from the vice chancellor · authored articles about water management, coastal deltas, and...

Contents

With more than fifty percent of the world’s population living in urban settings, and projec-tions that this figure will rise to sixty-six percent by 2050, ensur-ing careful management of these urban areas is a major societal and scientific challenge. We be-lieve that CUNY has a special role to fill in this context as an institu-tion that boasts a highly diverse faculty with the knowledge and skills to address contemporary urban challenges related to the environment, human health, technology, infrastructure, and to the ever-changing modes of social organization. CUNY re-searchers across disciplines are using New York City as a labora-tory and classroom to help NYC become a model for other cities in becoming more resilient and livable.

The historic adoption of the Paris Agreement by the Unit-ed Nations this past December was designed to reduce global carbon emissions and promote sustainable development. CUNY researchers are contributing to

this international conversation. Across the University, we have faculty who are steadily estab-lishing us as a leader in a wide range of research fields that pertain to the urban environ-ment including sustainable en-ergy, clean fuels, water resources management, green building, transportation, public health, geographic information scienc-es, demographics, immigration, housing, economic develop-ment, criminal justice, and polit-ical participation, to name a few.

In this latest Research News-letter, we highlight the work of scientists from the CUNY CrossRoads Initiative who have authored articles about water management, coastal deltas, and human-water interactions in Science (p. 2). In addition, we note that seven CUNY facul-ty received idea grants from the PowerBridgeNY program (p. 10), which is dedicated to helping New York State inventors and scientists turn their high-tech, clean-energy ideas into success-ful businesses.

We aim to support and en-courage faculty researchers who delve into these complex scientific and societal issues; therefore, we are introducing a CUNY Interdisciplinary Research Grant program. This new pro-gram, which is a modification of the long-standing collaborative grant program, will fund propos-als that transcend individual dis-ciplines and integrate a diverse range of skill sets and expertise to address challenges of the 21st Century. These proposals may address issues such as global

warming, smart buildings, trans-portation, water resources man-agement, and urban ecology. Projects may also adress press-ing urban health issues such as obesity, asthma, chronic mental illness, and HIV among many other topics. Information about the program can be found on page 9 of the Newsletter and I eagerly look forward to hearing about the successful research projects selected for awards this spring.

From the Vice Chancellor

Faculty accomplishmentsPages 2-5

Marine biologist discovers “glowing” sea dwellers

Student newsPages 6-7

2015 CSURP scholar profiles

OVCR program newsPages 8-12

New CUNY grant programs

Environmental Sciences Initiative Publishes in Science

Charles J. Vörösmarty, Professor of Civil Engineering at CCNY and Director of the CUNY Environmental CrossRoads Initiative housed at the Advanced Science Research Center, lead teams that produced three pieces published in Science this past summer: two contribute to an ongoing debate series and the other is a major scientific study. Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and one of the world’s most high impact scientific journals.

“Fresh water goes global” appeared in the July 31 issue of Science (Vörösmarty, C.J., A.Y. Hoekstra, S.E. Bunn, D. Conway,

and J. Gupta, 349[6247]: 478-479). This article examines how recent advances in Earth-system simulation, remote sensing, and water policy analysis are revealing how global forces impact water problems that were

once perceived to be primarily local-scale concerns. In the policy forum section of the journal, this article was juxtaposed against another arguing for more local-scale

solutions. In the end, both sets of authors agreed that a multi-scale perspective was the most productive avenue for future research.

In a second insight piece entitled, “Time for in situ renaissance,” (Fekete, B.M., R.D. Robarts, M. Kumagai , H. P. Nachtnebel , E. Odada , and A.V. Zhulidov, 349[6249]: 685-

686), Environmental CrossRoads Initiative affiliate, Balazs Balazs Fekete (CCNY), asserts the need for monitoring the state of the hydrosphere using cost-effective, ground-basedsensor systems.

In “Profiling risk and sustainability in coastal deltas of the world” (Tessler, Z.D., C.J. Vörösmarty, M. Grossberg, I. Gladkova, H. Aizenman, J.P.M. Syvitski, and E. Foufoula-Georgiou, 7 August 2015, 349[6248]: 638-643), Vörösmarty and his colleagues survey 48 deltas around the globe to assess the increasing risks associated with local human activities, land subsidence, regional water management, global sea-level rise, and climate extremes. The study concludes that the short-term solutions commonly devised to ameliorate problems with the world’s deltas are hindering the possibility for long-term sustainable solutions.

Faculty accomplishments

Lehman College Professor Wins Award for Cancer TherapeuticsMoira Sauane,

Assistant Professor of Biological Sci-ences at Lehman, was awarded $960,000 over four years by the National Institute of Health to ex-pand the under-standing of cellular and molecular

mechanisms that will help develop a cancer therapy that kills only tumor cells.

