News

For mycologists, the recent uptick in fungi interest has come as a welcome surprise. “Mycologists are used to people ignoring fungi for the most part,” Patricia Kaishian, visiting assistant professor of biology, said to NPR’s Science Friday. With the popularity of HBO’s The Last of Us, an adaptation of the video game of the same name, fungus finds itself in the spotlight. The plot of The Last of Us involves an outbreak of fungi-infected zombies, using fungal science related to mycelium and cordyceps to fuel its postapocalyptic story. While the show takes liberties with combining different species of fungi into one, it’s the show’s opening credits that most bothers Kaishian’s “mycology lens,” which features a slime mold, “something that used to be in kingdom fungi, but it’s now recognized as being an amoeba.” For Kaishian, though, fungi isn’t to be feared. With so much still unknown about fungi, she feels hopeful seeing students interested in mycology at Bard: “And I see that interest growing. So I’m hopeful that more mycology programs are going to start to pop up, and there will be more chances to study them and more funding available.”
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/last-of-us-fungi/

Bard College’s Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing is pleased to announce the appointment of Theresa Law as Assistant Professor of Computer Science.  Her tenure-track appointment will begin in the 2023–24 academic year.
 
“Bard has been so welcoming. I’m excited to work at an institution that respects and celebrates interdisciplinary collaboration,” says Law. “I can’t wait to dig into new ideas with the creative minds at Bard—both students and faculty.” 
 
Theresa Law (she/hers) graduated with a BA in Cognitive Science from Vassar College in 2018, and is set to graduate with her PhD in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from Tufts University in summer 2023. Her research is in human-robot interaction. At the highest level, she explores the question “how can we investigate concepts such as mind, agency, intelligence, and consciousness through building and interacting with artificial agents?”  Her work includes projects about how we conceptualize and evaluate robots, perceive and react to robot behavior, and considerations of the role of robots in our society. She currently lives in Boston with her fiancé and their two cats.

Valerie Barr, Bard College’s Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, has been elected as a 2022 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Barr, who teaches in the Computer Science Program, is “being honored for distinguished contributions to computer science education, and to increasing the diversity in the computing fields,” writes the AAAS. 
 
“I am honored that the computer science section of AAAS is recognizing diversity work in computing,” said Barr. “I look forward to continuing this work broadly in the context of the NSF-funded Alliance for Identity-Inclusive Computing Education, led by Drs. Nicki Washington and Shaundra Daily at Duke University, and locally as we develop curricula that will expose students to computing across all disciplines encompassed by the Bard Network.”
 
“Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science Valerie Barr has been recognized as an outstanding scientist, educator, and groundbreaking leader in higher education. Professor Barr’s dedication to increasing diversity in computer science has wide-reaching implications for transformative curriculum and pedagogy.  Her work foregrounds the critical importance of computation as she challenges liberal arts institutions to expand our understanding of the interdependence of STEM and humanities. We are honored to welcome her distinctive expertise and vision as she steps into faculty leadership at Bard,” said Dean of the College and Professor of English Deirdre d’Albertis.
 
Barr is the second Bard faculty member to be honored with this AAAS distinction. David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing Felicia Keesing, who teaches in the Biology Program, was elected as a 2021 fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
 
Valerie Barr, Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, is a groundbreaking computer scientist who has been a national leader in efforts to broaden participation in computing and connect the field to a wide array of liberal arts disciplines. She comes to Bard from Mount Holyoke College, where she was chair of the Computer Science department, and is eager to explore what students, and not just computer science students, “need to know about computing in order to actively critique and challenge the current pace and impact of technological change.”

In addition to teaching, Barr has been involved with curriculum development and computing education. Her research projects have been funded repeatedly over the past two decades by the National Science Foundation. Her research interests also include reanalyzing degree attainment data to better identify and understand long-standing trends in the areas of gender, race, and ethnicity, and in software testing, particularly as applied to artificial intelligence and language processing systems. In addition to Mount Holyoke, she has taught at Union College, Hofstra University, Pratt Institute, and Rutgers University. She received her BA from Mount Holyoke College; MS from New York University; and PhD from Rutgers University. She has been on Bard faculty since 2022.
 
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals, has elected more than 500 scientists, engineers and innovators from around the world and across all disciplines to the 2022 class of AAAS Fellows, one of the most distinguished honors within the scientific community. The newly elected Fellows are being recognized for their scientific and socially notable achievements spanning their careers. View the 2022 class of AAAS Fellows here.
 
“AAAS is proud to elevate these standout individuals and recognize the many ways in which they’ve advanced scientific excellence, tackled complex societal challenges and pushed boundaries that will reap benefits for years to come,” said Sudip S. Parikh, Ph.D., AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals. 
 
