He teaches software development, web site development, and database management. Dr. Gerdes holds a B.S. and M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, a M.B.A. from Lehigh University, a M.S. in Computer Science from Vanderbilt, and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from Vanderbilt. He has taught at Ohio State University, University of California Riverside, and Jia Tong University, Shanghai, China. His articles have appeared in the Communications of the ACM, Decision Support Systems, Transactions of the IIE, and other journals. He has authored two U.S. Patents, one dealign with measurement of coke temperature, and one for the development of a new public key certificate in support of user privacy. He is currently an associate editor for Electronic Commerce Research and Telecommunications Systems.