Juergen Hahn

Professor and Department Head
Juergen Hahn is the department head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in addition to holding an appointment in the Department of Chemical & Biological Engineering. He received his Diploma degree in engineering from RWTH Aachen, Germany, in 1997, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He was a post-doctoral researcher at the Chair for Process Systems Engineering at RWTH Aachen, Germany, before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, in 2003 and moving to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2012. His research interests include systems biology and process modeling and analysis with over 140 peer-reviewed publications in print. Dr. Hahn is a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship (1995/96), received the Best Referee Award for 2004 from the Journal of Process Control, the CPC 7 Outstanding Contributed Paper Award in 2006, was named Outstanding Reviewer by the journal Automatica in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2010 CAST Outstanding Young Researcher, and has been elected as an AIMBE Fellow in 2013, an AIChE Fellow in 2020, and a Fellow of BMES in 2022. He served on the IEEE CSS Board of Governors in 2016 and has been a CACHE Trustee since 2014. He is currently serving as deputy editor-in-chief for the Journal of Process Control, as editor for the journal Optimal Control: Applications and Methods, and as associate editor for the journals Control Engineering Practice, the Journal of Advanced Manufacturing and Processing, and the Journal of Personalized Medicine.

Jose Holguin-Veras

William H. Hart Chair Professor and Director, Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE)
Dr. José Holguín-Veras is the William H. Hart Professor, and Director of the Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment; and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering, Magna Cum Laude, from the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in 1981; his M.Sc. from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1984; and his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin in 1996. He has been a faculty at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, City College of New York (1997-2002), and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2002-present). His work has received numerous awards, including the 2013 White House Champion of Change Award for his contributions to freight transportation and disaster response. His research emphasizes the integration, synthesis, and projection of the knowledge that exist in multiple disciplines to produce solutions to the complex and multifaceted problems—which have proven to be too complex to be solved by single-disciplinary approaches—that impact freight transportation and humanitarian logistics. His research taps into the knowledge of social sciences to build more realistic mathematical models of humanitarian logistics, and integrate cutting edge economic principles into freight transportation modeling, so that a complete picture could be developed on the broader impacts of transportation activity on the economy and the environment; and on the most effective ways to conduct post-disaster humanitarian logistics. His research blends field research and measurements, applied and basic research to ensure that theory relates to reality; and, ultimately, to a set of actionable policy recommendations that contribute to the betterment of the economy and society. Current research activities focus on three major areas: freight transportation demand modeling, sustainable freight policy, and humanitarian logistics. His work on freight demand modeling focuses on enhancing the realism of spatial price equilibrium (SPE) models, and development of simplified modeling techniques. His work on sustainable freight policy studies the interactions between the agents (e.g., shippers, carriers, receivers) involved in freight activity, to define ways to exploit these interactions to foster sustainable development and operations. An important third area, of profound human impact, focuses on the development of novel forms of humanitarian logistics. His research group has pioneered the multidisciplinary study of post-disaster humanitarian logistic operations. His research has: identified the key lessons learned from the response to the largest disasters of recent times; translated these lessons into actionable policy recommendations; and shared these suggestions with disaster response agencies. As part of the field work, his research group has conducted detailed analyses of the most prominent disasters of recent times, including: Hurricane Katrina, the Port-au-Prince earthquake, the tornadoes in Joplin and Alabama, Hurricane Irene, and the Tohoku disasters in Japan. His contributions to the solution of regional and national problems are numerous as they span modeling, policy, and research. In particular, his ability to transition research into practice—navigating complex implementation environments—has been recognized with appointments to prestigious positions. As a member of the Board of the New York State Thruway Authority—as the only researcher and Hispanic American in the board’s history—he helps oversee toll policy and the replacement of the $4 billion Tappan Zee Bridge, one of the largest construction projects in the US. He is overseeing all-electronic-toll-collection, toll setting, financing, asset management, and helps the agency reach a higher level of efficiency. His policy contributions also cover disaster response; as a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Disaster Research