While chemotherapy targets all cells that multiply, IL-24 only targets and destroys cancer cells, which is “fantastic because it is very specific,” Sauane said. She and her team of graduate, undergraduate, and high school students plan to use the NIH award to dissect

the molecule mechanism that regulates cancer cell death in order to understand the way that anticancer genes kill cancer cells. This is imperative because identifying the mechanisms and molecules that mortify inside cells would allow doctors and patients to choose more accurate treatments.

Sauane’s interest in cellular mechanisms was peaked in her undergraduate and graduate career, and was further developed as a postdoctoral research fellow and associate Research Scientist at Columbia Univer-sity. There, she developed original strategies to identify molecular mechanisms that control apoptosis in cancer cells, with focus on anti-cancer genes in clinical trials.

With molecular and cellular tools from Harvard University and more experiments to come, Sauane is hoping that she and her team will be able to “Identify possible pathways that can, in combination with our anti cancer gene, more efficiently kill the cancer cells.”

Cathy Spatz Widom, a Distinguished Professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice won the 2016 Stockholm Prize in Criminology—the most prestigious award in this field. Dr. Widom won this international award for her pioneering research examining the ways parents can affect outcomes among their children relating to adult violence and crime. In a longitudinal study, taking place over two decades, she found that the maltreatment of children does increase adult rates of crime and violence, but that most of the maltreated children in her study did not have criminal records as adults. Her evidence suggests a more complex relationship between parents and maltreated children than the conventional cycle of violence theory.

Cathy Spatz Widom

Spotlight on...

CUNY Research2 Research Newsletter, Winter 2016

3 Research Newsletter, Winter 2016 CUNY Research

This past January Dr. Teresa Bandosz (CCNY) was selected for a 2016-17 Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to conduct research in Spain. This is just the most recent of the many honors and awards that Dr. Bandosz has received since joining the faculty of the City College chemistry department in1996. Dr. Bandosz develops and tests materials that scrub toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide from the air in industrial facilities and pollution control plants, and in this capacity she has worked on a number of projects for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

She has been an investigator on 25 research grants from such agencies as the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and has received more than $6.7M in external funding over the course of her

career. Dr. Bandoz was appointed as an editor of the Journal of Colloids and Interface Science in 2014 and is on the editorial board of several other scientific publications. She has been the author or co-author of more than 300 publications in peer reviewed journals, which have been cited well over 7,000 times, contributed numerous book chapters, and edited the book Activated Carbon Surface in Environmental Remediation published by Elsevier in 2006. She holds four patents, is a consultant for several companies, including DuPont, Synagro and FuelCell Energy, and is responsible for controlling odor removal from the water pollution control plants of New York City.

Dr. Bandosz received a PhD in chemical engineering from the Technical University of Krakow, Poland, in 1989 and a DSc in physical & analytical chemistry from the Marie Curie University in Poland in 1998. Dr. Bandosz, who came to the United States from Poland in 1991, said she has wanted to be a chemist since she

was 12 when a teacher first showed her the amazing invisible world of compounds and molecules. She has been a faculty member In the CCNY Science Division since 1996 and was promoted to full professor in 2005.

The work of the Bandosz Research Group at CCNY, which includes postdocs as well as graduate and undergraduate students, focuses on the application of adsorption to environmental problems. This research includes the development of new adsorbents based on activated carbons, the desulfurization of air, fuel storage solutions, the removal of toxic industrial gases, and the development of carbons for supercapacitors, among other areas.

Faculty Spotlight: Teresa Bandosz

Did You Know?About the CUNY Faculty Awards Expansion Project website cunyawards.org

The CUNY Faculty Awards Expansion Project is a program funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation that aims to increase the number of awards, named fellowships, speaking invitations, and other signs of professional recognition received by CUNY faculty in the sciences.

Receiving scholarly recognition and awards can help to accelerate the careers of research-active faculty and raise the visibility of the natural and social sciences at CUNY. The website (cunyawards.org) highlights how scholarly awards can positively impact faculty careers. The overview page lists the growing number of faculty at CUNY who have been recognized for their research in STEM fields.

On Cunyawards.org faculty can access an awards database containing a comprehensive list of scholarly awards and fellowships in the sciences. Awards are drawn from North American scientific societies, professional associations, and other organizations engaged in the promotion of scientific research. The awards database is designed to facilitate the process of identifying awards relevant to a faculty member’s research area and qualifications.

