Charley Driscoll (far right) studies a sample of water taken from Limestone Creek in Fayetteville, New York, with research intern Marykate McHale (left) and Courtney Davis ’20. (Photo by Alex Dunbar)

Before came to 黑料不打烊 as a civil and environmental engineering professor, he had always been interested in ways to protect our environment and natural resources.

Growing up an avid camper and outdoors enthusiast, Driscoll set about studying the large-scale effects of pollutants on the natural environment, earning a civil engineering degree from the University of Maine and both a master鈥檚 degree and a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Cornell University.

When he arrived on campus in 1979, Driscoll completed a dissertation examining the impact of acid rain on lakes in the Adirondacks, including the acidity effects on fish populations.

Later this summer, he will return to the Adirondacks to study how those lakes are recovering from acid rain and mercury pollution.

Charles Driscoll

鈥淚t鈥檚 very exciting and a great opportunity to continue this research and work alongside partners like Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cornell, the Ausable Freshwater Center, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to carry on this important work,鈥� says Driscoll, the University and Distinguished Professor of Environmental Systems Engineering in the .

Driscoll, one of the nation鈥檚 leading experts on pollution research, developed a series of predictive environmental models that explore how chemicals in soil, water and vegetation change when exposed to air pollutants. He has devised strategies to reverse the damaging effects of acid rain and mercury contamination in lakes, including leading efforts to successfully restore nearby Onondaga Lake鈥攐nce one of the most polluted lakes in the country鈥攁fter developing new methods for decreasing mercury pollution.

鈥淲e’ve seen improvements in air quality. We’ve seen recovery from acid rain and other air pollutants,鈥� Driscoll says. 鈥淗uman generated air pollution really impact the environment on a very large scale. However, ecosystems can be quite resilient. With effective air quality management they can come back from rather significant disturbances.鈥�

On this episode of the 鈥溾€機use Conversations鈥� podcast, Driscoll discusses the magnitude of his research, how he uses models to both understand the disturbances and lead restoration efforts and reflects on some of his successful remediations.

Check out听 featuring Driscoll. A transcript [PDF]听is also available.

How would you describe the magnitude of your research?

When I started on the acid rain problem in the 鈥�70s, the country was just becoming concerned about the effects of air pollution from a human health standpoint. There was relatively little analysis or discussion on those impacts on lakes, soil, vegetation and wildlife. This was a large-scale problem. We’re talking about air pollution from the Midwest impacting areas hundreds of miles downwind, and at the time a lot of people didn’t believe it was possible and were skeptical of the effects of air pollution.

That research led me to other problems like the issue with mercury deposition and climate change. The early work on acid rain really informed and guided my subsequent research.

How are models used to understand the effects of these disturbances and to lead remediation efforts?

We were interested in developing a model that we could use as a tool to validate our understanding of the phenomena of air pollution on ecosystems but also make projections on how the ecosystems might recover under different emission control strategies. I learned a lot from interactions with my biological colleagues and soil scientists.

We expanded and applied these models to the Adirondacks and national parks, particularly the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. About 10 years ago, we made projections for how the park might recover from decreases in acid rain. Now, they want us to go back and use our model to see how well those projections did because acid rain emissions decreased.

How successful have these remediation initiatives been?

Remediation is a real challenge for something like acid rain. We’ve done remediation in Onondaga Lake and that’s been wildly successful because it’s a relatively local problem. But acid rain affects high elevation areas. From Georgia up to Maine, those soils and waters have been heavily impacted.

We have done experiments where we’ve added base chemicals like limestone, commonly used in gardens to neutralize acidity, and then looked at the response of the system. We know from those experiments that if we restore bases like calcium and magnesium to the soil this can neutralize the acidity that is toxic to plants and fish and that we can recover the ecosystems. The trouble is the footprint of acid rain is massive, and it’s very difficult to do that on any meaningful scale.

We’ve learned we have to focus on emission reductions to recover these听ecosystems, particularly the soil. Lakes recover relatively quickly, but the soil develops over tens of thousands of years and recover slowly.

Charles Driscoll (right) examines the quality of water in Limestone Creek in Fayetteville, New York. (Photo by Alex Dunbar)

The College of Arts & Sciences (A&S) kicked off a new tradition for recognizing A&S faculty excellence and achievements from over the past year with its inaugural Scholarship and Research Gala. The May 1 event was held in the Schine Student Center鈥檚 Goldstein Auditorium.

University and college leadership, including Interim Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer , Vice President for Research , Executive Director of Foundation Relations , A&S Dean and Associate Dean for Creativity, Scholarship and Research celebrated the impressive breadth and impact of research at 黑料不打烊’s oldest and largest college, highlighting A&S researchers’ commitment to advancing knowledge across disciplines.

The College of Arts and Sciences launched a new tradition celebrating faculty scholarship

The celebration, which included a reception and dinner, underscored impressive scholarly achievements across the college:

• More than 30 faculty members have published books in the past two years
• Dozens of professors received prestigious awards, honors and fellowships
• A&S researchers secured $19 million in awarded federal research funding in fiscal year 2024

Ross noted that the event was designed to foster cross-disciplinary connections, with seating arrangements that encouraged faculty from different departments to learn from one another. Colleagues from across the college discussed their diverse research interests, discovering shared triumphs and challenges despite differences in topics and methodologies.

鈥淓ach person is passionate about their work and sharing it with their students, and there is a diversity of disciplines, approaches and timescales for the work,鈥� Ross said. 鈥淥ur wonderful team collaborated to bring this vision to life. Directors of research development for the College of Arts and Sciences, Melissa Whipps and Sarah Workman, developed the interdisciplinary aspects, while assistant director of events Jessica Allman and operations assistant Hailee Bosco transformed the concept into a seamless event through their logistical expertise.”

鈥淭he range of topics and the profound impact of these studies demonstrate the commitment of our researchers to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and understanding,鈥� said Mortazavi. 鈥淲ithout the pioneering efforts and relentless pursuit of excellence by our researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences, we would not be able to teach, inspire and innovate in the ways that we do. Their contributions not only enhance our academic environment but also shape the future of their respective fields.鈥�

The gala also acknowledged the crucial support provided by staff members from the , academic departments, , , , and the , whose contributions are essential to the college’s research enterprise.

Attendees departed with a renewed appreciation for the college’s supportive and accomplished academic community. Several commented that the night ended too early. Perhaps there will be dancing next year?

Chloe Britton Naime plans on studying neurodevelopmental and learning differences among individuals with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to better understand how the neurodivergent brain operates. (Photo by Amy Manley)

Chloe Britton Naime 鈥�25 is about to complete a challenging and rare dual major program in both mechanical engineering from the and neuroscience from the .

Even more impressive? Britton Naime will conclude the rigorous dual major in four years instead of the customary five years, which is 鈥渙ne of the biggest reasons I wanted to attend 黑料不打烊,鈥� says Britton Naime, who will begin their Ph.D. program in neuroscience at Florida State University in the fall.

Chloe Britton Naime

It鈥檚 the latest chapter in Britton Naime鈥檚 lifelong love affair with learning. Specifically, studying why their brain functions differently as a neurodivergent individual who struggled to read鈥擝ritton Naime was diagnosed as dyslexic at the age of 8. They have also finally been diagnosed with autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

鈥淚 remember thinking, 鈥榳hy does my brain work differently than everyone else? Why is this task much more challenging for me?鈥欌€� says Britton Naime, who is graduating summa cum laude and is a member of the .

鈥淚鈥檓 interested in how we can improve our diagnostics, but I’m also interested in what treatments or interventions can be done,鈥� Britton Naime says. 鈥淔iguring out what can help support meeting this individual鈥檚 needs. Figuring out the possibilities and how we can continue to improve the outcomes for neurodivergent people.鈥�

Changing the Narrative

Britton Naime considers themselves honored to have a strong support system, including their mother, Katrina Britton, who encouraged self-advocacy at an early age. But knowing not everyone who is neurodivergent has these advocates has fueled Britton Naime鈥檚 career aspirations.

Chloe Britton Naime is an undergraduate research assistant in the Center for Autism Research and Electrophysiology (C.A.R.E.) Lab鈥攚hich studies how typically developing children, children with developmental disabilities and children with autism perceive, process and integrate sensory information.

As a peer coach in the physics department, Britton Naime engages with students with an accommodation from the Center for Disability Resources to ensure the student鈥檚 needs are being met. If a student needs accommodations but doesn鈥檛 have them, Britton Naime will make sure the student understands the resources available to them on campus.

鈥淲hen I have a place where I can advocate for someone, I take that opportunity. Thankfully, 黑料不打烊 provides a great infrastructure for supporting students with disabilities,鈥� Britton Naime says.

Britton Naime is also an undergraduate research assistant in the 鈥攚hich conducts behavioral and neurophysiological research to understand how typically developing children, children with developmental disabilities and children with autism perceive, process and integrate sensory information.

Through lab studies focused on measuring and recording the brain鈥檚 electrical activity, Britton Naime says the CARE Lab鈥檚 work represents progress in reducing the historically negative stigma around autistic individuals.

鈥淭he CARE Lab focuses on the strengths and capabilities of our autistic population and identifies the reasons why they鈥檙e succeeding at something. It鈥檚 really rewarding work,鈥� says Britton Naime, who also did a Fulbright Canada-Mitacs Globalink Research Internship at the University of British Columbia in the Baby Learning Lab with Lauren Emberson, Ph.D.

How 黑料不打烊 Laid the Foundation for What鈥檚 Next

The technical skills Britton Naime learned through the mechanical engineering program, including as a data processor, helped accentuate their work as a neuroscientist, specifically when it comes to processing and interpreting the neuroimaging data to comprehend how brain activity relates to our behavior, cognition and mental processes.

The foundational nature of the mechanical engineering program also allowed Britton Naime to seek out the aspects they wanted to learn more about as they honed and built up their skills as a researcher.

At Florida State, Britton Naime plans on studying neurodevelopmental and learning differences among individuals with ADHD to better understand how the neurodivergent brain operates.

By gaining a deeper understanding of how neurodivergent brains function鈥攑articularly through the use of neuroimaging technology鈥擝ritton Naime aims not only to improve quality of life through enhanced diagnosis and tailored interventions, but also to help unlock the full potential of individuals whose strengths may be overlooked in systems built for neurotypical learners. Their research challenges deficit-based narratives and seeks to reframe how success and capability are understood in academic and developmental contexts.

鈥淚 hope to be a professor and have my own lab where I can produce quality research related to this topic. But I also want to continue serving as a vocal advocate for my community,鈥� Britton Naime says. 鈥満诹喜淮蜢� prepared me to go to grad school and to go into this industry, which is important because I didn鈥檛 know where I wanted to go. I had all these avenues available and received the support I needed to go down this path.鈥�

Senior researchers (pictured from left to right) Morgan Opp, Lucy Olcott, Jesse Buck and Isabella Chavez Miranda helped advance Professor Robert Doyle’s cutting-edge obesity and diabetes treatments.

When Jesse Buck 鈥�25, Isabella Chavez Miranda 鈥�25, Lucy Olcott 鈥�25 and Morgan Opp 鈥�25 started as student researchers in medicinal chemist Robert Doyle鈥檚 lab, they hoped to hone their research skills.

It quickly became evident this would be unlike any other lab experience. The collaborative environment in the Doyle Group cultivated confidence in their abilities and led to constructive conversations about how to achieve the goals of their projects.

As they were producing, purifying, synthesizing and redesigning the peptides that eventually helped lead to Doyle鈥檚 breakthrough weight loss and diabetes treatments, they discovered their meaningful interactions transformed them into a family, as well as putting them on a path to becoming scientists.

鈥淭hey are future stars, an incredible quartet that matches great intelligence with as hardworking of a student group I鈥檝e ever had the privilege to work with,鈥� says Doyle, the Jack and Laura H. Milton Professor and Dean鈥檚 听in the .

The quartet will now take the lessons learned and apply them to their master鈥檚 and Ph.D. programs at prestigious graduate schools:

• Buck, a medicinal chemistry major (Arts and Sciences) will pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley;
• Chavez Miranda, a double major in medicinal chemistry (Arts and Sciences) and business management (), will pursue a master’s in health administration at the University of Southern California;
• Olcott, a chemistry major (Arts and Sciences), will pursue a Ph.D. in pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania; and
• Opp, a double major in medicinal chemistry and biology (Arts and Sciences), will pursue a Ph.D. at Yale University.

After spending hundreds of lab hours together, Buck, Chavez Miranda, Olcott and Opp sat down with SU News to reflect on a bond that will continue beyond graduation.

How did you become passionate about this research?

Lucy Olcott

Lucy Olcott: My interest in health science was sparked at 15 when my grandmother was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Watching her struggle to adapt to a new lifestyle while managing new treatments opened my eyes to the importance of health care.

After I took Honors General Chemistry with Professor Robert Doyle, the path became clear. The Doyle lab has given me the opportunity to explore translational medicinal chemistry focused on unmet clinical needs of various metabolic diseases.

Morgan 翱辫辫:听I’ve always had a passion for research that’s translatable, where I can directly see the work I’m doing on a day-to-day basis and how that work has the potential for real-world impact on people who need it. I was in Dr. Doyle’s class freshman year. I knew I liked metabolism and technology, and he took a chance on me and allowed me to begin my research.

Isabella Chavez Miranda:听I’ve always had a deep love and passion for chemistry. Both my parents are chemical engineers. Since I was young, I’ve watched them do research. It was a no-brainer that I wanted to be involved when I came to 黑料不打烊.

I was lucky to be in Dr. Doyle鈥檚 class my freshman year. He saw the potential in me and allowed me to grow in his lab for the past four years.

Jesse Buck

Jesse 叠耻肠办:听I came in as a chemistry major but transitioned to medicinal chemistry and joined this lab as a junior. Dr. Doyle took a chance on me, and I appreciate that because I learned so much about what it means to be in a lab. I love doing chemistry research with implications in biology that you can use to make an impact and create something helpful for patients.

What is your proudest moment/biggest lesson learned from the lab?

叠耻肠办:听Being accepted into our respective graduate programs. That is concrete evidence that our hard work has paid off. We have an opportunity to grow and become impactful scientists.

翱辫辫:听Going to the Mid-Atlantic Pharmacology Society meeting [in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] with Isa鈥攊t鈥檚 a big deal for undergraduates to present their research at a national conference like this.

翱濒肠辞迟迟:听Patience in research. It鈥檚 easy to get frustrated when experiments don鈥檛 go as planned. Being able to identify where things might have gone wrong and go back to the drawing board is just as important as producing and collecting novel data.

Isabella Chavez Miranda

Chavez Miranda:听The first time I was able to synthesize a peptide that had the exact correct mass and was usable was an amazing feeling. That showed that I鈥檓 learning and growing as a scientist.

How will your graduate work advance your career ambitions?

Chavez Miranda:听I鈥檝e loved making these potential drugs that could have a big impact on patients but if the people who need the drugs the most can鈥檛 get them, what real value do they bring? I want to bridge that gap between the patients and the drugs they need.

Morgan Opp

翱濒肠辞迟迟:听I鈥檓 interested in pursuing research in drug discovery and development for centrally mediated diseased states and hope to pursue a career in academia as a principal investigator, conducting high-impact research while mentoring the next generation of scientists.

叠耻肠办:听This is the perfect opportunity to discover what niche I want to work in. I鈥檓 hoping to find the perfect lab to mesh my love of chemistry and biology.

翱辫辫:听To continue exploring my passion for endocrinology and metabolism. I’m looking at labs that bridge both analytical chemistry, cell biology and medicinal chemistry. I’m leaning toward a future in biotechnology and want to remain on the cutting edge of research.

In case you missed it: Check out episode #175 of the 鈥溾€機use Conversations鈥� podcast, 鈥淪triving to Improve the Efficacy of Obesity, Diabetes Treatments.鈥� In the , medicinal chemist Robert Doyle discusses his breakthrough weight loss research, the important role students play in advancing his research, and how, through philanthropy, his work has come to life.

Ryan Monarch

The Moynihan Award is given annually in recognition of an outstanding record of teaching, research and service. It was established eponymously in 1985 by then-U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was also a former member of Maxwell鈥檚 junior faculty from 1959 to 1961.

Monarch joined Maxwell in August 2021 after serving as principal economist for the international finance division of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2021. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 2014.

Monarch studies U.S.-China trade, buyer-supplier relationships in international trade and how the recent tariff war affects U.S. exports and supply chains. His research has been published in the Journal of International Economics鈥搕he top journal in international economics鈥揳nd multiple other top-tier economics journals, such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of the European Economic Association and American Economics Journal: Applied Economics. He has also written numerous policy reports. His work has been sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Economist and Reuters.

In recent months, Monarch has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, the South China Morning Post, the New York Post, Spectrum TV, National Public Radio, The Motley Fool and other outlets for his expertise on ongoing events in international trade policy, and he served as a panelist for the Maxwell School event 鈥淭rump鈥檚 Tariffs: Issues and Implications鈥� held on April 9.

The Moynihan Award recipient was chosen by a committee of faculty comprised of Leonard Lopoo, Andrew Cohen and Emily Thorson. In a nomination letter submitted by Lopoo, they noted that Monarch is 鈥渁n expert in international trade鈥� who has 鈥渕ade important contributions to the 鈥榖uyer-supplier matching鈥� topic.鈥�

鈥淗is course evaluations are outstanding,鈥� wrote Lopoo, associate dean, chair and professor of public administration and international affairs. 鈥淪tudents frequently commented on how Professor Monarch makes complicated topics easy to understand鈥� and enjoyable to learn.鈥�

Lopoo also noted Monarch鈥檚 鈥渋mportant service to the Maxwell School,鈥� serving on the international trade search committee and serving as director of the Trade, Development and Political Economy Workshop.

This story was written by Michael Kelly

Haowei Wang

Wang鈥檚 research focuses on understanding the social determinants of healthy aging in a global context. In particular, she investigates the transformation of family networks, how multiple dimensions of family relationships impact well-being and caregiving in later life, and how demographic shifts and social policies shape physical and mental health across the life course.

The APC Fellowship program is designed to help early-career population researchers network, increase their profile and develop skills for disseminating research. Fellows are invited to give a talk at an APC research center, present at an APC virtual event and receive support in preparing a policy brief. Founded in 1991, the APC is an independent group of over 40 research institutions in the U.S. that brings together scholars across disciplines to educate policymakers and collaborate on research related to demographics and population change.

鈥淧rofessor Wang is doing important policy-relevant work on healthy aging and family structures that impact not just individuals but whole communities,鈥� says Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research. 鈥淲e are so happy to see this recognition of her research and her strong trajectory.鈥�

Wang is a research affiliate at the Center for Aging and Policy Studies, a faculty associate at the Aging Studies Institute and a research affiliate at the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health. Her areas of expertise are in social gerontology, family demography, aging and population health. She has contributed to many articles in interdisciplinary journals on topics including population aging, health disparities, family structure changes, intergenerational relationships, and COVID-19 experiences among middle-aged and older adults.

Story by Michael Kelly

A warmer future could lead to less salty rivers by reducing the need for road salting. (Photo courtesy of Shutterstock)

The chemistry of U.S. rivers is changing鈥攁nd will change further in complex ways in different regions of the country. Scientists are exploring ways to predict future changes in watershed chemistry, which could improve managing them for climate change and community health.

