Alex Patterson is a Lecturer in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Before joining Rensselaer, he worked at Osram Opto Semiconductors in Regensburg, Germany, where he implemented advanced methodologies for electrical, thermo-electrical, and optical modeling of LEDs and developed simulation tools. His academic research interests focus on bridging the gap between theory and experiment in the realm of nanoelectronic and photonic devices via developing new models and employing them as tools to better understand device behavior. He was the recipient of the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship and the 2013 IVNC Shoulders-Gray-Spindt Award for Best Student or Postdoc Paper.