In September 2015, Dr. M. Chantale Damas (Queensborough Community College) was awarded $750,000 from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Minority University Research and

Education Program (MUREP) for her project entitled CUNY-NASA Solar and Atmospheric Research Program and Education Partnership.Queensborough is one of only four community colleges across the nation to receive this award. In addition to this grant, Dr. Damas is the PI on a National Science Foundation Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award; both projects aim to introduce community college students to research in solar, geospace, and atmospheric physics under the umbrella discipline of space weather.

Dr. Damas has played a leading role in the

Space Weather Group at Queensborough Community College (QCC) since her appointment in 2012. She will be developing educational materials about space weather that will be incorporated into astronomy classes at QCC and made available to other CUNY colleges.

The NASA program offers students in STEM fields paid year-long undergraduate research opportunities, including summer internships at both NASA and partner institutions.

The new space weather curriculum is being developed with several institutional collaborators, including City College, Medgar Evers

College, the New York-NASA Space Grant Community College Partnership Program at York College, the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Community Coordinated Modeling Center.

NASA Education Grant Awarded to Queensborough

Faculty accomplishments

David Gruber, Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Science at Baruch College, has published research on his discovery of the first green fluorescent fish ever recorded in the wild. While photographing biofluorescent coral off Little Caymen Island in the Caribbean, Gruber and colleagues “serendipitously imaged an intensely green fluorescent false moray eel,” a finger length fish that was glowing as brightly as the coral the team had come to photograph. Since the discovery in 2011, Gruber has identified more than 180 species of biofluorescent fish. Biofluoresence is created when fish absorb natural blue light and emit it as a different colour, usually red, green, or orange.

This past November, Gruber and colleagues published a new study in PLOS ONE, sparked by the discovery of the glowing eel. The research is based on “a series of expeditions to the Caribbean and

South Pacific where several species of biofluorescent eels, representing several anguilliform families, were collected and analyzed.” In the paper, “Adaptive Evolution of Eel Fluorescent Proteins from Fatty Acid Binding Proteins Produces Bright Fluorescence in the Marine Environment,”

the authors identify two species that glow – the Kaupichthys hyoproroides and

a a yet-to-be-named second species. Gruber and his

fellow researchers have not determined the specific function of the biofluorsence in these species, but Gruber hypothesizes that it is useful for mating, and is triggered when there is a full moon.

On a more recent trip to the Solomon Islands, this past summer, Gruber discovered biofluorescence in another species, the

Hawksbill Sea Turtle. One of the rarest species on the planet, and critically endangered, the Hawksbill Turtle is the only biofluorescent reptile ever recorded. Unlike the eels, which glow green, the turtle Gruber observed gave off both green and red light. It is possible that the red came from algae on the shell, but the turtle itself definitely emitted a green light.

Gruber says, the discovery “opens up all these new questions to us.” Can the turtles see the biofluoresence? How do the turtles produce the light? Are there other species with this ability? Hawksbill Turtles are so rare as to make study of them difficult, however, Gruber hopes to conduct research on the Green Sea Turtle, which is related to the Hawksbill.

Watch David Gruber’s TED talk entitled, “Glow-in-the-dark sharks and other stunning sea creatures,” filmed in October 2015 in which he discusses all of these discoveries and more.

Marine Biologist Discovers a “Glowing” Eel and Turtle

The reclusive Kaupichphys

eel that Gruber accidentally

photographed off Little Cayman

Island in 2011.


Chantale Damas

Vinod Menon, Professor of Physics at City College, received a major National Science Foundation (NSF) award this past summer. Dr. Menon and his group, the Laboratory for Nano and Micro Photonics, work in the field of photonics research. Photonics has an increasingly significant impact on our lives through a

wide variety of applications in telecommunication, display technology, medicine, remote sensing, entertainment, and alternative energy systems.

A team led by Menon in collaboration with colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dirk Englund, Marc Baldo, and Jing Kong, and with Pouyan Ghaemi Mohammadi, also

from the Physics department at CCNY, was awarded a $2M NSF Emerging Frontiers In Research And Innovation grant. The project is entitled Excitonics and Polaritonics using 2D materials (ExPo2D) and aims to develop the next generation of photonic and electronic systems and sub-systems that exploit the unique advantages of 2D transition metal dichalcogenide semiconductors.

Dr. Menon is also the Principal Investigator on a research project entitled Polaritonics using two-dimensional atomic crystals that was awarded $300K from the division of engineering at NSF. This research program will contribute to our fundamental understanding of light-matter interaction at the nanoscale by investigating light-matter quasiparticles (microcavity polaritons) as a platform for ultrafast low energy switching and signal processing. His research is also supported by grants from the Army Research Office, and the NSF Division of Materials Research.

