Troy, N.Y. — Kenneth Connor has been named chair of the department of electrical, computer, and systems engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has recently been serving as acting department chair.

“I have been impressed by Professor Connor’s ability to seek and attract outstanding faculty to his department, evidenced by the four new faculty members he has hired this academic year. I am confident that he will continue to grow the department with additional key hires who will contribute significantly to achieving department and school goals in support of the Rensselaer Plan,” said William A. “Bud” Baeslack ’78, dean of engineering. The Rensselaer Plan, initiated last year, is the strategic outline for Rensselaer’s future.

A resident of Troy and an elected a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Connor has directed Rensselaer’s Plasma Dynamics Laboratory since 1992.

Connor has been a visiting scientist at Nagoya University in Japan, and the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has worked at Kyoto University in Japan, the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology in the Ukraine, and at Fermilab in Illinois. He also has had long-term collaborations at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Texas - Austin, and the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

At Rensselaer, Connor was Anderson Fellow and acting director of the Anderson Center in 1996. In addition, he was among the key players who helped revise most of ECSE’s core undergraduate courses to the studio format as part of Rensselaer’s pioneering efforts in interactive learning.

Connor received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1968 and 1970, respectively, and his Ph.D. in electrophysics from the Polytechnic Institute of New York in 1975. He joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1974.

Contact: Patricia Azriel
Phone: (518) 276-6531
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