University researchers are combining traditional geochemistry with artificial intelligence to predict how alkalinity鈥攁 measure of a solution鈥檚 ability to neutralize acids鈥攁nd salts in rivers around the country could be affected by further climate warming and population growth, according to a study published in .

Tao Wen

The research team was led by听, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Wen also directs the听贬测诲谤辞驳别辞肠丑别尘颈蝉迟谤测听And eN惫颈谤辞苍尘别苍迟补濒听D补迟补听Sciences (HANDS) and听Noble Gases in听E补谤迟丑听S测蝉迟别尘蝉听Tracing (NEST) research laboratories.

An excess of salt can make water undrinkable, increase the cost of treating water and harm freshwater fish and wildlife.

Past research shows that as salt levels in U.S. rivers have gone up, these waters have also become more alkaline, which can damage water, wastewater treatment and aquatic life. Increased alkalinity is occurring because of rising temperatures and more rainfall. Human activities, such as more people living in certain areas, might also contribute to it.

Yet alkalinity is also beneficial. When river waters are more alkaline, they help draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and limit climate warming over time. However, before rivers can be harnessed for this purpose, researchers must first understand the basic chemistry at play.

Using machine learning models, the Wen team projected how salinity鈥攎easured through sodium levels鈥攁nd alkalinity will change in 226 U.S. rivers between 2040 and 2100 under different climate and human population scenarios.

In northern states, rivers would become less salty because warmer winters mean less salt will be applied on icy roads. However, in the South and West, where people don鈥檛 use much road salt, river salinity will likely stay the same. But as these areas get hotter and drier, more salt from the soil might accumulate and wash into waterways.

The study also found that rising temperature can affect alkalinity. In watersheds rich in carbonate rocks, such as limestone, researchers found that alkalinity flux鈥攖he product of the natural breakdown of rock minerals鈥攄eclines when temperatures surpass 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). This finding suggests that warming past a certain temperature level could suppress alkalinity in rivers.

Researchers from the College of Arts and Sciences are integrating traditional geochemistry with artificial intelligence to forecast the impact of climate warming and population growth on the alkalinity and salt levels in rivers nationwide.

However, in watersheds dominated by silicate rocks or organic carbon, higher temperatures accelerate silicate weathering and the decomposition of organic material, leading to increased alkalinity levels. More rainfall can also increase the amount of these chemicals in rivers, but only up to a certain point.

In the future, some watersheds with lower alkalinity could be manipulated to take up additional alkaline from watersheds, allowing rivers to sequester more carbon from the atmosphere.

For this and other multidisciplinary research, Wen received a 2025听. The award highlights excellent work by independent researchers in their early career that bring new insights into the field of geochemistry or to promote geochemical applications.

Visit the 听to read the full story.

Story by John H. Tibbetts

The cutting-edge weight loss and diabetes research developed by medicinal chemist has offered significant and consistent weight loss and glucose control to its recipients through peptide-based treatments.

Doyle and his fellow collaborators reported that two new peptide compounds颅颅鈥擥EP44 and KCEM1鈥攃onsiderably reduce body weight and normalize blood glucose levels without causing the typical negative side effects experienced by patients who take currently available GLP-1-based anti-obesity drugs.

Doyle, the Jack and Laura H. Milton Professor and Dean’s in the , focuses his research on pharmaceutical drug development for the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes. He says that while the first-generation of weight-loss drugs did lead to results, there was a problem: while weight loss occurred, it was almost a reaction to taking the GLP-1 peptide, and that weight loss came with a cost.

Due to side effects like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain, 70% of patients who started taking these drugs were not taking them one year later, and that 30% stopped taking the drugs within three months, generating a very low patient tolerability for the drugs, Doyle says.

Robert Doyle

The recent discoveries Doyle and his collaborators introduced at conferences of the American Chemical Society and The Obesity Society give hope for those battling obesity and type 2 diabetes. The methodology behind these peptide and similar weight-loss compounds could also hold the key to treating two other public health crises: cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the U.S., and opioid addiction.

鈥淎s medicinal chemists, we are focused on using peptides, or small proteins, to treat neuroendocrine disorders, primarily disorders that affect the brain,鈥� says Doyle, the Dean’s Professor of Chemistry and adjunct associate professor of medicine and pharmacology. 鈥淲e are looking at addiction, cravings, food intake, body weight reduction, glucose regulation, all those complex endocrine issues that are prevalent today.鈥�

On this 鈥溾€機use Conversation,鈥� Doyle discusses his breakthrough weight loss research, the important role students play in advancing his research, and how, through philanthropy, his work has come to life.

Check out听 featuring Doyle. A transcript [PDF]听is also available.

How has this field evolved over the years?

A team of researchers at 黑料不打烊, led by medicinal chemist Robert Doyle, has co-developed a novel treatment for obesity and type 2 diabetes without any of the harmful side effects.

The major change in the last 10 years is the creation of these GLP-1 drugs, exemplified by Ozempic and Zepbound. Until these drugs existed, there were no safe, viable weight loss alternatives. Diet and exercise have always been on the table, of course, but for people who needed or wanted a pharmaceutical intervention, there was nothing that could achieve anything greater than the 5% body mass index [BMI] loss that you’d be looking for to have any kind of clinical benefit.

With the creation of the first real breakthrough drug, Victoza, you were seeing that 5% BMI decline from a pharmaceutical perspective, and that was a huge success. That set the stage for these newer, more potent and more active weight-reducing drugs. But those initial drugs were often once- or twice-a-day injectables, and patients didn鈥檛 want to do that. In these last few years, we have upwards of 10% and greater body mass reduction coupled with once-a-week injectables. That has really broadened the appeal and created quite a phenomenon.

How did we proceed from the first generation of weight loss drugs to where we are now?

There was this discovery that this little hormone that you make in your stomach, if made long-acting and then injected, could trigger food intake reduction. We realized that and did pharmacological science to improve its half-life, make it hang around longer so it would maintain what was normally only a very short activity in a human. We drove that appetite off switch. The discovery of GLP-1鈥攁nd what GLP-1 could do鈥攈asn鈥檛 won a Nobel Prize yet, but it is going to. I wouldn’t be surprised this year if you see the Nobel Prize awarded for the discovery of GLP-1 because it has revolutionized weight loss.

How has 黑料不打烊’s Center for Science and Technology enhanced your studies?

Robert Doyle works alongside student researchers. (Photo by Evan Jenkins)

Within my own lab, we have multiple large scale peptide synthesizers that allow us to produce gram quantities of these drugs. We have multiple purification setup systems so that we’re able to purify to 99%, and we have cell labs that can screen for the required receptor binding.

We also have artificial intelligence and a molecular operating environment, these computational chemical approaches to aid in design. We can start from a concept on a piece of paper, begin to design something computationally and then physically make it in the lab. If it makes the grade, we put something in place that outlines what we want the drug to be able to do, and if it meets those criteria, it goes out into preclinical animal models at the University of Pennsylvania in this case. We’ll look and see if what we’ve created here is manifesting the effect we want it to in that preclinical model. If not, we go back to the drawing board. But if it does, we call that a hit and we’ll begin the process of optimizing it for development.

How do our students assist with your research?

They’re the ones who are in there grinding out the production, the purification, the screening, the failures and the redesigning. They bring passion and intellect. They’re wonderful. They roll up their sleeves. They jump wholeheartedly into all the aspects of drug development. I have to be willing to trust them that they’ll do it right. They have that sense of confidence, inquisitiveness and can-do. Every day they surprise me with some wonderful question or clever idea.

Robert Doyle talks with lab member Emily Ashlaw G鈥�27, a Ph.D. candidate interested in peptide therapeutics.

Their research, recently published in the Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, is the result of a collaboration between the and the to address teaching disparities in K-12 public school districts. Numerous studies have shown that students are more likely to be successful when they can identify with their teachers.

The two-fold endeavor was launched in the fall of 2021 with a gift from 黑料不打烊 alumni couple Marcia Baldanza and her late husband, Ben, who passed away this past November. While the School of Education developed the Baldanza Fellows Program that provides a full-tuition grant, a partial cost-of-living stipend and the promise of a teaching job in a partner school district, the X Lab used behavioral science to test the effectiveness of various types of email recruitment to prospective applicants.

Messages that were crafted as letters and promoted a long-term career opportunity were more successful in recruiting applicants to a School of Education teacher recruitment fellowship, their findings revealed.

X Lab researchers developed an email list of thousands of candidates, some of whom had recently completed their undergraduate degrees at 黑料不打烊. They then developed different types of email messages with trackable links to determine which elicited the most interest in the form of opens, clicks and ultimately, applications. The first message was delivered to approximately 6,000 candidates in November 2021, followed by a second email six weeks later.

Leonard M. Lopoo

The email recipients received either an official letter with the University seal, signed by the dean of the School of Education, or a message that was formatted as an informational flyer with photos. 鈥淚ndividuals also received one of two different message framings,鈥� says Len Lopoo, director of the X Lab and associate dean, chair and professor of public administration and international affairs. 鈥淥ne appealed to those who want to pursue a challenging new endeavor, while the other appealed to those who may be looking for stable and long-term career prospects.鈥�

Each email had a link to the fellowship website, which included details on the program and a link to the application.

The findings show that the emails in the form of an official letter were 15 to 17 percent more likely to be opened than emails that resembled a flyer for both the introductory email and the reminder email. The letter was also more effective at getting recipients to click on the link to the Baldanza Fellows website, but only for the reminder email, Lopoo says.

The official letter reminder email increased the likelihood of clicking by over 80 percent, relative to the flyer.

鈥淭he findings also demonstrate that messages that emphasized the long-term career opportunity of teaching were more successful at pushing recipients to open the follow-up message than those that highlighted the challenge of a career in teaching,鈥� says Lopoo. 鈥淗ow does one communicate effectively with an email? The question is small, but I think the implications are important. This project has massive important implications in lots of fields.鈥�

For example, says Lopoo, the findings can be applied by employers seeking job candidates as well as by social welfare organizations wishing to better align their services with those who could most benefit.

Ashraf Haque, a Ph.D. student in the Public Administration and International Affairs Department, was part of the X Lab鈥檚 research team. 鈥淚 learned how to approach research systematically, how to analyze data in the most transparent way and how to communicate my findings,鈥� he says. 鈥淎lso, I learned about the academic publication process, which is immensely beneficial for my future research and publication.

In addition to Haque and Lopoo, the Maxwell research team included Robert Bifulco, professor of public administration and international affairs, and Hannah Patnaik, managing director of the X Lab. Professors Christine Ashby and George Theoharis represented the School of Education.

Ashby and Theoharis continue to run the using the outreach findings to recruit applicants. This year鈥檚 cohort of nine fellows will graduate in May 2025 and applications for the fourth cohort are currently under review.

鈥淐ollaborating with our Maxwell colleagues has been a delight. The same is true for working with our partner school districts,鈥� says Theoharis of four area public school districts.

Theoharis meets three times a semester with the school district administrators. 鈥淭hey tell us 鈥楾his is important to us鈥攖his is an issue we鈥檙e deeply committed to. We need teachers with varied life experiences and perspectives.鈥欌€�

Eight graduate students will be honored with the Graduate Dean鈥檚 Award for Excellence in Research and Creative Work at an annual hosted by the Graduate School on Wednesday, March 5. The event will also include brief presentations from the awardees about their research or creative work. The campus community is invited and encouraged to attend.

This year鈥檚 honorees, selected by members of the Graduate Faculty Council from a pool of nearly 60 applicants from across the University, are:

• Caroline Charles, English, : 鈥淏lack Family Photography in 黑料不打烊: Assembling a Community Collection with Family Photo-Sharing鈥�
• Bramsh Khan, social science, : 鈥淕endered Politics of Infrastructure Violence in Balochistan, Pakistan鈥�
• Natalie Petryk, bioengineering, : 鈥淏iodegradable and Bioactive Polyurethane Foams to Improve Traumatic Wound Healing鈥�
• Frank Sicong Chen, computer and information science and engineering, Engineering and Computer Science: 鈥淓nhancing Security and Health Monitoring on Wearable Devices through Multi-Modal Continuous Monitoring鈥�
• Lily Holloway, creative writing, Arts and Sciences: 鈥淎lways I Am Wanting and Wanting: A Literary Reading鈥�
• Benjamin Valen, social psychology, Arts and Sciences: 鈥淗ealth Disparities Among Transgender, Nonbinary and Cisgender Undergraduate Students鈥�
• Jersey Cosantino, cultural foundations of education, : 鈥淩esisting Pathologizing Discourses: (Re)claiming Mad, Neurodivergent and Trans* Narration via a Mad Trans* Studies Oral History Method(ology)鈥�
• Yasmine Tiana Goring, television, radio and film, : 鈥�222 Macon Street鈥�

鈥淭he depth and breadth of our graduate students鈥� portfolios are truly impressive,鈥� says , dean of the Graduate School. 鈥淲e are proud to honor them, and look forward to hearing more about their work during their presentations at the awards ceremony.鈥�

The awards recognize overall academic excellence and outstanding research and creative activities by master鈥檚 and doctoral students. Honorees receive a certificate of recognition and a $500 award.

Student who earned honorable mention were:

• Azadeh Ghanizadeh, composition and cultural rhetoric, Arts and Sciences
• Pardha Sourya Nayani, electrical and computer engineering, Engineering and Computer Science
• Tevvon Hines, film,
• Elina Ruiqi Sun, social psychology, Maxwell School
• Tosin Alabi, business administration,

The will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. in 312 Lyman Hall. A reception will follow. For more information, contact Holly Johnson at hjohns02@syr.edu.

The (QDR), established in 2014, provides social scientists with an avenue to qualitative data for the benefit of others.

“QDR is a valuable national resource for managing complexities of qualitative data across the social sciences. Qualitative data presents unique challenges for its archival, sharing, citation and management,鈥� says , vice president for research. 鈥淨DR has been at the cutting edge of research in making qualitative data broadly accessible for more than a decade. As the leader in the field, their activities set the standard for best practices and are teaching others how to manage qualitative data.鈥�

Pictured from left to right: Bharat Dhungana, Qualitative Data Repository graduate assistant; Christiane Pag茅, associate director of the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry; Sebastian Karcher, CQMI director; and Dessi Kirilova, QDR senior curation specialist.

The QDR was created by qualitative methods expert , professor of political science in the . It is now led by , director of the University鈥檚 and research associate professor of political science.

鈥淭his isn鈥檛 just an archive. We鈥檙e an active place of cutting-edge social science research and constantly engage with other qualitative data researchers. We鈥檙e interested in what the next generation of qualitative data looks like, what avenues it opens, how it can be challenging and can be shared ethically,” Karcher says. “There are a lot of questions we鈥檙e actively working on and we love to be involved in conversations with others who are doing that work.鈥�

Working with Karcher are Carole Palmer and Nic Weber, University of Washington collaborators and co-technical directors; Dessi Kirilova, senior curation specialist; Derek Robey, the 2023-25 postdoctoral fellow; and Christiane Pag茅, data specialist for qualitative research. Three Maxwell School graduate students typically assist in the center. Thirty-five prominent U.S. universities are .

Karcher says QDR stores data from national and international researchers. Holdings have recently expanded to include more qualitative health data, which has been especially helpful for researchers since the COVID-19 pandemic. 鈥淭hat data helps researchers who are trying to figure out how people relate to medical science and assess questions such as not just what makes drugs work, but also what makes people want to get vaccines,” Karcher says.

Pictured from left to right: Sebastian Karcher, Dessi Kirilova and Christiane Pag茅.

The repository assists researchers in many ways, Karcher says. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e teaching and engaging in research, there鈥檚 likely something here in your area to work with and benefit from. If you are doing qualitative research yourself, more and more funders are expecting grantees to share the data they collect, so we can be a help. That isn鈥檛 always easy to do, and there are practical and ethical challenges, but we鈥檙e experienced and quite good at it. We are also available to read grant applications to offer data-related pointers.鈥�

Karcher says the staff is excited about the types of data the QDR has received. 鈥淪ome of the items getting the most use are transcripts of interviews, which are very hard to come by. Being able to get real, qualitative data for research reuse and for instruction is incredibly valuable. It鈥檚 important to researchers who are doing this work. We are also getting tons of views from classrooms. There are students in Amsterdam, in Cardiff and at other universities around the world who are learning from instructors who are using our repository to .鈥�

Some data sets deposited in the QDR are:

• Two years’ worth of online collected by medical anthropologists during the COVID-19 pandemic containing 30,000 data points and 1,500 pieces of imagery, audio and video diaries, photos and Snapchat posts.
• Almost 2,000 human rights reports from , cataloging that took place from 1968 to 1998 in Northern Ireland.
• Campaign videos from Latin America elections strategies (鈥溾€�).
• Notes from interviews with sex workers and program staff used by Corey Shdaimah, Daniel Thursz Distinguished Professor of Social Justice at the University of Maryland School of Social Work, to assess alternative criminal justice models (鈥溾€�).

says she was pleased to have such a reliable resource. 鈥淲hen researchers collect qualitative data, the people who share their stories know their information will be made use of. I felt very good about having a place to deposit data that I knew was secure and that would protect the confidentiality of my respondents. It鈥檚 also been important to have people from different disciplines see my work there. Some reached out and we鈥檝e had conversations about the data that have been fruitful to me as a researcher.鈥�

Senior Research Data Management Consultant of Duke University Libraries has referred researchers to the QDR and has worked with its staff for data management and sharing training. 鈥淥ne of the key outcomes for our researchers is easier compliance with funder and journal data sharing policies,” Lafferty-Hess says. “QDR has provided reviews of data management and sharing plans as a solution for those whose data may have some sensitivities. It has been an advocate for participants and a partner for researchers to build ethical approaches to data sharing,鈥� she says.

, data services librarian, underscores the repository鈥檚 uniqueness. 鈥淭he QDR is really quite useful and important because it鈥檚 one of the very, very few data repositories that specializes in qualitative data. Its uniqueness makes QDR invaluable. The people there are knowledgeable, helpful, friendly and respected all over the world.鈥�

Lori Brown

Distinguished Professor Lori Brown and her collaborators, Trish Cafferky and Dr. Yashica Robinson, are included in this year鈥檚 Design Triennial with their installation 鈥�.

The work is one of 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, home to the exhibition 鈥�.鈥� The exhibition explores design鈥檚 role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the U.S., U.S. territories and tribal nations.

The installation, featuring Brown鈥檚 work, centers on the efforts of obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Robinson to create a new and expanded network of home health care services and alternatives to hospital births. This work reveals ongoing inequities in the state鈥攔esulting from economics, racial injustice, public policy and distance from health care facilities.

鈥淏irthing in Alabama: Design of Reproduction鈥� extends two decades of research, advocacy and activism focusing on reproductive health care by Brown. The installation provides a platform to question where and how architecture contributes to a wide and diverse public and to examine questions of how law and policy shape spaces of birthing access across geographic boundaries and spatial conditions.

For 鈥淏irthing in Alabama,鈥� Brown and a team of architectural researchers mapped the legacy of laws and building and zoning codes to contextualize these challenges and present designed alternatives to alleviate their impact.

