Affiliated Deans
David E. Fenske, Dean
The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology
Dr. Selçuk Güçeri, Dean
Drexel University College of Engineering
George P. Tsetsekos, Dean
The LeBow College of Business
Allen Sabinson, Dean
Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design
DUCA Staff
Brenda Sheridan, Executive Director
Brenda Sheridan is the Executive Director for DUCA. She is also the Director of College Relations at the iSchool at Drexel. She has a Ed.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in Higher Education Administration. Her dissertation title was: Key components of successful higher education online fundraising programs. Sheridan has a MS in Journalism from West Virginia University and a BS in Broadcast Journalism from Penn State University. She is a member of Kappa Tau Alpha, National Journalism Honorary. Sheridan has worked in higher education for the past 20 years as an Adjunct Instructor, fundraiser and administrator.
DUCA Academic Council
Jeffrey L. Popyack, Academic Council Chair
Jeffrey L. Popyack is Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies in Computer Science at Drexel University. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Applied Mathematics from the University of Virginia and B.S. in Mathematics from George Mason University. His research interests are in operations research, artificial intelligence and computer science education. He was the Academic Director for the Pennsylvania Governor's School for Information, Society and Technology from 2002-2008 and for the Drexel University Computing Academy since 2009. He is primarily responsible for the freshman computer science curriculum and artificial intelligence track courses at Drexel. He has been the Principal Investigator on three NSF-DUE grants and a Microsoft Research University Relations Tablet PC Development Grant for innovation in teaching computer programming courses. In 1999, he was awarded Drexel's Undergraduate Teaching Award for Senior Faculty. He served three terms as an Executive Officer of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines, including five years as President.
Michael Atwood
Michael Atwood is the Associate Dean for Research and for Undergraduate Education at The iSchool at Drexel. He holds his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Colorado. Dr. Atwood's major teaching interests include human-computer interaction, computer-supported cooperative work, and artificial intelligence. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, supporting communication and collaboration among groups involved in system design activities, and on organizational memory. His professional experience includes research and development of interactive systems and expert systems, software engineering process improvement, software project management, and software product development.
David Gefen
David Gefen teaches Strategic Management of IT, Outsourcing, Analysis and Design, Database Analysis and Design, and VB.NET. He received his Ph.D. in CIS from Georgia State University and a Master of Sciences in MIS from Tel-Aviv University. His research focuses on trust and culture as they apply to the psychological and rational processes involved in Outsourcing, Managing IS projects, ERP, and e-commerce. David’s wide interests in IT adoption and management stem from his 12 years of experience in developing and managing large information systems. His research findings have been published in the top MIS journals, including MISQ, ISR, JMIS, IEEE TEM, Omega, JAIS, CAIS, and elsewhere. David is an author of a textbook on VB.NET programming. David is on the Editorial Boards of MISQ, JMIS, and DATABASE.
Peter Grillo
Peter Grillo, Ph.D. is an associate professor at The iSchool at Drexel. Grillo's teaching interests include information systems management, system analysis and design, distributed systems, and database management systems. His research interests are in the strategic applications of technology within organizations.
Jeremy Johnson
Jeremy Johnson is Professor and Department Head for Computer Science at Drexel University. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from The Ohio State University and the University of Delaware respectively, and his B.A. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include computer algebra algorithms and systems, high performance computing, domain specific languages and hardware and code generation, and automatic performance tuning. He is a founding member of the SPIRAL project (www.spiral.net), a joint project, with Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to automatically implement and optimize signal and image processing algorithms. Tools from SPIRAL are currently used by Intel in the development of their high-performance libraries MKL (Math Kernel Library) and IPP (Intel Performance Primitives). He has built special purpose hardware, under a grant from the Department of Energy, for high speed simulation of the power grid and has a patent for computing multi-dimensional Fourier transforms using the dimensionless fast Fourier transform, an algorithm he and his colleagues invented. He currently serves on the editorial board of the journal on Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing, as chair of the ACM special interest group in Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation (SIGSAM) and chair of the Computer and Cognitive Science cluster of the Franklin Institutes' Committee on the Sciences and the Arts.
Naga Kandasamy
Naga Kandasamy is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Drexel University where he teaches and conducts research in the area of computer engineering, with specific interests in embedded systems, self-managing systems, fault-tolerant computing, parallel computing and computer architecture.
He received his Ph.D in 2003 from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining Drexel, he was a research scientist at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University, from 2003-2004. Prof. Kandasamy is a recipient of the 2007 National Science Foundation Early Faculty (CAREER) Award and best student paper awards at the 2006 and 2008 IEEE International Conferences on Autonomic Computing. He is a member of the IEEE.
Christopher Redmann
Christopher P. Redmann is an Assistant Professor and Program Director of the Digital Media Program of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts at Drexel University. He teaches coursework in Animation, Shader Writing, Compositing and Crowd Simulation. His research revolves around historic recreations of American Colonial era sites and programming for haptic medical training. Redmann also has fifteen years of experience creating animation; his work has been seen in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. He has also worked on visual effects for short and feature films, which have garnered awards at the New York City Short Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival and have been screened at the Director's Guild of America. Christopher holds a Bachelor of Architectural History from the University of Virginia and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.
Residential Life
Miguel Vargas, Residential Life Director
Miguel Vargas has been Drexel University Computing Academy’s Residential Life Director since its inception in 2009. Previous to this appointment, he was a Pennsylvania Governor’s School for Information, Society, and Technology staff member for 10 years. Miguel is an architecture student at Drexel, and works for the Residential Living Department at the University.
Charles Rumford, Lead Tech
Major: Computer Science
Year in School: Senior/Graduated Spring 2010

Charles attended the PGSIT, the predecessor to the Drexel University Computing Academy, in 2004 and started working for the program in 2006 while attending Drexel. His main interests in the computing world include: networking, systems administration, algorithms, computing education, and general non-sense. Also while at Drexel he has served with a number of organizations on campus and off-campus dealing to explore non-computing interests. He hopes this year to provide the best experience for the students.
Sam Chenkin, DUCA Project Coordinator
Major: Information Systems(BS/MS)
Year in School: Junior

Sam came to Drexel with a firm desire to avoid the traditional Computer Science and Information Technology paths. At The iSchool at Drexel he found the Information Systems program, a perfect mix people and technology, which has kept him interested since day one. As well as attending Drexel, Sam works at NPower PA, a non-profit consulting company in Center City, Philadelphia, where he focuses on bridging the gap between technology and people.