Faculty members work directly with students—doing research, solving problems, teaching, and interacting. They take pride in their dedication to teaching — demonstrating a commitment to excellence in teaching that always has been a hallmark of Rensselaer’s teacher-scholars. There are many undergraduate research opportunities at Rensselaer. With the help of faculty members, some students secure external funding to pursue research opportunities in their field of interest. Rensselaer’s faculty devote much thought and time to designing more dynamic teaching methods, redesigning curricula, and transforming classrooms into interactive learning environments where students learn by doing.

Rensselaer’s faculty members are a collaborative community working in an atmosphere of increasing interdisciplinarity.

We welcome that and are committed to going even further—from “low walls” between disciplines to “no walls”—believing that those intersections foster some of the most vital research today.

Our faculty includes National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award winners, members of the National Academies, and other eminent professionals.

They have been innovators, from the first senior professor, Amos Eaton, whose revolutionary approach in the 1820s had students conduct the experiments and do the lecturing—truly learning by doing—and his successor Benjamin Franklin Greene, class of 1848, who transformed Rensselaer into a diversified institution of higher learning, a true polytechnic.

That Rensselaer graduates have consistently been in demand for more than 180 years is a testament to the talent and dedication of our faculty. True to Stephen Van Rensselaer’s founding principle, they have prepared our students for the application of science to the common purposes of life.

History shows that those purposes have often ranged to the truly uncommon, in achievements from the Brooklyn Bridge to the moon landing to the invention of the microprocessor.

Department Faculty

• Architecture
• Arts
• Biology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Chemical and Biological Engineering
• Chemistry and Chemical Biology
• Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Cognitive Science
• Computer Science
• Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Economics
• Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering
• Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Information Technology
• Language, Literature, and Communication
• Management & Technology
• Materials Science and Engineering
• Mathematical Sciences
• Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering
• Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy
• Science and Technology Studies