Lori A. Brown, Trish Cafferky, and Dr. Yashica Robinson’s “Birthing in Alabama: Designing Spaces for Reproduction鈥� exhibition, which delves into a history of birth in Alabama to better understand the various systems that affected the ability of caregivers to provide access to safe and affordable reproductive healthcare. (Photo courtesy of Elliot Goldstein with the Smithsonian Institution)

The installation shows the complicated history of maternity care and access from 1865-2024 and the high rates of maternal mortality for pregnant Black women during this time period. It includes excerpts from Brown’s interviews, bringing the voices of those on the frontline working to expand birthing access across Alabama into the gallery experience.

Brown is an internationally recognized scholar and educator whose research focuses on the relationships between architecture, social justice and gender. She is the co-founder of, a nonprofit dedicated to gender equity in architecture.

Brown鈥檚 research has focused on the physical structures of abortion clinics and how the debate has shaped access to reproductive health care. She is the author of 鈥�,鈥� and many articles including 鈥溾€� that discusses the call for design ideas for what was the sole remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi.

The exhibition is on view now until the summer of 2025 and is installed throughout the Andrew and Louise Carnegie Museum. Each floor is organized on themes of home: 鈥淕oing Home,鈥� 鈥淪eeking Home鈥� and 鈥淏uilding Home.鈥�

鈥淕oing Home鈥� examines how people shape and are shaped by domestic spaces; 鈥淪eeking Home鈥� addresses a range of institutional, experimental and utopian contexts that challenge conventional definitions of home; and 鈥淏uilding Home鈥� presents alternatives to the single-family concept of home.

Brown and her co-collaborators are featured in the 鈥淪eeking Home鈥� section. Installation of the exhibition was supported by the New York Council on the Arts and additional support from the 黑料不打烊 Office of Academic Affairs; Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement and the School of Architecture.

The 黑料不打烊 contingent at the Gerontological Society of America Annual Scientific Meeting in November included Marjorie Cantor Professor of Aging Studies Merril Silverstein (second from left) and Human Development and Family Science doctoral students, from left to right, Xiaoyu Fu, Bo Jian and Ying Xu.

In mid-November, as part of the for the human dynamics programs in the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics, 黑料不打烊 announced that Falk鈥檚 departments of (MFT) and (HDFS) would merge and become one department within 黑料不打烊鈥檚 starting July 1, 2025.

Within one week, the synergies between the two departments became apparent at the prestigious (NCFR) from Nov. 20-23 in Bellevue, Washington.

Eman Tadros

At the NCFR, MFT Assistant Professor was honored with both the Olson Grant and Advancing Family Science Emerging Mentor/Teacher Award. In addition, several HDFS faculty and doctoral students presented their research, including Marjorie Cantor Professor of Aging Studies , who was a keynote speaker.

鈥淒r. Tadros’ involvement with NCFR highlights the interconnection between the HDFS and MFT departments,鈥� says MFT chair and Professor of Practice . 鈥淣CFR and many other professional organizations support both departments鈥� focus on expanding scholarship on human systems and development, and relational wellbeing.

鈥淥ur mutual emphasis on families and systems sets the stage for increased scholarship and service for individuals and systems in our community and around the world,鈥� Watson adds.

The , which is available to NCFR members who contribute to the discipline of family science by bridging research, theory and practice, was previously awarded to Silverstein and former HDFS doctoral student , who is now an assistant professor at Texas Tech University.

鈥淒r. Hwang and Dr. Silverstein gave a keynote talk on their work with the award focusing on the impact of digital communication in maintaining intergenerational relationships during the pandemic,鈥� says HDFS chair and Associate Professor . 鈥淒r. Tadros will similarly present her work as a keynote next year. Through their important work, these faculty represent the shared values of research in the two departments, which will soon join and continue to do high-level research on family processes that has significant implications for the wellbeing of families.鈥�

Watson says Tadros will use the Olson Grant to fund her scholarship on racially and ethnically minoritized individuals鈥� online dating behaviors. The highlights 鈥淒r. Tadros鈥� exemplary mentorship, particularly in providing research opportunities for underrepresented students,鈥� Watson says.

In addition to the NCFR, HDFS faculty and doctoral students recently presented at another prominent national conference: the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) Nov. 13-16 in Seattle, Washington. At both the NCFR and GSA events, HDFS faculty and doctoral students presented on a wide array of topics related to important questions of well-being for families and older adults (the complete list of HDFS presenters is below).

Human Development and Family Science doctoral student Bo Jian with her poster presentation at the National Council on Family Relations 2024 Annual Conference.

鈥淭he presentations at the GSA included original research on dementia care, mortality patterns, mental health and intergenerational relationships in older adults,鈥� Mulvaney says. 鈥淢uch of the research was focused on examining key processes of aging and relationships across diverse contexts, including Mexican, Puerto Rican and Chinese communities. As a whole, the presentations represented cutting-edge research that adds to the scientific literature that highlight the experiences of diverse older adults.鈥�

At the NCFR, Mulvaney says, the presentations focused on key features of family relationships and developmental processes, including biased-based harassment of adolescents, child maltreatment, intergenerational relationships and the impact of poverty on children鈥檚 self-regulation.

鈥淎ll of the research utilized high-level and cutting-edge methodologies to inform our understanding of these critical family processes,鈥� Mulvaney says.

Visit the for a complete list of the HDFS presenters at the GSA and NCFR conferences and the research they shared.

The fellowship will support three months of field research in 2025 for a multi-year research project, 鈥淐ivil Society Thrives in the Kafana: Locally Led Development and Grassroots Civic Engagement in Serbia.鈥�

Catherine Herrold

Herrold will explore how Serbian civil society actors understand, implement and measure the effectiveness of initiatives such as sustainable agriculture, cultural festivals and community development programs by grassroots groups and philanthropic entities outside of professional non-governmental organizations.

The project builds on past research and collaborations with scholars at the University of Belgrade and contacts in Serbian civil society and international aid agencies. Herrold intends to produce a book, academic journal articles and policy briefs and hopes to build public engagement through opinion pieces and podcasts as well as course content.

鈥淧rofessor Herrold鈥檚 research can help better explain how to build and maintain a dynamic society through the participation of everyday people at the grassroots,鈥� says , associate dean for research and Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking. 鈥淪he epitomizes Maxwell鈥檚 commitment to engaging on pressing issues of democracy around the world and bringing those lessons back to campus.鈥�

The Fulbright-Hays Program awards grants to U.S. teachers, administrators, pre-doctoral students and postdoctoral faculty as well as to institutions and organizations for overseas research and training that focus on non-Western foreign languages and area studies. The program is funded by a congressional appropriation to the U.S. Department of Education.

Maxwell School Associate Professor Catherine Herrold will spend three months in Serbia as she continues her research on civil society and grassroots development initiatives.

Herrold received a U.S. State Department Fulbright Scholar award for her 2023 research on citizen-led development initiatives in Serbia as well as the 2023 University of Maryland Do Good Institute and Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Global Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Award.

She spent five years doing similar research in Egypt and Palestine for her book, 鈥淒elta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond鈥� (Oxford University Press, 2020), which was awarded ARNOVA鈥檚 Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize.

Herrold is a senior research associate for the Middle Eastern Studies Program and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and an associate professor by courtesy appointment in the political science department. Her research focuses on global civil society, international development, democracy promotion, nonprofit management, and collaborative and participatory governance.

Story by Michael Kelly

Kevin Du

It鈥檚 a mentality that has served Du, an electrical engineering and computer science professor in the , well as he has carved out a decorated career as a global cybersecurity expert. His labs have been used by more than 1,100 institutions and universities across the world, and it all started with the launch of the , which developed hands-on instructional laboratory exercises known as SEED labs for cybersecurity education.

But at the time of its creation in 2002, the experiences Du wanted to provide to his students around cybersecurity education didn鈥檛 exist in a practical fashion. He set out to create a virtual training tool that could help prepare cybersecurity experts on how to handle the pressing issues they would face in the future.

The initiative launched thanks to $1.3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The SEED project鈥檚 objectives are to develop an instructional laboratory environment and accompanying laboratory exercises that help students comprehend the practical security principles, concepts and technologies associated with cybersecurity issues; apply those principles to designing and implementing security mechanisms that can counter cybersecurity attacks; analyze and test computer systems for potential security issues; and apply these security principles to resolving real-world cybersecurity problems.

鈥淚 designed the SEED project so students can actually walk through those attacks by themselves on their computer,鈥� says Du, who is a fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery. 鈥淣ot just talk about the attack, but now they can actually see the attack and think about what they would need to do to stop the attack.鈥�

Since its founding, the open-source (software that is made freely available to interested parties) SEED project, which operates by having the students access the lab work through virtual machines, has accomplished the following:

• Developed more than 40 labs exploring computer and information security topics like software security, network security, web security, operating system security and mobile app security, and
• through its SEED emulator, users can replicate the internet on a single computer, introducing students to hands-on cybersecurity research activities related to the internet, Border Gateway Protocols (the internet鈥檚 routing protocol), Domain Name System (the internet鈥檚 directory), and Blockchain, Botnet, the Dark-net and more.

鈥淲e are not teaching students to carry out these attacks, but if you don鈥檛 know what鈥檚 happening behind the attack, you won鈥檛 know what to do when you encounter an attack,鈥� Du says.

Kevin Du (second from right) has carved out a decorated career as a global cybersecurity expert. His labs have been used by more than 1,100 institutions and universities across the world. (Photo by Jeremy Brinn)

A Safe, Hands-On Environment for Resolving Cybersecurity Attacks

Before Du created these virtual labs, cyberattacks would be explored on paper, with professors describing how a theoretical cyberattack could be carried out. While it is important for students to understand the theoretical workings of cyberattacks, Du says this approach leaves out the equally important practical application, the actual stopping of a cyberattack as it is happening or once it has happened.

Professors would discuss cyberattacks in theory, but gaining hands-on, practical experience was very limited, for one very good reason, according to Du. Working through cyberattacks represents a security threat, one that can鈥檛 be tackled on a normal University-issued computer, because some of the cyberattacks being studied could bring down the entire internet if they were successfully carried out.

The solution, according to Du, was to build virtual machine technology that would allow 黑料不打烊 students鈥攁nd students in classrooms all across the country鈥攖o access and run the cybersecurity software on their own personal computers.

At the time, virtual machine technology was still relatively new on college campuses. Du fine-tuned the project鈥檚 goals and objectives, focusing on educating students about the dangers of the different kinds of attacks while emphasizing ways to keep these attacks from happening.

鈥淭here was a huge gap between the theory and the practice of a cybersecurity attack. We needed to fill that gap,鈥� Du says. 鈥淭he big achievement with the SEED lab is we brought the ideas that students were learning about in their research and we simplified those ideas and made this hands-on component that compliments the theoretical teachings.鈥�

Becoming a Global Leader in Cybersecurity

Since starting as a professor at the University in 2001, Du鈥檚 research papers have been cited 17,800 times, and he has won two ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security Test-of-Time Awards.

In 2015, Du, who was always interested in hands-on learning, began offering training workshops funded through a $1 million NSF grant for interested cybersecurity educators at colleges and universities across the country. Each summer, approximately 80 instructors converge on Link Hall for a weeklong intensive training workshop where they learn the ins and outs of Du鈥檚 open-source software. Since offering the sessions, Du estimates that more than 400 college professors were trained on the software and are now teaching their students many of the same cybersecurity awareness and prevention lessons Du teaches through his labs.

鈥淚鈥檝e found that many instructors share my teaching philosophy that they want to have hands-on practice with their classes, but they鈥檙e finding there weren鈥檛 many opportunities,鈥� Du says. 鈥淣ow, my SEED lab can fill that gap and it鈥檚 very easy for the instructors to use. Because I put a lot of thought into designing this SEED lab, it makes it easier for other professors to bring the teachings back to their campuses.鈥�

Du has also written a textbook based on the SEED labs, 鈥淐omputer and Internet Security: A Hands-on Approach,鈥� that is used by nearly 300 universities. Knowing the source material can be a bit dry when digested only in a textbook, Du built a recording studio in his basement and produces video lessons complete with hands-on demonstrations to accompany his lectures. The videos are posted online and available at a cost of $10 per class.

鈥淭he videos certainly help enhance the teachings through demonstrations of the attacks or the lessons we鈥檙e learning and have helped more people benefit from my SEED labs,鈥� says Du, who hopes to one day introduce artificial intelligence topics into his SEED labs鈥� educational environment.

On this 鈥溾€機use Conversation,鈥� Jason Davis and Jenny Stromer-Galley offer up tips and tools you can use to help spot misinformation, share advice to help us be better-informed consumers of information and social media, and analyze the latest research on misinformation trends in the upcoming presidential election.

With the increase of misinformation and disinformation on the internet and social media, our brains struggle to process what we’re seeing and whether an image, a video clip or a story is real or not.

Faculty members and have studied the trends and created tools to help discern what鈥檚 real and what is synthetic when it comes to content posted online and on social media.

Stromer-Galley is an expert in political campaigns and misinformation and is a professor in the ; Davis is an expert on misinformation and disinformation detection. He is a research professor with the Office of Research and Creative Activity in the , and is also co-director of the .

鈥淒epending on where people are getting their information, the quality and credibility of that information could be quite low,鈥� Stromer-Galley says. 鈥淚t leaves the public more vulnerable to state actors who are trying to engage in disinformation campaigns or U.S.-based malignant actors who are trying to manipulate the public for their own ends.鈥�

鈥淥ur brains have not evolved as fast as the technology, and so we are still as vulnerable as we ever were to the same sorts of approaches at being deceived, intentionally or unintentionally,鈥� Davis says. 鈥淲ith this new digital landscape and digital speed and scale, we need digital tools to help us protect ourselves from ourselves sometimes, and sometimes from that malicious information ecosystem.鈥�

On this 鈥溾€機use Conversation,鈥� Stromer-Galley and Davis offer up tips and tools you can use to help spot misinformation, share advice to help us be better-informed consumers of information and social media, and analyze the latest research on misinformation trends in the upcoming presidential election.

Check out featuring Davis and Stromer-Galley. A transcript [PDF]听is also available.

Semantic Forensics Helping Detect What鈥檚 Real and What鈥檚 Fake

Davis is involved with the Semantic Forensics program, whose work is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Through his efforts with DARPA, Davis is helping to advance research into the detection of disinformation and misinformation in the media.

Jason Davis

Semantic forensics is the understanding of not just whether something is real or fake, Davis says, but also delves into the why. What was the intent? Who was the target?

In its fourth year of concentrating on this research area, Davis has been developing digital tools that identify synthetic, manipulated media. The program evaluates the detectors being used, striving to understand what they can and can鈥檛 do when it comes to identifying synthetic media, as well as how effective they are at spotting real or synthetic content.

鈥淲e can say with confidence that this detector works for detecting these kinds of fake, synthetic images at a 98% accuracy, and it is capable of doing this but not being able to do that. They鈥檙e not a panacea, but here’s what they can do, so we learn how to use these detection devices properly and use them appropriately,鈥� Davis says. 鈥淭hen there鈥檚 the development of the tools and the modeling of the threat landscape. How do we create controlled versions of what we know is going on out there in the wild so that we can study, train and better understand our capabilities.鈥�

Investigating Social Media Spending Trends and Messaging Behind Political Ads

Stromer-Galley, who leads the University鈥檚 听team, has studied misinformation trends in this presidential race and other top 2024 contests.

Jenny Stromer-Galley

After the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, over the summer, the ElectionGraph team explored the money being spent by the candidates, political action committees, political parties and unknown actors that mentioned presidential candidates in advertisements on both Facebook and Instagram.

The aim was to 鈥渧isualize the firehose of information and misinformation coming at voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 elections,鈥� Stromer-Galley says.

The findings showed that:

• negative social media advertising in the presidential race increased after the assassination attempt;
• nearly 3,500 Facebook pages from outside organizations spent $55 million over the past year in an effort to influence the public this election season; and
• there was a pattern of 鈥渃oordinated inauthentic behavior鈥� among some outside organizations, including a large network of Facebook pages running ads (costing an estimated $5 million) aimed at scamming the public under the guise of supporting a presidential candidate鈥檚 campaign that garnered roughly 234 million impressions.

鈥淭o our surprise, there was a large network of individuals and organizations that we didn鈥檛 know who was behind this that were running scam ads targeted to people who are activated and excited about the presidential election. They were capitalizing on their enthusiasm by turning over their credit cards and then they’re getting scammed,鈥� Stromer-Galley says. 鈥淲hile Facebook is trying to take down those pages, the scammers continue to stay a step ahead.鈥�

Tips to Ward Off Misinformation

When you find yourself aimlessly scrolling through social media without thinking about the validity of what you just saw, that act makes you fully engaged in the platform and susceptible to misinformation or disinformation.

Users are encouraged to embrace cognitive friction when scrolling, because, according to both Davis and Stromer-Galley, the social media apps are designed for you to absorb content at face value, without applying deeper thought to who was behind the post or what their intent might be. By increasing friction, you take the proactive step of slowing down and contemplating the legitimacy of a post.

Both Davis and Stromer-Galley say that the best defense to misinformation and disinformation campaigns is knowledge, urging people to get their news from a wide-range of diverse, traditional media outlets, and to not solely rely on social media as a reliable news source.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a private, nonprofit grantmaking organization, started its to begin to answer some of them. The program鈥檚 stated goal is 鈥淭o sharpen our scientific understanding of the physical principles and mechanisms that distinguish living systems from inanimate matter, and to explore the conditions under which physical principles and mechanisms guide the complexification of matter towards life.鈥�

To that end, the program awarded (left) and (right), professors in the in the and members of the BioInspired Institute, a three-year grant to explore what they鈥檝e described as a fundamental unanswered question about the functionality of cells and the energy and entropy landscape of cell interiors.

Jennifer Ross (left) and Jennifer Schwarz, professors in the Department of Physics, received a three-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Matter to Life program.

鈥淭here is a lack of quantitative understanding of the principles governing the non-equilibrium control knobs inside the cell,鈥� Ross and Schwarz explained in their proposal. 鈥淲ithout this knowledge, we will never understand how cells work, or how we can replicate them in synthetic materials systems.鈥�

They鈥檝e chosen to focus their work on one very particular aspect of the biology of cells, the concentrations of protein molecules within them known as protein condensates, and specifically their liquid-liquid phase separation, which they describe as the 鈥渒iller app鈥� for the sculpting of energy and entropy in the cell.

鈥淟iquid-liquid phase separation is when two liquids separate, like oil and water,鈥� Ross says. 鈥淭he proteins separate out [into droplets] and make what we think of as membrane-less organelles. We’re interested in how both energy-using systems and entropy-controlling systems can help to shape those organelles.鈥�

They鈥檙e hoping to gain an understanding of how cells self-organize without a 鈥渕anager鈥濃€攊n this case, a membrane to act as a physical containment system鈥攁s well as how they react and adapt to their environment.

鈥淭his droplet formation is so sensitive to temperature and its surroundings,鈥� says Schwarz. 鈥淭he cell knows, ‘A ha!’ The temperature is increasing, so the environment is slightly different. So鈥’m going to adapt.鈥�

Ross is serving as principal investigator, and with graduate student assistance, will be performing reconstitution experiments to explore these processes, while co-principal investigator Schwarz and her team will be delving into the theoretical side of the science using predictive simulations. The three-year grant will also fund a paid undergraduate and two local high school students through summer programs.

