Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Chris Sims received a B.S. in computer science from Cornell University (2003), followed by a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2009). After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Sims held a postdoctoral research position at the University of Rochester, and a faculty position at Drexel University before joining the faculty at RPI in 2017.Chris Sims has made significant contributions to our understanding of human cognition through his research in computational modeling. One of his notable contributions is the application of information theory to cognitive processes.

Christopher Jeansonne is a Senior Lecturer in the Communication and Media Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on critical media pedagogy and gameful learning, investigating strategies designed to help students explore how identities are established within and articulated through popular culture media. His dissertation Superheroes in the Classroom, Or: An Autoethnography of Great Power, Responsibility, and Community in a Critical Media Pedagogy was the recipient of the 2019 Manuel Barkan Dissertation Award.

Chris Fisher-Lochhead (he–him) is a composer, improviser, and educator. His work attempts to cultivate adventurous and inclusive environments for musical collaboration through critical engagement with instrumental and compositional technique, notational systems, and ensemble dynamics. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University; he joined the Rensselaer faculty in 2018. As a composer, he has collaborated with performers around the world.

Brett Fajen conducts research on perception and action. His main interests are the visual control of locomotion and perceptual-motor learning and adaptation. His research on these topics contributes to the development of the ecological and dynamical systems approaches to perception and action. “If you have ever been awed by the performance of a professional athlete, then you can appreciate some of the challenges that are faced when executing a skilled action,” said Fajen. “Such tasks require rapid decision-making, anticipation, and coordination.

I am an anthropologically-oriented STS scholar working at the intersection of community engagement, design research and pedagogy, and environmental justice. My scholarly work on the contexts that enable effective collaboration, communication, and engagement is rooted in interdisciplinary research that centers both STS and non-academic perspectives.

Branda Miller is an internationally recognized media artist, and Professor of Media Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  Her media art works have been screened at festivals, museums and exhibitions, broadcast nationally and internationally, and used in community organizing and education. She is an Emmy award-winning editor who has worked in the media industry of L.A.

Dr. van Heuveln is a passionate educator who continually tries to improve the effectiveness of the many different undergraduate courses he teaches in the areas of cognitive science, logic, artificial intelligence, critical thinking, and the philosophy of mind. Dr. van Heuveln’s research is in the area of visual logic: using visual representations to perform and enhance logical reasoning. Dr.

I am an experimental economist. My research is mainly focused on identity economics, social preferences, and discrimination. I am also interested in understanding human interaction with technology and technology’s impacts on economic outcomes. At RPI, I teach Behavioral Financial Economics and Experimental Economics. In my Behavioral Financial Economics course, we discuss emotional and cognitive biases and how they impact our financial and economic decisions.

Dr. Weissman's research focuses on meaning in conversation from a cognitive and linguistic perspective. With a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Weissman has conducted research at the intersections of pragmatics, psycholinguistics, and experimental linguistics. His dissertation investigated the effects of context and different types of linguistic meaning on lie judgments; current research expands on this topic. In addition, Dr.

Ben Chang is an electronic artist and director of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer.