Mark Zaidel has more than 25 years of experience in teaching, research and systems development. His area of expertise is electronic learning and includes information processing and retrieval, knowledge discovery from contextual data, computer-supported instruction, autonomous learning objects, human-computer interactions, software design, networking and computer hardware. In the business world he focuses on implementations of information systems, e-commerce and applications of operation research in data processing. As an educator he explores new ways of teaching and sharing content data over the Internet, also exploring applicability of artificial intelligence and mathematical modeling to student's and educational technology assessment.

Dr. Zaidel has been an author and co-author of over 60 publications and presentations in topics ranging from large-scale fuzzy knowledge models supporting decision-making to emerging techniques used in E-learning environments. He has taught a variety of information technology, database, management, operation research and sailing courses.

The list of institutions supporting his research include commercial companies in the health care industry, state and local governments, NSF, DoD and collaborative university agreements. His primary teaching and research interests are in subjects that take academic theories and apply them in new ways to solve real world issues. At Northern State University he has led curriculum development for an E-learning graduate program, advised graduate research and sponsored number of student publications.