May 2025
With deep gratitude, DIMACS announces the Endowed DIMACS Support Fund created by Dr. A. David Mangelsdorff and Dr. Linda A. Smith.
The fund honors the memory of Dr. Mangelsdorff’s parents Arthur Fred Mangelsdorff, M.D. (Rutgers College, 1924) and Maesie Rowland Mangelsdorff (Douglass College, 1935), as it also celebrates their Rutgers roots. Both were loyal alums—Arthur was an officer of his alumni class and received the Loyal Son alumni award, while Maisie was also an officer of her alumnae class and received the Margaret T. Corwin Alumnae Award. The elder Mangelsdorffs met at the American Cyanamid company in nearby Bound Brook NJ, where Arthur was the assistant medical director and Maisie worked in personnel. The couple married and settled down in Plainfield NJ, where they raised their son to have an expansive passion for learning as well as local pride in Rutgers. David Mangelsdorff fondly recalls attending reunions and Rutgers sporting events with his parents while growing up. These connections made donating to Rutgers a natural choice for honoring Arthur and Maisie.
What led Dr. Mangelsdorff and his partner Dr. Smith to DIMACS was a shared commitment to students’ learning and practical interdisciplinary research, exemplified by DIMACS’s connections to cybersecurity and homeland defense through CCICADA, the homeland security center based at DIMACS.
Both educators, Drs. Mangelsdorff and Smith have parallel legacies of service, teaching, and mentoring. As a professor for the Army-Baylor University Master of Health Administration/Master of Business Administration program for over 50 years, Dr. Mangelsdorff prepared his military graduate students to be confident leaders able to solve complex problems and take care of their teams in challenging situations. Early in her career, Dr. Smith worked in a clinical laboratory at a major medical center and then at a state public health laboratory. At the latter, she began conducting seminars and soon discovered her passion for teaching. She launched her academic career as a professor of clinical laboratory sciences at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and never looked back! For nearly four decades, she dedicated herself to educating new generations of medical laboratory science professionals. During their careers, both professors were honored with awards for exemplary teaching and for service to their professions, and both are now retired as emeritus faculty members of their respective institutions.
Dr. Mangelsdorff has a long record of philanthropy to universities, both individually and together with Dr. Smith. Retired as a full colonel from the U. S. Army Reserve, many of his gifts are directed toward areas informed by his service, such as cybersecurity (which drew him to DIMACS and CCICADA) and programs for veterans, especially homeless veterans. He says, “Many of my graduate students are military officers. For a variety of reasons, some military personnel post-service have difficulty integrating into civilian life. Statistics on homelessness suggest too many are former military veterans, often with mental health issues, who need support. The military emphasizes leaving no one behind.”
His advice for students is to “be a generalist with a mix of liberal arts, computer systems and programing, and the STEM disciplines” and to read history. If he were just starting out he says, “I would learn more about computer systems, programming languages, and artificial intelligence.” Perhaps he would even do this at DIMACS!
The Drs. A. David Mangelsdorff and Linda A. Smith Endowed DIMACS Support Fund is set up as a charitable gift annuity through the Rutgers Foundation. As such, it is a deferred gift that DIMACS will use to support teaching, consultation, and research in cybersecurity, homeland security, and disaster preparedness initiatives in accordance with the donors’ wishes. Their gift is the first of its type to come to DIMACS and represents an investment in the future that is deeply appreciated.
Many of the themes highlighted through the gift align with the work of the CCICADA Center, based at DIMACS. CCICADA Director Fred Roberts says, “I am extremely thankful to Dr. Mangelsdorff and Dr. Smith for such a special gift recognizing the importance of work on cybersecurity, homeland defense, and disaster response. The research on a wide variety of homeland security problems conducted at DIMACS, particularly at our CCICADA Center, will surely benefit. We at DIMACS and CCICADA put a major emphasis on the close integration of research and education, so the gift will enrich many Rutgers students involved in research groups in cyber defense, resilience of systems to disasters, and related topics. Dr. Mangelsdorff’s dedication to support for homeless veterans resonates with programs we have started that are aimed at understanding strategies for providing shelter for the homeless and at understanding related stress to law enforcement personnel. The gift provides renewed incentive to emphasize these directions of research. I hope that we can ensure that this generous gift will establish an enduring legacy for the Mangelsdorff family and will honor the memory of Rutgers alumni Arthur Fred Mangelsdorff, M.D. and Maesie Rowland Mangelsdorff by inspiring and encouraging intensive homeland security research and learning.”
DIMACS Director David Pennock adds his own expression of thanks saying, “The generous gift from Drs. Mangelsdorff and Smith will provide a fantastic resource to support the Center’s research and educational programs in homeland security, cyberterrorism, and disaster preparedness, including activities that shine light on the needs of homeless veterans. Their donation also gave us a chance to learn about the couple’s truly extraordinary lives. It’s poetic that their gift honors David’s Scarlet-Knight parents who inspired him to pursue a life of interdisciplinary learning and service that fits well with the ethos of DIMACS. Among David’s dozens of awards, including multiple Researcher of the Year, Educator of the Year, Exceptional Civilian Service, and Philanthropist awards, one of his earliest awards—an Optimist Club award from 1963—struck me. It seems that he not only sees his own glass as half full but generously fills the glasses of everyone around him—his students, fellow service members, colleagues, family, and friends—well past halfway. We are thrilled, humbled, and grateful to benefit from his and Dr. Smith’s generosity.”
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