Roundtable, he advises the federal government in disaster response on the basis of his field research after large disasters and catastrophic events. He has been member of numerous panels for the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other agencies. His research, routinely implemented by practitioners, has been impactful. His work on freight generation and freight trip generation has led to the development of freight trip generation models—to be incorporated in the next edition of the ITE Trip Generation Manual—that are more accurate than any currently available. Equally transformative has been his research on freight tour models, freight origin-destination estimation, and others that are being incorporated into transportation modeling packages such as TRANSCAD, TRANUS, among others. One of his most visible contributions is the NYC off-hour-delivery project, which is having a transformative effect on urban freight policy. This project has blossomed into a potent freight demand management tool that has won the enthusiastic support of the private sector. It is estimated to lead to economic savings of 100-200/million dollars per year, and reductions of: 202.7 metric tons (t)/year of CO, 40t/year of HC, 11.8t/year of NOx, and 69.9 kg/year of PM10). Recognizing these significant impacts, the City of New York adopted OHD as part of its sustainability plan, and the Federal Highway Administration created a program to foster OHD, based on the one pioneered in NYC, and to replicate it in other US cities. Because of its impacts, TIME magazine identified off-hour deliveries as one of the “10 Ideas that Make a Difference” in traffic congestion. His leadership positions include: President of the Scientific Committee of the Pan-American Conferences of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, member of the Scientific Committee of the World Conference of Transport Research, Elected Member of the Council for the Association for European Transport, member of the International Organizing Committee of the City Logistics Conferences, member of technical committees at numerous professional organizations, and member of the editorial boards of the leading journals. He has led dozens of technical sessions, and has participated in numerous technical committees at the Transportation Research Board (e.g., Intermodal Freight, Urban Freight, Freight Economics, Freight Planning and Logistics, Road Pricing, Task Force of Freight Demand Modeling), European Transport Conference, World Conference of Transport Research, Pan-American Conference of Transport and Traffic Engineering, and others. He is a member of a number of high level public sector committees and boards. His current appointments include: United States Department of Transportation’s National Freight Advisory Committee (2013-2015), Board of the New York State Thruway Authority (2010-present), National Academy of Sciences’ Disaster Research Roundtable, National Academy of Sciences’ Committee for Review of USDOT Truck Size and Weight Study (2013-2014), Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Core Group on Community Engagement (June 2011-present), Advisory Panel for the NY-NJ-CT-PA Regional Catastrophic Planning Group (March 2010-2013), and Advisory Panel of the Mohawk Corridor Multimodal Transportation Study (2010-2012). The list of awards he has received includes: the 2013 White House Champion of Change Award, CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2001-2006); the Milton Pikarsky Memorial Award in 1996, from the Council on University Transportation Centers, the Salute to the Scholars Award from the City University of New York (in 2000 and 2001); the 2006 Robert E. Kerker Research Award in recognition of Excellence in Research of Special Importance to Practitioners and Scholars of Public Administration and Policy in New York State; the 2007 School of Engineering Research Award; and a Proclamation from the Council of the City of New York (2001). He is a fellow of: State Academy of Public Administration (2006), International Road Federation (1991), Japanese International Cooperation Agency (1989), and the Organization of American States (1982-1984). According to Google Scholar, he is the most widely published and cited freight researcher in the world. He has more than 150 technical publications in the most prestigious venues, and, reflecting his influence, his work has been cited more than 1,300 times by his peers. He has given 15 plenaries, 40 invited lectures, and hundreds of presentations in professional conferences. As a Principal Investigator (PI), he has managed about $13.4 million in competitively awarded contracts from the most prestigious funding agencies: USDOT ($8.2 million), NSF ($3.9 million), New York and New Jersey State Departments of Transportation ($1.3 million), among others. These projects have focused on freight research ($8.4 million), disaster research ($2.8 million), road pricing ($1.2 million), and others ($1.0 million). As a Co-PI, he has worked on about $10 million in projects. He has extensive professional experience in both developing and developed countries. His professional experience includes the analysis of the intermodal alternatives for the trans-isthmian corridor that runs parallel to the Panama Canal, and the development of numerous national and regional transportation plans in Venezuela, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and other countries. He has been consultant in transportation planning, modeling, and economics for international companies and financial institutions, such as The World Bank, United Nations, Inter-American Development Bank, among many others.

