Directors

Eli Noam has been Professor of Economics and Finance at the Columbia Business School since 1976. In 1990, after having served for three years as Commissioner with the New York State Public Service Commission , he returned to Columbia. He is the Director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. CITI is a university-based research center focusing on strategy, management, and policy issues in telecommunications, computing, and electronic mass media. In addition to leading CITI's research activities, Noam initiated the MBA concentration in the Management of Media, Communications, and Information at the Business School and the Virtual Institute of Information , an independent, web-based research facility.

Besides the over 400 articles in economics, legal, communications, and other journals that Professor Noam has written on subjects such as communications, information, public choice, public finance, and general regulation, he has also authored, edited, and co-edited 28 books.

Noam has served on the editorial boards of Columbia University Press as well as of a dozen academic journals, and on corporate and non-profit boards. He is a regular columnist on the new economy for the Financial Times online.

He served on advisory boards for the Federal governments FTS-2000 telecommunications network, the IRS's computer system reorganization, the National Computer Systems Laboratory, and of the National Research Council. He is a member of the Council for Foreign Relations, and a fellow of the World Economic Forum. He received AB, AM, PhD (Economics) and JD degrees, all from Harvard. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Munich (2006) and the University of Marseilles (2008).

Noam is a commercially rated multi-engine pilot and a radio amateur, advanced class, and flies as a search and rescue mission pilot for the Civil Air Patrol(1st Lt.). He lives with his wife, Nadine Strossen, a law professor and former national president of the American Civil Liberties Union, in New Milford, CT and New York City.
Eli Noam's Webpage

Bob Atkinson joined CITI in 2000 as one consequence of CITI receiving a multi-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for the purpose of expanding CITI into a Sloan Center for Telecommunications Research. At CITI, he has written on a number of regulatory issues (for example, Network Neutrality: History Will Repeat Itself, Telecom Regulation for the 21st Century: Avoiding Gridlock, Adapting to Change and Net Neutrality: An Overview) and speaks regularly at conferences on regulatory policy, telecom business trends and the interaction between policy and business.

For 18 months prior to joining CITI, Mr. Atkinson was the Deputy Chief of the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau. (FCC announcement) With the Chief of the Common Carrier Bureau and two other Deputy Chiefs, he was responsible for developing, implementing and enforcing FCC policies and regulations governing interstate telecommunication services. Mr. Atkinson negotiated the conditions associated with the FCC's approval of the SBC-Ameritech merger and was responsible for the substance of many major FCC decisions, including: UNE Remand; Line Sharing; Bell Atlantic-GTE and Qwest-US West mergers; Broadband Deployment (Sec.706) Report; and, Local Competition & Broadband Deployment data gathering.

From 2001-2006, Mr. Atkinson served as the Chairman of the North American Numbering Council (NANC), which advises the FCC on matters affecting the availability and utilization of telephone number resources in the U.S. (NANC goals interview, part 1; part 2)

In March 2009, Mr. Atkinson moderated a series of public meetings in Washington, DC on behalf of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) concerning the $7.2 billion "broadband stimulus program"  http://www.ntia.doc.gov/broadbandgrants/meetings.html.

Beginning in 1985, Mr. Atkinson was responsible for the regulatory, public policy and external affairs activities of Teleport Communications Group (TCG), the nation's first Competitive Access Provider (CAP) and Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC). In 1994 he became Senior Vice President for Legal, Regulatory & External Affairs when his role was expanded to include responsibility for TCG's Legal Department. When AT&T acquired TCG in July 1998 and TCG became AT&T Local Services, Mr. Atkinson was Vice President and Chief Regulatory Officer of AT&T Local Services until he joined the FCC.

Throughout his career, Mr. Atkinson played a leading role in most of the key regulatory and public policy decisions that introduced competition to the local telephone markets and shaped the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) industry. For example, the TCG White Papers helped shape key state and federal local competition policies. Since joining CITI, he participated regularly in public policy hearings (for example, http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/Hearings/02052003hearing775/Atkinson1265.htm), conferences and seminars and has been quoted regularly in the press on telecommunications policy issues (for example, PBS and The Chicago Tribune).

In the regulatory and public policy area, Mr. Atkinson served in Washington, DC as a Government Relations Representative for ITT's Communication Operations Group and as Counsel for Government and International Matters at Satellite Business Systems (SBS). He was a founder of the Ad Hoc Committee for Competitive Telecommunications (ACCT, a forerunner of CompTel), which was formed by competitive long distance companies in the mid-70's to promote pro-competition legislation and regulations. After joining TCG, Mr. Atkinson co-founded and was the first President of the Association for Local Telecommunication Services (ALTS), the competitive local telecommunications industry's trade association.

Mr. Atkinson graduated from University of Virginia in 1972 with a Bachelor of Art degree in Government and Foreign Affairs. He later received a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center (evening program) in 1979. While at Georgetown, Mr. Atkinson was a member of the Georgetown Law Journal. He is presently admitted to the bar in New Jersey.

Dr. Raul Katz joined CITI in April, 2007 as the Director of Business Strategy Research.  Dr. Katz leads two research programs: “The impact of user-generated content on society and on the media business” and “Development of future industry scenarios for Latin American communications”.

Dr. Katz has a Ph.D. in Political Science and Management and an M.S. in Communications Technology and Policy, both from MIT, as well as a Maitrise in Political Science and a Maitrise in Communication Sciences from the Sorbonne.

He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, where he teaches a Seminar in International High Technology Strategy within the MBA program.

Raul has been a management consultant in the telecommunications industry for the past 25 years. After twenty years of service, he retired as a Lead Partner and Head of the Telecommunications Practice in the Americas with Booz Allen Hamilton.  He then served as CEO of Adventis, an international telecommunications consulting firm.  He also serves as President of Telecom Advisory Services, a strategy consulting firm.

Raul has published extensively in research journals; his books include “The Information Society: an International Perspective” and “Creative Destruction: Business Survival Strategies in the Global Internet Economy”. He has been a frequent speaker at CITI events, and served on our Advisory Board.

Dr. Alleman was previously the Director of the International Center for Telecommunications Management at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Director of Policy Research for GTE, and an economist for the International Telecommunication Union. He has conducted research in the area of telecommunications policy, with emphasis on pricing, costing, and regulation as well as on international telephony settlements, telecommunications in the infrastructure and related areas. More recently, he has been researching the application of real options valuation techniques to network industries and the causes, consequences and remedies of the financial infirmities of the communications and information technologies sectors.

Dr. Alleman founded Paragon Service International, Inc., a telecommunications call-back firm and he has been granted patents (numbers 5,883,964 & 6,035,027 ) on the call-back process widely used by the industry.
James Alleman's Webpage

A. Michael Noll is Professor Emeritus of Communications at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. Prof. Noll has had a varied career, including basic research at Bell Labs, science policy on the staff of the White House Science Advisor, and marketing at AT&T. He is an early pioneer in computer art, stereoscopic computer animation, and force- feedback (a forerunner of today's virtual reality). Prof. Noll has published nearly 100 papers on his research and is the author of eleven books related to telecommunication technology and communications. His most recent book, The Evolution of Media, available from Rowman & Littlefield, is a broad examination of the characterization of media. He has also written well over 100 opinion and column pieces for various newspapers and trade publications. His current research is primarily archival and historical, focusing on Bell Labs and industrial research, in general.
A Michael Noll's Webpage