arax ltd

Arax Limited is an IT services company based in London, UK. It was founded in 1991 with the purpose of providing consultancy and management services in the areas of human-computer interaction, virtual reality and web-based information management and content provision.

Since 1995 Arax Limited has been involved in a number of collaborative EU projects, including: COVEN - A Collaborative Virtual Environment (1995 - 1998); ETHOS - European Telematics Horizontal Observatory Service (1995 - 1997); VPARK - Virtual Amusement Park (1996 - 1998);

In 1998 the Arax team was involved in the conception and creation of the HLTCentral web site as part of the EC funded LINGLINK project. Since then, the site has evolved into a leading online information resource for the Human Language Technologies community, under the joint funding of two EC projects: EUROMAP - Human Language Technology Opportunity Promotion in Europe, and ELSNET - European Network of Excellence in Human Language Technologies.

Dr Vartkes Goetcherian, has an extensive background in the computer consultancy business. Following his research into parallel image processing at University College London, he joined Logica in 1979 where he worked in R&D in the Space and Defence sector for over 7 years. He left Logica in 1987 to join a start-up AI company, Harlequin Limited in Cambridge, where he was the Director responsible for all its European R&D activities. He led the company's efforts in a number of collaborative projects in EU and UK funded R&D programmes. In 1991 he set up Arax Limited. For a period between 1991 - 1994 he was an external consultant to the European Commission's Distance Education and Training Unit in Brussels. Since 1995 he has participated in several EU funded projects as well as acting as evaluator and reviewer of RTD projects for the EC. In 1999 he became the Editor of HLTCentral.org, which he continues to update at present. He also works for the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) as a project advisor for IPerG, an EC supported Pervasive Gaming IP project.

Ray Hudson has twenty-five years IT experience gained in a variety of organisational environments and application areas. His skills include the ability to manage projects through to implementation, create effective teams, and to form the required relationships with stakeholders for developing and implementing successful systems on time and to budget. Ray took a full-time MBA in 1991/92, and made a transition to research and development in the language technology field. Currently he is specialising in electronic commerce applications and promotion and awareness of applications of language technologies. He has fluent language skills acquired via extensive European experience in France, Germany and Italy.