Faculty

The Master of Science in Information Technology faculty strike the perfect balance between the academic and professional worlds, providing a range of theoretical knowledge and practical experiences that the unique curriculum of the MSIT demands. This combination of academic and “real-world” knowledge helps you immediately apply what you’ve learned directly into your work environment.

Renowned professors from the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Kellogg School of Management, and Northwestern's Law School bring their academic expertise to the classroom, giving students a balanced view of academic principles and practical applications. Industry leaders add their considerable talents to our program by bringing their professional successes and relevant experiences into the classroom.

Faculty Members in 2009-10

Randy Berry, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School. Dr. Berry has a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1993 and the M.S. and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 and 2000 respectively. During the summer of 2000 he was a postdoctoral associate in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. In 1998 he was on the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the Advanced Networks Group. His primary research interests include wireless communication, data networks, and information theory. He is the recipient of a 2003 NSF CAREER award and the Best Teacher award for the 2001/2002 academic year from the ECE Department at Northwestern University. More information can be found at http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/~rberry/ Dr. Berry serves on the Board for the MSIT and teaches 432, Communications Networks.

Yan Chen, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University.  Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley in 2003.   He has over ten years of experience in network security, network measurement, P2P systems and wireless networks from both academe and industry. He won the Department of Energy (DOE) Early CAREER award in 2005, the Department of Defense (DoD) AFOSR Young Investigator Award, and the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing Awards in 2004 and 2005 with his colleagues. Besides publishing in premier conferences such as ACM SIGCOMM, he has served as chair or on the technical program committee (TPC) of many major networking and security conferences. He started several security courses at Northwestern University, including the EECS 350 Introduction to Computer Security, EECS 354 Network Penetration and Security, and EECS 450 Internet Security. He was a Searle Junior Fellow (granted by the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence) of Northwestern University in 2004. More information can be found at http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~ychen/ . Dr. Chen teaches 458, Information Security and Assurance.

Alexander Chernev, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Dr. Chernev holds a PhD in Psychology from Sofia University and a PhD in Business Administration from Duke University. Dr. Chernev's research applies theories and concepts related to consumer behavior and managerial decision making to develop successful marketing strategies. He serves on the editorial boards of top research journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. Dr. Chernev's research has been published in leading marketing journals and has been quoted in business and popular press, including Business Week, Forbes, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He has written numerous teaching cases focused on corporate planning, marketing strategy, and brand and customer management. At Kellogg, Dr. Chernev teaches marketing management, strategic marketing, marketing research, and behavioral decision theory in the MBA, PhD, and executive education pro-grams. In addition to teaching, he advises companies around the world on issues of strategic marketing planning and analysis, business innovation, brand and customer equity, new product development, and customer management. More information can be found at http://faculty.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Faculty/Directory/Chernev_Alexander.aspx Dr. Chernev teaches 451, Strategic Marketing.

Alok Choudhary, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School, and Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management. Ph.D, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Prof. Choudhary's research is in high performance computing, data mining, databases, Storage Systems and Use of technologies in business applications such as Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management and Information Systems. He has worked in industry as a computer consultant and serves on the advisory boards of several companies.  He has published more than 250 papers in various journals and has written a book and several book chapters on his research interests. He also serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has chaired many international conferences.  More information can be found at http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/~choudhar/ Dr. Choudhary teaches 423, Data Mining and Business Intelligence.

Peter Dinda, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School. Ph.D in Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Dinda's research interests include virtualization, empathic systems, distributed and parallel systems, languages and programming systems for parallel, distributed and sensor network computing, and performance analysis. He leads the V3VEE Project (v3vee.org), which is building a new virtual machine monitor for modern architectures. He is presently the head of the EECS department's Computer Engineering and Systems Division and is affiliated with the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems and the Center for Ultra-scale Computing. More information can be found at http://www.cs.northwestern.edu/~pdinda/ Dr. Dinda teaches a Special Topics section on Virtualization.

Aaron J. Gellman, Professor of Management and Strategy in the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and Professor of Industrial Engineering in the McCormick School. Ph.D in Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A noted transportation economist, Prof. Gellman's research, and teaching include transportation economics and policy and the management and utilization of research and technology. Prof. Gellman is the author of numerous published papers and has served on government panels and committees, as well as corporate boards. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Panama Canal Authority and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. More information can be found at http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/bio/gellman.htm Dr. Gellman teaches 445, Managing IT Development and Innovation.

Alan Graves, Adjunct Instructor. Mr. Graves is a Project Consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. He conducts in-depth examinations of large financial institutions and other businesses regulated by the Federal Reserve System and works on special assignments, primarily in Washington D.C.  Alan transfered October 2008 from the Technology Lab housed at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago for the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC). The Council is a formal body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions. Alan has over twenty years of prior experience as an IT consultant and systems architect at Bell Labs/Lucent/NCR and Amoco Corporation. He has a very diverse background having held positions in Education, Diving and Broadcasting. His credentials include BA (Radio and Television), BS (Psychology), MS in Information Technology, and he holds certifications from the FCC, Novell, Microsoft, Information Systems Audit and Control Association, ISC 2 and Citrix. Mr. Graves teaches 490, IT Management.

