Leadership & Administration
Mujdat Cetin, PhD
Director, NYSTAR Center of Excellence in Data Science at the University of Rochester
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Robin and Tim Wentworth Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science
Mujdat Cetin is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Robin and Tim Wentworth Director of the Goergen Institute for Data Science at the University of Rochester. He is also serving as the Director of the New York State Center of Excellence in Data Science. Previously he served as a faculty member at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey, and as a Research Scientist at MIT. He also held visiting faculty positions at MIT, Northeastern University, and Boston University.
Mujdat Cetin received his BS in electrical engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1993, a MS in electrical engineering from the University of Salford, Manchester UK in 1995, followed by a PhD in electrical engineering from Boston University, Boston, MA in 2001.
Professor Cetin received several awards including the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award; the EURASIP/Elsevier Signal Processing Best Paper Award; the IET Radar, Sonar and Navigation Premium Award; and the Turkish Academy of Sciences Distinguished Young Scientist Award.
Professor Cetin is a Fellow of the IEEE and served as a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Directions Board and as the Chair of the IEEE Computational Imaging Technical Committee. He is currently a Senior Area Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging and the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, as well as an Associate Editor for the SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences. He has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, the IEEE Signal Processing Letters, and the IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics; a Guest Editor for Pattern Recognition Letters; and an Area Editor for the Journal of Advances in Information Fusion. He has also served as a member of the IEEE Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing Technical Committee and the IEEE Bioimaging and Signal Processing Technical Committee.
Professor Cetin was the Technical Program Co-chair for the IEEE Image, Video, and Multidimensional Signal Processing (IVMSP) Workshop in 2016; for the International Conference on Information Fusion in 2016 and 2013; for the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR) in 2010; and for the IEEE Turkish Conference on Signal Processing, Communications, and their Applications in 2006. He was one of the keynote speakers for the 2015 International Workshop on Compressed Sensing Theory and its Applications to Radar, Sonar, and Remote Sensing. He served as an Area Chair for the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) and for the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) multiple times.
Mike Kennerknecht
Economic Development Coordinator & Assistant Director of State Relations
Mike Kennerknecht is the Economic Development Coordinator and Assistant Director of State Relations for the University of Rochester. In his role, he works closely with the University’s Goergen Institute for Data Science and the Rochester Center of Excellence in Data Science on economic development projects and partnerships with industry and government. Mike also works closely with all of New York State’s Centers of Excellence and Centers for Advanced Technology, helping to coordinate their advocacy efforts and promote the Centers to businesses statewide.
Brendan Mort, PhD
Computational Resources Consultant
Brendan Mort is the Director of the Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC), which provides researchers with hardware, software, training, and support necessary to utilize computational science and big data computing technology in research activities in all areas of academic scholarship. Brendan is responsible for overseeing a staff of computational scientists, programmers, system administrators, and students who are responsible for the identification, development, deployment, and maintenance of computational tools and methods for modeling, analyzing, and visualizing computer-driven research projects. He helps facilitate faculty research collaborations and provides opportunities to showcase their research to the University community, to learn about the use of computing infrastructure in research problems, and to explore new frontiers in computing technology and their applications to research. Brendan received a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from the University at Buffalo, where he was a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow. His personal expertise is focused on the use of high performance computing and data-intensive technologies for analyzing chemical and biological systems. As a member of the faculty in the Chemistry Department, his research interests have led to collaborations in the exploration of simulations for understanding structure and function of biomolecular systems, the development of accurate methods for the calculation of molecular response properties, and applications of machine learning to chemistry.
Cathy Adams
Finance & Collaborative Projects Manager
The Center business manager is Cathy Adams. With 30 years of service to the University of Rochester, Ms. Adams brings a wealth of administrative and operational experience and knowledge of UR policies and procedures to her role as well as an ability to foster excellent relationships across all levels in the organization and our partner entities. Ms. Adams was recruited by CEIS (the University’s NYSTAR-funded Center for Advanced Technology) in January 2010 and joined our Center of Excellence in 2017.
Margaret Urzetta
Administrator
Margaret Urzetta joined CEIS in August 2015. She added to her position at CEIS duties at the NYSTAR Center of Excellence in Data Science at the University of Rochester in March 2019.
Nick Koziol
Business Engagement and Communications Manager, Center of Excellence in Data Science
Nick Koziol joined the Center of Excellence in Data Science in June 2022. At the University of Rochester, he works closely with the University’s Goergen Institute for Data Science and the Rochester Center of Excellence in Data Science to develop partnerships with businesses, faculty, and students that create positive economic impacts for the surrounding community and New York State. Nick has over 20 years of experience working with college students and universities in a variety of roles including alumni engagement, student life, fundraising, formal instruction, mentoring, and community engagement. Nick’s previous institutions include RIT, Medaille College, SUNY Cortland, and SUNY Fredonia. He received his master’s degree from SUNY Buffalo State in Higher Education Administration and his Bachelors in English from SUNY Fredonia. He is currently working on his EdD in Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester. Nick is also a podcast host for two podcasts and resides in Bliss, NY with his wife and four children.