The hope is that a better understanding of cell behavior at this level could ultimately lead to breakthroughs in the development of smart synthetic materials. 鈥淚magine a road-paving material that could identify when a pothole develops and heal itself,鈥� Ross says.

It鈥檚 just one example of countless possibilities for learning from biological systems.

Story by Laura Wallis

Buzard and her longtime research partners鈥� (associate professor of economics at Tufts University) and (associate professor of economics at Brigham Young University)鈥攔eceived word this summer that they had been selected by the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute to conduct research as visiting scholars at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

They will spend two weeks furthering their studies on how women carry a disproportionate share of the mental load, but the exact dates for their residency were held up over child care concerns for Gee and Stoddard. The trio expects to convene at the Federal Reserve in the spring or early summer of 2025.

When it comes to these invisible tasks鈥攚hich can include scheduling medical appointments, arranging child care and carpools and planning for other child-related extracurricular activities鈥攖his is par for the course, according to the preliminary findings of their research proposal.

Kristy Buzard

鈥淭here have been several times when one of my co-authors has been presenting the paper and they have to pause because their child鈥檚 school is calling and they have to stop what they鈥檙e doing to take the call,鈥� says Buzard, a Melvin A. Eggers Economics Faculty Scholar and senior research associate for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.

鈥淥ur research strives to understand the disproportionate burden of the mental load that it seems women bear, but we鈥檙e also planning on going deeper to understand why that happens, and what the impacts are. Hopefully, this may help us better understand the wage gap between men and women.鈥�

To study the inequality in external demands placed on women, Buzard, Gee and Stoddard ran a large, randomized control trial where they sent emails from fictitious parents in heterosexual relationships to school principals asking them to contact one of the parents. Recording which parent the principal contacted and their reaction to different messages parents might send, Buzard says the group set out to quantify why principals would insist on calling the woman even if she says she鈥檚 busy, while respecting the man鈥檚 stance that he was unavailable.

The research revealed that mothers are 1.4 times more likely to be contacted by their child鈥檚 school than fathers and that parents had a relatively difficult time getting schools, doctors鈥� offices, day care facilities, places of worship and other organizations to respect their wishes when it comes to which parent should be contacted when issues arise.

鈥淭hese principals responded less strongly to the signals the moms were sending about being unavailable while largely not calling the men who say they鈥檙e unavailable,鈥� says Buzard. 鈥淭his asymmetry in how the principals behaved led us to ask about the mental load and why mothers end up taking on more of the responsibility when there are more external demands being asked of them?鈥�

Buzard sat down with SU News to discuss the goals of this research, how being a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis will advance their efforts and why women have a larger parenting burden placed on them than men.

How will this residency help advance your research?

We鈥檙e hoping the Federal Reserve has data they can share that will shed light on our research. The Fed is not a monolith; there鈥檚 the Federal Reserve Board at the center as well as the twelve Reserve Banks and all their branches. There are research departments and community development departments. There are economists and people who are more policy and outreach focused who are also interested in these same issues. The more that we as academics, specifically economists, can do to be in touch with people on the policy front lines, the better our research is going to be. We need to be in touch with the policy landscape and I鈥檓 excited to connect with the Federal Reserve鈥檚 network.

How are you and your team incorporating the data you鈥檝e collected and interpreting what it says about why women have a larger burden placed on them than men?

One of the early pieces of data we’re working with is taking transcripts from the voicemails that were left for us from principals鈥攁bout 17,000 voicemails (out of the 80,000 principals we called)鈥攁nd doing a sentiment analysis to quantify how nice or mean or happy the principals were in the voicemail. That is, we鈥檙e studying what sentiment was embodied in the way these people are talking when they leave the message.

We鈥檙e in the very early stage, but what we expect is that if the email sends a signal that says the mother’s unavailable鈥攚hich goes against the social norm鈥攁nd if there is pressure on women to always be available as parents, we鈥檇 see more negative sentiment from principals when the mother said she was unavailable. If that response is going to be judged negatively, we would hope we could pick that up in these voicemails. If the father is not available, our guess is that鈥檚 not really an issue for the principal.

There are these subtle and not-so-subtle social cues that tell women that this [always being available for your child] is your job and you鈥檙e bad if you don鈥檛 do it. Where does this come from? Why do women do more of this work? If the mother lets something fall through the cracks, is she treated differently than if dad lets something fall through the cracks? These are some of the questions we want to explore.

Why have we seen a slowdown in the closing of the wage gap between men and women?

It closed over time and now it’s kind of stubbornly sitting there, but we鈥檙e a bit puzzled at this point as a profession in being able to explain exactly why we don’t seem to be able to [fully] close the wage gap. I’m not sure we can say it has stopped closing, but if you look from the 1980s on, there was a big closing of the gap as more women came into the workforce and we shifted to dual-earner families.

It seems like we鈥檝e hit some kind of limit and we鈥檙e not seeing the gap close at any appreciable rate and at this point, a big part of the gap can be explained by motherhood. There鈥檚 also a path dependency because child care is so expensive that unless you have two people who are both super-high earners, there is an economic incentive for one of them to step out of the labor force to take care of children when they’re young. Because historically women have made less than men, oftentimes the calculus says it鈥檚 better for the family if the mother is the one who steps out of the workforce. But none of this is in isolation鈥攖hese are norms that developed over time and we鈥檙e kind of just stuck now.

What are some of the other intended or unintended results of this research as it pertains to the wage gap between men and women?

If we really want to understand the gender wage gap, we need to think about the ways that the anticipation of this gap has people making career decisions from very early on. We conducted a survey asking a range of questions, thinking about the fact that you might have extra demands coming from parenthood and how that might affect your choice of a college major.

We see twice as many women as men saying they thought hard about this when they chose their college major. We see a lot more people saying they chose to stay at home for some portion of the time [since becoming a mother versus becoming a father]. We see people saying they chose more flexible arrangements, or they might take less money in exchange for more flexibility. The reason all of this is important, aside from people鈥檚 health and happiness, is that this can place women at a real disadvantage in terms of long-term outcomes in the labor market.

Larsen, Chair of the Department of Public Health in 黑料不打烊鈥檚 , was invited to present to a panel of scientists, policymakers and policy implementers at an information-gathering event called the 鈥淲hite House Roundtable on Emerging Technologies for Preventing Health Emergencies.鈥� At the onset of COVID in 2020, Larsen spearheaded an interdisciplinary team of experts in coordination with the New York State Department of Health to create a wastewater surveillance system throughout New York State.

David Larsen presents his 鈥渓ightning talk鈥� at the White House.

As one of many presenters during the three-hour roundtable, Larsen was given two minutes to discuss the merits of testing wastewater for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

鈥淚t was quite humbling to receive the invitation,鈥� Larsen says. 鈥淚 always hope that my work can influence public health, and since COVID-19, I鈥檝e been trying to support the improvement of our infectious disease surveillance systems in New York State and this country.鈥�

Today, the听听is testing for COVID in at least one wastewater treatment plant in all 62 of the state鈥檚 counties, covering a population of 15.4 million. The听听provides the most recent statistics regarding the network.

Days before Larsen鈥檚 trip to Washington, D.C., the (CDC) named the New York State Department of Health Wastewater Surveillance Program as a new in the National Wastewater Surveillance System. New York鈥檚 system was recognized by the CDC for its exemplary performance in the early detection and monitoring of communicable diseases such as COVID-19, polio, influenza and more.

This past spring, Larsen received a prestigious to teach and continue his wastewater surveillance research at the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Larsen is clearly a leading expert in this field and he received the invitation to speak at the White House from Nicole Fehrenbach, the Branch Chief of the Rapid Response Research and Surveillance Branch of the CDC. The CDC is intimately familiar with Larsen鈥檚 work as the New York State Wastewater Surveillance Network is a part of the CDC鈥檚 .

Larsen had visited Washington, D.C., before Aug. 27 and saw the White House from the outside, but he had never been in the complex until he attended the roundtable hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

鈥淲alking into the Eisenhower Office Building and seeing the offices of the Chief of Staff and other executive officials and the west wing of the White House was a bit surreal,鈥� Larsen says. 鈥淚t was the culmination of a lot of hard work since March of 2020.鈥�

During his 鈥渓ightning talk,鈥� Larsen says he emphasized that the functions of infectious disease surveillance are two-fold. First, they need to alert us when a community is at increased risk,鈥� he told the panel. 鈥淎nd second, they need to confirm a community is no longer at risk.”

David Larsen at the White House with the Washington Monument in the background.

鈥淭he Covid-19 pandemic showed how inadequately our systems performed in these two functions,鈥� he added. 鈥淪o, improvements are needed. Wastewater is a great way for both of these, and perhaps one of the most cost-effective ways to confirm a community is not at risk.鈥�

Larsen says his remarks were 鈥渨ell received,鈥� although he can鈥檛 share specific reactions because of the privacy guidelines for the roundtable. He鈥檚 encouraged that panelists were responsive because of the looming funding needs for wastewater surveillance.

鈥淩ight now, wastewater surveillance in the U.S. is largely being funded by COVID-19 emergency funds,鈥� Larsen says. 鈥淎s the emergency is over, those funds will expire. I hope that future funding will be made available to continue these efforts.鈥�

Those efforts, which started on the campus of 黑料不打烊 and now extend worldwide, will continue at 黑料不打烊 with Larsen leading the way.

鈥淩ight now, my team at 黑料不打烊 is focused on transitioning the operations of the program we鈥檝e built in New York over to the State Department of Health,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat will allow us to dive deeper into the science and maximize the benefits of the systems.

鈥淲ith the newly awarded Center of Excellence, we will support other states in the region, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,鈥� he adds. 鈥淎nd then globally, the Europeans are leading an effort to coordinate global wastewater surveillance and we鈥檒l continue to support those efforts.鈥�

Scott Landes

Earlier this month, Associate Professor of Sociology published a new study entitled 鈥溾€� in the听August edition of Health Affairs journal.

The report is the first of its kind to address the substantial knowledge gap on health disparities in the United States between disabled people and non-disabled people. Landes answered questions from SU News about his latest research.

Tell me about the new research that you just published.

Between 2008 and 2019, all-cause mortality risk was nearly two times higher for disabled than nondisabled adults. This mortality disparity was not just present for some disabled people, but persisted for disabled people across age, gender, race-ethnicity, socioeconomic status and health status groups.

Additionally, a mortality disparity was present for all of the 28 disability status combinations examined in the study (e.g., vision only; vision, hearing and mobility; etc.). While all disability status combinations were associated with a higher mortality risk compared to nondisabled adults, the degree of this disparity was more severe for people with a self-care (activities of daily living) disability.

In finding that disabled adults have a mortality rate that is twice as high as nondisabled adults, what does that tell you about the state of healthcare for people with disabilities?

Research provides substantial evidence that disabled people experience ongoing barriers to accessing quality care, ranging from problems with reliable transportation to challenges accessing often inaccessible physicians’ offices or medical settings. In addition, research from Dr. Lisa Iezzoni reveals that even when disabled people are able to access health care, physicians are biased in thinking that they will necessarily be less healthy than non-disabled people. This bias likely impacts course of treatment and care. So whether via challenges accessing care or challenges receiving the best care once accessed, medical care persists as an area of disparity for disabled people.

This research is the first time that mortality rates of disabled adults as compared to non-disabled was investigated. What led you to explore this issue?

At the 64th Meeting of the National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) on Sept. 1, 2023, a working group examining health disparities recommended that the 鈥渆ntire disabilities population NOT [emphasis added] . Fortunately, and largely in response to continued advocacy from the U.S. disability community, the NIMHD Director did not heed this advice, instead designating disabled people as a health disparities population on Sept. 26, 2023.

When making their recommendation to not designate disabled people as a health disparities population, the working group expressed concern, with no supporting evidence, that disabled people may have higher prevalence of all-cause mortality, but that they were not sure that all disabled people experience this and other health disparities. The dangerous precedent set here is assuming health disparities do not exist among a minority population known to experience a multiplicity of inequities. Fortunately, the Director of the NIMHD did not heed the advice of this working group, .

After hearing the working group’s suggestion to not designate due to insufficient evidence of disparities among disabled people, I decided to examine whether a mortality disparity was present among disabled adults in the U.S., and if present, whether it persisted across the disabled population.

What are the big takeaways from this research, and who needs to know about it (public policy officials, medical professionals, etc.)?

In sum, disabled people experience a substantial mortality disparity that extends across this population. This really needs to be an all-hands-on-deck moment, especially as we know that disabled people were also more likely to experience more severe COVID-19 outcomes during the height of the pandemic. All medical providers need to be aware of the increased risk of mortality among disabled people, but in being aware, should not assume that this is simply an inherent outcome of disability. Instead, it needs to be viewed as a disparity that can likely be reduced with higher quality care, both preventive and emergent care. In addition, policymakers need to continue working to ensure accessibility among medical providers, a goal that will be more enforceable in light of the recent Final Rule Implementing .

What is next? Does this research lead to more questions that need to be investigated?

The most pressing questions that remain are what are the exact mechanisms informing the disability mortality disparity, specifically how much of this disparity is due to health care access, socio-economic status, bias among health care providers as well as structural ableism. We need to know more about these exact mechanisms in order to better target interventions aimed at reducing this disparity.

, professor of physics in the , was recently awarded a grant from NASA for his project entitled, 鈥淓xtragalactic Outbursts and Repeating Nuclear Flares From Tidal Disruption Events.鈥� The three-year, $346,000 award will support his research on tidal disruption events (TDEs)颅鈥攐ne of the cosmos鈥� most extreme occurrences where a star is completely or partially destroyed by the gravitational field of a supermassive black hole (SMBH).

Eric Coughlin

By examining the formation of accretion flares鈥攖he very hot, bright shredded stellar material that falls into the black hole during a TDE鈥� astrophysicists can gain novel insights about the evolution of SMBHs, including such demographics as their mass and spin distributions. With improvements in technology like NASA鈥檚 NICER telescope, scientists have been able to detect more TDEs than ever. While these telescopes allow scientists to make direct observations of TDEs, theoretical models are necessary to relate observations to the physical properties of the disrupted star (e.g., its mass) and the disrupting black hole (e.g., its mass).

With this grant, Coughlin will work to advance TDE theory and modeling, so they are accurate and in agreement with observations. Specifically, he will numerically simulate TDEs of individual stars to generate a repository of accretion rates, which can then be used to compare to observations and infer the physical properties of black holes.

An artist’s concept of a tidal disruption event that happens when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which reacts by launching a relativistic jet. (Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF/NASA)

Part of the project will also be dedicated to understanding the production of repeating partial TDEs. A partial TDE occurs when a star is stripped of some of its mass by a SMBH but is not completely destroyed, while a repeating partial TDE is one in which the star orbits the black hole (similar to the Earth orbiting the Sun) and is stripped of mass鈥攁nd fuels an electromagnetic outburst鈥攐nce per orbit.

Coughlin notes that this aspect of his research shows specific promise for measuring quantities that normal tidal disruption events cannot. For example, in a TDE, there is an amount of time that passes after the star is partially disrupted and when accretion begins, known as the fallback time, and this period is 鈥渄ark鈥�, meaning no observable emission is produced before debris rains down onto the black hole. TDEs that generate only one accretion flare cannot be used to measure this timescale.

Repeating partial TDEs, on the other hand, enables a direct detection of the fallback time through the electromagnetic disturbances that arise as the star orbits the SMBH. The fallback time can also be reliably measured from simulations, but its value changes as a function of the star鈥檚 and the black hole鈥檚 mass, meaning that repeating partial TDEs provide a unique test of the theoretical understanding of strong tides and probe the properties of black holes (and stars in distant galaxies).

鈥淥ur goal is to develop an enhanced understanding of the variability in the accretion rates onto black holes that can be generated by tidal disruption events, ultimately to better inform our physical modeling of observations,鈥� says Coughlin. 鈥淥ur results will support the mission of NASA’s Physics of the Cosmos program: to understand the behavior of matter in extreme environments and the evolution of the Universe.鈥�

This is the second NASA grant currently held by Coughlin, with his other entitled, 鈥淐ontinued Swift Monitoring of Repeating Stellar Tidal Disruption Events: Towards a Legacy Dataset.鈥� This proposal uses data from the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (an optical-UV+X-ray telescope) to probe the properties of repeating partial TDEs. His research is also funded by a $330,000 National Science Foundation grant for a project entitled, 鈥淯nderstanding the long-term evolution of tidal disruption events.鈥�

鈥淐losing the Racial Wealth Gap: Public, Private and Philanthropic Collaborations” centered on how a plan of targeted, intentional philanthropy can help bridge racial wealth disparities and lead to the practical implementation of economic equity. Taking part in the discussion were 黑料不打烊 faculty members who have been studying the causes of and solutions to the racial wealth gap in America, Lender Center leaders and MetLife Foundation officials. Also involved were several local business leaders who have supported the Atlanta community by investing in innovation and startup businesses, neighborhood revitalization and historic preservation.

Villaneuva discussed the need for reparations to Black and Native American communities and efforts by his to create racial equity through education and 鈥渞adical reparative giving.鈥� The discussion was led by alumna ’78,听director of operations for the National Association of Black Journalists. 听

A roundtable discussion featuring community leaders followed. Participating were alumnus ’83 of ; , an Atlanta housing commissioner and founder of 听; , president and CEO of ; and , ombudsman for neighborhoods for the City of Atlanta. Additional participants were 黑料不打烊 Associate Provost for Strategic Initiatives and Lender Center Interim Director . Closing remarks were provided by , policy advisor for neighborhoods for the City of Atlanta and director of the Center for Urban Research at Georgia Tech University.

The event was part of an ongoing initiative of the Lender Center to examine the racial wealth gap in America and identify solutions to mitigate its impact. In nearly two years, the work has resulted in symposia and community conversations in 黑料不打烊, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta; funding for nine faculty research projects; and the creation of three postdoctoral fellowships. The center also formed a racial wealth gap composed of 15 notable business and community leaders and scholars from universities across the U.S. Those steps have been made possible by a $2.7 million grant from MetLife Foundation that was awarded in fall 2022.听

Kira Reed, senior research associate at the Lender Center for Social Justice, left, greets guest speaker Edgar Villaneuva for the Atlanta convening of a conversation about the racial wealth gap in America. Villaneuva advocates for the use of intentional philanthropy to provide economic racial equity.

Kendall Phillips, far left, interim director of the Lender Center, hosts the group of roundtable panelists for a question-answer segment.

A large audience gathered for the third conversation hosted by the Lender Center for Social Justice and supported by MetLife Foundation to discuss causes of and potential solutions for the racial wealth gap in America. The event was held at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. Roundtable panelists (at left) were Brendan Doherty, an Atlanta housing commissioner and founder of The Same House; Jodi Merriday, ombudsman for neighborhoods for the City of Atlanta; Angela Y. Robinson 鈥�78, of the National Association of Black Journalists; Chene茅 Joseph, president and CEO of Historic District Development Corporation; and Thomas R. Boyle ’83 of Atlanta community group Fourth Ward Neighbors.

Robinson, left, hosts Villaneuva’s talk with the audience.