Abraham H. Haddad, Program Director of the MSIT, Henry and Isabelle Dever Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School. Ph.D., Princeton.  Also a Fellow of IEEE, IFAC and AAAS.  Dr. Haddad served as President of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and is a member of the Council of IFAC.  His favorite projects are analysis, modeling, estimation, detection of systems, with applications to communication systems and networks.  More information can be found at http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/~ahaddad/ahaddad.html Dr. Haddad is chair of the MSIT Board of Directors and teaches 431, Probability and Statistical Methods. He is the former chairman of the EECS department for academic year 2004-05.

Michael Honig, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School. Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley. After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Honig joined Bell Laboratories, and subsequently moved to Bellcore Applied Research where he worked on digital communications for both wired and wireless systems. He has been at Northwestern since fall 1994.  He has served as an editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and has served on the Board of Governors for the IEEE Information Theory Society. He is a Fellow of IEEE and former Ameritech Professor of Information Technology at Northwestern. He has recently been elected the recipient of a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award is in recognition of Mike's past accomplishments in research and teaching. More information can be found at http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/~mh/ He teaches 413, Wireless Technologies.

Chung-Chieh Lee, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School.  Ph.D., Princeton.  A consultant to many sectors of information and telecommunication industry and a former co-director of Center for Information and Telecommunication Technology at Northwestern, Dr. Lee was instrumental in designing and guiding the MSIT through the approval channels of the University.  His current research projects involve advanced QoS architectures and control algorithms for all Layers 1-4 and novel wireless ad hoc network protocols and architectures.  More information can be found at http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/faculty/Lee_Chung-Chieh.html Dr. Lee is a member of the MSIT Board and teaches 411, Fundamentals of Telecommunication Engineering.

Hugh W. Ryan, Adjunct Instructor. MS ME, New Mexico State University.  Mr. Ryan is a retired partner from Accenture. While at Accenture, he led the Large Complex Systems. He has extensive systems integration experience with a focus in the application of leading edge IT technology on some of Accenture's largest IT projects. He has published on application and use of client/server and internet technology. Mr. Ryan teaches 443, Enterprise Applications and Integration.

James Speta, Professor of Law at Northwestern Law School.  JD from the University of Michigan in 1991; BA in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1988.  His research interests include telecommunications and Internet policy, antitrust, administrative law, and market organization. Prof. Speta previously clerked for Judge Harry T. Edwards on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Additionally, he practiced appellate, telecommunications, and antitrust law with the Chicago firm of Sidley & Austin.  More information can be found at:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/profiles/JamesSpeta/ Professor Speta teaches 491:  Selected Topics in Information Technology:  Law of IT.

Darren Taylor, Adjunct Instructor. Mr. Taylor is currently the Director of eCommerce Strategy & Integration at W.W. Grainger, a $6 billion global distributor of facilities maintenance supplies and one of the 20 largest commerce websites. Previous roles at Grainger include Director of Supply Chain Systems, and Director of Supply Chain Strategy, Quality and Business Intelligence. From 1998-2001, Mr. Taylor Founded an Internet company that was named as one of the Midwest’s top 75 high- tech firms by i-Street magazine, previously a divine InterVentures company. Mr. Taylor has been a guest speaker on various technology topics including: Indirect Procurement Conference on eCommerce Trends and RFID; SAP’s ASUG Conference on Warehouse Management Strategies; Arizona State University on Advanced Internet Technology; Ragan Communications Strategic Public Relations Conference on Branding with Online Communities. He has been featured in Crain's Chicago Business, Chicago Tribune, Silicon Prairie magazine and on NBC TV discussing topics ranging from strategies for keeping high tech talent to avoiding eBusiness pitfalls. Mr. Taylor graduated from two Management Training Programs: Grainger’s Leadership Development and MMI’s (The St. Paul) Technical Rotation. He holds a Masters in IT from Northwestern and a B.A in Accounting from Southern Methodist University.

John R. Twombly, Adjunct Instructor. MBA and Ph.D., University of Chicago. Dr. Twombly is Clinical Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Stuart School of Business. Dr. Twombly's research has been published in The Journal of Accounting Research and The Accounting Review, and he has written continuing education monographs and conducted seminars for the Center for Executive Education in New York, the Financial Analysts Federation, The Wharton School's Executive Education Program and numerous major corporations. In addition to his academic accomplishments, Dr. Twombly, who is a Certified Public Accountant, supervises the management of a real estate portfolio consisting of over one hundred rental units. More information can be found at http://www.stuart.iit.edu/about/faculty/john_twombly.shtml He teaches 456, Financial Management for IT Professionals.

Alan Wolff, Adjunct Instructor, MS and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Northwestern University. Dr. Wolff is the Director of Information Resources for Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. He has more than 20 years of work experience in the Information Technology field and nearly 10 years experience in teaching graduate level courses in telecommunications and computer science. In addition to being an instructor in the MSIT, Dr. Wolff has also been an adjunct faculty member at DePaul University's School of Computer Science, Telecommunications, and Information Systems. Alan is a member of the IEEE and Educause organizations. His group has won 3 Northwestern University "Best Practice" awards for particular projects in the last 2 years, for web applications work and high performance computing. More information can be found at http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/about/orgchart/Alan_Wolff.php Dr. Wolff teaches 421, Principles of Computer and Information Technology.