Speaker
Donald Cooke
Chief Scientist, Tele Atlas
Donald Cooke was a member of the Census Bureau team that developed the Dual Independent Map Encoding (DIME) system in 1967. In 1968 he co-founded Urban Data Processing, Inc, now Harte-Hanks Data Technologies. In 1980, Mr.Cooke founded Geographic Data Technology, Inc, bought by Tele Atlas in 2004. Tele Atlas North America now employs 550 people as a supplier of premium street and boundary databases for navigation, Business Geographics and LBS applications. GDT and ETAK, also bought by Tele Atlas, were the major TIGER digitizing contractors in the mid-1980s. Mr.Cooke was a member of the National Academy of Science's Mapping Science Committee from 1989 to 1993. He is a graduate of Yale and studied Civil Engineering Systems at MIT. His other interests include windsurfing, ice hockey, chamber music, astrophotography and two antique cars.