news coverage on the Web. Since 2008, he has served as a judge for RFID Journal s Best In Show Award. Prior to joining RFID Journal, Paul was an editor at Tele.com, a Web site and print magazine covering the telecommunications industry. He has also worked for a number of national consumer magazines, including SmartMoney and Skiing Magazine, where he served on the judging committee for the Golden Eagle Awards for Environmental Excellence, established by Times Mirror Magazines in 1993 to recognize the environmental achievements of ski areas.

Mark Roberti
Founder and Editor, RFID Journal
Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal, the leading source of intelligent news and analysis about RFID and its many business applications. He has reported on business and technology since 1985. His work has appeared in Business 2.0, Fortune, The Asian Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, The New York Times and many other publications. Prior to launching RFID Journal, Roberti was a senior writer at the Industry Standard. He has also served as the managing editor of InformationWeek. More than 250,000 people around the world visit the RFID Journal Web site each month, and its executive conference, RFID Journal LIVE!, has become one of the most important gatherings of RFID vendors and end users.

RFID Green Award

Peter J. Hawrylak
Assistant professor, Electrical Engineering Department, The University of Tulsa
Peter J. Hawrylak, Ph.D., is a leading researcher in embedded systems, radio frequency identification (RFID), sensor networks, real-time location systems (RTLS) and security. Dr. Hawrylak is has published several academic papers and authored several book chapters in these areas. He was a member of the Technical Advisory Group for the United States (USTAG) for the International Standards Organization (ISO), which oversees standardization of RFID and RTLS devices. Dr. Hawrylak has led the development of test methodologies to determine conformance and interoperability for ISO 18000-7 (active) RFID systems. He was a principle member of the team at the University of Pittsburgh RFID Center of Excellence investigating the interactions between RFID devices and implantable medical devices such as pacemakers and ICDs.

Neeraj Sood
Researcher, University of Toronto
Neeraj Sood is a graduate student in the electromagnetics group at the University of Toronto. He is currently working on developing tools to understand the propagation of ultra-wideband signals in complex environments. He has worked on technology development projects and has advised several organizations on RFID projects. He has a B.A.Sc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Andrea Linne
Features Editor, RFID Journal
Andrea Linne joined RFID Journal in 2004. As features editor, she is responsible for assigning and editing all articles for RFID Journal magazine and for features on the RFID Journal Web site. She also edits numerous columns and special reports written and produced by RFID Journal's editorial team. Previously, she was special projects editor at Information Week and features editor at HomePC and Family PC magazines.

Best RFID Thesis


Kevin Berisso
Director, AIDC Lab, Ohio University
Kevin Berisso holds a Ph.D. in Technology Management from Indiana State University. Having worked as a custom warehouse management software project engineer and then as a manufacturing engineer with Delphi Automotive, he has a wealth of practical industrial experience. As the current director of the AIDC lab (founded in 1988), Berisso has focused the lab on helping companies to apply existing “off the shelf” RFID technologies to specific business problems. He has presented at numerous conferences and workshops on RFID, as well as other automatic identification and data capture topics. In the classroom, he teaches an AIDC class, an RFID class, programming classes and robotics. During the summers, he is responsible for the annual AIDC Technical institute which held its 22nd offering this summer.

Fred Riggins
Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Information Systems, W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University
Fred Riggins received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was the winner of the William W. Cooper Doctoral Dissertation Award in Management.  Prior to joining the W.P. Carey School, he served as a faculty member at Georgia Tech, the University of Minnesota and the University of Alberta.  His teaching interests include information technology management, electronic commerce, developing markets for digital goods, and financial information systems and technology.  His research focuses on strategies for implementing interorganizational systems such as RFID, new business models for Internet-based commerce, and the implications of the digital divide for managers and businesses. He was also a judge for the RFID Journal Awards in 2007 and 2008. 

Sanja Sarma
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT
Former Chairman of Research and Co-Founder of The Auto-ID Center
Sanjay Sarma is credited with defining and developing many of the standards and technologies that form the foundation of the commercial RFID industry. He is a frequent industry speaker and serves on the Board of Governors of EPCGlobal, the worldwide standards body he helped create. Sanjay is also an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. In 1999, he co-founded MIT's Auto-ID Center and has served as its Chairman of Research. Professor Sarma is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair at MIT, the Ferry Award, the Den Hartog Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Keenan Award for innovations in undergraduate education, and the New England Business and Technology Award.

Dieter Uckelmann
Manager
LogDynamics Lab, University of Bremen
Dieter Uckelmann has been the managing director of the University of Bremen's LogDynamics Lab since July 2005. His main research area includes the synchronization of material, information and financial flows under the influence of automatic-identification and billing technologies. Mr. Uckelmann is also the co-founder and president of the Global RF Lab Alliance, an international network of RFID-focused research organizations with representatives in Europe, the United States and Asia, and the associate editor of the International Journal of RF Technologies: Research and Applications. Prior to his position at the University of Bremen, he worked in different managing positions within the auto-ID and intercompany-communication industries.