This year’s class has moved their fields forward, paving the way for scientific advances that benefit society. They bring diverse and novelty thinking, innovative approaches and passion that will help solve the world’s most complex problems. The new class hails from academic institutions, laboratories and observatories, hospitals and medical centers, museums, global corporations, nonprofit organizations, institutes and government agencies (including from the U.S. presidential administration).
 
The new Fellows will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate their election and will be celebrated in Washington, D.C., in summer 2023. They will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science in February 2023.

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Shuo Zhang and Bard mathematics and dance major Rose Xu ’23 were invited by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to present their most recent findings on new x-ray flares from the now inactive supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Their talk, “Detection of Seven High-Energy X-ray Flares from the Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole,” was presented at the 241st AAS press conference on Thursday, January 12 from 5:15pm to 6:15pm ET, in person in Seattle and virtually via Zoom and YouTube livestream. For more information about the 241st AAS press conference, click here.

The center of the Milky Way galaxy harbors the nearest supermassive black hole Sgr A* to Earth, with forty million times the mass of the Sun. Although being in an inactive status nowadays, Sgr A* demonstrates mysterious flares almost every single day, which could come from magnetic phenomena. We are sitting in the front row of these cosmic fireworks. Using 2 Ms data from NASA’s NuSTAR X-ray telescope, our math senior Rose Xu, working with Bard physics professor Shuo Zhang, has discovered seven new hard X-ray flares that took place between 2016 and 2022. This new result doubled the current database of bright Sgr A* X-ray flares, and can help to answer long-standing questions in flare physics, such as: What are the physical mechanisms behind Sgr A* flare? Do bright flares and faint flares share the same origin? 

Watch the Presentation at the American Astronomical Society Press Conference

“Astronomers are in the exhilarating process of revealing the physical conditions at the vicinity of our own supermassive black hole, which I couldn’t imagine myself being involved in before meeting professor Shuo Zhang. Solving practical problems from a liberal arts perspective is a skill that I am grateful to gain here at Bard College,” said Xu.
 

As part of one of 26 women-led projects in 17 countries, Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude will participate in a project to regenerate natural fabric dyeing processes with traditional Moroccan weavers as part of a Daughters for Earth grant awarded to Around the World in 80 Fabrics. “These grants, totaling over $600,000, are a part of our mission to deliver critical resources into the hands of the women on the frontlines of climate action,” says Daughters for Earth of this year’s grant winners. Professor Jude will lead microbial dye foraging alongside our natural plant dye research as part of a team that “will bring together traditional weavers, researchers, designers, textile experts, scientists, anthropologists, and businesswomen to create sustainable dyeing processes that Ain Leuh Women's Cooperative can use.” The cooperative, which was founded by local women in the Atlas Mountain region of Morocco, has used traditional weaving techniques to support their families for decades. Today, because of the pressures of demand from global trade, synthetic dyes are used more frequently, produced with chemicals that impact weaver health and the environment. The collaboration between the Ain Leuh Cooperative, Artisan Project, Around the World in 80 Fabrics, the Microbe Institute, and Bard College will help to create “an open-source natural dye, plant, and microbial resource book with a map and dye recipes,” with the goal of improving the health of Ain Leuh weavers and the health of the local ecosystem.
 
https://daughtersforearth.org/2022-grant-announcement/?fbclid=IwAR1pqtvKspxiG2olip9EXlXSPPJ0xbiLBb8ENCUFArD8MxC164hgSJXP8TU

Associate Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies M. Elias Dueker, Associate Professor of Biology Gabriel G. Perron, and Bard biology graduates Daniella Azulai ’17 and Mary Reid ’21 have copublished a new study, “Bacteria communities and water quality parameters in riverine water and sediments near wastewater discharges,” in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Data. ​​Over five months, they monitored microbial contaminants relating to the treated water outflow of the wastewater treatment plant operated by Bard, which releases into the Saw Kill, a tributary of the Hudson River and also the source of fresh water for the campus. This is the first of many datasets and research papers that they hope to publish on Bard’s water system. Preliminary data analyses provide insight into the impacts of watershed-wide usage of the Saw Kill as both drinking water source and treated sewage receiver. Future use of this dataset will include a focus on endotoxins and antibiotic resistant bacterial genes, water contaminants only now gaining broader attention in water quality and microbiological sciences.