CCNY Professor Receives $2M Award from NSF

In 2015, an interdisciplinary team of Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC) professors was awarded a three-year, $875,794, National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant. The project is entitled A Simulation-Based Curriculum to Accelerate Math Remediation and Improve Degree Completion for STEM Majors.The diverse team of Principal Investigators—Kathleen Offenholley (Mathematics), Ching-Song Wei (Computer Information Systems) and Francesco Crocco (English)—is unified by a shared interest in games-based learning.

The project tackles the persistent problems with mathematics remediation for STEM majors by creating a game- and-simulation-based algebra and

trigonometry curriculum. The curriculum will be

piloted in a summer immersion program for incoming Geographic Information Science (GIS) majors at BMCC. Scholarship in games-based learning has shown that introducing gaming into the curriculum can transform mathematics education from an intimidating and negative experience into one that is fun and leads to successful student outcomes. In keeping with the strategic aims of the Advanced Technological Education program, the curriculum will feature real-world applications that develop the skills necessary for a career in GIS.

This NSF project grew in part out of a Community College Collaborative Incentive Research Grant (C3IRG ) that Offenholley

and Crocco were awarded in 2011, and Dr. Crocco recently presented a talk at the 2016 Community College Research Grant Faculty Development Workshop entitled, “From Research to Development: How a C3IRG Helped Secure an NSF Grant.”

Gaming Software for Remedial Mathematics

Vinod Menon

Allyson Friedman a new member of Hunter College’s biological sciences faculty, was named a 2015 Postdoctoral Finalist by the Blavatnik Regional Awards. The awards are judged by some of the world’s most prominent scientists and are presented by the Blavatnik Family Foundation at the New York Academy of Sciences.

Established in 2007, the Blavatnik Regional Awards honors outstanding postdoctoral scientists from institutions across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Friedman was recognized for her translational research examining the ion channel mechanisms underlying depression. She has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and received a BA in Biology from Columbia University.

Spotlight on...A 2015 Blavatnik Finalist Recruited to Hunter College


CUNY’s 2016 Summer Undergraduate Research Program (CSURP) invites applications from talented undergraduates interested in research careers in the sciences. The 10-week program offers a hands-on research experience and is open to students interested in five key research areas: environmental science, nanoscience, neuroscience, photonics and structural biology. Successful applicants are matched with faculty mentors at one of CUNY’s eleven senior colleges. All undergraduates completing their sophomore or junior year and community college students with at least 30 credits at the time of application may apply.

CUNY Summer Undergraduate Research Program

Spotlight on...Student Research Success

Professor Raymond Tu (CCNY) recently published papers with two undergraduate students who were part of the CUNY Summer Undergraduate Research Program (CSURP). In the first paper, published in the American Chemical Society journal, Langmuir, student Pierre Desir (CSURP 2013) described his work on microbubbles, which are used in diagnostics and have potential as thereputic agents. In the second paper, Chaim Bernstein (CSURP 2014) described his work on liquid crystalline materials for the journal Soft Matter. In both papers, the students helped the lead author, graduate student Joseph Badami. Congratulations to all involved.

Do you know what Hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) is? It’s a brominated flame retardant that has recently gained the attention of scientists for its increasing presence in the environment. “Basically, it’s used to coat a lot of surfaces: plastics, furniture, textiles, and a lot of building materials—just to make them a bit less flammable,” says Shadman Quazi.

Shadman Quazi, a junior at Hunter College majoring in chemistry, studied the non-biodegradable and acutely toxic compound under the mentorship of City College professor Urs Jan. HBCD is so prevalent in every-day-life that it would be impossible to get rid of in the environment. So, Shadman’s goal was to “understand

a potentially dangerous molecule

and [figure out] how to deal with it.” This past summer, he and Dr. Jan tested the reaction of HBCD and bisulfide in a methanol/water solvent to observe the formation of its products. Tetrabromo-cyclododecene (TBCD), a hypothesized product, was analyzed and synthesized with the reaction solution using gas chromotography methods. Their results suggested that TBCD is a major product of the reaction.

Though Quazi grew up in Queens, NY, he’s from Bangladesh and sites his concern for his country of origing as his reason for researching the hazardous compound. “A lot of people there have to drink really dirty water,” he said. Water that could expose them to “all sorts of really bad things” and put them at risk for serious health issues and even death.

Quazi, a Ph.D. bound student, plans to study nanoscience. “The main thing I like about science is that it can help people in so many different ways.”

