ATHENS, Ohio -- "It's going to be a fast ride," said James Fales, director of the Center for Automatic Identification at Ohio University, as he gets ready to kick off the Automatic Identification & Data Capture Technical Institute, a fast and furious week of lectures and laboratory experience.

The 15th annual institute is at the Russ College of Engineering and Technology July 22 through 27.

The institute brings professors from all over the world to learn about automatic identification and data capture technologies such as bar coding, voice recognition and biometric identification. More than 400 professors representing over 18 countries have attended the institute during the last 15 years. The United States, Peru, Argentina, Indonesia and Switzerland are some of the countries represented by this year's 41 participants.

The goal of the institute is to further professors' knowledge of automatic identification and data capture so they may, in turn, introduce or expand automatic identification into their own course material. To date, professors report that after attending the institute they have instructed more than 11,000 students collectively about automatic identification.

The Ohio University Center for Automatic Identification is the nation's first university-based research center devoted solely to the study of automatic identification and data capture, which includes the technologies of bar coding, magnetic stripe and radio frequency identification and voice data entry.