All of the sampling was conducted as a joint Bard Summer Research Institute project between Dueker’s lab and Perron's lab in summer 2015. Lab members included: Marco Spodek ’17, Beckett Lansbury ’16, Yuejiao Wan ’17, Pola Kuhn ’17, Haley Goss-Holmes ’17. Coauthors Azulai and Reid worked on this project both as undergraduate and post-baccalaureate students.

“This project demonstrates the power of community asking scientific questions, and academia–students, faculty, and staff–being able to help answer those questions through careful observational and applied research,” said Dueker. “Our hope is that this database serves as a tool for researchers and communities around the world trying to respond to stewardship challenges in a science-based and community-accessible way.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01686-8

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Clara Sousa-Silva has published a new study, “The impending opacity challenge in exoplanet atmospheric characterization,” in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy. The paper is led by graduate student Prajwal Niraula (MIT), and coauthored by Julien de Wit (MIT), Iouli E Gordon (Harvard), Robert Hargreaves (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian), Clara Sousa-Silva (Bard), and Roman Kochanov (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian). Their research suggests that the current tools astronomers use to analyze data received from space telescopes may not be precise enough to accurately decode the unprecedented clarity of light-signals captured through next-generation observatories, including the extremely powerful James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched by NASA in December 2021. 

“We find ourselves in the extraordinary situation where the incredible engineering of JWST has resulted in the data collected from distant planets outcompeting our ability to interpret what we are seeing,” says Sousa-Silva. 

Astronomers rely on ‘opacity models,’ which interpret how matter interacts with light, to describe and predict the physical properties of astronomical objects. This new study used existing opacity models to analyze spectral data collected from JWST and to look at the characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres—predicting atmospheric temperature, pressure, and elemental composition. The researchers warned that for each possible atmospheric signal from an exoplanet, multiple interpretations could be made with current models and fundamental molecular inputs. The imprecision from these models means that data from an alien atmosphere could be misinterpreted. The implications of such misinterpretations include our understanding of whether an exoplanet could support life or not.

“There is a scientifically significant difference between a compound like water being present at 5 percent versus 25 percent, which current models cannot differentiate,” says study coauthor Julien de Wit.

The authors show how the limits of our knowledge on light–matter interactions (i.e. opacity models) will affect our exploration of exoplanetary atmospheres. “Accounting for these limits will prevent biased claims,” they write. “Guided improvements in opacity models, their standardization and dissemination will ensure maximum return on investment from the next-generation observatories, including the James Webb Space Telescope.” Their findings call for an investment in improved laboratory and theoretical data on atmospheric molecules, and development of more precise opacity models.
https://www.space.com/astronomy-models-getting-webb-measurements-wrong

Nearly everyone can identify a pond, but what, exactly, distinguishes it from a lake or a wetland? Robyn L. Smyth, Bard Center for Environmental Policy faculty member and term associate professor of environmental and urban studies, is coauthor of a new study featured on ScienceDaily that offers the first data-driven, functional definition of a pond and evidence of ponds’ distinct ecological function, which could have broad implications for science and policy.

Understudied and largely left out of federal and state monitoring and protection programs, ponds are often poorly distinguished from lakes or wetlands. This neglect has implications for the accuracy of climate modeling, as ponds are high emitters of greenhouse gases, and their contribution to the global carbon budget is uncertain. In their study, coauthors wanted to evaluate how scientists and policymakers define ponds and examine whether ponds are functionally distinct from lakes and wetlands. Their findings conclude: Ponds are small and shallow waterbodies, with a maximum surface area of five hectares, a maximum depth of 5 meters and less than 30% emergent vegetation.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/07/220705194136.htm

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Shuo Zhang has received a $91,933 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in support of her investigation, “Joint NuSTAR and EHT Probe of SgrA*: Flares, Black Hole Shadows, a New Hard X-Ray Source.” The NASA grant supports Zhang’s investigation, which includes the engagement of a postdoctoral researcher, three undergraduate research assistants, equipment, and travel. As the joint observation involves the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, coinvestigators on this project come from around the globe including Canada, the Netherlands, and Japan. 

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a space telescope that detects high-energy X-ray light and studies some of the most energetic objects and processes in the universe. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is an international collaboration capturing images of black holes using a virtual Earth-sized telescope. Zhang’s investigation proposes an observation of Sgr A*, the now inactive supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. This research aims to capture bright X-ray flares from Sgr A* and feed this result to the EHT analysis. A secondary goal is to study a mysterious X-ray source located at merely three light years from Sgr A*.

“Among all the fascinating science one can pursue via a joint X-ray and EHT observations of our own supermassive black hole, the physics behind mysterious daily Sgr A* flares is the jewel in the crown that astronomers have been pursuing. I am proud of our own students, physics major Nathalie Jones ’21, dance and mathematics major Rose Xu ’23, and physics major Grace Sanger-Johnson ’23, who have contributed to this exciting project.” says Zhang.

