Speakers
Rabindra (Robby) Ratan
Rabindra (Robby) Ratan is an Assistant Professor and AT&T Scholar in the Department of Media and
Information at Michigan State University. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the College of
Education’s program in Educational Psychology and Educational Technology. Rabindra received his
Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, his M.A. in Communication
from Stanford University, and his B.A. in Science, Technology and Society, also from Stanford University.
His research focuses primarily on the psychological experience of media use, with an emphasis on video
games and other interactive environments (e.g., virtual worlds, the road) that include mediated self-
representations (e.g., avatars, automobiles). He is particularly interested in how different facets of
mediated self-representations (e.g., gender, social identity) influence the psychological experience of
media use, and how different facets of this psychological experience (e.g., avatar-body schema
integration, identification) affect a variety of outcomes, including cognitive performance, learning,
health-related behaviors (e.g., food choice, driving aggression), and prejudicial/prosocial attitudes.
Neal Schmitt
Dr. Schmitt came to MSU as an assistant professor of psychology in 1974 and served as department
chairperson from 2000 to 2010. He retired from Michigan State in 2011 and, in addition to his role as
interim dean of the college, is currently executive vice president for Polaris Assessment Systems and
associate editor of two professional journals. In his research, Dr. Schmitt examines how effective hiring
practices can help find the best employee. He has worked with Ford Motor Co., the FBI and the National
Association of Secondary School Principals, and his research has been cited more than 18,000 times. His
work, along with his colleagues, was integral to building the industrial/organizational psychology
program at MSU into the top ranked program of its kind in the nation. A University Distinguished
Professor since 1992, Dr. Schmitt received doctoral and master’s degrees in industrial psychology from
Purdue University and a bachelor of arts from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa.
Ruth Waddell Smith
Ruth Waddell Smith is an Associate Professor of Forensic Chemistry in the Forensic Science Program,
School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in
the Analytical Chemical Sciences Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, NM). Her
current research interests include the application of multivariate statistical procedures for the
association and discrimination of various types of forensic evidence, including fire debris, controlled
substances, and questioned documents.
Brandon A. Sullivan
Brandon A. Sullivan is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Anti-Counterfeiting and Product
Protection (A-CAPP) at Michigan State University. He earned his PhD from the School of Criminal
Justice at Michigan State University in 2015 and his Bachelor and Master of Science from Bowling Green
State University. He also serves as co-Principal Investigator and Project Manager for the Extremist Crime
Database (ECDB) Financial Crimes project and is a Research Affiliate with the National Consortium for
the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His primary research interests are product
counterfeiting, criminal networks, and financial, enterprise, and extremist crime. Other research
interests include policing, media and crime, corporate crime, and environmental crime, as well as mixed
methodology and social network analysis. Recent publications have appeared in the International
Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice, Global Crime, European Journal of Criminology,
International Criminal Justice Review, and Security Journal.
15