Richard Taylor

Richard D. Taylor holds the prestigious Palmer Chair and is Professor of Telecommunications Studies, and serves as an Affiliate Professor of Information Sciences and Technology. He is Co-Director of the Penn State Institute for Information Policy and a Fellow of the E-Business Research Center. He has directed major research projects and published widely on the implications of investment in information technology on economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. He has some 35 years of experience in the telecommunications field. His scholarly work has primarily been in understanding the impact of investment in information technologies.

Taylor is active nationally and internationally in research, publishing and consulting. In January 2009, he served as co-chair of the annual convention of Pacific Telecommunications Conference. The event attracted more than 1,000 attendees—a mix of company officials, consultants, lawyers and scholars. Workshops, speakers, panels and lectures during the conference touched on a wide variety of topics from on overall theme of "Collaborating for Change."

He has been a speaker at academic, governmental, legal and corporate meetings in the telecommunications, cable television, broadcasting and publishing industries, as well as a consultant to non-profit groups including regulators, educators and librarians. He has organized and chaired a number of major conferences on topics relating to information technology and development and electronic commerce. In 2002, he was honored by appointment as an IBM Faculty Partner for his work in the area of information metrics.

He is co-author of the book, "Technology Parks of the Asia Pacific: Lessons for the Regional Digital Divide" (M.E. Sharpe 2003), sponsored by The Ford Foundation. He was invited to present the findings of that study at the World Bank InfoDev Conference in Chongqing, China. From August 2003 to August 2004, he was a Visiting Scholar at the East West Center in Hawaii. In 1995, he served as a USIS Visiting Expert in India on telecommunications liberalization.

Taylor is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the Federal Communications Bar Association. He is a past member of the Boards of the Pacific Telecommunications Council and the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 1989, he was vice president and corporate counsel for Warner Cable Communications, and from 1993 to 1998 was an outside member of the Board of PrimeStar Partners, Ltd., a satellite television broadcasting company.