List of University at Albany people

This is a list of University of Albany people.

Notable alumni

Business

• Steven Berkowitz (1980), former Senior Vice President of Microsoft Online Services, and CEO of MOVE
• Joshua Furnas (2007), co-founder of Selfless Tee
• Jang Young-sik (PhD 1970), economist, former president of the Korea Electric Power Company
• John Kourakos (1971), president of Tommy Jeans
• William Orton (1847), president of the Western Union Telegraph Company
• Norman E. Snyder (1983), co-founder of SoBe
• Ronn Torossian, (1995), CEO of 5W Public Relations, the 13th largest PR agency in the US

Government, law, and public policy

• Mike Arcuri (1981), former District Attorney for Oneida County, New York; former representative for New York's 24th congressional district
• Catherine Bertini (1971), former Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme; Fellow of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Rosa Clemente, 2008 Green Party vice presidential candidate
• Abdirahman Mohamud Farole (1990), former President of the Puntland region of Somalia
• Gerald Jennings, mayor of Albany, NY
• Benjamin Kallos, lawyer and politician
• Lawrence Korb (PhD 1969), Council on Foreign Relations and Center for American Progress; Assistant Secretary of Defense (1981–85)
• Nathan Lebron (BA 1997), first Hispanic to run for Mayor of Albany (2009); Albany County Executive candidate (2011); New York State gubernatorial candidate (2014)
• John M. McHugh (MPA 1977), Congressman from New York's 23rd congressional district (1993–2009); U.S. Secretary of the Army (2009–present)
• Harvey Milk (1951), gay rights figure; former San Francisco city supervisor; assassinated in 1978
• Susan Molinari (BA 1980, MA 1982), former NY Congresswoman, Staten Island
• Joseph E. Persico (1952), best-selling author of Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial; biographer of Edward R. Murrow, Nelson Rockefeller, William Casey; former Nelson Rockefeller speechwriter
• John D. Porcari (1985), Deputy U.S. Secretary of Transportation under the Obama administration; former Maryland Secretary of Transportation
• Angelo L. Santabarbara (BS, 2001), New York State Assemblyman from New York's 111th district (2013–present)
• Louis R. Tobacco (1994), New York State Assemblyman (62nd District)
• Christine A. Varney, (1977), Assistant Attorney General; United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division
• Richard C. Wesley (1971), judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit
• Lee M. Zeldin (BA 2001), United States Representative from New York's 1st congressional district (2015–present); New York State Senator from New York's 3rd district (2011-2014)
• Mark Weprin (BA 1983), former member of the New York State Assembly and New York City Council.

Juan Orlando Hernadez(BA 1997), President Honduras

Journalism

• Tom Junod (1980), journalist and writer for Esquire magazine since 1997
• Bob Ryan (1967), lead weatherman, WRC-TV (Channel 4, NBC affiliate in Washington, D.C.)

Literature and drama

• Marcia Brown, children's author
• Stephen Adly Guirgis (1990), playwright (Jesus Hopped the A Train, Our Lady of 121st Street)
• Joyce Hinnefeld, writer of fiction and nonfiction
• Gregory Maguire (1976), author of the books Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and Wicked (which became a Broadway musical)

Science

• Frances E. Allen (1954), IBM Fellow, Turing Award winner (2006)
• Sallie W. Chisholm (PhD 1974), biological oceanographer and professor at MIT
• Alan M. Davis (1970), IEEE Fellow for contributions to software engineering; author; entrepreneur; pomologist; horticulturalist
• Lois Privor-Dumm (1986), director, Alliances and Information for PneumoADIP, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Alanna Schepartz (1982), Milton Harris Professor of Chemistry at Yale University and Director, Yale Chemical Biology Institute; Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences
• Celal Sengor (1982), Turkish geologist, foreign member of the American Philosophical Society
• Omar M. Yaghi (1985), James and Neeltje Tretter Chair Professor of Chemistry and Co-Director of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at University of California, Berkeley; recipient of the American Chemical Society Chemistry of Materials Award (2009)

Social sciences

• Anne Case (BA), economist
• Philip B. Coulter (PhD 1966), political scientist
• David Pietrusza (BA 1971, MA 1972), historian and author
• William J. Taverner (1990), editor of American Journal of Sexuality Education
• Gerhard Weinberg (1948), diplomatic and military historian

Sports

• Rashad Barksdale (2007), NFL cornerback
• Todd Cetnar, professional basketball player
• Bouna Coundoul (attended 2002-04), Senegalese international soccer goalkeeper
• James Jones (BA 1986, MA 1995), Head Coach of the Yale University Men's Basketball Team
• Jordan Levine, professional lacrosse player
• Ashley Massaro, professional wrestler
• Brett Queener (2007), professional lacrosse player
• Joe Resetarits, professional lacrosse player
• Lyle Thompson, professional lacrosse player, two-time Tewaaraton Award Winner
• Ty Thompson, professional lacrosse player, Tewaaraton Award Winner
• Tara VanDerveer (attended 1971–72), head women's basketball coach at Stanford University; member of Naismith Memorial and Women's Basketball Halls of Fame

