Dr. Boleslaw K. Szymanski is the Claire and Roland Schmitt Distinguished Professor at the Department of Computer Science and the Director of the ARL Social and Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from National Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland, in 1976. Dr. Szymanski published over four hundred scientific articles. He is a foreign member of the National Academy of Science in Poland, an IEEE Fellow and a member of the IEEE Computer Society, and Association for Computing Machinery for which he was National Lecturer. He received the Wiley Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003 and the Wilkes Medal of British Computer Society in 2009. His research interests cover the broad area of network science with current focus on social and computer networks.

I am a Professor in the Department of Computer Science with a courtesy appointment in ECSE Department. I have been serving as the founding Director of Data Science Research Center, and Associated Director of IDEA at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York. I received MS. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science, both from Columbia University , in 1987 and 1994, respectively. Before joining RPI, I was a Member of the Technical Staff at the Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. My current research interests include applied machine learning in bioinformatics, medical informatics, and cyber security. I am a Fellow of the IEEE, a Senior Member of ACM, and a member of AAA.

Deborah McGuinness is a leading expert in knowledge representation and reasoning languages and systems and has worked in ontology creation and evolution environments for over 20 years. Most recently, McGuinness is best known for her leadership role in semantic web research, and for her work on explanation, trust, and applications of semantic web technology, particularly for scientific applications. “I am interested in making smart systems that help people and machines function better,” said McGuinness. “My slant on this work is to research, develop, and use semantic technologies that allow people and machines to represent, reason with, visualize, and explain information in ways that support understanding and (re)use.   My application areas cover a wide range of domain areas, but often in earth and space science informatics and health informatics.”

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) Artificial Intelligence Markets focusing on Big-Tech partnerships, antitrust and regulations; (2) Biopharmaceuticals markets focusing on innovation, pricing and FDA regulations; and (3) Antitrust laws and enforcement. Currently he teaches the course "Economics of Biotechnology and Medical Innovations."Before joining Rensselaer in 2016, he was the Mary and Richard Inman Chaired Professor at the School of Economics at Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech., he was Director of the MS (2011-2016) and PhD (2012-2016) programs. 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, energy (nuclear, natural gas, oilfield drilling and services), information technology, media markets, and international mail services.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 also been published as book chapters by publishers such as: MIT Press; Stanford University Press; Elsevier Science; Edgar Elgar; Routledge; and Springer. His recent writing on "Big Tech Investments in AI Startups Do Not Raise Competitive Red Flags" appeared in the Big Tech-AI Investment Symposium published by ProMarket (University of Chicago). 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, Seoul, New Delhi, Amsterdam, 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 & paperboard. 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; Sloan Foundation; Ragnar Soderberg's Foundation (Sweden); Woodruff Foundation; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, Paris); and Scripps Foundation.He worked as an expert with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD, Paris, 2005-2012) on developing the Competition Assessment Toolkit which served as an international framework adopted by many countries for identifying and revising regulations and their impact on competition. As part of this OECD initiative, Dr. Ghosal traveled to several countries to present professional training workshops to national government agencies, public policy and regulatory professionals to help with implementation of the framework.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.

Hull joined RPI in January 2008 to assume the positions of the Head of the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the Henry Burlage Professor of Engineering. Prior to that he spent about a decade at Bell Laboratories in the Physics Research Division, and twelve years at the University of Virginia, where he was the Director of an NSF MRSEC Center and Director of the UVA Institute for Nanoscale and Quantum Science. He received his PhD in Materials Science from Oxford University in 1983. Hull is highly active in engineering and materials science societies and professional groups. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Materials Research Society, and in 1997 served as president of the Materials Research Society. He has also chaired a Gordon Research Conference on Thin Films, and chaired the Committee of Visitors for the National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research. Within the realms of materials and nanoscience, Hull’s research focuses on the relationships between structure and property in electronic materials, fundamental mechanisms of thin film growth, and the self-assembly of nanoscale structures. Other areas of interest include degradation modes in electronic and optoelectronic devices, the properties of dislocations in semiconductors, nanoscale fabrication techniques, nanoscale tomographic reconstruction techniques, development of new nanoelectronic architectures, and the theory and application of electron and ion beams.  

Professor Kuruzovich’s course on database management integrates the technical challenges of managing data with the business challenges of deriving value through statistical analysis, visualization, and data mining. Professor Kuruzovich’s research broadly examines the means through which both individuals and organizations derive value from information systems and focuses on the intersection between information systems and marketing. His research has been published in leading academic journals 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.

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 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.

Dr. Johnson Samuel is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He is also the founding director of the Center for Smart Convergent Manufacturing Systems—a NYSTAR-designated Center for Advanced Technology (CAT) established in July 2025. Dr. Samuel’s current research focuses on convergent manufacturing, robotic material processing, and smart manufacturing systems. His work is supported by a range of federal, state, and industry sponsors, including the U.S. National Science Foundation, Army Research Lab, NASA, DARPA, Boeing, the Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, CESMII, Empire State Development, and NYSERDA. Since joining RPI in Spring 2011, he has supervised 10 Ph.D., 7 M.S., and 34 M.Eng. students. His team has published in top-tier journals such as Nature Communications, Nano Energy, Carbon, Additive Manufacturing, Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Applied Physics Reviews, ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, and the SME Journal of Manufacturing Processes. His research contributions have been recognized with several honors, including the ASME Richard Skalak Award - Bioengineering Division (2024), US National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2014), Outstanding Young Alumni Award from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2016), and the Rensselaer School of Engineering Research Excellence Award (2016). Dr. Samuel is deeply committed to educating and mentoring the next generation of U.S. manufacturing leaders. His education efforts have been recognized with the David M. Darrin '40 Counseling Award (2025), Rensselaer Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Award (2014), and School of Engineering’s Education Innovation Award (2015). Dr. Samuel has held multiple leadership roles within ASME’s Manufacturing Engineering Division (MED) and NAMRI/SME. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of ASME MED (2023–2028). Previous roles include Technical Program Chair of the 2017 ASME Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference and Chair of MED’s Manufacturing Equipment Technical Committee. At NAMRI/SME, he chaired the Scientific Committee for the Manufacturing Education, Workforce Development, and Outreach Track. He has also served as Associate Editor for leading journals, including the Journal of Manufacturing Processes (SME), ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, and Journal of Machining Science and Technology.