FEATURED ARTICLE
“It’s Personal: The Importance of a Credible Messenger” is featured in the Spring 2014 issue of Public Purpose, the magazine of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. Written by David Brond, Rensselaer vice president for strategic communications and external relations, the article highlights the importance of selecting the correct spokesperson for marketing and communications campaigns as well as best practices. Brond also recently spoke to the Troy Record in its “Five Questions” column.
CASE FELLOWSHIP
Stephen Browne ’15, the current Red & White President, has received the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Clarence J. Jupiter Fellowship for the upcoming year. The program seeks to diversify and increase the number of professionals in educational advancement. This program is designed to attract students (undergraduate and graduate) student who may not have previously considered a career in institutional advancement. The award is given to four people throughout the country. “This is the first year we have applied for such an award from CASE, and it really could not have been given to a better student,” said Geoff Seber, manager of alumni programs. “Steve started working in our office this past year as student worker and has really gone above and beyond to help build programs and engage alumni. He is all about customer service, has a great work ethic, and terrific attention to detail.”
NEW TEXTBOOK
A new textbook, Data Mining and Analysis: Fundamental Concepts and Algorithms, has been published by Cambridge University Press. Written by Mohammed Zaki, professor of computer science at Rensselaer, and Wagner Meira, Jr of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil, this textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate data mining courses provides a broad yet in-depth overview of data mining, integrating related concepts from machine learning and statistics.
FEATURED COMMENTARY
To meet its potential for driving discovery and knowledge acquisition, data science must address the key challenges posed by “Big Data,” assert Professors James Hendler and Peter Fox in a commentary that appeared in the June edition of the journal Big Data. Those challenges are not typically represented in university data science programs, which currently emphasize statistical techniques, visualization, and programming/analysis applications.
“Despite all the talk about the need for data science, there has not been a consensus as to what are the real challenges in data-enhanced science and engineering,” said Hendler, director of the Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications (IDEA) and the Tetherless World Research Constellation professor of computer, Web, and cognitive sciences. “The Rensselaer IDEA is not just about Big Data, it’s about really understanding the way data is creating new research paradigms across the campus.” In the commentary “The Science of Data Science,” Hendler and Fox, Tetherless World Research Constellation Chair and a professor of earth and environmental sciences and computer science, and a member of IDEA, write that “a research agenda is needed that explores the key challenges that must be met to fulfill the needs of research driven by large-scale data analytics.”