RinZhi Larocque planned to apply to dental school after graduating from the College of Staten Island, but she’s now considering getting a Ph.D. in computer science. The sudden career change was sparked by her participation in the CSURP. Larocque and her advisor Bruce Johnson, senior research director of computational science at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, spent a portion of their summer creating a program to predict protein NMR chemical shifts. “[My project] is like a combination of computer science, chemistry, and biology. I just find this really fascinating,” she said.

The program that Larocque and Johnson use is called NMRViewJ,

Shadman Quazi, Hunter College RinZhi Larocque, CSI

Student accomplishments



Spotlight on...15th Annual BiomedicalResearchConference for Minority Students

It was a very good year for CUNY undergraduates at the 15th Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS). Twenty-two CUNY students presented and received awards for their research. The students, who represented both senior and community colleges, presented in nine different concentrations. Eight students represented the CCNY Division of Science, and six came from Queensborough Community College and KIngsborough Community College.

The ABRCMS is one of the largest and best known professional conferences for underrepresented minority students, military veterans, and persons with disabilities who are pursuing advanced training in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Students come from over 350 U.S. colleges and universities, and it attracts approximately 4,050 individuals.

which uses Weka data mining to identify suitable attributes from 108 attribute lists, to generate predictive models for chemical shifts. “We really don’t know which one is important to calculate the torsion angles, so we just... listed all of the possible attributes and came up with a huge list,” she said.

The duo implemented structure base method in their predictor that calculated chemical shifts using protein torsion angles as input. “All attributes are torsion angles, so with this Weka data mining it will tell us which one of the 108 attributes are important,” said Larocque.

basically bulk materials brought down to their monolayer level. It’s a form of nanoscience that is a bit more advanced than what she’s studied in the past, but she was up for the challenge. “It’s really difficult to find instruments that are sensitive enough to differentiate between the monolayer and whatever the monolayer would be on, so our research involved a lot of trial and error,” she said. Using ellipsometry, Hecht

and her advisors Drs. Vinod Menon and Jared Day from the Laboratory for Nano

and Microphotonics at the Advanced Science Resaerch Center aimed to measure the optical constants of three 2D materials: MoS2, WS2, and WSe2. They varied the probe size of the ellipsometer to isolate the signal emitted from each layer. They found that the background signals from the substrates continued to overpower the signals from the 2D materials, which made the signals from the

thin films difficult to characterize. Eventually, after more trial and error, they examined a model that used the surface conductivity of the 2D materials to calculate the basic optical properties of 2D atomic crystals, including their dielectric constants. Research has shown that when 2D materials are at the monolayer they exhibit different properties than they do at the bulk layer. These properties are more receptive to manipulation and could have applications in “electronics and quantum computing, and a lot of really exciting futuristic technology plans,” Hecht said. While she isn’t sure what she wants to do in the future, she knows that it will involve science and possibly some teaching. “I know how exciting it was for me to be introduced to the sciences for the first time and to really feel like that whole world was opened up to me, and I’d really love to be able to share that feeling with other people,” she said.

Rachel Hecht, a sophomore at Baruch College, spent her summer studying the optical properties of 2D materials, which are

Rachel Hecht, Hunter College

Eleven CUNY undergraduate and graduate students presented research posters at the American Astronomical Society’s 227th annual conference held in Kissimmee, Florida this past January

Roberto Moncada, a sophomore at City College in the NSF AstroCom NYC program, presented his summer project with fellow interns Rafael Colon and Juan Guerra, both students at Lehman College with their advisor Luis Anchordoqui (Lehman). They tested whether powerful objects known as quasar remnants could accelerate the most energetic cosmic rays in the universe using a simple inductor model. This would show that relatively nearby supermassive black holes could in fact be responsible for the most energetic particles we see

from Earth.Joe Filippazzo, a graduate

student at CSI and the Graduate Center, presented his thesis research along with his advisor Emily Rice (CSI). His research focusses on an enormous uniform characterization of the observed properties of two hundred brown dwarfs (the lowest mass star-like objects in the Sun’s neighborhood), with an emphasis on differences in the age of the objects. Brown dwarfs have such low mass that they closely resemble gas giant planets, very similar to the bevy of exoplanets now being discovered. So these brown dwarfs can lend insight into the properties and evolution of these alien planetary atmospheres.

Two CUNY students, Sara Camnasio (Macaulay/Hunter College)

Students Present at the Annual AAS Conference

and Paige Godfrey (GC/CSI), also received travel funding from a new AAS program called Funds for Astronomical Meetings: Outreach to Underrepresented Scientists.

OVCR program news

This summer, the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) hosted a computer science immersion program run by the non-profit organizations Girls Who Code. The seven-week initiative was funded by a grant provided by the AOL Charitable Foundation which sponsored the 20 high school participants. AOL provided additional support by donating laptops for the students and teachers.

