MS in IT Faculty Leaders

Dr. Gregory N. Hughes

Professor for the IT Capstone Course

Founding Professor for the BS and MS degrees in Information Technology

Education: Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Princeton University; Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic University

Areas of Instruction: Dr. Hughes teaches IT capstone and managing IT Resources in the Information Technology department. His specialties span a number of business and functional areas including R&D, manufacturing, marketing, professional services and program management. In addition to his commitment to Information Technology students, Dr. Hughes has played an active role in the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute community by serving as a member of the Board of Trustees and first Vice Provost for Information Technology.

Research Interests: Dr. Hughes is pursuing the latest trends in information technology, e-Business and entrepreneurship. As he contributes to the field of business and technology management, Professor Hughes calls upon his 26 years of experience at AT&T and its successor Lucent Technologies. During AT&T's globalization, Dr. Hughes led Network Systems businesses in optical networking, fiber optics, and communications services in over 25 countries. Dr. Hughes received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award from President Bush in 1992 as President of AT&T's Transmission Systems Business.

Contact:
Email: hugheg@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-2590
Fax: (518) 276-6687
Office: 304 Lally Hall

Dr. David Spooner

Associate Dean of Science and Information Technology

Faculty leader for the Database Design Concentration

Areas of Instruction: Database, security, software design methodologies

Research Interests: Dr. Spooner's research interests include database security and Computer Science and Information Technology education. His current work focuses on access control for semi-structured and unstructured data. He was recently involved in a project with the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department to develop interactive web-based tools for modeling deformation at subduction zones along faults in the earth's surface. Another recent research project in collaboration with colleagues in the Computer Science Department developed a rule-based cache manager for distributed information systems. As head of the Database Design concentration, Dr. Spooner calls upon his years of research experience in database design that focused on developing database tools to support design, manufacturing and concurrent engineering.

For more on his publications, please visit: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~spoonerd

Contact:
Email: spoond@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-6890
Fax: (518) 276-6687
Office: 206 Lally Hall

Dr. Carl Pavarini

Professor for the Management Core

Education: Ph.D., systems engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1973. MIT Sloan Program for Senior Executives, 1986. INSEAD International Management Program, 1989.

Areas of Instruction: Business Issues for Engineers & Scientists

Interests: Dr. Pavarini is an active investor in, and advisor to, many technology based companies. He serves on the boards of several start-ups and one public company. Dr. Pavarini brings with him, 26 years of experience in Lucent Technologies and AT&T Bell Labs. He spent 10 years in Bell Labs in applied research and product development. Subsequently, he held numerous business management positions, most often with P&L responsibility for global products and services, ranging from $1B+ existing businesses to internal start-ups in new market areas. He held vice president and general manager positions in, and was a corporate officer of, both AT&T and Lucent Technologies.

Dr. Pavarini is currently a visiting professor at Stevens Institute of Technology as well as an adjunct professor of core engineering and information technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In the past he has taught entrepreneurship in telecommunications and electronic media in the MBA program of the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University.

Contact:
Email: carlpavarini@aol.com
Phone: (973) 543-9496
Fax: (973) 543-8164
Office: 3018 JEC

Dr. Christopher D. Carothers

Faculty leader of the Networking Concentration

Education: Ph.D. and M.S in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology; B.S, Information and Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Areas of Instruction: Dr. Carothers teaches Parallel Distributed Simulation Systems and Computer Organization.

Research Interests: Dr. Carothers brings with him his years of experience as a researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology, Bellcore and MITRE Corporation. Dr. Carothers is an associate professor at RPI and he is also a consultant to the General Electric Research Center.

Currently, he is working on many research projects like CAVES, SONMS, and RETINA to name a few. CAVES is a fully configurable storage system that allows a client application to register for caching services. While in CAVES different storage management protocols are tested using a simulation model. SONMS' objective is to advance network modeling, simulation and network experiment design to enable automated network management and control.

