Four Distinguished Professors Join Cornell Tech Faculty

Cornell Tech and Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute welcome new faculty with expertise across disciplines including machine learning, computational photography, and mobile health applications

NEW YORK, NY – Cornell Tech today announced four new professors who will join the campus’ distinguished faculty. With research and industry experience in fields such as machine learning, computational photography, and mobile health applications, these professors will build on Cornell Tech’s interdisciplinary and groundbreaking research. Today, Cornell Tech is home to more than 30 world-class faculty members advising nearly 70 PhD students. 

“With a breadth of expertise, our new faculty members will enrich Cornell Tech’s campus by driving groundbreaking research, mentoring students, and working with New York-based startups, companies, and nonprofits,” said Greg Morrisett, Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. “Along with the rest of the Cornell Tech faculty, our new professors are at the forefront of solving some of the most complex and crucial problems of the digital age which is why we’re thrilled to welcome them to our multidisciplinary community on campus.” 

The new professors include:

• Tanzeem Choudhury, Ph.D., Professor joins Cornell Tech from Cornell University where she was an Associate Professor of Information and Computer Science. She is the director of the People-Aware Computing group, which works on inventing the future of technology-assisted wellbeing. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Rochester.  
• Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Ph.D., Assistant Professor joins the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech from the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering where she received a Ph.D. She develops computing technologies across various domains including mobile health, user interfaces, and the Internet of Things, such as a sleep apnea detection application that has been deployed worldwide.
• Alexander “Sasha” Rush, Ph.D., Associate Professor joins Cornell Tech from Harvard University, where he was an Associate Professor in Computer Science focused on data-driven methods for understanding natural language. His recent research has centered on the intersection of deep learning and structured prediction, concentrating on text generation and document-level understanding. Before Harvard, Sasha was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) in New York. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his B.A. in Computer Science at Harvard University. 
• Christoph Studer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor joins Cornell Tech from Cornell University where he was an Assistant Professor focusing on the joint design of algorithms and integrated circuits. Dr. Studer’s research group is developing novel technologies for future multi-antenna wireless communication systems. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. 

Guided by both academic excellence and practical impact, Cornell Tech’s purpose-driven research program spurs relevant and valuable progress in five areas: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Social Computing, Security & Privacy, Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, Data & Modeling, and Law & Policy. Cornell Tech’s faculty is publishing groundbreaking research — for instance, Nicola Dell created technologies countering domestic abuse through mobile apps; Ari Juels analyzed manipulation on cryptocurrency exchanges; and Nathan Kallus studied how algorithms determining credit and loan decisions produce racist consequences.   

About Cornell Tech

Cornell Tech brings together faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalytic environment to produce visionary results grounded in significant needs that will reinvent the way we live in the digital age. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute embodies the academic partnership between the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University on the Cornell Tech campus.

Cornell Tech’s Roosevelt Island campus opened fall 2017. When fully completed, the campus will include two million square feet of state-of-the-art buildings, over two acres of open space, and will be home to more than 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff.