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Lester A. Gerhardt
Lester Gerhardt's career combines
industrial and academic experience. Lester joined Rensselaer in 1970.
He was promoted to full professor, and was then selected as the first
chairman of the newly merged electrical, computer, and systems
engineering department following a nationwide search. At Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, his specialty is Digital Signal Processing,
emphasizing image processing, speech processing, and brain computer
interfacing, conducting sponsored research and teaching in this field.
He has been actively involved in academic administration concurrent with
his professorial career. He has served in the roles of ECSE Department
Chair which was then cited as the most improved Department in the US at
the time by the National Academy of Engineering; Founding Director of
the Center for Manufacturing Productivity, appointed by President George
Low, which then became the second such Center in the US; Director of
the Computer Integrated Manufacturing Program, then the largest
interdisciplinary research program on campus, which was awarded the
National LEAD (Leadership, Excellence, and Development) Award; Director
of the Center for Industrial Innovation; Associate Dean of Engineering
for Research; a VP of Research Administration and Finance; Dean of
Engineering; and most recently as Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate
Education. He was the Inaugural Recipient of the National ASEE Research
Administration Award.
Internationally speaking, he has served as a Delegate to
NATO; consultant to the governments of Singapore, Portugal, Canada,
Germany and the United Kingdom; co-founder of the ongoing Global
Engineering Education Exchange Program in 1995 and served as its Chair
of the Executive Committee for over a decade; originator of the
Rensselaer Engineering Education Across Cultural Horizons (REACH)
Program requiring an international experience of each undergraduate
student in 2008; on the International Advisory Board of the ASEE; was
awarded an honorary doctorate by the Technical University of Denmark;
his numerous presentations and publications include the subject of
globalization of higher education; and travels globally extensively.
Before going to RPI, Lester spent ten years with Bell
Aerospace Corporation, where he worked on the visual simulation of space
flight including the Apollo Program's moon landing, using both model
based and electronic based imaging technology, on which he was granted
several patents. In 1999, he organized Space Week at Rensselaer in 1999,
in honor of the 30th anniversary of the moon landing in which he was
involved many years before. Four of the twelve astronauts who walked on
the moon attended this event including Buzz Aldrin. He is an active
consultant to industry, government, and academe, sits on the Board and
directs the research of a privately held company, is a Fellow of the
IEEE, and ASEE; and holds several patents. He is married to a wonderful
women, Karen, and they have two sons. Lester enjoys tennis, sailing,
swimming, art, and woodworking.
His Bachelors degree in electrical engineering is from the City College
of New York, and his Masters and PhD degrees are from the University of
Bu ffalo in Electrical Engineering, earned while working at Bell
concurrently.
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