Biography
Dr. Popyack received his PhD and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from the University of Virginia and BS in Mathematics from George Mason University. He served ten years as the Associate Head for Undergraduate Affairs in the Department of Computer Science at Drexel University, where he is an Associate Professor. His research interests are in operations research, artificial intelligence and computer science education. He is primarily responsible for the freshman computer science curriculum and artificial intelligence track courses at Drexel. He recently served his fourth term as an Executive Officer of Upsilon Pi Epsilon, the International Honor Society for the Computing and Information Disciplines, including five years as president. 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 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 received Drexel’s Undergraduate Teaching Award for Senior Faculty, and in 2007, received the College of Engineering Outstanding Service Award.
Research Areas
Research Interests
Operations research, stochastic optimization, computational methods for Markov decisions processes, artificial intelligence, computer science education
Academic Distinctions
- PhD, Applied Mathematics, University of Virginia
- Thesis: Approximating Large-Scale Markov Decision Processes
- MS, Applied Mathematics, University of Virginia
- Thesis: Computational Methods for Undiscounted Markov Decision Chains
- BS, Mathematics, George Mason University