For more than a year, the Jefferson Project at Lake George has been collecting electronic data from sensors mounted in stream beds, platforms moored on the water, and the depths of the lake bottom. A tour boat plying the southern basin of the lake may be an unexpected next step for sensor deployments, but it’s […]

In this Approach blog, the Rensselaer news team spoke with alumnus Paul A. Bleicher, M.D., Ph.D., (B.S. ’76), who is the 2015 Rensselaer Entrepreneur of the Year, and chief executive officer of OptumLabs, about entrepreneurship, resilience in leadership, and his time at Rensselaer. Q: What drew you to biology at Rensselaer and how has science […]

In a basement lab, Krysia Kornecki reaches into a refrigerator and pulls out a small plastic tub — about half a pint— filled with mud. The mud was skimmed from the bottom of Lake George and in the hands of researchers the information it contains — in the form of microscopic plants and animals, pollen, chemical […]

Last month, on May 26, Rensselaer hosted a Twitter Q & A with 2015 Commencement honorand Henry Louis Gates, Jr. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree during the 209th Commencement Ceremony held at Rensselaer on Saturday, May 30. Dr. Gates is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, and cultural critic; he has authored 17 […]

Admiral Michelle Howard, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, originally posted the blog titled “Continue to Reach for Equality and Inclusiveness in All Rights,” in Navy Live on March 18, 2015, to commemorate Women’s History Month. Admiral Howard will be addressing Rensselaer graduates at the Institute’s 209th Commencement and receiving an honorary degree at the ceremony. On the […]

Just in time for swimming season, The Approach wanted to share some information on the current, and changing, state of Lake George. Since 1980, researchers at the Rensselaer Darrin Fresh Water Institute (DFWI) have tracked a series of indicators — including temperature, nutrients, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, and transparency — in the waters of Lake George. […]

(In this guest post, Christopher J. Low, a Rensselaer graduate and IBM consultant, explains how business analytics, like a GPS system, has aided him in navigating his career.) Data has shaped a lot of my life experience so far, and now it’s also an important part of my career. In academics, numbers and information were […]

Spring is inevitable. And while ice still caps Lake George, data about the water beneath has been flowing into the Jefferson Project at Lake George throughout the cold, long winter. The winter has been a time for testing, de-bugging, and anticipation, as researchers begin working with a network of sensor platforms installed in the waning […]

A quick congratulations to RPISEC, the “resident computer security club and CTF team” at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  Club president Markus Gaasedelen, a computer science student, confirmed a report that popped up on RPI Reddit claiming a top place finish in the 12th Information Security Talent Search, as organized and hosted by Rochester Institute of Technology’s […]

Ring any bells? Readers of the Approach may remember a 2014 post on the Image-Based Ecological Information System, or IBEIS, an experimental software tool that can identify individual animals pictured in the thousands of ordinary photos taken by tourists in game parks such as Yellowstone National Park, Amboseli National Park in Kenya, or the Galapagos Islands […]