Director, New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce, Information Society Technology, Information Society DG, European Commission

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Rosalie A. Zobel was born in England. She received a bachelor's degree in physics from Nottingham University, UK, in 1964, and a PhD in radiation physics from London University in 1967.

She started her career in the Information Technology industry in ICL in 1967, and later held positions as a systems engineer in CERN (Centre Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire), Geneva, Switzerland, the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, UK, and the Max Plank Institut fur Plasmaphysik, Garching, Germany. At the latter she became operations manager of the first CRAY Supercomputer centre in continental Europe.

In 1981 she moved to the USA and took up a position in the AT&T Headquarters, Basking Ridge, USA. She held positions as senior marketing manager for open systems software both for the USA and international markets, and was responsible from 1983-1986 for the international UNIX business. In 1986 she became senior marketing manager for information technology products in AT&T Japan.

She returned to Europe in 1988 as Deputy Head of Unit of the European Community's ESPRIT Business Systems unit. In 1991 she launched the EC initiative in Open Microprocessor systems (OMI). From 1995 she was the Head of EC unit "Business systems, multimedia and microprocessor applications", and EU-coordinator of the G7 Pilot Project "Global Marketplace for SMEs". She is now Director of the Information Society Technologies Programme Key Action II - "New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce".