Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Silvia Ruzanka is a media artist whose projects include video, installation, performance, and virtual environments.  Her work is concerned with the archaeology and memory of technology and media, and their intersections with everyday life.  She has presented her artwork and research internationally at galleries, museums, and festivals, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Boston Cyberarts Festival, the New Forms Festival (Vancouver), SIGGRAPH, ISEA, the Gosia Koscielak Gallery (Chicago), DeadTech (Chicago), and the Museum of New Art (Detroit), among others.  He

Sergei Nirenburg has worked in the areas of cognitive science, artificial intelligence and natural language processing (NLP) for over 40 years, leading R&D teams of up to 80. His professional interests include developing computational models of human cognitive capabilities and implementing them in hybrid-engine models of societies of human and computer agents; continued development of the theory of ontological semantics; and acquisition and management of knowledge about the world and about language.

Sarah Greene received her PhD in Ecological Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2008 with research focused on the microeconomic theory and practice of Daniel Kahneman’s concept of Experienced Utility applied to poverty and underdevelopment in Central America.  Dr.

Sara Tack is a creative director, art director, designer, artist and educator. She co-founded Smith & Jones, a marketing communications agency, where she designed and implemented integrated brand identity systems.

My research primarily focuses on the analysis of nonstationary time series data and its applications in economics and finance, including financial market forecasting, risk management, and systemic risk assessment. I am also dedicated to developing robust statistical methods for causal analysis.  Additionally, I explore applied econometrics across various domains in economics and finance, such as health policy evaluation, firm strategies, and natural resource management.

Recording producer, engineer, touring multi-instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter originally based out of Memphis, Nashville, and Woodstock NY. His alt-rock quintet Human Radio (Human Radio, Columbia, 1990) reached #23 on the Billboard Rock Chart with a video in “heavy rotation” on MTV and national tour. Rice has performed, recorded, toured, and written with numerous artists and groups including Isaac Hayes, George Clinton, Luther Ingram, Peter Frampton, Rob Wasserman, Stephen Perkins (Jane’s Addiction), Jill Sobule, Steve Earle, Darryl Jenifer and Dr.

Ron Sun is a cognitive scientist investigating the fundamental nature of the human mind, using various methodologies of cognitive science, and in particular computational modeling, as means of forging mechanistic, process-based theories of the mind (especially comprehensive computational theories such as cognitive architectures). He has played a leading role early on in developing hybrid neural-symbolic (neurosymbolic) systems for cognitive modeling, and he is currently known for his work on the Clarion cognitive architecture.

Robert Nideffer joined the Arts department in 2013 as department head. He has exhibited at a variety of national and international art venues including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte in Spain; the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California; the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He has spoken about his work in a wide range of venues both inside and outside the academy.

Dr. Jones earned his Ph.D. in Economics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an MBA from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration (Rochester), and a JD from University of Albany Law School. His research and public speaking efforts focus on the intersection of finance, law, and economics, including areas related to valuation of financial assets, forensic economics, and copyright law. Dr. Jones writes and speaks frequently on matters relating to the valuation of closely held businesses.

Associate Professor of Music and Media, Rob Hamilton joined the Department of Arts at Rensselaer in 2015, with a secondary appointment in the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program. As a composer, performer, researcher and software designer his creative and analytical practice explores the cognitive implications of the spaces between musical systems, interactive game environments, network topographies, artificial intelligence and procedurally-generated sound and music.He holds a Ph.D. in Computer-based Music Theory and Acoustics as well as a M.A.