OGC Names Raj Singh Director Interoperability Programs.

WAYLAND, Mass. -- The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) announced today that Dr. Raj Singh has been appointed Director, Interoperability Programs for OGC. Dr. Singh will report to George Percivall, Executive Director, Interoperability Architecture and lead for OGC's Interoperability Program. Dr. Singh will begin by playing a key role in the third OGC Web Services (OWS-3) Interoperability Initiative, a major testbed activity to extend the OGC baseline to enable an interoperable, multi-source decision support environment based on geospatial Web services (http://www.opengeospatial.org/initiatives/?iid=162).

Dr. Singh's appointment to the OGC's staff underscores the Consortium's commitment to maintaining the technology leadership that has made it the preeminent consensus standards organization in geospatial technology.

Dr. Singh has made significant business and research contributions to the geospatial industry. Most recently, he served as Information Architect at Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc., where he researched spatial technologies and technology areas for integration into the corporate growth strategy. He was also co-founder and CTO at Syncline, Inc., a Geographic Information System (GIS) company. Prior to Syncline, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dr. Singh's work focused on the use of Web services to reduce transaction costs associated with cross-departmental data sharing, processing, and collaborative analysis, and on predicting urban "nodes" of successful retail and residential development. In business and research roles, he has provided strategic GIS consulting to state and regional governments.

In 2003, Dr. Singh was the Technical Architect for OGC's Conformance Testing Initiative. He also worked on other interoperability initiatives and played key roles in developing the OpenGIS(R) Styled Layer Descriptor and Web Terrain Service specifications.

Dr. Singh holds Doctorate and Masters degrees in City Planning from MIT and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Brown University.

The OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 270 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS(R) Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.