For more information about Dr. Carothers, kindly visit: http://www.cs.rpi.edu

Contact:
Email: chrisc@cs.rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-2930
Fax: (518) 276-4033
Office: 306 Lally Hall

Professor Patricia Search

Faculty leader for the Human Computer Interaction Concentration

Education: M.A., Goddard College

Areas of Instruction: Interface Design, Hypermedia Design & Development, Visual Design, Interactive Narrative.

Research Interests: In her current art work and multimedia research, Professor Search is designing multimedia installations that explore the aesthetics of space, time, and action in computer interface design. She has worked with computer graphics and electronic media for over twenty years. She has had 23 solo exhibitions of her art and participated in over 150 invitational or juried group exhibitions in the United States , Canada , Australia , Italy , Portugal , the Netherlands , the Czech Republic , Greece , China , and Japan . Professor Search's artwork has been published in twenty international journals and three documentaries. She received the best paper awards for her research in computer interface design from the International Visual Literacy Association and the World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia. In 2003 she received a Fellowship in Computer Arts from the New York Foundation for the Arts. That same year she received a Fulbright Senior Specialists Grant to work on interface design projects with the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia and the University of Western Sydney. In 2005 Professor Search was awarded the “Creative Achievement Award” from the Visual Literacy Association. She has served on the boards of the Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts and the International Visual Literacy Association.

A sample of her work can be seen at the following URL:

http://www.nyfa.org/nyfa_artists_detail.asp?pid=4889

Contact:
Email: searcp@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-6470
Fax: (518) 276-4090
Office: Sage 4707

Dr. Cheng Hsu

Faculty leader for the Information System Engineering Concentration

Education: Ph.D. in Management Sciences from Ohio State University; MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Ohio State University; BS in Industrial Systems Engineering from Tunghai University.

Areas of Instruction: Dr. Hsu teaches Databases, Information Systems, Electronic Business, and Manufacturing Information Management.

Research Interests: Dr. Hsu is currently working on service enterprise engineering, including participatory global database query, on-demand information matching, and integration of sensors, RFID, and enterprise databases for real-time distributed decision making. He is also a pioneering researcher on person-centered integration of information resources and enterprises. He is the originator of the Metadatabase Model (a model-based ontology and scalable common schema) for information integration and the Two-Stage Entity-Relationship model for data and knowledge systems analysis and design. Dr. Hsu has authored and edited several books on these subjects and guest edited a special issue of SMCA on e-Commerce (2000). His scholarly papers have appeared in a few IEEE Transactions (including SMCA, Software Engineering and Knowledge and Data Engineering) and many other major journals and refereed conferences. His research has been supported by both government agencies (including National Science Foundation and Army Research) and industry (e.g., Alcoa, GE, GM, IBM, and Samsung). His recent service appointments include a Fulbright Senior Specialist project to Taiwan (2005) and a faculty education project for the Royal Thai Ministry of Education (2004).He has been a principal investigator of numerous research projects, whose sponsors include both the industry (e.g., Alcoa, Digital, GE, GM, IBM, and Samsung) and the government (e.g., National Science Foundation, Army Research, New York State, and NATO).

For more information kindly visit his website www.viu.eng.rpi.edu .

Contact:
Email: hsuc@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-6847
Fax: (518) 276-8227
Office: 5219 CII

Dr. Jong-Shi Pang

Faculty leader for the Financial Engineering Concentration

Education: Ph.D. in Operations Research and M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University; B.S. in Mathematics from National Taiwan University.

Areas of Instruction: Mathematical Models of Operation Research.

Research Interests: The main focus of Dr. Pang's education and research has been in the field of optimization and equilibrium programming. This branch of applied and computational mathematics develops mathematical models and computational tools that can be used to determine the best allocation of limited resources in a variety of applications. This research applies to decisions in finance and business, and for the study of a host of non-smooth phenomena that arise from engineering and science, such as a bouncing ball hitting the floor and changing direction. Dr. Pang believes that the decision making models are enormously useful for management as well as engineering applications.

