List of University at Albany people

Performing arts and broadcasting

• Priya Anand, Indian film actress and model
• Awkwafina, aka Nora Lum (2011), rapper, television personality, and actress
• Lisa Barlow, businesswoman and television personality (The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City)
• Edward Burns, film actor and director
• Carolee Carmello (1983), Broadway actress and singer
• 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, Rhoda, Golden Girls)
• Rosaline Greene, actress
• Steve Guttenberg, film actor
• Randye Kaye, author, radio talk show host, and voice actress
• Brian Lehrer (1973), radio talk show host
• Monte Lipman, record executive and film producer
• Brandon Jay McLaren (2002), television actor
• Josh Ostrovsky (2006), social media personality, actor, entrepreneur
• Ignacyo Matynia (2013), film and television actor (Break Every Chain)
• Michael Nolin (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)
• Stacey Prussman (1992), actress, radio host, stand-up comedian, 2021 New York City mayoral candidate
• Howard Reig (1942), radio and television announcer
• , television personality (The Real World, The Challenge)
• Frank Whaley, film and television actor
• D.B. Woodside (1991), actor (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Lucifer, Single Ladies)

Science

• Frances E. Allen (1954), IBM Fellow, Turing Award winner (2006)
• Sallie W. Chisholm (PhD 1974), biological oceanographer and professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 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
• Myriam Gorospe, scientist, head of the RNA Regulation Section at the National Institute on Aging
• Coby Schal (1976), Polish-born American entomologist
• 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), 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
• Calvin Zippin (1947), cancer epidemiologist, biostatistician, and professor emeritus in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco

Social sciences

• Robert H. Babcock (BA 1953, MA 1957), historian
• Anne Case (BA), economist
• Philip B. Coulter (PhD 1966), political scientist
• Peter Allen Golden, author, historian, journalist, and blogger
• Debra Hope (PhD 1990), clinical psychologist
• David Pietrusza (BA 1971, MA 1972), historian and author
• William J. Taverner (1990), author, sexologist, editor of the American Journal of Sexuality Education
• Gerhard Weinberg (1948), diplomatic and military historian

Sports

• Rashad Barksdale (2007), NFL cornerback
• Dave Clawson (MA, 1990), head football coach, Wake Forest
• Dave Cohen (1990), football coach
• 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
• Rob Senderoff (1995), college basketball coach
• Jason Siggers (born 1985), basketball player in the Israel Basketball Premier League
• Lyle Thompson, professional lacrosse player, two-time 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
• Jarren Williams, NFL defensive back

Other

• Arlene Istar Lev (1986), family therapist and author of Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and their Families
• Suzanne Lyall, sophomore who disappeared after getting off a bus at Collins Circle in 1998
• Philip Markoff (2007), deceased, accused "Craigslist Killer"
• Peter Turkson, cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church

Notable faculty

• Frances Dorothy Acomb, historian
• Manuel Alvar (1977–1998), head of the Spanish Royal Academy; known for his linguistic atlases of Spain and Spanish South America
• Branka Arsić, scholar of American literature, won the Modern Language Association's James Russell Lowell Prize in 2016
• Gonzalo Torrente Ballester (1966–70), Spanish novelist (1910–1999); won Cervantes Prize in 1985
• Judith R. Baskin, University of Oregon associate dean for Humanities, director of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies, and the Philip H. Knight Professor of Humanities
• 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
• JoAnne Carson, painter and sculptor, Guggenheim Fellow (2016)
• Alan S. Chartock, political scientist and radio personality
• Sarah Blacher Cohen, writer, scholar, playwright, and professor
• John Frederick Dewey (1971–1982), British 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
• Sandra K. Ellston, Shakespearean scholar, former chair of Undergraduate Studies in English and co-director of the Humanities Center
• Joachim Frank (1976–present), German-American 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
• 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
• George R. Goldner, art historian, former Drue Heinz Chairman of the Department of Drawings and Paints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Martha Hollander, poet and art historian
• 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
• Boris Korenblum, Soviet-Israeli-American mathematician, specializing in mathematical analysis
• Richard Lachmann, sociologist, specialist in comparative historical sociology, and professor
• 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
• 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), French-American linguist, educator, and researcher of the language acquisition process, and author of Pimsleur Language Series
• Mark Raider, historian and University of Cincinnati professor of modern Jewish history
• Herman Prins Salomon, Dutch-American linguist and historian
• 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 (1977–2014), philosopher, expert on reproductive ethics, and former chair of philosophy department
• 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 (1998–2013), translator of Jacques Derrida

University presidents

The followings persons have led the University at Albany:

Table notes:

References