Roundtable panelists included Atlanta investors, business leaders and neighborhood advocates, from left, Brendan Doherty, Jodi Merriday, Chene茅 Joseph, Thomas R. Boyle 鈥�83 and David Edwards.

A number of alumni participated in and attended the racial wealth gap conversation. Thomas R. Boyle 鈥�83, center, was a roundtable panelist. He is involved in the Atlanta historic preservation association Fourth Ward Neighbors.

Charlie Pettigrew, right, MetLife Foundation representative, chats with guests at the event reception. They include Vicki Brackens (left), president of Brackens Financial Solutions Network, LLC of 黑料不打烊; and University staff members Peter Cronin (second from left) vice president in Advancement and External Affairs; Stephanie Walgamott (center), director of regional development/South; and Rachel Vassel (right), associate vice president, multicultural advancement. A MetLife Foundation grant supports the racial wealth gap community conversations and other research initiatives.

Alumnus Jonathan Olens 鈥�15, center, was among the attendees.

Alumnus Jonathan Olens 鈥�15, center, was among the attendees.

Faculty who have received Lender Center Racial Wealth Gap research grants also were present. At left is Willie Reddic, Whitman School of Management; and at right, Laverne Gray, School of Information Studies. At center is Kristen Barnes, of the College of Law, a member of the Racial Wealth Gap initiative’s thought leader advisory group.

Lender Center for Social Justice Thought Leader Advisory Group members Pablo Mitnik (left), of the University of Michigan Center for Inequality Dynamics, and Gregory Price (right), minority and emerging business faculty member in the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of New Orleans are joined by Hannibal Newsom (center), assistant professor in 黑料不打烊鈥檚 School of Architecture and Lender Center research project grantee.

The Lender Center Racial Wealth Gap initiative’s three postdoctoral associates also attended. From left are Yvonne Christophe, Mauricio Mercado and J Coley.

A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of the U.S. Army’s First Division on the morning of June 6, 1944, (D-Day) at Omaha Beach, France. (Photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHOM) Robert F. Sargent, U.S. Coast Guard)

Eighty years ago this week the epic invasion of Allied air and ground forces swept across the Normandy peninsula to help defeat Adolf Hitler and his German war machine during World War II.

A battle of more than 150,000 Allied troops, who fought on the beaches and in the hedgerows, D-Day launched June 6, 1944, and remains immortalized in books, movies and television shows鈥攁nd in the sacred cemeteries on the French coast.

Alan Allport

For all its magnitude, the battle didn鈥檛 decide the outcome of the war, as German forces were already weakening in the face of the Soviet army on the Eastern Front, says Professor Alan Allport, the Dr. Walter Montgomery and Marian Gruber Professor of History in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

However, D-Day and its strategic importance finally gained Allied forces their footing in Europe and had long-lasting implications for a Western Europe free from communism and enduring American international diplomacy, says Allport, who is the author of 鈥淏ritain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War 1938-1941鈥� (Knopf, North America).

In this Q&A with SU News, Allport further explains the significance of D-Day and its impact generations later. For any media who wish to schedule an interview with Allport, please reach out to Vanessa Marquette, media relations specialist, at vrmarque@syr.edu.

The at 黑料不打烊 has long partnered with the to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamental workings of the universe. In 2015, the 黑料不打烊 Gravitational Wave Group played a leading role in a discovery that confirmed Albert Einstein鈥檚 general theory of relativity, with the first detection of gravitational waves. Since then, physicists from the have continued to advance this body of knowledge.

Collin Capano

Among these physicists, Professor has been awarded a from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for two of his projects which began in January of 2024 and are scheduled to be completed by fall of 2026. Capano is also the director of the , which is the University’s central information hub for using open-source software (code that anyone can inspect, modify and enhance).

Einstein鈥檚 prediction posited that gravitational waves emitted by black holes would have specific frequencies, akin to a chorus with people singing at various pitches. Capano鈥檚 first project, “Development of Efficient Black Hole Spectroscopy,” aims to explore Einstein’s theory by testing it in extreme conditions near black holes. Using data from the LIGO detector, researchers will examine whether these waves match Einstein’s predictions or reveal unexpected patterns, potentially uncovering new insights into physics.

The second project, “A Desktop Cluster for Detecting Compact Binary Mergers,” involves creating a network of computers to accelerate the search for gravitational waves in data produced in LIGO data. This innovation could significantly speed up the process and reduce costs, enabling more universities and colleges, particularly those with fewer resources, to participate in gravitational wave astronomy. Grant money from this award will be used to fund the construction, software development and testing of a cluster of processors.

The project also supports students, offering them opportunities to gain valuable data science skills, which are in high demand nationwide. Overall, this project not only pushes the boundaries of scientific knowledge but also promotes accessibility and diversity in STEM research.

Johanna Dunaway, professor of political science in the and research director of the 黑料不打烊 (IDJC), has been named a 2024 Carnegie Fellow. She is one of 28 distinguished scholars and writers selected as a Carnegie Fellow to study political polarization.

鈥淲e are incredibly proud of Professor Dunaway and her work,鈥� says David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School. 鈥淗er research, teaching and scholarly leadership on this issue have already brought great benefit to our understanding of the impact of changing news coverage and consumption on our democracy. This fellowship will expand that already important work and benefit our society at large.鈥�

Johanna Dunaway

As recipients of the so-called 鈥渂rainy award,鈥� Carnegie Fellows will receive a grant of up to $200,000 for research seeking to understand the causes of polarization in our society and what can be done to address this challenge. The award is for up to two years, with fellows typically working on a book or major study.

Dunaway will use her award to further her research on the relationship between changing news focus and political polarization. The project will specifically examine the roots and consequences of affective polarization, with a focus on the role of changing media environments, and how both are tied to anti-democratic behaviors.

鈥淚 am honored to receive this fellowship and look forward to conducting the research,鈥� says Dunaway. 鈥淏y helping us better understand the conditions under which the news environment fuels the influence of affective polarization on political reasoning and behavior, I am hopeful this project will address a critical gap in our ability to understand it as a threat to democracy.鈥�

Dunaway鈥檚 Carnegie project builds on earlier polarization and media examinations. In 2018 she and two other scholars, including Associate Professor of Communications Josh P. Darr, studied voting patterns in communities with shuttered newspapers. Their work was published in the Journal of Communication and was followed by a book co-authored with Darr based on new research related to the impact of the original findings, 鈥淗ome Style Opinion: How Local Newspapers Can Slow Polarization鈥� (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

The Carnegie Corporation of New York selected this year鈥檚 fellows from over 360 applicants鈥攁 record number for the program. Founded in 2015, the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program provides the most generous stipend of its kind for research in the humanities and social sciences.

Dunaway joins a growing list of Maxwell faculty who have earned this prestigious award, including Shana Gadarian, professor of political science and associate dean for research, in 2021; Thomas Keck, professor of political science and the Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics, in 2019; and Jennifer Karas Montez, University Professor, professor of sociology and the Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies, in 2018.

Ben Samadi

As 黑料不打烊鈥檚 largest school with over 300 faculty spanning the sciences, mathematics and humanities, the is a key contributor to the University鈥檚 R1 Carnegie designation, signifying very high research activity. In 2023 alone, A&S鈥� research and related expenditures exceeded $19 million. While funded research keeps faculty on the cutting edge of their fields, there are many administrative duties related to managing their grant awards. To support A&S researchers in the fulfillment of these duties, the College has named Behrang (Ben) Samadi as the inaugural director of research administration.

According to A&S Associate Dean for Research听, by assisting faculty throughout the grant process, this new position aims to reduce some of the faculty鈥檚 non-research activity, allowing more time and resources to focus on their research or scholarship.

鈥淭here are many administrative aspects both in applying for research funding and in managing awards,鈥� says Maisto. 鈥淏en will assist A&S faculty in all phases of pre- and post-award project administration and management.鈥�

Samadi will work closely with faculty to bring their research ideas to fruition and effectively execute their sponsored projects by:

• partnering with principal investigators to anticipate and resolve any administrative challenges that may arise throughout grant lifecycles to ensure compliance with funder and other requirements and maximize efficiency in grant operations;
• partnering with the Office of Sponsored Programs on faculty grant proposals to ensure complete and on-time submission; and
• overseeing fiscal administration and financial reporting of research grants in concert with College budget staff and the Office of Sponsored Accounting.

Samadi, who started on April 15, comes to A&S from Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, one of Malaysia鈥檚 highest-rated private universities, where he was a project manager, program leader and associate professor of marketing and management. Through his dual roles as a project manager and professor, he is versed in both the business and academic aspects of higher education. In addition to his background in business analysis, stakeholder management and strategic planning, Samadi also has expertise in securing research funding, leading research teams and publishing work in high-impact journals 鈥� skills that will serve him well in this new position, notes Maisto.

鈥淏ased on his extensive experience working in a similar role at other universities and the high level of praise for the quality of his work, Ben will be a major asset for our faculty,鈥� says Maisto.

Samadi鈥檚 addition affirms A&S鈥� commitment to supporting faculty and student research. Together with Melissa Whipps and Sarah Workman, directors of proposal development in A&S and the University鈥檚 Office of Research, their efforts will continue to further the research mission of the College and University by increasing the volume, scope, success and management of grants.

Learn more about听.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Kasey Laurant (left) and student Cody Van Nostrand 鈥�24 running an experiment in the water channel lab.

Boasting an impressive wingspan of over seven feet, the golden eagle is one of the largest birds of prey in North America. In addition to being cunning, skilled hunters and their ability to soar effortlessly for hours, golden eagles might also utilize strong gusts of wind to assist their flight 鈥� an ability that piqued the interest of , an aerospace and mechanical engineering professor in the .

During her Ph.D. studies at Cornell University, Laurent conducted research on golden eagles by recording their acceleration as they flew, and the study formed the foundation for her dissertation on bird and drone flight. She also participated in Cornell鈥檚 Raptor Program, which provides a home for injured or non-releasable birds for research, training and rehabilitation. This experience gave her valuable insights into bird flight and behavior.

鈥淪lowly throughout my Ph.D., I became more of a bird person. That鈥檚 what motivates my research here at 黑料不打烊,鈥� Lauren says.

Laurent鈥檚 research aims to enhance flight and aerodynamics by measuring wind speeds and unsteadiness within air flows. Her work鈥檚 interdisciplinary nature also enables collaboration with biologists to explore ideas for improving aerodynamics by learning from nature.

鈥淚f you step outside on a windy day, you鈥檒l feel the wind coming from various directions and at varying strengths at random intervals,鈥� says Laurent. 鈥淚f we measure the wind at a single point in time, that value will be random, but if we measure the wind over a long period of time and evaluate the statistics of how the wind changes over time, we鈥檒l find patterns.听My research looks at how these patterns, or signatures, may be deduced by looking at the locomotion of animals in turbulent environments. Will a bird fly a certain way in the turbulent atmosphere?鈥�

Kasey Laurant (left) and Cody Van Nostrand 鈥�24 conducting an experiment in the lab.

As Laurent puts together a proposal for gust soaring seen with golden eagles, she鈥檚 also interested in gathering data from crows, goshawks, and turkey vultures, large birds that also use strong wind gusts to aid their flight.

鈥淕oshawks fly through the forest and can maneuver very fast in different environments.听 When flying close to treetops, turkey vultures鈥� wings have an angle to them, allowing them to restabilize. It would be difficult to replicate this in man-made vehicles since they鈥檙e not flexible and don鈥檛 have joints like birds, but there鈥檚 still much we can learn.鈥�

Studying how birds utilize wind and atmosphere to aid their flight would assist in improving the flight of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs.) Smaller aircraft often face issues when encountering wind gusts, causing them to lose control and potentially crash. Understanding how to maneuver around gusts could open up new possibilities for aircraft to fly in without sustaining damage from wind gusts and even utilize gusts to their advantage, similar to birds.

This research can be useful in creating smaller and lighter UAVs for various applications, including search and rescue missions. The main challenge with drones is that they have a limited range, which requires them to return to a base to change batteries and repeat the process. If the drones have a longer lifespan, they can continue with their search without the need to land or replace the battery.

鈥淚f we find a way to let the gusts move aircraft around, power won鈥檛 be an issue. We鈥檒l just need to know how to maintain stability in that gust,鈥� Laurent says. 鈥淢ost research looking at flight in turbulence aims to develop methods to reject gusts, but it seems, according to the eagles, that may not be the best approach. We can learn a lot from nature to improve aerodynamics and locomotion.鈥�

Master鈥檚 and doctoral students from across the College of Engineering and Computer Science presented their research at the 2024 ECS Research Day.

Master鈥檚 and doctoral students from across the (ECS) presented their research during the 2024 ECS Research Day, held at the National Veterans Resource Center. From fundamental studies to prototype development, a total of 113 posters and 20 oral presentations highlighted the broad research activities across the college.

A keynote address, 鈥淭he Crucial Role of Strategic Decision-Making in Career Progression: A Personal Journey鈥� was delivered by Melur K. 鈥淩am鈥� Ramasubramanian G’87, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost at the State University of New York (SUNY) and the President of the SUNY Research Foundation. Ramasubramanian, who earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from 黑料不打烊, shared his experience and insightful career advice with the attendees.

鈥淓CS Research Day is a signature event that we organize every year to celebrate graduate research in our college. This year is particularly exciting with record participation and high-quality research presented. It showcases the strong scholarly work in many areas.鈥� said Dacheng Ren, associate dean for research in ECS.

Below is a list of awards handed out during ECS Research Day:

ORAL PRESENTATION AWARDS

Communications and Security

First Place: Feng Wang. “Maximum Knowledge Orthogonality Reconstruction with Gradients in Federated Learning.” Advisor: Dr. M. Cenk Gursoy.

Second Place: Nandan Sriranga. “Detection of Temporally Correlated Signals in Distributed Sensor Networks.” Advisor: Dr. Pramod Varshney.

Energy, Environment and Smart Materials

First Place: Johnson Agyapong. “The Formation of Deterministic Wrinkle Morphologies via 4D Printing of Shape Memory Polymer Substrates.” Advisor: Dr. James Henderson.

Second Place: Ashok Thapa. “Passive Oscillating Heat Pipes for High-Heat Dissipation.” Advisor: Dr. Shalabh Maroo.

Health and Well-Being

First Place: Yikang Xu. “A New Anti-Fouling Indwelling Urinary Catheter with Embedded Active Topography.” Advisor: Dr. Dacheng Ren.

Second Place: Natalie Petryk. “Hydrolytic and Oxidative Degradation of Polyurethane Foams for Traumatic Wound Healing.” Advisor: Dr. Mary Beth Monroe.

Sensors, Robotics and Smart Systems

First Place: Yasser Alqaham. “Energetic Analysis on All Possible Bounding Gaits of Quadrupedal.” Advisor: Dr Zhenyu Gan.

Second Place: Zachary Geffert. “Multipath Projection Stereolithography for Rapid 3D Printing of Multiscale Devices.” Advisor: Dr. Pranav Soman.

POSTER PRESENTATION AWARDS

First Place: Omkar Desai. “A Caching System for Concurrent DNN Model Training.” Advisor: Dr. Bryan Kim.

Second Place (tied): Zifan Wang. “Catch You if Pay Attention: Temporal Sensor Attack Diagnosis Using Attention Mechanisms for Cyber-Physical Systems.” Advisor: Dr. Qinru Qiu.

Second Place (tied): Shreyas Aralumallige. “Chandregowda. Exploring the Role of Bio-Flocculant Interactions with Clay Minerals in Addressing Mining Industry Challenges.” Advisor: Dr. Shobha K Bhatia.

Third Place (tied): Matthew Qualters. “Experimental Flow Control Techniques on a Supersonic Multi-Stream Rectangular Jet Flow.” Advisor: Dr. Fernando Zigunov.

Third Place (tied): Pardha Nayani. “Unleashing Bandwidth: Passive Highly Dispersive Matching Network.” Advisor: Dr. Younes Ra鈥檇i.

Honorable Mention:听 Ziyang Jiao. “The Design and Implementation of a Capacity-Variant Storage System.” Advisor: Dr. Bryan Kim.

Honorable Mention:听 Ratnakshi Mandal. “The Dance of DNA and Histone Proteins: Molecular Insights Into Chromosome Formation.” Advisor: Dr. Shikha Nangia.

A suction cup sound and movement tag being deployed on the back of a humpback whale in Massachusetts. These tags allow researchers to track movement and audio of individual whales.

A major example of this is passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), which records audio via a microphone in one location, usually a stationary or moving platform in the ocean. While this method allows researchers to gather acoustic data over a long period, it is difficult to extrapolate fine-scale information like which animal is producing which call because the incoming audio signals could be from any number of animals within range.

The study鈥檚 lead author, Julia Zeh, left, and Valeria Perez, a co-author, during a field research trip off the coast of Massachusetts. (Photo courtesy of Julia Zeh)

鈥淭his information can give us insight into how whales coordinate behaviors, how their calls relate to what they鈥檙e doing, what types of calls they use and what information they might exchange in group communication,鈥� says Zeh. 鈥淯nderstanding acoustic sequences within and between individuals also gives us insight into the complexity of the humpback whale communication system.鈥�

If researchers know who is calling, they can associate vocal behavior with individual age, sex or the behavioral context of the calls. This data can also be used to enhance PAM studies, which are commonly used for species鈥� presence/absence verification and population counts.

鈥淗aving information from tag data about call rates and timing can improve count estimates,鈥� says Zeh. 鈥淔or example, having 10 calls doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean there are 10 whales, but potentially two whales calling back and forth, or one whale producing sequential calls.鈥�

While previous studies have linked caller identity to acoustic tag data, this is the first robust method for studying large baleen whales, like humpback whales. The team’s efforts to enhance caller identification through simultaneous tagging provide a new resource for researchers to better understand animal behavior and advance wildlife conservation efforts.

The team鈥檚 work was supported by the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Program, the Office of Naval Research, the ACCURATE Project, the Cetacean Caller-ID project and the U.S. Navy Living Marine Resources Program.

鈥淭his eclipse will be a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime event in the sky that will bring us all together,” says Walter Freeman, an associate teaching professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. (Photo by Angela Ryan)

鈥淚ntroduction to Astronomy鈥� classes always end the same way they began, with Freeman advising his students that, ultimately, 鈥渨e look at the stars because they are pretty and they illuminate who we are as humanity.鈥�

That humanity will be on full display at 3:23 p.m. on Monday, April 8, when the University campus community and Central New York will experience a total solar eclipse鈥攁 naturally occurring phenomenon when a new moon finds itself precisely between the Earth and the sun鈥攃reating nearly 90 seconds of pure darkness during the middle of the afternoon.

The philosophy Freeman instills in class varies greatly from when humanity鈥檚 first encounters with solar eclipses, when people believed the sun powered their lives, and the events in the sky were closely associated with religion and mythology. Since the timing of the sun, moon and stars鈥� motions were documented to both keep time and navigate, anything that led to the sun鈥檚 disappearance, even for a few seconds, 鈥渟erved as harbingers of doom and gloom, an omen of terror,鈥� says Freeman, an associate teaching professor of physics in the .