Dr. Pang is also the Margaret A. Distinguished professor in Applied Mathematics. In August 2003, Dr. Pang received the prestigious George B. Dantzig Prize, the world's top prize in the area of mathematical programming.

For more information about his research kindly visit: www.rpi.edu/~pangj/

Contact:
Email: pangj@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-2994
Fax: (518) 276-4824
Office: Sage 4208

Dr. David R. Musser

Faculty leader for the Software Design Concentration

Education: Ph.D. University of Wisconsin

Areas of Instruction: Dr. Musser's areas of instruction include programming languages and generic software design.

Research Interests: Dr. Musser has served on the University of Texas and University of Wisconsin faculties and on the research staffs of Information Sciences Institute and General Electric Research and Development center. His research on generic programming with Alexander Stepanov provided the foundation for the Standard Template Library (STL) now part of the C++ standard library. He is the co-author of STL Tutorial and Reference Guide, Second Edition: C++ Programming with the Standard Template Library.

A central focus of Dr. Musser's research is the concept based approach to the design of libraries of generic software components. Through this he aims to overcome problems with traditional software libraries like component inflexibility or poor performance. Currently, his research focus is on proof based methods of software development. He is working on proof-checking of theorems about generic algorithms and on code carrying theory, a new method of assuring secure delivery of mobile code (an alternative to proof carrying code).

For more information about him, kindly visit his webpage: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~musser

Contact:
Email: musser@cs.rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-8660
Fax: (518) 276-4033
Office: 313 Lally Hall

Dr.Jason Kuruzovich

Faculty leader for the MIS concentration

Education: Ph.D., University of Maryland, Information Systems; B.S., Lafayette College, Chemical Engineering

Areas of Instruction: Professor Kuruzovich is currently teaching an undergraduate course in data mining, a class which integrates the technical challenges of managing data with the business challenges of deriving insights through statistical analysis, visualization, and data mining. In addition, Professor Kuruzovich is currently co-teaching a PhD seminar on advanced topics in information systems research.

Research: Professor Kuruzovich’s research broadly examines the means through which both individuals and organizations derive value from information systems. His research is currently under review at leading publications including the Journal of Marketing, Information Systems Research, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Professor Kuruzovich’s previous work experience includes consulting experience with numerous Fortune 500 companies and several high-technology startups.

Contact:
Email: kuruzj@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-2332
Fax: (518) 276-8661
Office: 1120 Pittsburgh Building (PITTS)

Dr. Sibel Adali

Professor for the Database Core Course

Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park; Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering and Information Science from Bilkent University, Turkey.

Areas of Instruction: Database Systems, Advanced Database Management Topics, Multimedia Database Systems.

Research Interests: Dr. Adali's current research focuses on caching and reuse of application specific data. Dr. Adali is a member of the CAVES (A Configurable Application View Storage System) project. ‘CAVES' allows a client application to register for caching services. Applications can register methods to re-use stored applications views and also register rules that govern how the storage of these views should be managed.

Dr. Adali is also a member of the “Connected Kids” project. This project is producing technical innovations in database design for distributed data entry by youth-services organizations and is modeling the processes of social organization required to support and sustain a complex, multipurpose information system.

For more information on her research kindly visit: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sibel/

Contact:
Email: adalis@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-8047
Fax: (518) 276-4033
Office: Amos Eaton 125

Dr. Koushik Kar

Professor for Networking Core

Education: Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland College Park; B.Tech in electrical engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, India.

Areas of Instruction: Dr. Kar has been involved in teaching courses like Computer Communication Networks, Broadband and Optical Networks, Computer Architecture, Networks and Operating Systems.

