University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: October 4, 2007

Name: Jim Battista
School: College of Arts and Sciences
Department: Political Science
Academic Title: Assistant Professor
Academic Degrees: B.A., University of Virginia; M.A. and Ph.D., Duke University
Areas of Special Interest: Legislative politics, specifically state legislatures; more specifically, comparative analysis of state legislatures' rules and internal structures

What I've found most rewarding about teaching are those moments when a student suddenly gets a concept that they've been struggling with, and starts using it fluently. If this happens right after I try a different way to get the point across-so I can at least pretend that their getting it was my doing-that's even better. But just being in the room when the light bulb comes on is a privilege.

Name: Heather Ochs-Balcom
School: Public Health and Health Professions
Department: Social and Preventive Medicine
Academic Title: Research Assistant Professor
Academic Degrees: B.S., and M.S., biology, Clarion University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., epidemiology and community health, University at Buffalo
Areas of Special Interest: Genetic epidemiology of cancer, oxidative stress and chronic disease, nutrition and disease prevention, correlates of pulmonary function

I currently am working on a number of studies in large pedigrees, as well as case-control studies in the general population, that are looking for genes that play a role in Barrett's esophagus and esophageal, lung and colon cancers.

Name: Atri Rudra
School: Engineering and Applied Sciences
Department: Computer Science and Engineering
Academic Title: Assistant Professor
Academic Degrees: B.Tech., Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India; Ph.D., University of Washington-Seattle
Areas of Special Interest: Theoretical computer science, in particular the theory of error correcting codes, algorithmic mechanism design, approximation algorithms and computational complexity

My main work is in error correcting codes, which are clever ways of introducing redundancy into data so that the original information can be recovered from corrupted data. For example, CDs and DVDs work even in the presence of scratches because they use error correcting codes. The overarching goal of my research is to design error correcting codes and algorithms that can correct more errors than what is known today.