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Radoslav Ivanov

Assistant Professor
Prior to joining Rensellaer as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Radoslav was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with Dr. George Pappas and Dr. Rajeev Alur. Radoslav defended his PhD dissertation in 2017 at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Dr. Insup Lee and Dr. James Weimer. His research lies broadly in the field of safe and secure autonomy. The natural application domains of his work are safety-critical cyber-physical systems (CPS) such as automotive CPS and medical CPS. The fields relevant to his research are safe autonomy, neural network verification, CPS security, control theory and sensor fusion.

Patricia Search

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).

Oshani Seneviratne

Assistant Professor
Oshani Seneviratne is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she leads the BRAINS (Bridging Resilient, Accountable, Intelligent Networked Systems) Lab. Her primary research interest is advancing Decentralized Systems (Web, Blockchain, and Decentralized Learning technologies), and she conducts applied research in health informatics and decentralized finance. Oshani obtained her S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under the supervision of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. She previously served as the Director of Health Data Research at Rensselaer.

Donald Schwendeman

Professor, Director, Center for Modeling, Optimization and Computational Analysis (MOCA)
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.

Mei Si

Associate Professor, Cognitive Science
Mei Si is primarily interested in is artificial intelligence and its application in virtual and mixed realities. In particular, her research concentrates on computer-aided interactive narratives, embodied conversational agents and pervasive user interface, elements that make virtual environments more engaging and effective. Si has been using her research to develop virtual environments and intelligent conversational agents for serious games. In one example of her work, Si helped to develop the Tactical Language Training System, a large-scale (six to twelve scenes each for three languages) award-winning project funded by the U.S. military for rapid language and culture training. The system has been used by thousands of military personnel. “Computer-aided interactive narrative is a new form of media that allows the user to play a role in a story and interact with other characters controlled by an automated system. The user’s choices of actions affect the development of the story,” said Si. Narrative itself is a central part of the human experience. Its power to shape people's minds and affect people's behavior has been recognized throughout recorded history. The support for user interactivity distinguishes interactive narrative from other narrative forms. By allowing the user to interact, the experience is richer and potentially more engaging. Moreover, interactivity can promote intrinsic motivation in learning, and support learning in context and replay. Therefore, interactive narrative can be potentially a more effective media than traditional narrative.” Si regularly presents and publishes her work. She has recently presented on “Activating Narcissus: Cognitive and Affective Systems Transformed Through "Serious" Game Play” at the International Conference on the Philosophy of Computer Games; “Foreign language learning in immersive virtual environments” at the IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging conference, and “Modeling Rich Characters in Interactive Narrative Games” and GAMEON-ASIA. Her recently published work includes “D.V. Modeling Appraisal in Theory of Mind Reasoning” in the Journal of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, and book chapters “ Virtual Interactive Interventions for Reducing Risky Sex: Adaptations, Integrations, and Innovations” in  Interactive Health Communication Technologies: Promising Strategies for Health Behavior, and “Modeling Theory of Mind and Cognitive Appraisal with Decision-Theoretic Agents” in Social emotions in nature and artifact: Emotions in human and human-computer interaction.

Marjorie McShane

Marjorie McShane develops cognitive models of intelligent agents that can collaborate with people in task-oriented, dialog applications. While at heart a linguist, she is particularly interested in the integration of functionalities that are often treated in isolation, such as physiological simulation, emotion modeling, and the many aspects of cognition. One aspect of cognition to which she has devoted particular attention is natural language processing, approached from a cross-linguistic perspective and with the goal of producing machine-tractable descriptions that can support sophisticated conversational agents. She has also worked extensively on cognitive modeling in the medical domain, to support the configuration of intelligent agents playing the roles of virtual patients and tutors in training applications such as the Maryland Virtual Patient system.McShane has (co-)authored four books: Agents in the Long Game of AI: Computational cognitive modeling for trustworthy, hybrid AI (MIT Press, 2024), Linguistics for the Age of AI (MIT Press, 2021), A Theory of Ellipsis (Oxford University Press, 2005), and An Innovative, Practical Approach to Polish Inflection (Lincom Europa, 2003). She has published extensively on linguistics, natural language processing, cognitive modeling, and knowledge representation.

Malik Magdon-Ismail

Dr. Magdon-Ismail has been a Professor of Computer Science since 2000. After degrees at Yale and Caltech, Dr. Magdon-Ismail was a research scholar at Caltech before joining Rensselaer as Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His interests are in decision making from data in complex systems, including machine learning, computational finance networked systems and quantum computing. He enjoys poker, bridge, squash, tennis and badminton. For more details, please visit his web page.

Lydia Manikonda

Assistant Professor of Business Analytics and Web Science
Lydia Manikonda is an Assistant Professor in the Lally School of Management. Her research interests lie in developing robust, goal-centric intelligent models that are capable of learning and reasoning with complex, real-world data drawn from the Web. In particular, how these models can be used to address critical challenges in user privacy, public health (including addictions, dietetics, and maternal health), and finance (with an emphasis on crowdfunding). Within this broader scope, she also is studying how #generativeAI is actively shaping user behavior online. The rise of #genAI systems has introduced new privacy concerns, altered patterns of interactions both online and offline, and its impact on mental health. Understanding and integrating these behavioral, ethical, and psychological dimensions into metacognitive tasks is a central aspect of her work, ensuring that frameworks remain both effective and adaptable in dynamic environments. Methodologically, her research tackles challenges associated with handling unstructured and messy data (especially, natural language text), and integrating diverse sources of information. So far, her research work has received several media mentions, a best SPC and reviewer awards at AAAI ICWSM 2025 and 2016 respectively and an outstanding demonstration award at AAAI ICAPS 2014. Lydia received her PhD in Computer Science from Arizona State University in 2019 and MS (by Thesis) and B.Tech both in Computer Science and Engineering from IIIT-Hyderabad. More information about her research and publications can be found here: website (https://lmanikon.github.io/) or Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xB5PgNgAAAAJ)

Dorit Nevo

Professor, Management Information Systems; Vice Provost and Dean, Graduate Education
Dorit Nevo is a Professor of Management Information Systems at the Lally School of Management. She joined RPI in 2012, and prior to that was an Associate Professor at the Schulich School of Business in Toronto. Professor Nevo obtained her BA and MS in Economics and PhD in Management Information Systems. Since joining RPI, she held the roles of program director for the MS in Business Analytics, Acting Associate Dean for the Lally school of Management, and MS and MBA programs director. Dorit’s research focuses on interactions between computers and their users within the business environment. This work was published in leading academic and business journals including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Sloan Management Review, and the Wall Street Journal. She also examines how news readers receive the advice of fake news algorithms. This work received media attention from the ACM and IEEE among others. On the teaching front, Dorit mostly teaches Statistics and Data Science at the Lally School of Management. She is the recipient of the RPI Trustees’ Outstanding Teacher Award and the David M. Darrin ’40 Counseling Award in Celebration of CLASS.