Information Technology

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Associate Dean: David L. Spooner

Director of Program Development: Gail Gere

Program Manager: Linda Kramarchyk

Program Home Page: http://www.it.rpi.edu/

Information Technology (IT) degrees available at Rensselaer include the Bachelor of Science and the Master of Science. Opportunities for Ph.D. level work in information technology are also available. Those holding these degrees are in great demand and command some of the highest starting salaries and bonuses in any profession.

Rensselaer’s IT degree programs are designed for students with an interest in computers that they wish to apply to other disciplines. Recognizing that Information Technology is the “enabler of the Information Age,” Rensselaer has made IT one of its top academic priorities. The Institute has developed a highly interdisciplinary program that emphasizes IT’s application to nearly every field from science and engineering to management to humanities and social sciences.

Rensselaer’s undergraduate and graduate IT degree programs consist of two components. The first is a set of core courses that focus on the effective use of computers to solve problems. The second is the concentration area in which students employ their technical expertise to a problem domain or discipline of their choice.

Each of Rensselaer’s five schools offers concentration area options to IT students. The IT curriculum draws it’s coursework from each of these academic schools. Many Rensselaer faculty members representing a wide variety of the disciplines taught at the Institute contribute to this program, thereby providing students with a broad range of perspectives on IT and the breadth of its impact on the world.

Faculty*

Professors 

Bailey, R.A.—Ph.D. (McGill University); coordination chemistry and chemistry of molten salts (Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department).

Breneman, C.M.—Ph.D. (University of California, Santa Barbara); physical organic chemistry (Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department).

Bringsjord, S.—Ph.D. (Brown University); logic, philosophical logic, philosophy of artificial intelligence (Cognitive Science Department).

Century, M.—M.A. (University of California, Berkeley); musicology, music composition, improvisation and performance (Arts Department).

Connor, K.—Ph.D. (Polytechnic Institute of New York); electromagnetic theory, wave propagation, plasmas for fusion research and industrial applications, finite element methods (Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department).

Gerhardt, L.A.—Ph.D. (State University of New York at Buffalo); communication systems, digital voice and image processing, adaptive systems and pattern recognition, integrated manufacturing (Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department).

Goldberg, M.K.—Ph.D. (Institute of Mathematics, Novosibirsk, Russia); algorithms for combinatorial optimization, experimental algorithm design and analysis, computational learning theory, graph theory (Computer Science Department).

Gowdy, J.M.—Ph.D. (West Virginia University); ecological economics, industrial organization and public regulation, regional economics (Economics Department).

Hasan, I.—Ph.D. (University of Houston); finance (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Herron, I.—Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University); applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, hydrodynamics, stability (Mathematical Sciences Department).

Hess, D.—Ph.D. (Cornell University); science, culture, and power; social studies of alternative medicine (Science and Technology Studies Department).

Hsu, C.—Ph.D. (Ohio State University); metadatabase and information systems, Internet enterprises planning, database and knowledge-based systems, computerized manufacturing, enterprise integration and modeling, information visualization, economic evaluation of cyberspace-augmented enterprises (Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems Department).

Isaacson, D.—Ph.D. (New York University); mathematical physics, biomedical applications (Mathematical Science).

Kapila, A.—Ph.D. (Cornell University); applied mathematics, combustion, fluid mechanics (Mathematical Sciences Department).

Miller, B.—M.F.A. (New York University Graduate Film and Television Program); video art, media art (Arts Department).

Nierzwicki-Bauer, S.A.—Ph.D. (University of New Hampshire); plant molecular biology; subsurface microbiology (Biology Department).

Phan, P.—Ph.D. (University of Washington); strategic management, entrepreneurship (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Rolnick, N.B.—Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley); music composition, electronic and computer music, electronic arts (Arts Department).

Saulnier, G.J.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); circuits and electronics, communication systems, digital signal processing (Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department).

Search, P. —M.A. (Goddard College); visual design theory and practice; interaction design and multimedia art; computer animation and hypermedia interface design; multi-literacy models for intercultural communication (Language, Literature and Communication Department).

Siegmann, W.L.—Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); applied mathematics, wave propagation (Mathematical Sciences Department).