Jonathan Dordick

Vice President, Strategic Alliances and Translation, Institute Professor, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Biological Sciences
Jonathan S. Dordick, Ph.D., is Institute Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with joint appointments in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Biological Sciences.He received his B.A. degree in Biochemistry and Chemistry from Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At Rensselaer, he served as the Vice President for Research, the Director of the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, and Department Chair. He was the founding Co-Director of the Rensselaer-Mount Sinai Center for Engineering and Precision Medicine. Prior to joining Rensselaer, he was Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at the University of Iowa, where he also served as the founding Associate Director of the Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing. He has served the biochemical engineering community as a previous chairman of the Biotechnology Division of the American Chemical Society and as an editor of Biotechnology & Bioengineering. Dr. Dordick has made foundational contributions to enzyme technology, microscale cell culture engineering, drug discovery and human toxicology, and biomanufacturing. He pioneered the development of enzymatic and chemoenzymatic methods for new materials synthesis, initiated the field of molecular bioprocessing, which combines biocatalytic molecular diversity and in vitro metabolic pathway engineering with high-throughput and high-content microfluidic- and microarray-based tools to generate biologically active compounds, and greatly expanded a fundamental understanding of enzymatic catalysis in abiotic environments critical for chemical and pharmaceutical processing. Finally, he has used biomolecular discovery and engineering to address clinical translation in areas of infectious and neurological diseases, anticoagulant therapy, and highly sensitive point-of-care biosensors based on CRISPR technology. Dr. Dordick has received numerous awards and honors, including election to the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors, and receipt of the DIC Award for Excellence in Biochemical Engineering and James E. Bailey Award, both of the Society of Biological Engineering, Amgen Award in Biochemical and Molecular Engineering, AIChE Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award, ACS-BIOT Marvin J. Johnson Award, ACS-BIOT Elmer Gaden Award, and International Enzyme Engineering Award. He is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers. Dr. Dordick has cofounded several companies, including EnzyMed, Solidus Biosciences, Inc., Redpin Therapeutics, SynAppBio, and Lavaage, Inc. He has also served on multiple White House-sponsored panels and committees in biomanufacturing. Dr. Dordick has published over 430 papers and is an inventor/co-inventor on over 50 patents and patent applications.

Jonas Braasch

Professor and Associate Director for Research, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC)
Jonas Braasch is a Professor at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and teaches in the Graduate Program in Architectural Acoustics. His research interests span collaborative virtual reality systems, binaural hearing, auditory modeling, multimodal integration, sensory substitution devices, aural architecture and creative processes in music improvisation. For his work, he has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, DFG (German Science Foundation), the European Research Council, New York State Council on the Arts, the Christopher and Dana Reeve and Craig H. Neilsen Foundations. He obtained a master’s degree from Dortmund University (Germany, 1998) in Physics and two Ph.D. degrees from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany (2001, 2004) in Electrical Engineering/Information Science and Musicology. As a soprano saxophonist, he has worked with Curtis Bahn, Chris Chafe, Stuart Dempster, Mark Dresser, Zach Layton, Francisco Lopez, Pauline Oliveros, and Doug van Nort – among others. Within his saxophone practice, Jonas Braasch developed his horn of sounds concept, which is the first method for wind instruments to use different sound generators to create a palette of sounds and styles using one main instrument to achieve an enhanced awareness of internal diversityJonas Braasch is an acoustician, musicologist, and sound artist who teaches courses in Acoustics, Music, and the Doctoral Seminar at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He obtained a master's degree from Dortmund University (Germany, 1998) in Physics and two PhD degrees from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany (2001, 2004) in Electrical Engineering/Information Science and Musicology. Mr. Braasch is the co-founder and director of the Communication Acoustics and Aural Architecture Research Laboratory (CA3RL) which is part of RPI's Architectural Acoustics Program. His research interests include Binaural Hearing, Multi-channel Audio Technology, Telematic Music Systems, Perceptual Audio/Visual Integration, Intelligent Systems, and Musical Acoustics. Jonas Braasch (co-)authored more than 60 journal and conference papers and 3 monographs. For his work, he has received funding from the NSF, NSERC, DFG (German Science Foundation), and NYSCA. As a soprano saxophonist and sound artist, he has on-going collaborations with Curtis Bahn, Chris Chafe, Michael Century, Mark Dresser, Pauline Oliveros, Doug van Nort, and Sarah Weaver - among others. In 2006, he has been awarded with the Lothar-Cremer Prize, the highest recognition of the German Acoustical Society for young investigators.

