Interdisciplinary work is at the core of Susan Smith’s research and educational interests.  Her undergraduate work in Biology serves as a basis for her research in Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Race and Biomedical Ethics. Her master’s work at the University of Guelph was completed under the direction of Michael Ruse and focused on the nature of human action with respect to free will and determinism.  At the University at Buffalo, working with Jorge J.E. Garcia, she explored the metaphysical basis of race with a focus on its intersection with healthcare.Dr. Smith’s current work explores the ethical issues related to genetic testing and, specifically, informed consent.  She is also actively investigating the perpetuation of racial disparities in medicine and medical research and solutions for their elimination. Additionally, she continues to explore ethical issues with data privacy and algorithmic bias. Before coming to RPI, Dr. Smith taught at Mercyhurst University, Canisius College, and the University at Buffalo.  She has taught courses in Biomedical Ethics, Research Ethics, Philosophy of Human Nature and Science, Technology and Human Values.  Teaching has been a passion for her since she received her undergraduate degree in Education from the University of Windsor.  Dr. Smith encourages students to critically examine their own beliefs and to attempt to create rational defenses for those beliefs.  Dr. Smith was selected by the graduating class of 2021 as one of four professors at Rensselaer to present a "Last Lecture" as somemone who had a last positive impact on their undergraduate experience. She was the recipient of the 2022 Teaching Excellence Award for the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Rensselaer.Prior to her arrival at Rensselaer, Smith was the Director of the Social Science Interdisciplinary Degree Programs at the University at Buffalo and served on the advisory board of the University at Buffalo Genomics, Education and the Microbiome (GEM) Community of Excellence. 

Dr. Schwendeman received his B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, and earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under the supervision of Professor G.B. Whitham, FRS.  Dr. Schwendeman took a one-year postdoctoral research position at Caltech working with Professor H.B. Keller, before joining the faculty in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Rensselaer as an assistant professor in August, 1987.  Dr. Schwendeman received promotions to associate professor with tenure and then professor, and was Head of the Department of Mathematical Sciences, 2012-2024. Dr. Schwendeman is the Director of the Center for Modeling, Optimization, and Computational Analysis (MOCA). Dr. Schwendeman's research focuses on the development and analysis of numerical methods for systems of partial differential equations (PDEs) that arise in applications of science and engineering.  A significant portion of his work has centered around the development of numerical methods for systems of PDEs modeling wave phenomena in reactive and nonreactive flows.  This work has included numerical studies of shock wave focusing and convergence, transonic and hypersonic aerodynamics, and multi-phase and multi-material high-speed reactive flow.  In other work, Dr. Schwendeman has developed a class of new numerical methods for fluid-structure interaction problems and conjugate heat transfer, and he has developed high-order accurate methods for Maxwell's equations and related systems.  All of this work has been in collaboration with researchers at national labs (Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore) and at Rensselaer. Dr. Schwendeman is also actively involved in undergraduate and graduate education and career development.  He has been a leader among the consortium of universities organizing the Mathematical Problems in Industry Workshop (1993-present), and the originator and lead organizer of RPI's Graduate Student Mathematical Modeling Camp (2004-2018).  Dr. Schwendeman has also been an active member of the NSF-funded Research Training Grant (RTG) program in the department, which supports the research and education of several graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows.

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 40 years. McGuinness continues to make foundational research contributions in a range of artificial intelligence areas, and has been recognized for her leadership in 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 are often in earth and space science informatics and health informatics.”

Chris Carothers is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research interest are in massively parallel systems focusing on modeling and simulation systems of all sorts. Prof. Carothers is an NSF CAREER award winner and is currently active in the DOE Exascale Co-Design Program associated with designs for next generation exascale storage systems as well as the NSF PetaApps Program, and the Army Research Center's Mobile Network Modeling Institute

https://www.dsrc.rpi.edu https://www.cs.rpi.edu/~yener 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.

