Rob A. Rutenbar is senior vice chancellor for research at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has responsibility for Pitt’s $1.5 billion research and innovation infrastructure. At Pitt, he has launched several initiatives, including the Pitt Momentum Funds to support large-scale team science, Pitt Big Proposal Bootcamp to educate faculty about the unique logistics of center-scale funding, and Pitt’s Office of Industry and Economic Partnerships to align the University’s research expertise with industry partners. He secured support for the Western PA Quantum Information Core, Pitt’s new quantum research facility, and Pitt’s Federal Statistical Research Data Center, for access to sensitive U.S. Census data. He has also rebuilt key components of the University’s policy ecosystem, including the conflict of interest and intellectual property policies.
He is also Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. His previous academic roles include head of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, where he held the Jatras Chair in Engineering.
Rutenbar serves on the boards of LifeX, Innovation Works, the Pittsburgh Technology Council, RIDC and the Kamin Science Center, and also holds leadership positions in the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. He has co-chaired the Computer and Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Advisory Committee for the National Science Foundation and served on multiple U.S. National Academies study panels.
His research focuses on tools for custom chip design and hardware architectures for AI. He has mentored more than 50 graduate students, published more than 200 papers and received 14 U.S. patents. His courses on chip design on the Coursera platform have reached more than 125,000 registered students. He founded two successful venture-backed startups: Neolinear (chip design, acquired by Cadence in 2004) and Voci Technologies (enterprise AI voice analytics, acquired by Medallia in 2020). He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Semiconductor Research Corporation Aristotle Award (for the impact of his students on the U.S. semiconductor industry) and the IEEE CAS Industrial Pioneer Award (for his startup work). He is a fellow of ACM, IEEE, AAAS and the National Academy of Inventors.