Patricia Search

Director, Center for Global Communication+Design and Professor
In her current art work and multimedia research, Patricia Search designs multimedia installations that explore the aesthetics of space, time, and action in computer interface design. “I work with digital media and create interactive installations that highlight ways to use diverse media, exploration, physical interaction, and social discourse to create immersive experiences for online communication,” Search said. “These multisensory environments create perceptual dichotomies that juxtapose realism and fantasy, logic and emotion, continuity and transition. The installations incorporate non-Western perspectives of space, time, and action inspired by indigenous cultures, resulting in innovative ways to use interaction design to define a sense of place. As a result, my research is expanding the syntax of experience design and shaping new dimensions in relational aesthetics through the integration of physical and virtual environments. In these installations, multiple viewers use the interaction with physical and virtual elements, social discourse, and memory to define the aesthetics of the experience and a sense of place.” Patricia Search has had over 40 solo exhibitions and multimedia installations of her art throughout the United States, including 11 in New York City, as well as exhibitions in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany and Taiwan. She has also participated in over 150 group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, Greece, China, and Japan. She was awarded a Fellowship in Computer Art from the New York Foundation for the Arts and received a Fulbright Senior Specialists Grant to work on multimedia projects with two universities in Australia. In 2005, she received the Creative Achievement Award from the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), and in 2010, she was awarded the IVLA James G. Sucy Distinguished Service Award. She was President of IVLA from 2009-2010. She received the best paper award for her research from the World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, and she received the IVLA Editors’ Choice Award for best papers in 2003 and 2007. Her art has been published in numerous journals and three television documentaries including a PBS documentary. Patricia Search served as Co-Editor of the international Journal of Visual Literacy and was a contributing editor for the International Journal of Learning for two years. She has co-edited five books on visual literacy research. She served on the Board of Directors of the International Visual Literacy Association and the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (ISAST).

William Wallace

Professor Emeritus
 He is presently engaged in research on the application of agent based technology to problems in incident management and emergency response, issues in trust and ethical decision making, resilience supply networks, and in studying emergent and improvisational behavior in social media immediately before and following a disaster.  Professor Wallace’s research has been supported by agencies and organizations such as the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including the U.S, Coast Guard), U.S. Department of Transportation and Army Research Office, and has resulted in over 200 archival publications. He was a member of the National Research Council's Board on Infrastructure and the Built Environment and served on the National Research Council Committee on Social Science Research on Disasters.  Professor Wallace received the International Emergency Management and Engineering Conference Award for Outstanding Long-Term Dedication to the Field of Emergency Management, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Third Millennium Medal and is a Fellow of the IEEE, and received the 2004 INFORMS President’s Award for work that advances the welfare of society. In addition, he was either Project Director or co-Project Director for research that resulted in the ITS-America “Best of ITS” award in the area of Research and Innovation and four project of the year awards from ITS-New York.  

