What turns me on about teaching at Rivier College is that I am able to learn lots of neat, new stuff, right along with my students.  This semester, for example, I am teaching a Computer Security course full of fascinating topics, such as cryptography (which has an amazing history, and is at the same time a very hot topic), and we are also learning how hackers attack machines with viruses, worms, and other malicious software. I came to the U.S. from my native England to earn a Ph.D. in Physics from Yale University. From there, I spent many happy years in the Database Systems Engineering group at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).  I also worked at Oracle Corporation before finally pursuing my dream to teach full-time at the college level. My major interests are database systems, programming languages (especially Java and C/C++), and Web development.

Sr. Martha Villeneuve

Since 1971, Sr. Martha has been integrally involved with the development of the College's computer systems and with the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. While many today know her as the director of the Academic Computing Center, she was responsible not only for the establishment of the Computer Science Department, but with Sr. Cecile Papineau, she oversaw installation of the first computer on campus in1983. Sr. Martha chaired the Mathematics and Computer Science Department from 1975 to 1992 and taught in the department all these years. She remembers when Rivier's computer lab consisted of one teletype terminal located in a small room and the College shared access to a mainframe computer at Dartmouth College, along with Mount St. Mary College and Notre Dame College. Today, while she admits to missing her time in the classroom, she says that overseeing the Computing Center gives her plenty of opportunity to continue to interact with students. "As long as I can continue to help students," she says, "I'm happy."

Excerpt from "Sr. Martha Villeneuve to celebrate 50th Jubilee" article in the Rivier College Campus Forum, April 2003.

Vladimir Riabov, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor
vriabov@rivier.edu
http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/vriabov/ 

Research, teaching, and photography are three of my passions. My latest work involves the development of a “bagel-shaped” parachute that NASA plans to use for landing future space probes on Mars, Venus, Titan, Europe, and Neptune. After receiving a Ph.D. from Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology, I developed computer codes for the Russian Space Shuttle “Buran” before immigrating to the United States. Here, I worked for Nortel Networks for a time and then joined the Rivier College faculty. My “joy of discovery” has led me to research in the fields of storage area networks, embedded system design, direct simulation Monte-Carlo techniques, complexity code analysis, and numerical methods for aerospace applications. I am also excited by new technological challenges in the networking industry.

 Mihaela Sabin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
msabin@rivier.edu
www.rivier.edu/faculty/msabin/web/home/

Computing first became an important part of my life 25 years ago when I studied computer science at the Politehnica University in my native Rumania. After completing my master's degree, I researched the automation of programming or the "what you see is what you get" type of interaction most people prefer. I pursued a doctorate in computer science jointly with a master's in college teaching at the University of New Hampshire. There is no greater professional satisfaction for me than imparting what I know to my students and partnering with them in learning how computers can serve us in smarter ways. My current research is in the field of artificial intelligence and how it is used to diagnose faults in computer networks; to tailor the assembly of products with too many features; and to manage the storage of multimedia.