The Present and Future of Information Modeling

Dr. Chen is internationally known for his invention of the Entity-Relationship (ER) Model, the foundation of many systems analysis and design methodologies and frameworks such as IBM’s AD/Cycle, computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tools, and repository systems. The ER model was adopted as the ANSI standard in Information Resource Directory System (IRDS), and has been ranked as the top methodology for database design. The ER model also serves as the foundation of the recent work on Object-Oriented analysis and design methodologies and Semantic Web.

Besides developing the ER model, Dr. Chen has made contributions to computer performance evaluation, office automation, and recently to XML and cyber security. Currently, he is an Invited Expert in W3C XML Schema and XLink working groups, and is a member of the Airlie Software Council, a group of software gurus and high-level executives providing advice to large-scale DoD software projects. He has also served as a consultant to many corporations and government agencies.

Dr. Chen has received many awards including the Achievement Award in 2000 from DAMA International and the Stevens Award in Software Method Innovation in 2001. He was inducted into the "Data Management Hall of Fame" in 2000, and is listed in Who's Who in the World. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ACM, and AAAS. After receiving his PhD degree from Harvard, he served on the faculty of MIT and UCLA before assuming his current position at LSU in 1983.

Dr. Chen will focus on the importance of Information modeling. He will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of current information modeling practices, and discuss future challenges such as modeling new types of data, and the relationship between the XML and ER models. He will also raise the question of the potential value of studying English sentence structures, Chinese character composition methods, and Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs to the information modeling field.