The first doctoral degree in computer science ever earned at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute was in 1969. The sixth was presented to Margaret Kahles Guyder in 1972, and it was also the first ever earned by a woman.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Deborah McGuinness has been elected a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) “for significant contributions to the semantic web, knowledge representation and reasoning environments, and deployed artificial intelligence applications.” AAAI is a nonprofit scientific society that promotes research in artificial intelligence and its responsible use. The AAAI fellows program recognizes people who have “made significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.”