Walter Freeman

Freeman uses stargazing and phenomenon like the upcoming solar eclipse to demonstrate to his students how the advancement of astronomy over time teaches us a valuable lesson on 鈥渢he development of our capabilities as people,鈥� Freeman says. As scientific advances are made, society has come to comprehend the sheer brilliance on display during a total solar eclipse.

鈥淭his will be a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime event in the sky. Science gives us a means to predict and understand eclipses. But beyond that, physics takes a back seat here. The eclipse isn鈥檛 a scientific event as much as it is a human event. Everyone will be able to appreciate what happens in a poetic and artistic way. That will be beautiful, and it will bring us all together,鈥� Freeman says.

Campus community members are invited to participate in this rare occasion鈥攖he next total solar eclipse in 黑料不打烊 isn鈥檛 predicted to happen for another 375 years鈥�through a series of on-campus events.

The Department of Physics, in collaboration with the College of Arts and Sciences, is hosting various on the Quad from 1:30-4 p.m. Physics students will lead assorted make-and-take projects and demonstrations across different locations. Telescopes will be available by Carnegie Library, and guided and eclipse-related presentations are being offered in the Stolkin Auditorium. Be sure to visit the for more helpful information.

Additionally, join the Barnes Center at The Arch and Hendricks Chapel on the Quad from 2:30-4 p.m. for an featuring a sound bathing experience and guided meditation, a viewing of the total solar eclipse, and a celebration of Buddha鈥檚 birthday ritual with the Buddhist chaplaincy.

Leading up to the eclipse, Freeman spoke with SU News about what makes this total solar eclipse different, where the optimal viewing areas are for experiencing maximum totality and why people should focus on who they鈥檙e watching the eclipse with instead of striving for that perfect social media post.

While fingerprint powder and microscopes are very important tools in forensics, machine learning is becoming one of the fastest emerging technologies in the field. This involves the use of algorithms and computing to perform efficient and effective investigations by analyzing large and complex sets of data. The College of Arts and Sciences鈥� (FNSSI) offers customized courses designed to equip students with the skills to examine these problems using computational methods and algorithms.

One specific course, titled “Computational Forensics,” introduces students to coding, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Taught by , courtesy research professor and a leading expert in digital forensics, the curriculum teaches students how machine learning and AI are utilized in the field. A highlight for students taking this course is the final project, where they select a real-world problem that they are passionate about and solve it using computational techniques learned in class. The assignment culminates with a presentation where they share their solution to the chosen problem.

Brianna Cardillo

Brianna Cardillo, a graduate student in forensics, focused her work on one of her favorite hobbies 鈥� reading. Her project, 鈥淲hat to Read Next? Using Historical Reader Preferences to Promote Books from Marginalized Authors,鈥� aimed to develop a machine learning algorithm that could suggest books, with a specific focus on promoting works by underrepresented writers.

鈥淚鈥檝e been in social media spaces surrounding reading and creatively writing books for a long time now, and I really became aware of just how much diversity people鈥檚 reading preferences lacked,鈥� says Cardillo. 鈥淚 have read so many books from authors like that had such incredible world-building and portrayed such important themes, books that deserved more praise than they got.鈥�

To address this inequity, Cardillo developed an algorithm which suggests books based upon readers鈥� interests. It takes into account information like genre, length, average rating on the book recommendation site Goodreads, and authors鈥� race, which she gathered from personal interviews, blog posts and book jackets. She organized this data into Excel spreadsheets and input the information into a machine learning algorithm. Simply put, the algorithm is a content-based filtering system which considers what readers enjoy and calculates whether they will enjoy other books by underrepresented authors based on those interests.

Filipe Augusto da Luz Lemos

鈥淚ncreasing awareness of marginalized authors requires readers to actively choose and promote diverse stories, especially since we have so much influence over publishing with how we use our dollars,鈥� says Cardillo. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why I wanted to make the algorithm in the first place, with the hope that this could be part of that first step.鈥�

While she primarily focused on race when developing this version of the algorithm, Cardillo would like to one day expand it to include multiple categories of marginalization alongside race, like sexuality or disability status.

鈥淚 would love to include authors of many different identities so that everyone can find books where they feel represented,鈥� she says.

The awards are funded by a 2022 grant that supports research and community programming over three years to examine the racial wealth gap鈥檚 root causes and ideas that may resolve its economic and social inequalities, says , Lender Center interim director. The awards are part of the Lender Center for Social Justice initiative led by the

The racial wealth gap is an ongoing issue that undermines potential economic and social progress and opportunities for members of underserved and underrepresented communities, according to , Lender Center senior research associate and associate professor in the Whitman School of Management.

鈥淭hese research projects are noteworthy because of their unique courses of inquiry, their highly inter-disciplinary and inter-institutional nature and their close engagements with 黑料不打烊 community members and organizations,鈥� says Phillips.

Projects receiving the one-year grants and involved faculty are:

鈥�Addressing the Racial Wealth Gap Through Increasing Decennial Census Self-Response Rates in Marginalized Communities鈥�

Leonard Lopoo

This project will test mechanisms to try to increase self-response rates for the 2030 federal census in undercounted communities in New York State. Successful efforts could offset census undercounts that might otherwise reduce federal funding for education, health care, housing, infrastructure and other vital services.

• , , principal investigator
• ,

Brice Nordquist

鈥満诹喜淮蜢� Futures鈥�

This study looks at 黑料不打烊鈥檚 arts and humanities infrastructure and how universities and community organizations can partner in offering arts and humanities programming and college and career support to historically marginalized communities.听 Led by the 鈥� , the effort involves multiple South Side organizations.

• , College of Arts and Sciences, principal investigator.
• ,
• ,

鈥淒oes Military Service Mitigate the U.S. Racial Wealth Gap? Overlooked Pathways for听Underrepresented Minorities in Public Service鈥�

Arielle Newman

Corri Zoli

This project explores how military service intersects with racial wealth disparities. Researchers will look at military service as a means of economic advancement and a way to overcome social barriers that may hinder underrepresented minorities who are pursuing post-service career advancement and entrepreneurship.

• , , and , Whitman School, principal investigators
• , (IVMF)
• ,
• , Maxwell School
• , IVMF
• , Lender Center for Social Justice
• , University of Pittsburgh

鈥淔rom Highways to High-Speed Internet: Leveraging Equitable Infrastructure for the Data Economy鈥�听

LaVerne Gray

Researchers are determining whether access to first-class digital information, services, assets and increased technology training can reduce the racial wealth gap by lessening barriers to digital networks, critical information and data literacy skills. Skills-training workshops are planned with community members.听听

• and , (iSchool), principal investigators
• , iSchool
• , iSchool
  

  Beth Patin

• iSchool
• , College of Arts and Sciences/
• , , Whitman School

鈥淥pportunity Design: Engaging Public Health in Low-Income Communities鈥�

Hannibal Newsom

This study leverages interest in ongoing energy retrofit work at 418 Fabius Street in the James Geddes Housing development in 黑料不打烊 to generate a more comprehensive examination of social determinants of health through the process of opportunity mapping.

• , , principal investigator
• , College of Visual and Performing Arts, co-principal investigator
• , School of Architecture, co-investigator

鈥�Nourishing Families: Parents as Partners in the Alignment of a Mindful Eating Intervention to Meet the Needs of Low-Income and Marginalized Families With Young Children鈥�

Lynn Brann

Parent and teacher workshops that include mindful yoga and mindful eating lessons for children are planned to address the nutrition needs of low-income, underrepresented families in 黑料不打烊. Research will explore if better nutrition for vulnerable populations can mean better health for families and more opportunities for their gainful employment, lessening the racial wealth gap.

• , , principal investigator
• , Falk College
• , Falk College

鈥淎ddressing Obesity and Hypertension in Refugees through Culturally Relevant Meal Interventions鈥�听

Miriam Mutambudzi

This project looks at obesity and hypertension in diaspora populations and works with African immigrants on post-immigration diets to introduce healthy adaptations while preserving culinary heritage. The goal is to assess whether healthier eating can reduce health issues and boost labor force participation, generating improved socioeconomic status.

• , Falk College, principal investigator
• , Falk College

鈥淒isability as a Critical Element in Exploring the Racial Wealth Gap鈥�

Nannette Goodman

Researchers will identify challenges faced by Black, Indigenous and People of Color individuals with听disabilities and will examine the role of disability in the racial wealth gap. They plan to develop recommendations regarding policies and practices that limit economic inclusion and trap people with disabilities into poverty.

• , College of Law, principal investigator
• , College of Law

鈥淥ptimizing Corporate Supplier Diversity Programs and Corporate-Facing Regulations for Addressing the Racial Wealth Gap鈥�听

Karca Aral

This initiative examines diversity interactions and legislative interventions in business-to-business aspects of wealth distribution and corporate supplier diversity programs. Researchers will develop guidance on diversity programs and diversity initiatives while enhancing those programs鈥� potential to level the racial wealth gap.

• , Whitman School, faculty lead
• , Whitman School
• ., Whitman School

Mechanical and aerospace engineering students Kendra Miller (left), Elan Fullmer (center) and Sydney Florence Jud were awarded first place at the New York State Green Building Conference student poster competition.

Kendra Miller, Elan Fullmer and Sydney Florence Jud, students in the mechanical and aerospace engineering program, claimed first place for their poster presentation at the New York State Green Building Conference competition, held Feb. 29 and March 1.

Titled, 鈥淕enerating Renewable Electrical Energy,鈥� their project was听sponsored by Aerovec, a startup company focused on developing small-scale, modular wind turbines for remote applications and microgrids. Aerovec is one of 19 industry-sponsored capstone projects that mechanical and aerospace seniors are working on this year. Aerovec is looking into multiple installation locations, such as commercial building rooftops, construction sites, and sites that need natural disaster relief assistance. This senior design project is primarily focused on the feasibility of an array of wind turbines on commercial rooftops for local energy generation.

The student team was advised by professor Jackie Anderson.

By wiggling its flexible foot underwater, an apple snail can create a flow that brings floating food particles to itself, a process known as “pedal foot collection,” by biologists. Fascinated by the snail鈥檚 unique ability, this would inspire the latest research conducted by , a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor in the . Pandey’s findings were published in the high-impact science journal .

Anupam Pandey

鈥淥ne of my research interests is understanding how soft, highly deformable, solid materials interact with adjacent liquid flow,鈥� Pandey says. 鈥淥rganisms that live underwater exploit this interaction for locomotion and feeding. Apple snails have evolved to leverage their proximity to the water-air interface to transport or pump liquids.鈥�

To understand the process behind pedal foot collection, Pandey designed a robot the size of a centimeter that oscillates rhythmically and mimicked the apple snail鈥檚 motion. He then placed the robot underwater in a tank and sprinkled Styrofoam particles on the surface to see if it could collect it, discovering that the robot functioned similarly to a pump.

鈥淲e found that our bio-inspired robot was able to drag particles from distances that are five times its size. But more interestingly, we found an optimal speed at which pumping maximizes,鈥� explains Pandey. 鈥淭his optimal speed seemed to depend on robot geometry as well as the properties of the liquid it鈥檚 submerged in. Combining experiments and modeling, we predicted the optimal conditions under which the robot pumps the most liquid.鈥�

In addition to understanding the role speed and liquid play in how the robot collects small objects and pumps liquid, Pandey also tracked the pattern of Styrofoam particle movement through long exposure photography, which he color-coded to make it easier to see how the particles moved.

While the small, oscillating robots have the potential for numerous applications, one notable benefit is as a collection device. Pandey believes that they could help address issues involving the collection of microplastics in oceans, which tend to remain at the water鈥檚 surface due to their small size.

Most plastic collection devices create strong disturbances at the water surface and cause microparticles to mix in the water. These microplastics travel to other water bodies, causing more plastic pollution which harms plants and animals and inevitably ends up in our food chain. However, devices like the undulating robot operate near the water鈥檚 surface with minimal interference and could potentially provide a solution to this problem.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 great about this research is how interdisciplinary it is. Biologists may be interested in this, and it has several potential applications in engineering liquid flows at small scales, sensing and actuation of floating objects or even microplastics in water bodies,鈥� Pandey says. 鈥淚t will not only advance understanding of liquid transport near surfaces but lay the groundwork for future research as well.鈥�

Building America works closely with industry, academia and community-based organizations to advance commercial building and residential housing performance solutions. Following a request for proposals from DOE鈥檚 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), awards were granted to nine teams of experts from around the country to develop, scale and implement solutions that advance energy efficiency in residential buildings.

The “Reducing Applied Losses in Heat Pumps” project is led by Principal Investigator , a professor of practice in mechanical and aerospace engineering and the associate director of building science and community programs. 鈥淥ur focus will be on reducing what we call applied energy losses in heat pumps,鈥� says Shapiro. 鈥淲e believe that we can substantially reduce energy use just by helping people make better choices in installation and operation. If this hypothesis is correct, it will help people in affordable housing reduce energy costs, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce the impact of electrification on the electric grid.鈥�

This project will focus on improving efficiencies in air-source heat pumps by reducing applied losses. With 黑料不打烊CoE as the team lead, project stakeholders also include the 听(ECS), the听 (AEA) based in New York City, and听 based in Ithaca, New York. This retrofit solutions team will receive $1 million in funding over five years.

Professor Ian Shapiro doing a baseline site visit of a heat pump installation at a residential home with two PhD students. (Left to right: Ji Zhou, Ian Shapiro, Wenfeng Huang, and Stan Linhorst)

In addition to Shapiro, affiliated faculty will include Professors 听and听. Zhang is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at ECS and the executive director of 黑料不打烊CoE. Dong is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at ECS and 黑料不打烊CoE鈥檚 associate director of Grid-Interactive Buildings. The team will leverage local partnerships and access to 黑料不打烊CoE鈥檚 to refine heat pump technology and operation and expand their application in underserved communities. 鈥淭he DOE Building America Program has profoundly impacted the advancement of housing technologies and practices for new construction. 黑料不打烊CoE is proud to host and support the project with state-of-the-art facilities and contribute to improving energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality through effective retrofitting solutions for existing buildings,鈥� says Zhang.

Each of the nine selected awardees is given a period of one to five years to scale and implement their proposed retrofit solution appropriately. A is available from DOE鈥檚 Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The University鈥檚 Office of Institutional Research and Assessment was recently created through a merger of the Office of Institutional Research and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment.

黑料不打烊鈥檚 Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) was recently created through a merger of the Office of Institutional Research and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment. The streamlined operation, located at 400 Ostrom Avenue, serves all members of the University community. The office is comprised of two departments: , overseen by Assistant Vice President , and , overseen by Senior Assistant Provost .

In this Q&A, Ovadia and Edmonds discuss the new OIRA and how the merger brings together valuable services for the University community.

Gabriela Kirk

Kirk-Werner and her counterparts have created the to study so-called 鈥減ay-to-stay鈥� statutes that leave millions of incarcerated individuals subject to the partial or total cost of their imprisonment.

The controversial practice contributes to widening inequalities in American society, according to Kirk-Werner and longtime collaborators Brittany Friedman, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, and April D. Fernandes, associate professor of sociology at North Carolina State University.

Arnold Ventures is a philanthropic organization that supports policy research projects addressing inequities and injustices in American society. Its five-year funding pledge supports the lab鈥檚 mission to advance research, policy and advocacy around the political economy of punishment.

Kirk-Werner first became interested in pay-to-stay policies in 2016 as a graduate student at Northwestern University. Friedman, a fellow graduate student, had discovered a little-known Illinois statute allowing the state鈥檚 attorney general to sue incarcerated people for their prison stay. She submitted a Freedom of Information Act request asking for records on the practice and, intrigued by what she found, joined Fernandes and Kirk-Werner in launching the first in-depth study of states鈥� pay-to-stay policies, specifically the use of civil lawsuits to recoup money.

鈥淲e found that states largely enforce pay-to-stay unevenly, often imposing these laws amid financial turmoil as a means to boost the state鈥檚 balance sheet,鈥� says Kirk-Werner.

The researchers witnessed cash-strapped states using pay-to-stay laws, a practice first employed during the Great Depression, to seize stimulus checks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. 鈥淪tates increase their reliance on these laws at will, most likely when prompted by financial hardships and budget shortfalls,鈥� Fernandes explains. 鈥淪o incarcerated people could be subject to the seizure and collection efforts of the state through pay-to-stay.鈥�

Read the complete story, written by the Maxwell School’s Jessica Youngman with the University of Southern California’s Daniel P. Smith, on the .

Catherine Herrold.

Using the $10,000 grant, Herrold will pursue a research project titled 鈥淐ivil Society Thrives in the Kafana: Locally Led Development and Grassroots Civic Engagement in Serbia.鈥� The award will fund her summer 2024 fieldwork in Serbia as she continues to investigate how grassroots groups and philanthropic entities outside of professional Non-Governmental Organizations mobilize and sustain initiatives for social change.

The project is based on research Herrold began in 2023 on Serbians鈥� local initiatives, such as sustainable agriculture, cultural festivals and community development projects. Supported by a U.S. State Department Fulbright Scholar award, she lived, worked and interacted with residents, spoke with staff of foundations and government agencies, and collaborated with scholars at the University of Belgrade鈥檚 Laboratory for Philanthropy, Solidarity and Care Studies.

Herrold spent five years doing similar research in Egypt and Palestine for her award-winning book 鈥淒elta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond.”

Each year, ARNOVA鈥檚 annual conference presents 13 awards and six scholarships for achievements in nonprofit, philanthropic and voluntary action research.

Herrold is a senior research associate for the Middle Eastern Studies program and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. Her research focuses on global civil society, international development, democracy promotion and nonprofit management. She received a Ph.D. from Duke University in 2013.

The number of attempts beyond the arc had increased in each of the previous 10 seasons, from 22.2% in 2010-11 to 39.2% in 2020-21, and it had been nearly five years since a team won a game without making at least one 3-pointer (that streak is now up to eight years). Led by 3-point specialists Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, the Golden State Warriors had won three of the previous seven NBA titles and were about to win a fourth in 2022.

It appeared the 3-point revolution would never end. But a recent study by sport analytics professor and associate professor shows that while the number of 3-point shots continues to increase, the average expected value of 3-pointers has become less than 2-pointers since the 2017-18 season.

Justin Ehrlich

鈥淲hen taking fouled shots and made free throws into consideration, we found that what had long been a premium for the 3-point shot started to become a dispremium in the 2017-18 season and that trend is continuing,鈥� Ehrlich says. 鈥淭he implication of these findings is enormous in terms of potential impact on roster construction and offensive philosophies.鈥�

The from Sanders and Ehrlich, 鈥淓stimating NBA Team Shot Selection Efficiency from Aggregations of True, Continuous Shot Charts: A Generalized Additive Model Approach,鈥� is available through the Social Science Research Network website. Sanders and Ehrlich will present their paper as one of seven finalists in the research competition at the NBA-centric March 1-2 in Boston, Massachusetts.

鈥淚n past conferences, there has been a lot of discussion among NBA executives about how basketball analytics created the 3-point 鈥榤oneyball鈥� era of basketball and how this has impacted the popularity of the game,鈥� Sanders says. 鈥淧erhaps ironically, our research uses basketball analytics, along with a fully specified team offensive objective function, to say there is now too much 3-point shooting for a point-maximizing offense.鈥�

To conduct their research, Sanders and Ehrlich developed a new shot chart that uses a generalized additive model to estimate total shot proficiency continuously in the half-court. Their shot chart incorporates missed shots that draw a shooting foul鈥攁nd shot-pursuant free throw scoring鈥攖o determine total scoring yield following a shot decision.