This NASA grant supports the training and involvement of three Bard undergraduate research assistants who will work on the preparation and analysis of the new data during the summer of 2023. Under Zhang’s supervision, the Bard students will study NuSTAR data analysis pipeline, X-ray spectral and image analysis softwares, and will contribute to data preparation.

Since 2019, Zhang has received five grants from NASA for her astrophysics research, totaling more than $331,000 in NASA funding to date.

Dr. Felicia Keesing, Bard College’s David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been selected as the winner of the 2022 International Cosmos Prize by the Expo ’90 Foundation. Dr. Keesing will receive a certificate of merit, a medallion, and a monetary prize of 40 million yen (approximately $290,000 USD) at the award ceremony, which will be held in Osaka, Japan, on November 9. Dr. Keesing will also give a commemorative lecture, participate in a symposium held in her honor, and have an audience with the Emperor and Empress of Japan. 

The International Cosmos Prize Committee states: “Dr. Felicia Keesing clarified the relationship between biodiversity and the risk of zoonotic pathogen transmission by conducting practical research and studies. She has demonstrated that while ecosystems with high biodiversity can be a breeding ground of various pathogens, the overall infection risk can be reduced in these ecosystems due to the presence of a dilution effect, thereby proving that biodiversity is of critical value to human society. These research achievements are instrumental in exploring the interrelationships among all life forms and provide sensible suggestions for seeking the ideal state of ‘Harmonious Coexistence between Nature and Humankind’ in the post-COVID-19 era.” Read the Committee’s Reasons for Awarding the Prize to Dr. Keesing here.

“I am honored to receive the International Cosmos Prize for 2022. The purpose of this prize and the activities of the Expo ’90 Foundation focus on the harmonious coexistence of humanity and the natural world. I can imagine no more important topic,” said Dr. Keesing. “Working closely with undergraduate students has been an ongoing source of inspiration. Perhaps most importantly, as I watch my students, and my children, grapple with the realities of the world they are inheriting, I am acutely aware of the stakes of the choices we are making.” Read Dr. Keesing’s full comments on winning the award here.

The annual Cosmos Prize is awarded in recognition of a body of work that has significantly advanced our understanding of the relationships among living organisms and the interdependence of life and the global environment. The decision to award the prize to Dr. Keesing was reached after the committee evaluated 174 nominations from 28 countries.

Previous recipients include Jared Diamond (1998), David Attenborough (2000), E.O. Wilson (2012), and Jane Goodall (2017).
https://www.expo-cosmos.or.jp/english/cosmos/

Bard College has received a $210,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of Assistant Professor of Physics Antonios Kontos’s proposal “Research in Light Scattering Metrology for Gravitational Wave Optics.” The three-year NSF grant supports his continuing research, summer research assistants, and equipment. All research projects are to be carried out with the engagement of Bard undergraduate and local area high school students, who will be hired as summer research assistants, and provide opportunities to gain invaluable experience in pursuing careers in technology and academia.

“This NSF grant will ensure that Bard continues to contribute to the fascinating new field of gravitational wave astronomy and that our students will continue to engage in cutting edge research in optics,” says Kontos.

The NSF award supports Kontos’s research in gravitational wave (GW) detector instrumentation, one of the most important leaps in scientific progress in recent years. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Antenna (LIGO) project has given scientists the ability to observe the universe in a completely new way. Unlike conventional telescopes which use the light emitted by stars and galaxies to learn their properties and their place in the universe, GW detectors use gravitational waves which are similarly emitted by many astrophysical objects.

Gravitational-waves are ripples in spacetime that travel to Earth, and cause the detectors to essentially change in size. To do that, the LIGO detectors require state-of-the-art mirrors, which are used to sense the stretching of space. Improvements in mirror design will allow observers to look further into space, and detect more of these GW signals. 

Kontos’s proposed project will aid in pushing the mirror technology, by utilizing light scattering as a tool to study mirror coatings. Specifically, an important aspect of mirror quality is the presence of defects which scatter light and inhibit the operation of the LIGO detectors. Defects may sometimes develop on the mirror surface with time, but the process is not always understood. This research project is designed to study defects on mirrors so that we can ultimately improve LIGO’s sensitivity and improve our understanding of space, time, matter, energy, and their interactions. 