The ASRC worked with the AOL Charitable Foundation to support this exciting initiative through which attendees learned mobile app development, robotics, and web design using Scratch and other technologies, such as Python, IDLE, Calico, Myro and JavaScript. In addition to the intensive hands-on curriculum, the participants heard from a variety of industry leaders to enbale them to get a broad view of the potential professions available in the field. Speakers included Bruce Johnson, Senior Research Director for

Computational Science in the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center’s Structural Biology Initiative and Drew Lesicko, AOL Head of Mobile Product, among others.

Attendees also went on field trips to the offices of AOL, LinkedIn, and Microsoft and received mentorship from industry leaders. The program culminated on August 20 with a graduation ceremony in which the participants presented their final projects to families and Girls Who Code supporters.

The participants gave demos to show off their projects during the final graduation reception. The pojects ranged from a website designed to help high school students make personalized college application timelines, to an interactive video game. AOL Chief Technology Officer Bill Pence served as a keynote speaker for the ceremony, along with Rein Ulijn, Director of the ASRC’s Nanoscience Initiative.

Girls Who Code Comes to CUNY

Funded by the New York City Mayor’s Office, the CUNY Research Scholars Program (CRSP) was launched during the fall semester of 2014. The program provides stipends for associate degree students to engage in authentic research experiences in STEM disciplines. Each of the seven CUNY community colleges and three comprehensive schools selected a total of 150

students to receive 400 hours of mentoring from a faculty member on a laboratory-based project. CRSP is the largest organized mentored research program for associate degree students in the country and has grown to 180 students during the 2015-2016 academic year.

On July 22nd, CRSP celebrated the completion of its first full year with a day-long symposium

at John Jay College. Executive Vice Chancellor Vita Rabinowitz and Vice Chancellor for Research Gillian Small offered opening remarks. Dr. Charles Vörösmarty, Director of Environmental Science at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center gave the keynote address entitled, “Ah-Ha Moments from the World of Global Water Science.”

The symposium consisted of three sessions, during which one student from each participating campus gave an oral presentation. Students also presented posters during each session. Their campuses provided programming that included training in scientific poster preparation and public speaking. Eighty-six faculty mentors attended the conference to support their students.

2015 CUNY Research Scholars program Symposium

Spotlight on...Fred Naider


A symposium in honor

of Fred Naider was held

at the College of Staten

Island’s Center for the

Arts on June 18, 2015.

The symposium, entitled

“Celebrate the Word

of Peptide Chemistry

and Biology and Dr.

Naider’s Contributions

to CUNY and CSI,” was

a day-long event that

consisted of tributes

from former students and

colleagues (both local

and international). They

honored Dr. Naider’s

work by reading papers

and presenting on his

scholarship in peptide

chemistry and biology.

Dr. Naider’s

experiments have

contributed both valuable

insight into the transport

of peptides through cell

membranes, and practical

guidance on the design

of antifungal drugs for

human medicine.

Dr. Naider currently

serves as the College of

Staten Island’s Provost

and Senior Vice President

for Academic Affairs.

CUNY Research9 Research Newsletter, Fall 2015

Did You Know?About CUNY Academic Works academicworks.cuny.edu

CUNY Academic Works is a service of the CUNY Libraries dedicated to collecting and providing access to the research, scholarship and creative work of the entire CUNY community.

CUNY Academic Works is a searchable database and provides for the preservation and dissemination of a full range of scholarship including:

• faculty research such as articles, conferencepresentations, and educational materials

• student work such as theses, dissertations, andprize papers

• scholarly journals published by or associated with the University

• digitized archival documents from CUNY’s libraries and special collections

Interdisciplinary Research Grant Program

Societies across the globe are confronting numerous challenges related to the environment, human health,

technology, infrastructure, and the ever-changing modes of social organization. Addressing these complex scientific and societal challenges requires problem-solving approaches that transcend individual disciplines and integrate a diverse range of skill sets and expertise.

The University is introducing a new Interdisciplinary Research Grant program that seeks to support and encourage faculty researchers who will tackle global challenges or problems that affect the needs of urban populations. Applications that address specific challenges in ways that can be approached by combining expertise across disciplines (such as the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities) are encouraged. The goal of this program is to provide seed funding for projects that will become eligible and competitive for external funding. The program replaces the long-running Collaborative Incentive Research Grant. More information can be found here: http://bit.ly/1ONx8Xq

Community College Research Grant ProgramThe Community College Research Grant program will support faculty research at CUNY

community colleges through two distinct tracks.