Current expected value formulas fall short by not including this additional information, which, when combined with the outcome of the initial shot attempt, results in what Sanders and Ehrlich call the 鈥渢rue point value鈥� of a shot.

• True Value from 2-point shot attempts=1.181
• True Value from 3-point shot attempts=1.094

(2022-23 NBA season)

And even when not factoring in free throws, the researchers found that the expected value from 3-point shots are now worth less than 2-point shots:

• Expected value from 2P field goal attempt=2P% * 2 = .548 * 2= 1.096
• Expected value from 3P field goal attempt=3P% * 3 = .361 * 3= 1.083

(2022-23 NBA season)

Shane Sanders

The true value data can be found in , and the graph below shows the expected and true values of 2- and 3-point shots from 2016-22.

According to this research, the expected value from average 2-point field goal attempts (FGA) is now worth 0.013 points more than average 3-point FGA, even before factoring in shot-pursuant free throw scoring. In other words, if you multiply the probability of making a 3-point FGA times the value of a 3-point FGA, it鈥檚 worth less than if you multiple a 2-point FGA times the value of a 2-point FGA.

When discussing true point value, the researchers use the term 鈥渟hot attempts鈥� instead of 鈥渇ield goal attempts鈥� because their formula includes missed shots when a player is fouled, which is not included in standard field-goal attempt statistics. So, when including made and missed free throws, the disparity based on this new true value metric is even greater as average 2-point shot attempts are now worth 0.087 more points than 3-point shot attempts.

Officials from NBA teams and the league have discussed moving the 3-point line back from its current distance of 23 feet, 9 inches (22 feet in the corners). But as this study shows, the value of a 3-pointer is decreasing at the current distance, and teams are already starting to alter their shot selection to emphasize more high-percentage 2-point shots.

鈥淭hese research findings do not coincide completely with the unresearched musings of NBA analysts Charles Barkley and Shaquille O鈥橬eal,鈥� Sanders says. 鈥淔or example, our findings do not suggest that such perimeter stars as Stephen Curry or Damian Lillard should not shoot a lot of threes. It means marginal stretch fours and other marginal outside shooters should not pull up for a 3 as often and that some marginal outside shooters should not extend their range to 25-26 feet or more. Players can still achieve the offensive spacing benefits of positioning on the perimeter without some players shooting from there quite as often.鈥�

Founded in 1999, the program supports the recruitment, persistence and advancement of underrepresented scholars in STEM on the 黑料不打烊 campus. The group continues to build a pipeline of scientists and engineers through its key goals to increase retention and representation, highlight scholars and establish an advising and mentoring network. These initiatives create a platform for students and faculty to exchange ideas and celebrate each other’s achievements.

Sadie Novak

Sadie Novak, a fifth-year chemistry student, is one of the many WiSE participants who is following her passion of scientific research. She remembers connecting with organic chemistry as an undergrad and credits a noteworthy professor and the lab she worked in as promoting a community of belonging.

鈥淭he professor did an amazing job of showing how organic chemistry is applied beyond [the field of] chemistry. It made me realize there are so many opportunities to do with chemistry,鈥� says Novak.

Continuing her work at 黑料不打烊, Novak has found support and community within the WiSE monthly peer chat gatherings and networking events. 鈥淭his has definitely opened a lot of doors and created a lot of community for women and other scholars in STEM here at 黑料不打烊,鈥� says Novak.

Kate Lewis

Program co-directors and say opportunities via informal mentorship and collaboration across science and engineering disciplines are crucial in providing support to University women and other scholars in the STEM fields and ensuring they have a shared space to build academic relationships.

鈥淗aving the opportunity to network with other women and scholars in STEM and obtain specific mentoring, training and coaching relevant to being a woman in STEM is really valuable,鈥� says Lewis, biology professor and the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence in the College of Arts & Sciences. 鈥淚t enables women to find different strategies to succeed and thrive and the networking also helps them to build their resilience.鈥�

Shobha Bhatia

鈥淲iSE provides a network and collaboration, mentoring and connections for different groups,鈥� says Bhatia, civil and environmental engineering professor and the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. 鈥淭hat is unique and if WiSE was not there, it鈥檚 not that people would not do well. But if you talk to any of them individually, they will find that the peer support has been extremely supportive.鈥�

While women only hold about in the U.S., the landscape is shifting. Organizations like WiSE play a crucial role in this change. With a spotlight on women and girls in science in February, Novak says creating spaces where students can see themselves in professors and other STEM academics makes all the difference.

鈥淚f you don鈥檛 see other people who have done it [like role models] it鈥檚 even harder for you to imagine yourself there,鈥� says Novak. 鈥淚 think days like [Feb. 11] where we highlight people who are in the field are super important.鈥�

Story by Daryl Lovell and Keith Kobland, members of the University’s central media relations team

鈥淏ringing these already strong offices together creates an even stronger operation,鈥� Provost Ritter says. 鈥淭his is an important step that enhances our ability to produce data-driven decision making that supports students and faculty.鈥�

Jerry Edmonds

OIRA serves all members of the University community. Its services span quantitative data, qualitative research, systems and processes, and helps to advance evidence-based decision making across campus. To that end, a new data request tool, accessible to all, will be available soon on the OIRA website.

The office is comprised of two aligned and integrated departments: Institutional Research and Institutional Effectiveness. Senior Assistant Provost Gerald Edmonds oversees the Institutional Effectiveness department, reporting to Steven Bennett, senior vice president, and Lois Agnew, associate provost for academic programs. Seth Ovadia, formerly the interim director of OIR, has been promoted to assistant vice president and oversees the Institutional Research department, reporting to Bennett.

Seth Ovadia

鈥淲hile we have outstanding professionals in both institutional research and institutional effectiveness and assessment, they have not been able to leverage each other鈥檚 strengths. This combined office aligns the deep relationships and qualitative expertise of institutional effectiveness with the data analytics and practices of institutional research,鈥� Bennett says.

He notes that OIRA provides services to all schools and colleges and many departments across multiple divisions, including budget, student experience, government affairs, legal, compliance, faculty affairs, public safety and others. It supports key activities such as the Middle States accreditation process, school and college accreditation data requests and reporting, faculty development, and curriculum planning and course development, as well as surveys of faculty, staff and students on matters ranging from diversity and inclusion to student wellness to project effectiveness.

AAG recognized 17 geographers in various practice areas for their contributions to geographic research and advancement of practice, and careers devoted to strengthening the field of geography, including teaching and mentoring. The honorary title of AAG Fellow is conferred for life.

Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern

Minkoff-Zern is an affiliated faculty member in the in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs; in the College of Arts and Sciences; in Maxwell; and the in Maxwell.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a huge honor to be recognized for my work in my home discipline of geography,鈥� Minkoff-Zern says. 鈥淎s an interdisciplinary scholar, I work across academic fields, looking at food systems with a geographic perspective, focusing on the migration of people and their agrarian knowledge and practices. This honor acknowledges not only my work but the growing impact of food systems research on the broader discipline.鈥�

address, contribute to and at times create initiatives to advance the discipline. Fellows also advise AAG on strategic directions and challenges, and mentor early- and mid-career faculty.

鈥淏eing named an AAG Fellow means I will join others in setting strategic initiatives and decisions for the organization, including taking part in committees, helping with broadening services and membership, and mentoring early-career geographers,鈥� Minkoff-Zern says. 鈥淚n recent years, the AAG has been strengthening its focus on accessibility and equity in the discipline through teaching and mentorship and advancing climate change research through interdisciplinary approaches. I hope to engage in reinforcing these efforts.鈥�

The AAG Fellows Selection Committee chose the 2024 class of Fellows. The complete list of Fellows with their citations is available on the .

“The breadth and depth of experience among this year鈥檚 AAG Fellows is a tribute to their commitment and to the breadth of the discipline of geography,” says Gary Langham, executive director of AAG. “We are grateful for their insights and leadership in advancing AAG and the field.”

With her faculty affiliations in Falk College and the Maxwell School, Minkoff-Zern is at the forefront of bridging the disciplines of food studies and geography and has emerged as 鈥渁 leader in a growing group of geographers who focus on issues of labor, race, and class within agriculture and food systems,鈥� according to an AAG news release announcing the 2024 Fellows.

Minkoff-Zern is currently working on a funded research project sponsored through the Lender Center for Social Justice with , associate professor of geography,听called 鈥淔ood Policy Councils as a Vehicle to Address the Racial Wealth Gap in Food System.鈥�

鈥淭his project looks at the role of Food Policy Councils in advancing labor justice for front-line workers across the food chain, including living wage initiatives, support for unionization, and improved health and safety standards and enforcement,鈥� Minkoff-Zern says.

Beyond her notable research, Minkoff-Zern is a leader in the subfield of food and agriculture, having served as chair and in many other roles in the . In this position, she helped steward the group toward new programs such as a scholarship for community food and agriculture partnership research.

Minkoff-Zern is the author of two books. 鈥溾€� tells the story of Mexican and Central American immigrants who are reshaping American farming by drawing on agricultural knowledge and practices from their home countries. Her second book, 鈥淲ill Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain,鈥� co-authored with Teresa Mares, looks at labor across the food chain from farms to food processing and into the home and explores the intersections between sustainability movements and labor organizing. This book will be published by the University of California Press in 2025.

Thomas Pearson

, assistant professor of economics in the , is part of a team of scholars who have been awarded $195,000 from the Russell Sage Foundation to study the exclusion and expulsion of minority groups from U.S. towns and cities between 1850 and 1950.

Their project, 鈥淭he Geography of Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Uncovering a Hidden History of Expulsion and Exclusion,鈥� will result in a nationwide dataset detailing the expulsion and exclusion of minority groups that occurred locally, even if illegal at the federal level.

The team aims to identify understudied forms of exclusion such as 鈥渟undown towns鈥� to characterize both the causes of racial/ethnic exclusion and its consequences for affected groups and places. They hope to identify systematic factors driving these events and impacts on affected populations. They also seek to reveal demographic, cultural and economic changes in the identified places, with a focus on African Americans, Chinese and Mexicans who were most affected.

The funding is awarded by the Russell Sage Foundation鈥檚 program on Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration, which supports innovative research that examines the roles of race, ethnicity, nativity, legal status鈥攁nd their interactions with each other and other social categories鈥攊n the social, economic, and political outcomes for immigrants, U.S.-born racial and ethnic minorities, and native-born whites.

In addition to Pearson, the team includes Samuel Bazzi of the University of California at San Diego; Eric Chyn of the University of Texas at Austin; Andreas Ferrara of the University of Pittsburgh; Martin Fiszbein of Boston University; and Patrick Testa of Tulane University. Bazzi is leading the project.

Pearson previously collaborated with teammates Bazzi, Ferrara, Fiszbein and Testa. 鈥淭he Other Great Migration: Southern Whites and the New Right鈥� was published in the August 2023 issue of Quarterly Journal of Economics, while 鈥淪undown Towns and Racial Exclusion: The Southern White Diaspora and the 鈥楪reat Retreat鈥欌€� appeared in the American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings in May 2022.

Before joining Maxwell in 2022, Pearson served as an instructor, teaching fellow and research assistant at Boston University and as a research associate in Indiana University鈥檚 Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. He also served in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua. He earned a Ph.D. from Boston University in May 2022.

Alexis Pe帽a 鈥�16 (Photo courtesy of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine)

Despite the dominance of cheap, quick clothing production among modern retailers, 黑料不打烊 biomedical engineering alumna Alexis Pe帽a 鈥�16, and her colleague, Lauren Blake, are determined to revolutionize the textile industry with their start-up, Good Fibes.

鈥淪ince summer 2022, Lauren and I have embarked on understanding the fashion industry ecosystem to provide innovative solutions for the current challenges,鈥� says Pe帽a. 鈥淎t Good Fibes, we鈥檙e developing methods for biomanufacturing natural textile fibers using biological building blocks. Our mission is to enable a circular textile economy through material innovation.鈥�

The biotech startup aims to produce lab-grown fibers through cellular agriculture and use engineered molecules to create renewable, biodegradable and non-toxic fibers. They hope this will offer alternatives to synthetic fibers such as polyester, which currently make up over 50% of clothing material. Synthetic fibers can also take hundreds of years to degrade and shed microplastics and chemical pollutants into the environment.

Though fibers like cotton, silk or wool are natural fibers, their production processes don鈥檛 align with sustainability goals or meet the industry鈥檚 needs. Cotton processing demands extensive amounts of water and silk production requires a considerable amount of energy. Wool products may also contain harsh chemicals and dyes that make them less biodegradable.

Alexis Pe帽a ’16 and Lauren Blake present a pitch for Chain Reaction Innovations (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

Natural materials can also be unpredictable in supply due to weather, humidity, animal diet or plant soil, which can cause variations in harvest seasons and batch-to-batch quality. Additionally, the industry faces challenges related to performance criteria and variability in quality, which ultimately leads to a reliance on synthetic fibers.

Good Fibes鈥� bioengineered fibers solve these issues by providing environmentally conscious production and better-quality materials compared to current synthetic textiles.

鈥淭he lack of reliable alternatives to synthetic fibers is a major pain point in the textile industry. Our bioengineered fibers not only provide an alternative to petroleum-based fibers, but also address limitations of cotton, silk and wool by having year-round production and tunable properties such as elasticity, tensile strength and dye affinity鈥� says Pe帽a.

Pe帽a and Blake recently completed their Ph.D.s in May 2023 at Johns Hopkins University. The co-founders also taught a course called 鈥淔uture Fashion Innovation鈥� to material scientists and engineering undergraduates at Johns Hopkins during intersession and adapted the course into a webinar for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine alumni during Earth Week in 2023.

Additionally, Good Fibes has been selected as a participant in a lab-embedded entrepreneurship program (LEEP), Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI) program at Argonne National Laboratory.听The CRI program is designed to support entrepreneurs and their innovative research with a focus on clean energy.

鈥淔ashion should allow people to feel good about their clothing, but also feel good about what happens to their clothing after they wear it,鈥� says Pe帽a. 鈥淲e believe this can truly innovate the textile industry and bring a much-needed change to fashion鈥檚 monolithic infrastructure.鈥�

Nearly 30 million people in the United States struggle with alcohol use disorder (AUD), which is characterized by impaired ability to stop or control alcohol use despite adverse social, occupational, or health consequences. Of that 30 million, less than 10% receive treatment, according to the . Among the barriers to care are cost, stigma and presence of co-occurring psychological symptoms or conditions, including anxiety, depression and trauma.

Sarah Woolf-King (left), associate professor of psychology, and Fatima Dobani, a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology, were each recently awarded prestigious grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Through the development of novel intervention strategies, members of the College of Arts and Sciences鈥� are dedicated to advancing treatment for individuals suffering from AUD. This is another example of cutting-edge research at 黑料不打烊 that contributes to human thriving, a key pillar of the University鈥檚 new . In support of that work, a psychologist and graduate student in psychology were recently awarded grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

, associate professor of psychology, received a (major NIH research grant awarded to individual investigator teams) to test the efficacy of a novel approach to decrease alcohol use and improve co-existing psychological symptoms among people with HIV.

A second NIH award鈥攁n 鈥攚as obtained by , a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology. The prestigious F31 award will support her work to generate a way to measure how discrimination against Multiracial young adults contributes to alcohol misuse among that population. Her study will develop a discrimination scale to help inform culturally sensitive intervention strategies.

Learn more about these .

]]> /blog/2023/11/29/new-research-on-veterans-with-less-than-honorable-discharges/ Wed, 29 Nov 2023 18:50:30 +0000 /?p=194495

More than one in seven veterans discharged between 2002 and 2013 received a less than 鈥淗onorable鈥� discharge, according to new research out of 黑料不打烊. The “” research brief describes how service members with behavioral or mental health challenges, ethnoracial minorities, members of the LGBTQ community, and women are at the greatest risk for receiving a less than 鈥淗onorable鈥� discharge鈥攚hich, in turn, has veterans experiencing lifelong negative consequences associated with their discharge status

Mariah Brennan and Emily Graham, the authors of this brief, said, “It is critical that we raise awareness surrounding the challenges that veterans face when they leave military service with a discharge that is less than ‘Honorable’. Transitioning from service can be challenging enough, but the added consequences associated with less than ‘Honorable’ discharges are severe, lifelong, and put this group of veterans at greater risk for poor health outcomes and homelessness. It’s important that resources and support upon separation are available to those in greatest need.”

If you’d like to learn more about this research and/or schedule an interview with the authors, please reach out to Vanessa Marquette, media relations specialist, at vrmarque@syr.edu.

Asif Salekin (left) and Brian Testa (Photo by Alex Dunbar)

Whether you鈥檙e looking to try a new recipe, dimming the lights in your living room, or curious about the species of bacteria living inside your mouth, Amazon Alexa has got you covered. With a simple voice command, Alexa鈥檚 ability to perform various tasks or answer questions has made it widely popular, with over 40 million users in the United States alone. Despite the convenience smart speakers like Alexa offer, these devices have also raised some privacy concerns.

Amazon has been known to collect data on users, which includes their shopping habits, preferences and even their location for personalized marketing. But that鈥檚 not all. When using waking words such as 鈥淗ey Alexa鈥� to activate smart speakers, the audio of your voice command is also recorded and stored, becoming Amazon鈥檚 property. This means that Amazon owns your voice audio and can do whatever they want with it.听鈥淏ig tech companies are using our personal information. We鈥檙e less like customers and more like their product,鈥� says graduate student Brian Testa 鈥�24. 鈥淚鈥檝e always been sensitive to that. I don鈥檛 use a lot of technology at home for that reason.鈥�

Using voice data, companies like Amazon and Google have now developed technology that poses even more threats to privacy: AI and machine learning that can determine people鈥檚 emotional state or mood from their voice. This patented technology can even pick up on feelings from emotionally neutral phrases like 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the weather?鈥� Since there are no laws in place to prevent this, there鈥檚 no protection against it.听鈥淚n the U.S. for the last five to 10 years, lots of researchers have been working on how they can use voice to infer emotions, mood or even mental health,鈥� says assistant professor in electrical engineering and computer science, Asif Salekin. 鈥淚n my own lab, we have previous works on tech that can infer mental disorders like depression, social anxiety, manic disorder and even suicidal tendencies from one鈥檚 voice.鈥�

While this technology can be useful in certain circumstances, most users, if not all, have not consented to having their emotions detected by smart speakers. These privacy concerns led Testa, Professor Salekin, graduate students Harshit Sharma 鈥�26 and Yi Xiao 鈥�26, and undergraduate student Avery Gump 鈥�24 to begin researching ways to protect users鈥� privacy from smart speakers.听鈥淐onsent is key,鈥� Salekin says. 鈥淲e鈥檇 still like to use smart speakers since they鈥檙e quite useful鈥揑 have them in my own home. This project was about finding a way to use these devices without giving companies the power to exploit us.鈥�

Led by Testa, the group conducted extensive research and developed a device that can be attached to a smart speaker or downloaded as software onto a laptop. This device emits a mild noise that only the smart speaker can hear and masks the emotional tone in your voice, providing a new level of privacy protection for concerned users. 鈥淭hrough the use of a speech emotion recognition (SER) classifier, a smart speaker can analyze how people are feeling based on how they sound. We created a microphone device that listens for the wake word 鈥楬ey Alexa,鈥欌€� Testa says. 鈥淲hen the smart speaker activates, our device activates too and begins to emit a noise that disrupts the smart speaker from detecting your emotions. However, only the smart speaker hears this noise.鈥�

Currently, their device masks your emotional state by presenting it as a completely different emotion. When you speak, the smart speaker may detect from your voice that you鈥檙e sad, angry or frustrated when you鈥檙e not feeling any of these emotions. This unpredictability makes it difficult for smart speakers to accurately determine your true emotions or mood and also prevents machine learning from picking up on any patterns and mood correlations. The group hopes to improve the device鈥檚 functionality by making it mask your emotions as neutral rather than presenting them as a different emotion. 鈥淭o create the mild noise our device emits, we utilized genetic programming to identify a combination of specific frequencies that disrupt the smart speaker from determining a person鈥檚 mood,鈥� Salekin says. 鈥淥nly the speaker hears this noise, but it can hear your speech commands clearly, so the utility of the smart speaker remains intact.鈥�

Though the sound is only detected by the smart speaker, the group wanted to see how loud it would be when the device is used. Testa played the sound in the lab when Professor Salekin was having a meeting and Salekin didn鈥檛 even realize it was playing, which showed that the noise wasn鈥檛 disruptive. Additionally, they also conducted a survey with others to see if the noise was loud enough to be disruptive.

