Karyn Rogers

Associate Professor and Director, Rensselaer Astrobiology Research and Education Center (RARE)
Dr. Karyn Rogers joined the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2013 after serving as a Research Scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri, and a Deep Ocean Exploration Institute Postdoctoral Scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Rogers completed her PhD in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, with previous degrees awarded from Stanford University (M.S. 2001) and Harvard University (A.B. 1996). Dr. Rogers is a member of the New York Center for Astrobiology (NYCA) and the Institute for Data Exploration and Applications (IDEA). Dr. Rogers’ research focuses on the relationships between microbial communities and environmental conditions in extreme ecosystems, and is broadly applied to understanding the nature of the origin of life on Earth, the potential for life throughout the solar system, and the extent of life in modern extreme environments. To advance our understanding of environmental microbiomes in these systems, Dr. Rogers research program includes field research in early Earth and Mars analog environments as well as laboratory experimental studies of microbial behavior under extreme conditions. Additionally, the group is exploring the viability of abiotic synthesis of biomolecules over a range of early Earth conditions. The driving question in this research is how realistic environmental conditions combine to form habitable niches that can both support the early emergence of life as well as the long-term survival of life in these environments. Dr. Rogers’ fieldwork includes several terrestrial hydrothermal systems including Cerro Negro Volcano, Nicaragua, the Vulcano shallow marine hydrothermal system in Italy, and several modern deep-sea mid-ocean ridge environments. These field endeavors are combined with extensive laboratory analytical and experimental techniques to develop a holistic picture of functional microbial ecosystems. More specifically, laboratory techniques include cultivation of extremophiles under high pressure, high temperature, acidic, and anaerobic conditions; a next-generation genomics approach to determine the functional environmental microbiome in extreme systems; geochemical analyses and modeling of environmental and bioenergetics parameters; and the synthesis of these datasets using novel data analytics. Dr. Rogers’ research program currently includes two postdoctoral associates, four graduate students (in both Earth & Environmental Sciences and the Department of Biological Sciences), and several undergraduate researchers. The laboratory is housed in Jonsson-Rowland Science Center and includes a state of the art high-pressure microbial cultivation facility. Additionally, Dr. Rogers is the US Lead for the Deep Carbon Observatory’s (Sloan Foundation) High Pressure Sampling, Transport, and Cultivation User Facility and the co-chair of the UNOLS Deep Submergence Science Committee New User Program. Dr. Rogers teaches courses in Geobiology, Aqueous Geochemistry, the Origin of Life, Advanced Geomicrobiology, and Planetary Habitability.

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 170 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, has been a CACHE Trustee since 2014, and is serving as the chair of the BMES Council of Chairs in 2024. He was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2025. He is currently serving as deputy editor-in-chief for the Journal of Process Control 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.

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.

Johnson Samuel

Dr. Johnson Samuel has been serving as a faculty in the mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering department of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), since the Spring of 2011. As director of the Nano/Micro-scale Manufacturing and Material Design Lab (NanoM3 Design Lab) at Rensselaer, he leads research and education efforts in the areas of advanced manufacturing and material design. His research has attracted funding from multiple agencies including the National Science Foundation, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Defense Health Program, Army Research Lab, DARPA and The Boeing Company. He is the recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER award for his proposal titled “Microstructure-specific machining strategies for bone” (2014), The Outstanding Young Alumni Award, MechSe Dept. Univ. of Illinois- Urbana  Champaign (2016), Rensselaer School of Engineering Research Excellence Award (2016), and the World Economic Forum Young Scientist Cohort (2016) Besides research, Dr.Samuel is also passionate about training and developing the next generation of manufacturing engineers in the US. He was awarded the Rensselaer Class of 1951 Outstanding Teaching Award (2014) and the School Of Engineering Education Innovation Award (2015) in recognition of his manufacturing education efforts at Rensselaer.

Jianjing Lin

Assistant Professor
Dr. Lin joined the Rensselaer faculty as an Assistant Professor of Economics in Fall 2017. Her research interests include topics in Health Economics, Industrial Organization, and Applied Econometrics.  She currently focuses on issues related to health information technology (IT) adoption, as well as how health IT impacts hospital financial and quality performance.

Jennifer Pazour

Jen Pazour is a Professor and the PhD Program Director in the department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. Her research and teaching focus on the development and use of mathematical models to guide decision making for logistics and supply chain challenges. Modern supply chain systems need to fulfill a wide variety of requests quickly with little warning in small units to many dispersed locations at low costs. These characteristics are fundamentally different than yesterday’s demand that aggregated at given locations. In the face of this disconnect, her team's research thinks differently about how supply chain resources are acquired, managed, and allocated to fulfill customer requests. In doing so, her team's contributions span a diverse array of applications, including resource sharing platforms, peer-to-peer transportation systems, on-demand warehousing platforms, and crowdsourced order fulfillment systems, as well as facility logistics and transportation systems. Methodologically, they are modelers, whose core intellectual strength is in the development of mathematical and computational representations of sociotechnical systems and processes. Their research approach is to (1) create optimization models encompassing the primary system and decision trade-offs, (2) discover solution approaches and algorithms to efficiently solve the optimization models, (3) use the developed models and approaches to better understand the implications of the sociotechnical system’s design and operation, and then (4) through theoretical results, computational experiments, and statistical analysis provide managerial insights and policy recommendations. Her team has created a wide range of operations research tools, including integer linear programs, bi-level optimization formulations, queuing models, and analytical models. Jen is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, a Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D Scholars Award, a National Academies of Science Gulf Research Program Early-Career Fellowship, and a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research. She was awarded the Rensselaer Alumni Teaching Award, the IISE Logistics and Supply Chain Division Teaching Award, and the IISE Dr. Hamed K. Eldin Outstanding Early Career IE in Academia Award. She is an Associate Editor of Transportation Science, IISE Transactions, Military Operations Research, and OMEGA. She has served professional societies, for example, as a speaker and session organizer at the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, as the chair of the INFORMS professional recognition committee, chair of the INFORMS undergraduate operations research prize, chair of INFORMS TSL Facility Logistics SIG, the communications chair of the IISE Logistics and Supply Chain division and is on the IISE Transaction Social Media Team. She proudly holds three degrees in Industrial Engineering (a B.S. from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Arkansas). More information can be found at her research and teaching blog: http://jenpazour.wordpress.com/

Jennifer Hurley

Richard Baruch M.D. Career Development Chair & Associate Department Head
Dr. Jennifer Hurley received her B.S. from Juniata College in 2004 in molecular biology. She did her Ph.D. at Rutgers/UMDNJ with Drs. Nancy Woychik and Masayori Inouye, studying the function of Toxin-Antitoxin modules in bacteria. She was recognized by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for excellence in research for her study of the HigBA toxin-antitoxin module. Jennifer did her Postdoctoral fellowship at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth with Drs. Jay Dunlap and Jennifer Loros, investigating the relationship between the core proteins and the output of the circadian clock in Neurospora. Her Fellowship was funded by the Ruth Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and she received a Perkins award for her contributions to Neurospora research. Dr. Hurley joined the Department of Biological Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2015. Her lab has received the 2020 Junior Faculty Research Award from the School of Science at RPI, the 2020 Society for Research in Biological Rhythms Junior Faculty Research Award, the Beadle and Tatum Award from the Neurospora Society, and NIH MIRA award and an NSF CAREER award.

Jason Kuruzovich

Associate Professor of Business Analytics
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.