Track 1: Collaborative Pedagogical Research GrantPedagogical research is central to improving both the educational experience and graduation rates of our community colleges. By better understanding the pedagogy used to teach community college students we will become better providers of higher education. The program supports collaborative pedagogical research efforts of CUNY Community College faculty and seeks to leverage faculty expertise to promote student success.

Track 2: Mentored Undergraduate Research GrantThis program is designed to increase the number of associate degree students who are engaged in faculty mentored research projects. Research by undergraduates is a high impact educational practice, and the program aims to identify and support faculty who can provide outstanding mentored research experiences for students. The Mentored Undergraduate Research Grant program is open to all faculty across disciplines as long as the project involves faculty mentoring of an undergraduate student. More information about both tracks of the program can be found here: bit.ly/1NUejvf

New CUNY Grant Programs

bit.ly/1NUejvf

The New York City Regional Innovation Node (NYCRIN), an entity led by CUNY in partnership with NYU & Columbia and a network of 25+ research universities, is in the midst of completing its fourth, successful 7-week regional I-Corps cohort. Based on the National Science Foundation model, this entrepreneurship “bootcamp” provides teams of inventors with a hands-on learning experience that trains them how to successfully transfer knowledge developed in a lab into marketable products and processes that benefit society. Each team learns from engaging with potential customers, partners, and competitors, and from encountering the chaos and uncertainty that stems from commercializing innovations and creating ventures.

NYCRIN received dozens of applications from teams across the Northeast region to participate in this fall 2015 cohort. After multiple interviews, twelve teams were ultimately chosen to participate in the cohort. Approximately half of the teams already have existing companies, while the other half consists of teams made up of academic researchers with no business experience.

Over these past few weeks, teams were taught Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad methodology and every aspect of the Business Model Canvas including: channel distributions, the role of partners, revenue streams, value propositions, and much more. Along with the help of the core teaching team, numerous

adjuncts, multiple observers and mentors, these twelve teams were assisted with: prototype development, business plan development, and project management, among other areas.

To date, all of the the NYCRIN I-Corps cohorts have been tremendously successful. The members of the twelve teams from this past cohort alone, conducted nearly 550 customer interviews. Several participants have described their experiences as “insanely valuable educationally, professionally, and personally…life changing even.” NYCRIN is proud of the work that these teams produce and is happy to provide ongoing support for all of the past and future teams that embark on the innovation and entrepreneurship journey.

NYCRIN Hosts Its Fourth Successful Regional Cohort

PowerBridgeNY – a collaboration between the City University of New York, Columbia University, Cornell University’s NYC Tech, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, Stony Brook University, and Brookhaven National Laboratory – received funding from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to initiate a new Idea Grant program this past summer. Applicants had to have an exciting clean technology that works in the laboratory and is at the proof-of-concept stage. Proposals could include plans to build a functional prototype or to test an existing prototype in a real-world environment.

PowerBridgeNY received over 34 Idea Grant submissions and the review process included a 15-minute interview for applicants to pitch their technology. The Idea Grant recipients received $1,000 in seed funds to jumpstart their efforts to commercialize their clean technology inventions.The Idea Grant teams were also required to submit a pre-proposal application to the main PowerBridgeNY training program, which began Cycle 3 in October 2015. PowerBridgeNY provides support to faculty-led teams to help them commercialize promising clean energy technologies, either via the formation of a start-up or by licensing the technology to an existing company. Program support includes funding of up to $150K for research validation and prototype development, active mentoring from industry veterans and venture investors, project management assistance, competitive landscaping, and business plan development.

The 2015 PowerbridgeNY Idea Grant winners from CUNY who successfully submitted their pre-proposals are the following:

• Beth Kujan - Low-Cost Irrigation System for On-Demand Solar Panel Cleaning

• Bill Blanford – Improved Energy from Waste Derived From Landfill Gas with Sugar Modified-Zeolites

• Loana Voiculescu - Novel lab on chip device for automotive and petroleum applications

• Jizhong Zhou - Sky-sweeper: a curtain wall cleaning robot to improve energy efficiency of skyscrapers

• Larry Pratt - Kerosene and Diesel Fuel from Brown Grease

• Marco Castaldi - Ash from Waste Combustion Facilities as an Electrode in Microbial Fuel Cells

• Vinod Menon - Optically induced hyperpolarization chip for low cost magnetic resonance sensing

Seven CUNY Faculty Win Inagural Clean Tech Idea

Institutional

Entrepreneurship at CUNY


The Collaborative Incentive Research Grants Program (CIRG) funds faculty research projects in their preliminary stages. The program encourages an interdisciplinary approach with a focus on participation from two or more CUNY campuses. The primary goal is to seed research that will become the basis of new external grant proposals. The program is administered by a Faculty Evaluation Committee, comprised of senior faculty from the colleges, and chaired by the Associate University Dean for Research.