Vivek Ghosal

Department Head of Economics and Virginia and Lloyd W. Rittenhouse Professor
Dr. Ghosal is Professor and Department Head of Economics, and Virginia and Lloyd W. Rittenhouse Chaired Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences. He was the Acting Dean, School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences, from January-July 2023. He is an Affiliated Faculty member at Rensselaer's Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS), and at the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications (IDEA).Professor Ghosal's current research and policy interests include: (1) biopharmaceuticals markets focusing on innovation, pricing and FDA regulations; (2) Antitrust laws and enforcement; (3) big data, artificial intelligence and competition law and economics; (4) firm strategy related to innovation, M&As, and pricing; and (5) firms' decision-making under uncertainty. The courses he currently teaches include: (1) Economics of Biotechnology and Medical Innovations; and (2) Economics of Regulations and Firm Strategy.Before joining Rensselaer in 2016, he was the Richard and Mary Inman Chaired Professor at the School of Economics at Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech., he was the Director of the MS and PhD. programs from 2012-2016. Prior to his position at Georgia Tech., he was a Senior Economist at the Economic Analysis Group, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice (1998-2001). In this position, he worked on mergers and acquisitions, horizontal and vertical market power, tying agreements, joint ventures, regulatory reform, and innovation and efficiency. Some of the markets he investigated include electricity, nuclear fuel, natural gas, coal, information technology, radio broadcasting, oilfield drilling services, and postal.Professor Ghosal has published two edited books: The Political Economy of Antitrust (Elsevier, 2007); and Reforming Rules and Regulations: Laws, Institutions and Implementation (MIT Press, 2010). He has published in peer-reviewed journals in Economics, Management, and Law & Economics, including: Review of Economics and Statistics; Journal of Law and Economics; Journal of Industrial Economics; International Journal of Industrial Organization; Research Policy; Small Business Economics; Managerial and Decision Economics; Business Strategy and the Environment; Journal of Competition Law & Economics; Review of Industrial Organization; Review of Law & Economics; Journal of Economics and Business; Illinois Law Review; China Economic Review; and Harvard Public Health Review. His research has been published as book chapters by publishers such as: MIT Press; Stanford University Press; Elsevier Science; Edgar Elgar; Routledge; and Springer.Dr. Ghosal's international appointments have included Visiting Professor (2010-2018) at the European Business School (Wiesbaden, Germany) where he conducted research and lectured on regulations and business strategy, with emphasis on environmental regulations, sustainability, and innovation in the automobile and other manufacturing industries. He was a Visiting Professor (2010-2016) at the joint Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, Paris) and Korea Development Institute School of Public Policy and Management (Seoul, South Korea) international program on regulatory reform and competition policy. In this position he provided executive education lectures and workshops to international public policy professionals. On topics related to antitrust, competition law and enforcement, regulations, and mergers and acquisitions, he has delivered executive education lectures in Taipei, Lima, New Delhi, and Tokyo. He has taught Summer graduate school workshops at the University of Amsterdam, Ludwig Maximilians University (Munich), and Central European University (Budapest).Professor Ghosal's grants, contacts and research have included industries such as: automobiles; high-speed rail; healthcare; transportation; information technology; telecommunications and media; energy and electricity; and paper products. His externally funded research grants have included issues related to: regional economic and business development; infrastructure investments; public-private partnerships; impact of environmental regulations; regulatory assessments; and innovation and efficiency. The organizations he has received funding from include: U.S. Department of Transportation; Georgia Department of Transportation; Ragnar Soderberg's Foundation (Sweden); Woodruff Foundation; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, Paris); Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies (Georgia Institute of Technology); and Scripps Foundation.Professor Ghosal has been a consultant for international organizations, governments, consulting firms and companies on issues related to antitrust, regulatory reform, business and economic modeling of markets, industry studies, and statistical and econometric modeling. He has provided project and expert reports, and testimony.Dr. Ghosal is member of the Editorial Boards of the journals: Business Strategy and the Environment (Wiley); Review of Industrial Organization (Springer); Journal of Industry Competition and Trade (Springer), Southern Economic Journal (Wiley); and Business Strategy and Development (Wiley).

Trevor Rhone

Assistant Professor
Trevor David Rhone received a liberal arts education from Macalester College in Saint Paul. He went on to pursue his doctoral studies at Columbia University in the city of New York where he did experimental studies of two-dimensional electron systems in the extreme quantum limit. Trevor David spent several years at NTT Basic research laboratories in Japan.  During a research stint at the National Institute of Materials Science in Japan, he transitioned to materials informatics research - exploiting machine learning tools to perform materials research. He continued this work at Harvard University where he used machine learning tools to search for new 2D magnetic materials. Trevor David Rhone's research interests involve using machine learning tools for materials discovery and knowledge discovery. Materials discovery could manifest in the search new 2D materials with exotic properties, the prediction of the outcome of industrially relevant catalytic reactions or for other compelling research problems. In addition, data analytics tools will be used to aid in developing a better understanding of physical systems.

Tianyi Chen

Assistant Professor
Tianyi Chen has been with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as an assistant professor since August 2019. Dr. Chen is the inaugural recipient of IEEE Signal Processing Society Best PhD Dissertation Award in 2020, a recipient of NSF CAREER Award in 2021 and a recipient of Amazon Research Award in 2022. He is also a co-author of the Best Student Paper Award at the NeurIPS Federated Learning Workshop in 2020 and at IEEE ICASSP in 2021. Dr. Chen's current research focuses on theoretical and algorithmic foundations of optimization, machine learning, and statistical signal processing.