For The Conversation, Patricia Kaishian, visiting assistant professor of biology, and two colleagues write: “As mycologists whose biodiversity work includes studying fungi that interact with millipedes, plants, mosquitoes and true bugs, we have devoted our careers to understanding the critical roles fungi play. These relationships can be beneficial, harmful or neutral for the fungus’s partner organism. But it’s not an overstatement to say that without fungi breaking down dead matter and recycling its nutrients, life on Earth would be unrecognizable.”

Climate change threatens the estimated 2 to 4 million species of fungi, of which the majority still have not been scientifically classified and yet are known to play a vital role in ecosystems. “Fungi are forming important networks and partnerships all around us in the environment, moving resources and information in all directions between soil, water and other living things. To us, they exemplify the power of connection and cooperation – valuable traits in this precarious phase of life on Earth.”
https://theconversation.com/beyond-flora-and-fauna-why-its-time-to-include-fungi-in-global-conservation-goals-181226

Four Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. The recipients of this cycle’s Gilman scholarships are American undergraduate students attending 536 U.S. colleges and represent 49 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, who will study or intern in 91 countries around the globe through April 2023. 

Computer science and Asian studies joint major Asyl Almaz ’24, from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, has been awarded $4,000 towards her studies via Bard’s Tuition Exchange at Waseda University in Tokyo for fall 2022. “Coming from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, it has not been an easy journey immersing myself into a different culture when I moved to America for college—let alone another one. I am so incredibly grateful to receive the Gilman scholarship to be able to spend a semester in Waseda. This will ensure that I will be able to not only step foot in another country and learn so many new things about Asian history and culture, but also to be able to afford the expenses that I will have to pay there,” said Almaz.

Music and Asian studies joint major Nandi Woodfork-Bey ’22, from Sacramento, California, has been awarded $3,500 to study at the American College of Greece for fall 2022. “I’m immensely grateful to have received the Gilman Scholarship. I look forward to spending a semester abroad in Greece as I expand and diversify my studies in music and culture. Studying abroad will help me build the global and professional skills needed to succeed in my future endeavors, and I’m thankful that the Gilman program has further helped me achieve this opportunity” said Woodfork-Bey.

Theater major Grant Venable ’24, from Sherman Oaks, California, received a Gilman-DAAD scholarship and has been awarded $5,000 to study at Bard College Berlin for fall 2022. “I am honored to be able to attend Bard College in Berlin with the help of the Gilman scholarship. This scholarship will allow me to pursue my passion for theater and challenge my work as a performance artist through my studies in Berlin,” said Venable.

Philosophy major Azriel Almodovar ’24, from Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, has been awarded $3,500 to study in Taormina, Italy on Bard’s Italian Language Intensive program in summer 2022. “Thanks to the Gilman Scholarship, I am able to study abroad with no financial issues and really take advantage of all that the Italian Intensive Program has to offer. I am very grateful for being a recipient and look forward to my time abroad,” said Almodovar.

Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,350 U.S. institutions have sent more than 34,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 155 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study. 

As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.”

The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”

The Gilman Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org

Teaching without an agenda is not something that concerns Kate Belin BA ’04, MAT ’05. “I do have an agenda. I want to see a national shift in how we teach math, what math is, and who has access to it,” Belin said in an interview with Chalkbeat. In their role at the Bronx’s Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, they continue to teach the mathematics of gerrymandering, “an especially relevant topic” today, and one that “will likely continue to be.” A winner of the 2021 Math for America (MƒA) Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education, Belin says their belief in the power of education was developed while at Bard, both as an undergraduate and graduate student. “I learned in college that mathematics was about creativity, patterns, problem-solving, and many more things that aren’t necessarily taught in K-12 school,” they said. “The master’s program at Bard College gave me hope that it was possible to bring more real mathematics into schools and that more students might fall in love with it, too.”
 
Read More on Chalkbeat

Results from the four-year Tick Project study in Dutchess County indicate that tick-control interventions reduce incidence of tick-borne disease in household pets, but do not reduce disease in humans. Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, is the lead author on the study, published in the May issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

In a randomized, placebo-controlled, and double-masked study of 24 residential neighborhoods, Keesing and colleagues tested the effects of using a fungal spray and baited boxes that dab insecticide on small mammals. The failure of the measures to reduce Lyme disease for people is “an unwelcome answer,” says researcher Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook and codirector of the Tick Project. The results led the researchers to speculate that, contrary to popular belief, people are more likely to attract Lyme-transmitting ticks when they’re away from home. The longstanding assumption has been that “people encounter the tick that makes them sick when they’re in their yards,” Keesing observes. “The evidence is not that solid.” 
https://www.webmd.com/arthritis/news/20220414/tick-spraying-may-not-guard-against-lyme-disease

Bard College’s Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing is pleased to announce the appointment of Beate Liepert as Visiting Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies and Physics. Professor Liepert, who joined the Bard faculty in January 2022, focuses on environmental physics, with a specific research goal of pursuing local solutions to the global issue of climate change. Her research interests include micrometeorology, air pollution, and community-based science.