Collaborative Incentive Research Grant Program


2015 Collaborative Incentive Research Grant (CIRG) Winners, Round 22

Faculty Awarded Title of Proposal

John Waldman, Queens CollegeElizabeth Alter, York College

Developing Environmental DNA Techniques for Biodiversity Monitoring in an Urban River

Jeffrey Marsh, Queens CollegeKennet Flores, Brooklyn College

Thermal and structural evolution of a long-lived accretionary orogen: A detailed thermo-chronological investigation of the eastern Cordillera, Ecuador

Nir Krakauer, City College of New York Chuixiang Yi, Qu1eens College

New concepts for observing and understanding changing patterns of water limitation on ecosystem productivity

Sarah Bonner, Hunter College Susan Imberman, College of Staten Island

Establishing measurement dimensions for assessing learning during collaborative problem-solving in computer science at the secondary school level

Candace Brakewood, City College of New YorkJonathan Peters, College of Staten Island

The Impact of Data on Travel and Transportation Systems: Shared Mobility Big Data Center

Elizabeth Riina, Queens CollegeMegan Dunn Davison, Queens College

Fragile Families: Risks and Resources for Families and Children with Language Impairment

Laurie Rubel, Brooklyn CollegeAnders Stachelek, Hostos Community College

Beyond Word Problems: Real World Contexts for Community College Mathematics

Sharon Loverde, College of Staten Island George John, City College of New YorkCharles Maldarelli, City College of New York

Molecular Modeling and Design of Chemical Herders for Oil Spill Remediation

Alexey Ovchinnikov, Queens CollegeAlice Medvedev, City College of New York

Solving Systems of Functional Equations

Fabiola Salek, York CollegeEckhard Kuhn-Osius, Hunter College Alicia Ramos, Hunter College

Developing Frameworks for Cultural Knowledge in Foreign Language Study

Pablo Peixoto, Baruch CollegeYi Sun, City College of New York

Mitochondrial interactions with the pre-synaptic architecture of ALS motor neurons

Matthew O’Dowd, Lehman CollegeBarry McKernan, Borough of Manhattan Community CollegeSaavik Ford, Borough of Manhattan Community College

Finding Intermediate Mass Black Holes in Quasar Disks with Gravitational Microlensing

The Community College Collaborative Incentive Research Grants (C3IRG) Program supports the collaborative research efforts of faculty at CUNY Community Colleges. The goal of the C3IRG Program is to promote research productivity and to enhance, through multi-campus or multi-disciplinary collaborations, the prestige and prominence of the University. The review committee is comprised of CUNY college senior faculty and is chaired by the Associate University Dean for Research.

Community College Collaborative Research Grant

Upcoming Event Research in the Classroom Workshop

March 11, 2016John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Student Dining Hall, 524 W. 59th Street(breakfast and lunch included)


2015 Community College Collaborative Incentive Research Grant (C3IRG) Winners

Faculty Awarded Project

Stuart Parker, Kingsborough Community College

Amy Traver, Queensborough Community College

Jonathan Cornick, Queensborough Community College

What is the impact of an Introduction to Sociology course infused

with quantitative reasoning modules on students’ quantitative

literacy, and how do these impacts correlate with students’ math

placement and course history?

Tracy Steffy, Kingsborough Community College

Maria Bartolomeo-Maida, Kingsborough Community College

Reading and Writing to Learn: Do Required Writing Assignments

Promote Reading Compliance and Student Engagement in Social

Science Classes?

Derek Bruzewicz, Queensborough Community Collegew

Tirandai Hemraj-Benny, Queensborough Community College

Karan Mohan Puri, Queensborough Community College

An Attachment in Mathematics and Metacognition to Motivate

Students of General Chemistry

Cheryl Bluestone, Queensborough Community College

Georgina Colalillo, Queensborough Community College

Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets: An intervention to promote Nursing

Student Success

Zvi Ostrin, Hostos Community College

Vyacheslav Dushenkov, Hostos Community College

Assessing the Impact of Mobile Devices on Student Learning in the

Anatomy Laboratory

Abel Navarro, Borough Manhattan Community College

Kibrewossen Tesfagiorgis, Borough Manhattan Community College

Chris McCarthy, Borough Manhattan Community College

Solid wastes as en eco-friendly alternative for the decontamination

of wastewaters

from the vice chancellor · authored articles about water management, coastal deltas, and...

Documents