Testa, Salekin, Sharma, Xiao and Gump are currently working on patent submissions, form factors and speaking with companies about commercializing their device. What sets their patent apart from similar concepts is that while past technology focused on determining people鈥檚 moods or emotions, their technology is all about protecting them. This unique approach makes their device the first of its kind. 鈥淚t was a fun project,鈥� Testa says. 鈥淭his paper was published by me and as the first listed author, I鈥檓 excited about it. I鈥檝e been working towards my Ph.D., and this is another step towards that goal.鈥�

鈥淲orking with the students in real-world applications and research with real results was exciting,鈥� Salekin says. 鈥淭his research has many components and the collaboration between us was great. We鈥檙e excited to see what the future for this tech holds.鈥�

Stephen Maisto

, research professor and professor emeritus of psychology, has been named the College of Arts and Sciences鈥� (A&S) associate dean of research. In that role, he will help advance the mission of the college by working with faculty to increase grant funding and research expenditures. Maisto will also ensure that research activities in the college align with the University鈥檚 new Academic Strategic Plan (ASP) and A&S鈥� forthcoming ASP. With faculty spanning the humanities, STEM and social science disciplines, the scholarly contributions made by A&S professors play a significant role in the University’s R1 Carnegie Classification, signifying high research activity levels.

Behzad Mortazavi, dean of A&S, is thrilled to welcome Maisto to the college鈥檚 leadership team.

鈥淚 look forward to Professor Maisto carrying on the positive momentum set in place by former associate dean of research Alan Middleton,鈥� says Mortazavi. 鈥淲ith his proven track record of proposal development and high-impact research publications, Professor Maisto is the perfect fit for this role moving forward.鈥�

Maisto, whose appointment as associate dean began Oct. 16, will work closely with Mortazavi and A&S leadership to enhance the college鈥檚 research standing and increase the volume, scope and success of grant proposals. He will oversee A&S鈥� Research Administration team in collaboration with the Office of Research and will provide strategic oversight for the Office of Research Development staff assigned to support the college.

鈥淚 look forward to accelerating the college faculty鈥檚 positive trajectory of receiving external support for their research. Within that overall goal, I鈥檓 especially excited about the prospect of working with individual faculty to reach their research goals and for mentoring junior faculty as part of that process,鈥� says Maisto.

Since joining the 黑料不打烊 faculty in 1994, Maisto has focused much of his research on the assessment and treatment of alcohol and drug use disorders. His cutting-edge work also extends to HIV prevention and intervention.

He has authored or co-authored more than 300 publications and was recently part of a seminal study where he and 黑料不打烊 researchers looked at the听pain-relieving effects of cannabidiol (or CBD). The team鈥檚 noteworthy results revealed that CBD and expectancies for receiving CBD do not appear to reduce pain intensity but do make the pain feel less unpleasant. Their findings, which received significant media attention, shed important light on the actual effectiveness of CBD.

Throughout his career, Maisto has secured over $50 million in research funding. A testament to his proficiency with proposal development, he and fellow psychology professor Sarah Woolf-King earned a rare听 on a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant application in 2017鈥搕he highest score possible. Recently, Maisto was among the leaders of two research teams who received over $5 million in funding from the NIH for 听focused on HIV prevention and alcohol use disorder recovery, respectively.

Maisto has held a variety of leadership positions at 黑料不打烊, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) centers and other professional organizations. With the Department of Psychology in A&S, he served as director of clinical training and interim department chair. With the VA Center for Integrated Health Care (Upstate New York), he served as director of research and executive director. He also held leadership roles with Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island; the VA Medical Center in Brockton, Massachusetts; and the VA Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

An accomplished professor, mentor and researcher during his nearly three decades at the University, Maisto was honored with the Chancellor鈥檚 Citation Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018 and was awarded emeritus status in 2020. Prior to joining the University faculty in 1994, Maisto taught at Vanderbilt University, Brown University Medical School and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He received an M.A. and Ph.D. in experimental psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and completed a postdoctoral respecialization in clinical psychology in 1985 at George Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. Maisto also is board certified in clinical psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology.

Resettled refugees, also called new Americans, encounter myriad challenges from being displaced, ranging from financial stress to difficulties finding employment to lack of access to resources. These hurdles are magnified for new Americans who, in addition to possibly learning a new language, require speech, language and hearing services.

As the rate of asylum seekers arriving in the United States surges, 黑料不打烊 in particular is one of the highest intake cities in the United States, welcoming over 7,000 refugees in the past decade alone. To help ease the language barriers faced by new Americans, communication sciences professionals must be prepared to provide culturally responsive, human-centered, trauma-informed services for refugees who have complex educational and health care needs.

In response to this growing challenge, the College of Arts and Sciences鈥� (CSD) has launched a new training program called Supporting Outcomes and Healthcare Access for Refugees (SOAR).

A first of its kind in the United States, SOAR provides the next generation of speech-language pathologists and audiologists with training in promoting health equity, interprofessional collaboration and experiential learning opportunities. CSD professors Jamie Desjardins and Stephanie McMillen lead the program, which received a $10,000 grant from the American Speech Language Hearing Association’s multicultural board in 2022 to support the project.

According to Desjardins, SOAR was established in part to respond to a recent report revealing that CSD clinicians nationwide are feeling underprepared and lacking confidence in servicing U.S. refugee populations.

鈥淚t is our responsibility, as a CSD higher-education program, to improve pre-professional training to better prepare our students for working with new Americans. We started SOAR to meet these needs in our community and profession.鈥� – Jamie Desjardins

During the Fall 2023 semester, 19 CSD undergraduate and graduate students are participating in tailored classroom instruction and experiential learning activities. Together, these experiences allow students to learn about the needs and challenges that new Americans encounter when it comes to access to health care services.

CSD students attended a seminar where they learned about trauma-informed care.

At an event in early October, students learned how to work with an interpreter to provide linguistically and culturally sensitive clinical services for patients learning English as a new language. They interacted with in-person and virtual interpreters in scripted, live-action clinical scenarios with an actor, who portrayed a patient with limited English proficiency.

Li, a health economist who is part of the public administration and international affairs department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, wanted to see if Medicare鈥檚 Quality of Patient Care home health star ratings have an impact on patient care.

Critics have argued that these ratings are inaccurate. But since Medicare鈥檚 ratings provide the only source of systematically and publicly available information on home health agency quality, it is important for patients to have access to valid ratings in order to find high-quality care.

In the paper 鈥溾€� and published in the journal Medical Care, Li studied more than 1.8 million Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries who used home health care from July 2015 to July 2016 in the United States and evaluated whether patients treated by higher-rate agencies had better health outcomes.

Li looked at how many days patients were able to live independently at home after receiving home health care as well as if they needed hospitalization, visited an emergency department, had to be institutionalized, or died in the short-term.

In the study, Li found that patients treated by higher-rate agencies did better both in the short-term and long-term outcomes.

鈥淩ates of hospitalization, emergency department use, institutionalization generally decreased,鈥� said Li. 鈥淧atients treated by higher-rate agencies spent more time at home.鈥�

With these findings, policymakers should work to increase awareness and use of the ratings by patients and their caregivers said Li.

The star rating was created in 2015 with the aim of distinguishing high from low-quality home health agencies. Home health care plays an important role in caring for the elderly. For both the government and patients, Medicare鈥檚 home health visits are one of the least expensive ways to provide care, but assessing quality is often challenging for patients and their doctors, who must select an agency, often just as patients are leaving the hospital. Furthermore, many people tend to be less familiar with the reputation of home health agencies than they are with hospitals and other institutions within their communities.

While the rating system works, there are still issues with patients in rural areas who don鈥檛 live near highly-rated agencies.

鈥淲hile this study shows that the rating systems helps connect patients with effective home health agencies, there are still issues for some patients in accessing high-quality home health care, especially in rural settings,鈥� said Li. 鈥淔or example, 15% of patients live in zip codes where the best-rated home health options was only average. Knowing that the star ratings provide valuable signals of quality only means that we need to work harder at making sure that all people have access to high-quality care.鈥�

One of the visible examples of how the University is leading the way in research excellence is the , an interdisciplinary institute whose members examine complex biological systems, developing and designing programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation.

BioInspired serves as a framework for 黑料不打烊鈥檚 talented faculty and student researchers, supporting researchers from such disciplines as life sciences, engineering, physics and chemistry. It collaborates with both industry partners and other academic institutions, including , and others.

Helping the current and next generation of 黑料不打烊 researchers achieve their goals fuels , who served as BioInspired鈥檚 founding director beginning in April 2019, and , who took over as director on July 1. The two have frequently collaborated to provide a roadmap for successful research endeavors on campus.

Lisa Manning

鈥淏ioInspired is at the intersection of materials and living systems. The idea is there’s types of materials called biomaterials that interact with living systems, and there are types of materials that are bioinspired, which means they have features or functions or can execute tasks like intelligent new types of materials that act like living systems,鈥� says Manning, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. 鈥淭here’s this idea that organisms are actually secretly a material. By thinking about living systems as materials or having mechanical interactions, we can come up with new hypotheses that might even someday drive treatments for a disease.鈥�

Jay Henderson

鈥淲e’re trying to figure out ways to solve really big problems like antimicrobial resistance to antibiotics or how we can better treat injuries when they occur,鈥� says Henderson, professor of biomedical and chemical engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. 鈥淗ow can we use materials to try to do those things? Some of the biggest challenges facing our society might have solutions rooted in the materials we could use to address them, whether it’s treating an injury or a disease, or capturing energy in some way that it can’t currently be captured to address things like global warming or combating COVID. These are problems we鈥檙e going to continue to face in the future.鈥�

On this 鈥�’Cuse Conversation,鈥� Henderson and Manning share how BioInspired embraces an interdisciplinary approach to research, discuss the importance of introducing students to research opportunities early in their academic careers and explain how BioInspired and 黑料不打烊 are helping more women and students from underrepresented populations get involved in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

They also explore the Cluster Hires Initiative鈥攁 key part of the intended to significantly invest in faculty recruitment and retention in areas of distinction for the University鈥攑review the second annual BioInspired Symposium, scheduled for Oct. 19-20, and explain how they became passionate about research.

Check out featuring Henderson and Manning. A transcript [PDF]听is also available.

Jay Henderson and Lisa Manning discuss BioInspired’s interdisciplinary approach to research, the importance of introducing students to research opportunities early in their academic careers and what BioInspired and 黑料不打烊 are doing to get more women and students from underrepresented populations into STEM fields.

Kishi Animashaun Ducre (left) and Alan Middleton

A welcoming community where students of varying backgrounds thrive. An infrastructure that nurtures top-tier research and academics. These are two cornerstones of the (A&S) experience. Over the past six years, A&S has shown important strides in these areas, and that success can be attributed largely to the efforts of associate deans听听and听, who returned to the faculty this fall.

According to Behzad Mortazavi, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Ducre and Middleton were forward-thinking leaders focused on elevating the standing of the college.

鈥淚 applaud Professor Middleton and Professor Ducre on their thoughtfulness and dedication to the college,鈥� says Mortazavi. 鈥淎lan鈥檚 steadfast commitment to advancing research has been key to raising the profile of the college and the University. Likewise, Kishi鈥檚 work as A&S鈥� inaugural associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has strengthened the college鈥檚 reputation and improved the experience for our faculty, staff and students.鈥�

Ducre, a leading scholar in gender, race and environmental justice, joined the African American studies faculty in 2005. She is an environmental sociologist examining the intersection of the geographies of race and gender within the field of environmental justice, from a Black feminist perspective. Her work has appeared in edited books and journals, including Environmental Sociology.听Ducre is also author of 鈥淎 Place We Call Home: Gender, Race and Justice in 黑料不打烊鈥� (黑料不打烊 Press, 2013) and co-editor of 鈥淎ddressing Environmental and Food Justice toward Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline Poisoning and Imprisoning Youth鈥� (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Ducre led several key initiatives during her time as associate dean of DEI for A&S. She successfully campaigned for the establishment of the A&S | Maxwell Diversity Council written as an amendment to the college鈥檚 by-laws and led a robust series of professional development workshops on unconscious bias within the promotion and tenure review process; bystander intervention; and best practices in inclusive hiring. She also organized the , created to help viewers consider the factors and implications surrounding the May 2020 killing of George Floyd鈥攁nd the subsequent trial of police officer Derek Chauvin in spring 2021.

A testament to her work with social justice initiatives, last year Ducre was appointed to the 400 Years of African American History Commission by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul. Through research, events and activities, the commission is charged with sparking community dialogue about the history of racism in America and will recognize and highlight the resilience and contributions of African Americans since 1619.

, professor and chair of African American studies, is excited for Ducre to rejoin the department full time following her term as associate dean.

鈥淭he department would like to extend their gratitude to Professor Ducre for her inspired leadership over the last five years, and we cannot wait to see her in Sims Hall again,鈥� says Dima. 鈥淭his fall, Professor Ducre is teaching AAS 112 (Introduction to African American Studies) and a special topics seminar, AAS 400/600 (Black Feminist Geographies), which stems from her main area of expertise, environmental justice. The faculty, students and staff of AAS are looking forward to Professor Ducre鈥檚 return.鈥�

Middleton has been a faculty member in the Department of Physics since 1995. He was promoted to full professor in 2008 and served as chair of physics from 2013-17. He also served as the director of undergraduate studies for physics from 2000-07 and was a core faculty member of the from 2009-15.

An expert in the application of advanced algorithms to the study of structurally disordered materials, Middleton is interested in developing best teaching practices and innovative coursework. His popular class, Seeing Light, explores theories of light and vision from Lucretius through Einstein, using hands-on experiments to learn about optics and color theory. During his time at 黑料不打烊, he has been principal investigator (PI) or co-PI on National Science Foundation grants totaling over $3 million and has authored or co-authored nearly 50 research publications. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

As associate dean of research, he helped lead the college through significant gains in funding and research output, a key contributor to the University鈥檚 R1 Carnegie Classification, the top tier signifying high research activity levels. During his tenure, Middleton oversaw the hiring of two inaugural directors of proposal development: one in the sciences and mathematics and another in the humanities. Each of those new positions helped advance the research mission of the college as they worked with faculty to increase the volume, scope and success of grant proposals.

Under Middleton鈥檚 leadership, A&S had a record $23.4 million in research awards in 2022. Over the past year, the college also set a new record for funded research with $19.7 million in expenditures, which is the amount spent on research in A&S.

, professor and department chair of physics, is thrilled to have Middleton rejoin the physics department full time where he will help advance its teaching and research missions.

鈥淚 have known Alan Middleton for many years, and I have always enjoyed our discussions of best practices and gaining efficiencies in academic administration,鈥� Ross says. 鈥淎lan鈥檚 research in statistical mechanics is highly versatile and will be a welcome addition to many subfields in physics, including my own. I am also excited to have Alan鈥檚 experience as an educator back on the faculty as we implement new courses to enhance student experiential learning.鈥�

Ducre and Middleton helped create a strong foundation for the college, Mortazavi notes. 鈥淎s they return to their respective departments, I am honored to help celebrate their exemplary service, for which I am profoundly grateful. Thank you, Kishi and Alan!鈥�

As the college finalizes its Academic Strategic Plan, Dean Mortazavi will identify ways to continue the work of these outstanding faculty members.

Heather C. Fischer

Heather C. Fischer, a graduate student in the executive master鈥檚 in international relations (E.M.I.R.) program in Washington, D.C., has been named a 2023 Eisenhower USA Fellow. One of 11 recipients of the honor by the organization Eisenhower Fellowships, she was selected for her work fighting human trafficking and other human rights crimes in the national security space.

Named after the U.S.鈥檚 34th president, Eisenhower Fellowships was founded in 1953 to provide mid-career leaders from around the world the opportunity to travel to different countries to connect with fellow professionals of their respective fields.

Fischer works as the senior advisor for human rights crimes at Thomson Reuters Special Services, a D.C-based data and technology company. As a contractor for the federal government, she helps inform the company strategy to combat human trafficking, safeguard children from online sexual exploitation, pursue human rights violators, and promote women, peace and security.

The fellowship supported Fischer鈥檚 recent travel to Malaysia and Thailand to study best practices to address forced labor in global supply chains and develop a U.S. public awareness campaign to educate consumers about making ethical purchasing decisions for goods and services free of forced labor. Her academic research work during the fellowship was supervised and supported by Jay Golden, Pontarelli Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Finance and director of the Dynamic Sustainability Lab.

Heather C. Fischer is shown with, from left, Ekachai Pinkaew of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner, and human rights activist Sompong Srakaew of the Labor Rights Promotion Network, on a tour of a migrant Burmese community outside of Bangkok, Thailand. During the tour, Fischer spoke with workers about conditions in seafood processing factories.

鈥淗eather and I are working with Thomson Reuters to develop a technical bulletin to educate multi-national corporations, governments and NGOs as well as consumers on the important issues of forced labor in supply chains,鈥� says Golden. 鈥淎 key component of our work is to provide both public policy and business strategies to assist in identifying and eliminating products that are derived from forced labor around the globe.鈥�

Before joining Thomson Reuters, Fischer worked for the McCain Institute, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House. She was a special advisor for human trafficking and the inaugural human trafficking czar during the Trump administration.

Fischer enrolled in the E.M.I.R. program in August 2021 to enhance her policy-based perspective in support of her work.

鈥淥bviously, my time in government provided valuable public affairs experience, but I was really thrown into the deep end of the pool,鈥� she said in a . 鈥淲hen I saw 黑料不打烊 was offering an executive master鈥檚 program in conjunction with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, I knew this would be a great opportunity to work on the theory around the intersection of national security and human rights.鈥�

Story by Sophia Moore