The Academic Minute for 2023.03.13-2023.03.17

The Academic Minute from 3.13 – 3.17

Monday
Christopher Jeansonne – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Gameful Learning
Christopher Jeansonne is a media educator, a media maker, and a scholar focusing on critical media pedagogy. His research involves practical and theoretical investigations of pedagogical methods that help students explore how identities are established within and articulated through media. His teaching and research often center on popular culture media, including film, television, comics, games, and transmedial genres such as superheroes, science fiction, and horror.

Tuesday
Brett Fajen – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Vision
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.

Wednesday
Aparna Gupta – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The Future of Fintech
Aparna Gupta is a professor of quantitative finance and co-director of the NSF IUCRC Center for Research toward Advancing Financial Technologies (CRAFT) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Gupta also serves as the associate dean for academic affairs of the Lally School of Management at RPI.

Dr. Gupta was a visiting researcher at US SEC in Washington, D.C. for three years. Her research interest is in financial decision support, risk management, and applying mathematical modeling, machine learning, and financial engineering techniques for risk management in technology-enabled network services, as well as risk management in the interconnected financial institutions and financial markets. She has worked on several U.S. NSF and U.S. DoE funded research projects in financial innovations for risk management.

Thursday
Marcus Carter – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Intertidal Objects: A Design Solution for Coastal Erosion
MARCUS CARTER is an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a partner at OBJECT TERRITORIES, a critical design practice located in New York and Hong Kong. Marcus’ interests lie in the machinations of the contemporary urban environment as well as architecture’s catalytic potential in this climate. He has broad experience designing projects in North America, Asia, and Europe including master plans, office & hotel towers, institutional buildings and residential projects. Marcus holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Kansas, studying in Rome during that time, and a Master of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. While at Yale, Marcus was editor of Perspecta, the Yale Architectural Journal. Marcus is a member of the American Institute of Architects and a registered architect in New York. In addition to Rensselaer, he has taught at the Parsons School of Design, New York Institute of Technology, and Washington University and has been a student mentor for the Architectural League of New York and the Architecture is Free Foundation.

Friday
Shayla Sawyer – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Improving Biosensors for Ecological Monitoring
Shayla Sawyer is a professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her Nano-Bio Optoelectronics research program expands the fundamental understanding, engineering processes, and potential applications of hybrid inorganic/organic materials for optoelectronic devices and sensors. This includes the fabrication of nanomaterials from bacteria, fabrication in a solution process, and the development of optoelectronic sensors and complimentary systems. The optoelectronic devices are comprised of hybrid inorganic/organic materials what may include semiconductor metal oxide nanostructures, conductive polymers, conductive nanostructures, and bio-chemical solutions. Her overall research goal is aimed at effectively fabricating and characterizing novel materials and sensors with consideration of systems that require sensitivity and/or selectivity to bring quantitative measurements in typically qualitative worlds.  NSF Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications Research Center, NSF Divison of Biological Infrastructure, National Security Technologies/Department of Energy, NSF Division on Research and Learning, and the NSF GK-12 Community Situated Research Center are a few recent funding resources for her work.