I am Professor Pfaffmann of the Department of Computer Science at Lafayette College. I started at Lafayette College in the summer of 2003, earning tenure with promotion in 2010. I have served as Department Head for a total of four years and have coordinated two ABET reviews of the department.

My teaching varies and I have taught most of the courses in the department’s program. Recently, I have focused on the second course in the curriculum (CS150). In the past I have taught the following courses extensively: Computer Organization (CS203), Software Engineering (CS205), Computers & Society (CS200), and Artificial Intelligence (CS420). Often a focus of my courses are substantive programming assignments and writing within the computer science discipline.

My research agenda focuses on large multi-agent models of biological and social systems that are stochastic discrete simulations needing to be explored empirically for emergent behavior. The exploration strategies involved automated experimentation distributed across a 10-50 machine cluster, with later data analysis techniques to determine emergent properties.

I am a graduate of Wayne State Universities Department of Computer Science where I studied under Dr. Michael Conrad as a member of the BioComputing Group, then later with Dr. Monica Brockmeyer (WSU) and Dr. Silvano Colombano (NASA-Ames). During this time, my focus was on models of biological systems to explore their potential for information processing, computer science more broadly, and course work in biology focusing on eukaryotic cells.