Spooner, D.L.—Ph.D. (Pennsylvania State University); database systems, database security, and database browsing and visualization (Computer Science Department).

Wait, S.C., Jr.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); spectroscopy, vibrational and electronic spectroscopy (Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department).

Willemain, T.—Ph.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); probabilistic modeling, data analysis, forecasting (Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems Department).

Grice, R.—Ph.D. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); information usability, human-computer interfaces, applications of computers to technical communication, information development in industry (Language, Literature and Communication Department).

Hughes, G.—Ph.D. (Princeton University); global economics, economics of information technology (Lally School of Management and Technology, Economics Department; and Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems).

Younessi, H.—Ph.D. (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia); computer and information sciences, software and systems engineering (Rensselaer at Hartford – Department of Engineering and Science).

Associate Professors

Adali, S.—Ph.D. (University of Maryland); heterogenous distributed information systems, database systems (Computer Science Department).

Bystroff, C.—Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego); bioinformatics, protein folding, computational biology (Biology Department).

Carothers, C.—Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology); computer simulation, parallel simulation, parallel systems (Computer Science Department).

De, S.—Sc.D. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology); numerical methods in engineering, multimodal virtual environments, fast computational techniques of MEMS (Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering Department).

Durgee, J.— Ph.D. (University of Pittsburgh); marketing research and advertising (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Hahn, T.—Ph.D. (Wesleyan University); ethnomusicology, Japanese & contemporary music and dance, choreography (Arts Department).

Hanna, M.H.—Ph.D. (University of Illinois); slime mold development and genetics (Biology Department).

Kalsher, M.J.—Ph.D. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University); human factors, industrial/organizational psychology, applied experimental psychology (Cognitive Science Department).

Krishnamoorthy, M.S.—Ph.D. (Indian Institute of Technology); programming languages, analysis of algorithms (Computer Science Department).

Krueger, T.—M.Arch. (Columbia University); human-environment interaction, design (School of Architecture).

Magdon-Ismail, M.—Ph.D. (California Institute of Technology); machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics (Computer Science Department).

Mistur, M.—B.Arch. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); architectural design (School of Architecture).

Nambisan, S.—Ph.D. (Syracuse University); information systems (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Piper, B.R.—Ph.D. (University of Utah); computer-aided geometric design, numerical analysis, computer graphics (Mathematical Sciences Department).

Ravichandran, T.—Ph.D. (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale); management information systems (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Xiang, N.—Ph.D. (Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany); architectural acoustics, acoustic signal processing (School of Architecture).

Clinical Associate Professor

Heim, J.—Ph.D. (University at Albany); money and banking, international economics (Economics Department).

Assistant Professors

Akera, A.—Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania); history of scientific and technical computing, innovation studies (Science and Technology Studies Department).

Kuruzovich, J.—Ph.D. (University of Maryland); information systems (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Ukkusuri, S.—Ph.D. (University of Texas, Austin); transportation network modeling, stochastic optimization, traffic operations, transportation safety and security (Civil and Environmental Engineering Department).

Clinical Assistant Professors

Brown, R.H.—M.S.E.E. (University of Illinois); computer communication networks, network management, client/server architectures (Rensselaer at Hartford – Department of Engineering and Science).

Sands, R.—M.S., MBA (University at Albany); organizational behavior and human resource management (Lally School of Management and Technology).

van Heuveln, B.—Ph.D. (State University of New York at Binghamton); philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, logic, computation, reasoning, and cognition (Cognitive Science Department).

Adjunct Faculty

Kolb, J.—P.E., M.Eng. (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute); management of information systems (Chief Information Officer, DotCIO) (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Miner, J.—M.S. (Stevens Institute of Technology); information technology management, enterprise computing architectures (Director- IACS, Integrated Administrative Computing Services, DotCIO) (Lally School of Management and Technology).

Wright, F.—M.S.E.E. (Naval Postgraduate School); general management, manufacturing operations, international business (Lally School of Management and Technology).

*Departmental faculty listings are accurate as of the date generated for inclusion in this catalog. For the most up-to-date listing of faculty positions, including end-of-year promotions, please refer to the Faculty Roster section of this catalog, which is current as of the May 2008 Board of Trustees meeting.

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