Research Interests: Dr. Kar's interests lie in modeling, analysis and optimization of communication networks. The central focus of his recent research has been on distributed optimization of critical resources (like bandwidth and energy) in communication networks. More specifically, Dr. Kar's interests lie in design and analysis of algorithms that can be implemented using local coordination/information, and can optimize the overall usage or allocation of critical resources in a communication network, either exactly or approximately. The analytical tools that he uses in his research include linear and nonlinear programming, convex optimization, stochastic programming, queuing theory, network flows, integer programming, and distributed and approximation algorithms. His research is currently supported by three NSF grants including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Contact:
Email: kark@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-2653
Fax: (518) 276-4403
Office: JEC 6048

Dr. Ana Milanova

Professor for the Software Core  

Education: Ph.D. Rutgers University, M.S. Rutgers University, B.A. American University in Bulgaria

Areas of Instruction: Software Design and Documentation/Software Engineering I, Program Analysis for Software Engineering.

Research Interests: Dr.Milanova's broad interests include areas of software engineering, programming languages and compilers. Dr. Milanova is actively involved in building tools for object oriented software that improve software productivity and software quality. Her research focuses on static and dynamic program analysis for the purpose of testing, understanding, verification and maintenance of complex software systems.

For more information on her research kindly visit: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~milanova

Contact:
Email: milanova@cs.rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-6887
Fax: (518) 276-4033
Office: Lally Hall 314

Dr. Roger Grice

Clinical Associate Professor of Technical Communication and HCI

Professor for Core courses in Human Computer Interaction

Education: Ph.D. in Communication and Rhetoric, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; M.S. in Computer Science, Union College, Schenectady; B.S. (Electrical Engineering), Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn.

Areas of Instruction: Foundations of HCI Usability, Communication Design for the World Wide Web, and Writing for the World Wide Web.

Research Interests: Dr. Grice is pursuing latest trends in Human Computer Interactions.

His research focus includes information usability, human-computer interaction, communicating on the WWW, usability testing and evaluation, analysis of computer games interfaces, effective teaching and learning in virtual classroom and designing the total user experience.

He brings with him his experience at IBM where he was actively involved in planning, designing and developing information for large scale programming systems. Presently, he is a clinical associate professor of technical communication and interface design at RPI. Further, he the founding principal of Roger Grice Associates with clients such as IBM corporation, Skill Dynamics and Austin Community College to name a few. Dr. Grice is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and Assistant to the STC President for Membership. He is a senior member of IEEE and past president of IEEE's Professional Communication Society; he currently serves on IEEE's Publication Services and Products Board. He has received STC's Jay R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication and IEEE Professional Communication Society's Alfred N. Goldsmith Award for Contributions to Engineering Communication.

For more information about his research and work kindly visit his website - www.rpi.edu/~gricer

Contact:
Email: gricer@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-2828
Fax: (518) 276-4092
Office: 4402 Russell Sage Laboratory (SAGE)

Gail Gere

Ms. Gere, with the Founders Award of Excellence winner, Ms. Pooja Daswani

Director of Program Development for IT and advisor to MS in IT students  

Education: University Certificate (ABD), Educational Administration, University at Albany; M.S, Educational Administration, University at Albany; Bachelor of Arts, English Education, University at Albany.

Interests: While not a faculty member, Ms. Gere is included here because of her extensive responsibilities for the MS in IT. Ms. Gere has over 30 years of experience in admissions and student advisement. For more than 20 years, she was the Director of Graduate Academic and Enrollment Services for the entire university where she developed methodologies to enhance the enrollment process. She has also served on numerous campus committees such as Diversity Board, Reengineering Committees and the Graduate Advisory Board. She has assisted many departments in their recruitment initiatives using market research and focus groups. Further, Ms. Gere chaired the National Graduate Committee of American Association of Collegiate Registrar and Admissions Officers, presented a widely quoted enrollment seminar at the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools, and consulted at other universities. For the past 6 years, she has been the Director of Program Development for IT where she has been instrumental in increasing the variety of concentrations as well as increasing concentration course choices.

Her research and years of experience in the enrollment process ensures that only the best candidates get admitted to the program. Her expertise and passion towards her work is reflected in her commitment to help students throughout the application and enrollment process, as well as with course selection, and ultimately with securing their positions in top firms.

Contact:
Email: gereg@rpi.edu
Phone: (518) 276-6960
Fax: (518) 276-6687
Office: 203 Lally School