Director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Biotechnology & Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS), conducting breakthrough research on bones, Deepak Vashishth, PhD, is working to redefine the role of a top tier research university: one that is engaged in public and private partnerships, involved in interdisciplinary research, and providing quality education, all to drive entrepreneurial, sustainable, socially responsible scientific discovery and technological innovation. Administrative leadership: Through his work as a University Center Director, previously as a School of Engineering Department head, and in professional societies he has successfully developed partnerships, Programs, and platforms, to drive translational scientific research across disciplines, sectors,and geographic boundaries. As Director of CBIS he oversees 70 resident and non-resident faculty (from each of the five Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute schools); engages with global partners in the public, private, and academic sectors; and fosters innovative graduate and undergraduate research and education initiatives. In his first two years as CBIS Director he has: envisioned and facilitated the creation of two transformative research centers (Bioimaging Center and Center for Translational Research in Medicine); led the development of an industry partners program to enhance technology transfer and commercialization; and broadened the scope of interdisciplinary research by combining biotechnology with architecture, humanities, and management. As Department Head of Biomedical Engineering (BME) in the School of Engineering at Rensselaer, in just 3 years he dramatically grew and strengthened the department: increased tenured faculty tenfold (1 to 10); added a senior endowed chair to its rank; and it became home to 7 NSF career awardees and recipient of more than 10 NIH RO1 awards (from 2 in 2009). As a committee member of the Orthopaedic Research Society, he developed and facilitated a “Symposium in Translational Medicine” designed to accelerate the transition of discoveries from lab bench to bedside by bridging the gap between clinical, basic science & engineering, government agencies (FDA) and industry. Research leadership: Dr. Vashishth’s research interests are in the area of biomolecular science and engineering of extracellular matrix with particular emphasis on diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis and bone tissue engineering. His collaborative, interdisciplinary bone research is redefining how osteoporosis will be diagnosed and treated. In 2012 he was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) for contributions to the understanding of how both age and collagen‐modification affect bone fragility (cited over 1000 times). AIMBE fellows represent the top 2% of the medical and biological engineering community in the world and are elected based on nomination and vote by AIMBE fellows (http://aimbe.org/college-of-fellows/cof-1479/). He has opened new avenues for diagnosing and treating osteoporosis by developing a new technique to identify bone proteome from nanoscale samples. The process also has been applied for analyzing precious fossils. He is bringing his breakthrough research to market, co-founding a company (Orthograft plc), to produce the acellular biomimetic grafts for bone repair. Professor Vashishth and his research group have published over 200 peer-reviewed journal publications and conference proceedings in top journals including PNAS, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Plos One and others. His work presented in the form of over 100 invited and contributed lectures has been cited as a “New Hope for Osteoporosis Patients” and “Secret Formula for Bone Strength” in mainstream media. Working in collaboration with others, his research group has identified new structural roles for bone proteins and developed new biomimickry-based strategies for tissue engineering scaffolds. In addition to being a Fellow of and active in the AIMBE, he serves as a member of the National Institutes of Health study section on Skeletal Biology and Skeletal Regeneration. He is a board member of the Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials and a regular reviewer for other federal and international funding agencies, private foundations and university grants, and journals. He also is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, American Society of Bone and Mineral Research and the Orthopaedic Research Society. Educational leadership: Fundamentally focused on education, he is preparing the next generation of researchers and the “faculty of the future” by infusing undergraduate and graduate programs with a more interdisciplinary, collaborative, global perspective on sustainable, translational scientific research. In recognition of his dedication to education, he has won Rensselaer awards for outstanding and innovative classroom teaching including the Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching award. As CBIS Director, he established new global partnerships, redesigned graduate training programs, and developed a new course, all designed to prepare the “faculty of the future,” focused on sustainable collaborative interdisciplinary research and technology transfer and commercialization. As BME department head (2009-2013): expanded the graduate program three-fold (from 20 to 60 students), attracted more highly qualified graduate students, and promoted early success (National fellowships). He overhauled curriculum, to enhance learning and to improve the undergraduate experience, by reducing class size and providing hands-on education in a technologically connected classroom. Background: He earned his B. Eng with honors from Malaviya National Institute of Technology (India), MS from West Virginia University (USA) and PhD from the University of London (UK). He then conducted post-doctoral research at the Bone and Joint Center, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Henry Ford Hospital before joining Rensselaer as an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering in 1999.

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.

Liu Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering and the Department of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He directs the Efficient, Parallel, and Intelligent Computing (EPIC) Lab at RPI, focusing the research on Elastic AI Computing systems and architecture design. He is a recipient of NSF CAREER Award, Samsung Global Research Outreach Award, and Peter J Frenkel Fellowship from the Institute of Energy Efficiency at UCSB.

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.

Mohammed J. Zaki is a Professor and Department Head of Computer Science  at RPI. He is also the co-director for the NSF IUCRC Center for Research Towards Advancing Financial Technologies (CRAFT). He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Rochester in 1998. His research interests focus on novel data mining and machine learning techniques, particularly for learning from graph structured and textual data, with applications in bioinformatics, personal health and financial analytics. He has around 300 publications (and 6 patents), including the Data Mining and Machine Learning  textbook (2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2020). His research has won several best paper awards and nominations, including the EDBT'24 Test of Time Award. He is the founding co-chair for the BIOKDD series of workshops. He has served as associate editor for several journals, including Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Statistical Analysis and Data Mining, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, and Social Networks and Mining. He was the program co-chair for SIGKDD, SDM, ICDM, PAKDD, BIBM, IEEE BigData, and CIKM conferences. He also served on the Board of Directors for ACM SIGKDD. He was a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the Department of Energy Early Career Principal Investigator Award, as well as HP Innovation Research Award, and Google Faculty Research Award. His research is supported in part by NSF, DARPA, NIH, DOE, IBM, Google, HP, and Nvidia. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, AAAS, and SIAM.