Television, film, and radio

• Priya Anand, Indian film actress and model
• Edward Burns, film actor
• Randy Cohen (1971), former writer for Late Night with David Letterman; currently writes "The Ethicist" column for The New York Times Magazine and answers ethical questions from listeners of All Things Considered
• Jamie Gold (1991), television producer and 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion
• Harold Gould (1947), actor, The Sting, TV series Rhoda and Golden Girls
• Steve Guttenberg, film actor
• Randye Kaye, author, radio talk show host, and voice actress
• Brian Lehrer (1973), radio talk show host
• Michael Nolin (BA 1970), film studio executive; producer of Mr. Holland's Opus; screenwriter of Maniac Magee; professor at Savannah College of Art and Design
• John Ortiz, film and TV actor, The Job, Carlito's Way, Miami Vice, American Gangster)
• Howard Reig (1942), radio and television announcer
• Frank Whaley, film and television actor
• D. B. Woodside (1991), actor on TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24 and "Single Ladies
• Allan Steele, actor and writer
• Josh Ostrovsky, actor and creator of "thefatjewish" instagram

Other

• Michael R. Gottfredson, former president of the University of Oregon
• Arlene Istar Lev (1986), family therapist and author of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and their Families
• Philip Markoff (2007), deceased, accused "Craigslist Killer" ^[1]
• Brandon Mendelson (2008), author of Social Media Is Bullshit
• William J. Taverner, author, sexologist, editor of the American Journal of Sexuality Education
• Peter Turkson, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

Notable faculty

• Manuel Alvar (1977–98), head of the Spanish Royal Academy; known for his linguistic atlases of Spain and Spanish South America
• Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1966–70), Spanish Novelist (1910–1999); won Cervantes Prize in 1985
• Ronald A. Bosco (1975–present), Distinguished University Professor of English & American Literature (2004), SUNY Distinguished Service Professor (1992); president, Association for Documentary Editing; General Editor of The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harvard; has edited, co-edited (primarily with Joel Myerson), and authored over 20 volumes on Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Michael Wigglesworth, and Cotton Mather
• Don Byrd (1971–present), poet and literary critic; works include his poetry collection Technics of Travel, the book-length poems The Great Dimestore Centennial and Aesop's Garden, an analysis of Charles Olson's Maximus, and his masterpiece of literary analysis The Poetics of Common Knowledge
• Alan S. Chartock, political scientist and radio personality
• Nancy Denton (1990–present), sociologist, demographer, and educator; co-author of American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, winner of the 1994 Otis Dudley Duncan Award from the Sociology of Population Section of the American Sociological Association and the 1995 Distinguished Publication Award from the American Sociological Association
• John Frederick Dewey (1971–1982), structural geologist widely regarded as an authority on the development and evolution of mountain ranges; Fellow of the Royal Society, Wollaston Medal and Penrose Medal recipient, member of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Joachim Frank (1976–present), computational biologist, School of Public Health; investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at New York State's Wadsworth Center; elected in 2006 to National Academy of Sciences and named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
• Phyllis Galembo (1978–present), fine art photographer, known for photographing African masquerades
• Gordon G. Gallup (1975–present), evolutionary psychologist; developed the mirror test
• M. E. Grenander (1948–89), professor of English, authority on Ambrose Bierce, and benefactor of the M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections and Archives
• Pierre Joris (1992–present), poet, translator, anthologist; renowned translator of Paul Celan
• Leonard Kastle (1978–89), director of The Honeymoon Killers and notable opera composer of Deseret and The Pariahs
• William Kennedy (1974–present), 1984 winner of Pulitzer Prize for fiction for novel Ironweed; taught creative writing and journalism as UAlbany instructor from 1974 to 1982, thereafter full professor of creative writing; in 1983, awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, part of which went to UAlbany's New York State Writers Institute
• Scott Lilienfeld, author
• Michael J. Malbin (1990–present), political science, and expert on campaign finance; former speech writer to Richard B. Cheney
• Jon Mandle (1994–present), philosopher who works on issues of political theory and global justice; author of What's Left of Liberalism? An Interpretation and Defense of Justice as Fairness and Global Justice: An Introduction
• Ron McClamrock (1992–present), philosopher who works at the intersection of phenomenology and psychology; author of Existential Cognition: Minds in the World
• Steven F. Messner (1982–present), sociologist, criminologist, and educator; president of American Society of Criminology starting in 2011; co-author of Crime and the American Dream
• Toni Morrison (1985–89), author, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (works include Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Song of Solomon)
• Paul Pimsleur (1970–76), linguist, educator and researcher of the language acquisition process, and author of Pimsleur Language Series
• Vincent Schaefer, founder and longtime director of the Atmospheric Science Research Center (ASRC); discovered the first successful method of cloud seeding, with dry ice
• Richard E. Stearns, emeritus (1978–2000), Turing award winner for computational complexity theory
• Bonnie Steinbock (1977–present), philosopher, expert on reproductive ethics, and former chair of philosophy department
• Patrick Thornton (1984–1991), physics; created Dingo's Theory of Molecular Motion; awarded The Martin Luther King award for accomplishment in physics
• Bernard Vonnegut (1967–85), atmospheric scientist known for expertise in the physics of lightning; as a colleague of Vincent Schaefer at General Electric in 1946, discovered silver iodide method of cloud-seeding; older brother of author Kurt Vonnegut
• David Wills (1998–present), translator of Jacques Derrida

University presidents

References