Dr. Beate Liepert is a climate scientist who pioneered research on the phenomenon of “global dimming,” a decline in the amount of sun reaching the Earth’s surface, which has implications on the planet’s water and carbon cycles. She comes to Bard from the Seattle area, where she worked for and founded start-ups in the clean tech and insure tech fields, and was a lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Seattle University. The start-ups included CLIWEN LLC, a climate, energy, and weather consulting concern; and Lumen LLC, a company that developed design solutions for solar cells. She also served as a research scientist at True Flood Risk LLC in New York, NorthWest Research Associates in Seattle, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Her work centers on basic questions of climate variability, from interannual to centennial time scales. Research interests also include taking measurements of aerosols and solar radiation and investigating climate effects on ecosystems.

Additional activities have included serving as editor for Environmental Research Letters, a UK-based journal; proposal review panelist and proposal reviewer for the National Science Foundation; presenting at more than 50 international conferences and university colloquia; and authoring reviews and articles for journals including Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Climate, Frontiers, International Journal of Climatology, Nature, Science, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, and Global and Planetary Change, among many others. She has been interviewed on CNN and numerous international TV broadcasts; was a featured scientist in the BBC documentary Dimming the Sun, which also aired on PBS; and was profiled in a “Talk of the Town” essay in the New Yorker. Professor Liepert is the recipient of the 2016 WINGS World Quest “Women of Discovery” Earth Award and in 2015 she delivered a Distinguished Scientist Lecture at Bard on “Dimming the Sun: How Clouds and Air Pollution Affect Global Climate.”

Diploma, Institute of Meteorology and Institute of Bioclimatology and Air Pollution Research, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich; Doctor rer. nat., Institute of Meteorology, Department of Physics, Ludwig-Maximilians University; postdoctoral research scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University; certificate program in fine arts, Parsons School of Design.

Cecily Rosenbaum ’21 has been awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to do PhD work in chemistry. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the institution.

The Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College is pleased to announce the findings of the Kingston Air Quality Initiative (KAQI) after its first two years of research and data collection, as well as the availability of a new dashboard so that people in Kingston can access real-time information about their air quality. 

KAQI began in January 2020 as a partnership between Bard’s Community Science Lab and the City of Kingston Conservation Advisory Council’s Air Quality Subcommittee to conduct a first-ever Kingston-centered air quality study. Since then, Kingston residents and Bard College students, staff, and faculty have conducted air quality monitoring in both indoor and outdoor environments.

KAQI’s main monitoring efforts focus on a regional assessment of air pollution from fine particulate matter (PM2.5), as measured from the roof of the Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center on Broadway in Kingston. PM 2.5 is made up of microscopic particles that are the products of burning fuel, and is released into the air through exhausts from oil burners, gas burners, automobiles, cooking, grilling, and both indoor and outdoor wood burning. PM 2.5 particles are so tiny, they stay suspended in the air for long periods of time, allowing them to travel long distances before depositing. When these particles are inhaled, they can enter the bloodstream through the lungs, creating or exacerbating health issues. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that “Small particulate pollution has health impacts even at very low concentrations–indeed no threshold has been identified below which no damage to health is observed.”

After two full years of monitoring, KAQI found that while many signs point to Kingston’s overall air quality being decent, conditions do sometimes reach unhealthy levels for some individuals, and there is certainly room for improvement. 

Two important measures of PM2.5 air quality are the annual mean standard and the 24-hour average standard. For the period of measurement, Kingston met both the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) and the WHO’s annual mean standard. While the city was well below the EPA’s standard, it was much closer to the WHO’s stricter standard. For the 24-hour standard, Kingston met the EPA’s criteria, but was over the WHO’s 24-hour standard. For context, as of 2019, 99% of the world’s population was living in locations that do not meet the WHO’s air quality standards. 

Long term trends can only really be evaluated on a multi-year time scale. These first two years of monitoring will provide a baseline for KAQI’s monitoring efforts in the next few years, and allow them to assess how Kingston particulate matter pollution levels are changing over time.

You can see these findings and more detail at the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities website: https://cesh.bard.edu/kingston-air-quality-initiative-kaqi/.

The Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College, in collaboration with KAQI, has developed a dashboard that allows Kingston residents to access real-time information about their city’s air quality. The current PM2.5 and PM10 conditions are shown and interpreted, and one can see the air quality sensor’s reading from the past 12 hours. A separate page allows users to explore the hourly readings of particulate matter from the whole Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center dataset.

The dashboard can be found at: https://tributary.shinyapps.io/AMNC_live/

“KAQI is an important model for ways that academic institutions can contribute concretely to the communities who surround and support them,” said Eli Dueker, Director of Bard’s Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities. “We are combining serious efforts to monitor long-term air quality in Kingston with tools that allow us to put the data in front of residents in real time and give them feedback about what is going on in their city today.”

“This Kingston Air Quality Initiative monitoring project is such an important step that Kingston is taking toward assuring that its residents will breathe clean air into the future. This project responds to the need for both regional and neighborhood monitoring so that all residents’ air quality is taken into account. That the initiative focuses on PM 2.5 is especially important,” said Judith Enck, former EPA Regional Administrator.

Emily Flynn, City of Kingston Director of Health and Wellness, added “As we know, air quality can have significant impacts for respiratory infections, heart disease, stroke and lung cancer, and more severely affects people who are already ill. We applaud the work of the Center for Environmental Science and Humanities at Bard and thank them for their work here in Kingston.”

“Through the Kingston Air Quality Initiative dashboard, the Bard Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities has provided a valuable tool to the City of Kingston and its residents: the ability to assess the health hazards posed by air pollution in real time. The long-term trend data recorded will be a resource for decision makers to see the patterns of air quality within the city and to understand the impacts of local changes on air quality.” said Nick Hvozda, Interim Director of the Ulster County Department of the Environment.

These figures demonstrate daily pm2.5 averages for 2020 and 2021. Each point represents a single day, with vertical lines representing the range of variation in hourly readings that day (if no vertical line visible, the variation was smaller than the graphic point). The blue line provides a smoothing line to give a sense of seasonal trends.

For more information or ways to get involved, visit https://kingston-ny.gov/airquality  or https://cesh.bard.edu/kingston-air-quality-initiative-kaqi/

As a part of the Open Society University Network’s Refugee Higher Education Access Program (RhEAP), Assistant Director of the Citizen Science Program at Bard College Dr. Robert Todd has developed an intensive three-week program focused on scientific literacy using the fundamentals of Bard’s Citizen Science Program. The goal of this RhEAP course is to engage students with their own scientific literacy, and in doing so, think critically about how we as individuals access, validate, and integrate scientific knowledge into our daily lives at a time when we are constantly being inundated with disinformation and misrepresentation of scientific findings.
 
From March 14 through April 1, approximately 50 refugee and internally displaced students located across Kenya and Jordan attended Todd’s RhEAP Science Literacy Course. Todd was able to teach one group of students fully in person at the Kakuma Refugee Camp and another group as a hybrid course, blending an in-person class in Kakuma with a Zoom class for students from the Dadaab Refugee Complex and from Jordan. During this course, students engaged with important questions regarding how individuals make judgements on the validity of scientific claims. In Todd’s classes, students addressed topics revolving around water usage and water quality as it relates to human-made global climate change. By using real-world examples, hands-on experiments, and recent scientific findings, students were given opportunities to objectively analyze and contextualize scientific findings that help them to understand the content of scientific findings and how science is conducted. Working together across geographical locations and cultures, students participating in the RhEAP Science Literacy course gained experience and skills to better address challenges in a way that promotes collaboration, critical thinking, and self growth. This three-week science literacy session was offered as part of the STEM module of the broader RhEAP one-year course of study for the refugees. Upon the completion of the full RhEAP program offerings, students will be strong candidates for applying to BA programs and scholarships both abroad and in their host countries.
 
In cooperation with BRAC’s Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton’s Global History Lab, and Arizona State University, RhEAP is supported by the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning Initiatives, a project of the Open Society University Network led by Bard College and Arizona State University. RhEAP is simultaneously globally influenced and locally contextualized, featuring universally acknowledged best-practices—from student-centered to project-based learning—and locally rooted approaches to addressing  students’ psycho-social and emotional learning needs. RhEAP is designed around big questions that thread through the modules; learners are invited to consider such questions through various disciplinary lenses and via different methodological approaches. Courses are offered in a blended format and all courses have on-the-ground facilitators who are refugees themselves and are trained by the OSUN faculty.
https://www.bard.edu/news/education-is-like-water-and-we-are-very-thirsty-first-cohort-of-refugee-students-in-kenya-and-jordan-completes-bardosun-certificate-2022-03-23

Bard College senior women's basketball student-athlete Christina Kiser ’22 was again named an Academic All-American by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA). This marks her second consecutive year of receiving the Academic All-America award, making her the first Bard student to achieve this distinction. “It is no surprise to see Christina win this award for the second time,” Bard women's basketball coach Casi Donelan said. “She is as tenacious a student as she is an athlete. She has been committed to being the best student, the best teammate, and the best community member since the day she arrived.” Kiser, in addition to her winning record on and off the court, is a member of Bard EMS and copresident of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. As a biology premed student, she plans to continue her pursuit of a career as a surgeon after graduating in May.
https://bardathletics.com/news/2022/3/16/womens-basketball-kiser-becomes-bards-first-two-time-academic-all-america-winner.aspx

Richard Lopez, assistant professor of psychology and director of the REACH Lab at Bard College, and his colleagues have published a new paper examining craving regulation strategies among cigarette smokers in the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment. Craving is an important contributing factor in cigarette smoking. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and other treatments that incorporate craving regulation strategies reduced daily smoking and the likelihood of relapse. In this study, Lopez and colleagues found that multiple strategies were effective including reappraisal, which involves cognitively reframing one’s initial craving response, and distraction, which refocuses attention on other unrelated stimuli. This finding suggests that the regulation of craving is an important mechanism underlying smoking cessation.
https://www.journalofsubstanceabusetreatment.com/article/S0740-5472(22)00031-9/fulltext

Tyson Foods utilizes between nine and 10m acres of farmland – an area almost twice the size of New Jersey – to produce corn and soybeans to feed the more than 2 billion animals it processes every year in the US alone, according to new research. Speaking with the Guardian, Bard EUS Research Professor Gidon Eshel said the scale of farming needed to produce animal feed contributes to many of the environmental problems of large-scale agriculture. These issues include changes to soil and the natural flow of water, the way solar energy relates to the earth, and disruption of plants and animals. Pollution from fertilizers and pesticides are another big concern, and the risks of contaminating drinking water and harming ecosystems. There is a significant opportunity cost in growing feed crops. “If you produce 100lbs of corn and feed it to beef, you get 3lbs of edible beef. Because of this, using land to grow feed crops instead of food [for humans] is incredibly questionable – it’s wasteful,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/09/us-poultry-giant-tyson-farmland-twice-size-new-jersey-feed-animals?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

Bard College has received a $150,000 grant from the George I. Alden Trust to acquire an upgraded gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer in order to support the continuity and growth of ongoing curricular and research projects within the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Bard. This new instrument, with its expanded analytical capabilities, is an essential component of the five-year infrastructure and instrumentation plan created by the Chemistry and Biochemistry Program. 

“We are so grateful to have this support from the Alden Trust. Continuing the essential analytical capacity of our labs is important. And with this funding, we are able to expand the range of experiments that are possible, providing many more opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching and research at Bard,” said Associate Dean of the College and Associate Professor of Chemistry Emily McLaughlin.

Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GCMS) provides the technology to separate mixtures, and to identify and quantify pure compounds and individual components of mixtures for applications ranging across scientific disciplines. At Bard, this type of instrument has been central to the science curriculum for over 25 years. The acquisition of an upgraded gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer impacts the undergraduate teaching and learning experience in substantial ways—including in research and curricular work in chemistry, biology, environmental studies, and Bard’s Citizen Science Program, in which all first-year students take part. 

The enhanced capabilities of the new GCMS will facilitate ongoing and new collaborations among faculty and students, including the ability effectively sample aqueous environmental samples for volatile organic compounds (VOCs).  The GCMS has been a central part of analytical chemistry at the College, resulting in work presented at local, regional, and national conferences and manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals. 

Felicia Keesing, Bard College’s David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Keesing, who teaches in the Biology Program, is the first Bard faculty member to be honored with this distinction.

“Felicia Keesing exemplifies the critical importance of science both at the frontiers of knowledge and in our everyday lives. Generously sharing her expertise with our community, she is an outstanding researcher and gifted educator. All Bard students are beneficiaries of Professor Keesing’s commitment to curricular innovation in the teaching of science, and her leadership at the College over the past two decades cannot be overstated,” said Dean of the College and Professor of English Deirdre d’Albertis.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing studies Lyme disease, and other tick-borne diseases. She is particularly interested in how the loss of biodiversity affect disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. In 2000, she was awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in a ceremony at the White House, and in 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.

The 2021 class of AAAS Fellows includes 564 scientists, engineers, and innovators from around the world spanning scientific disciplines. AAAS Fellows are a distinguished cadre of scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for their achievements across disciplines, from research, teaching, and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public. The full list of 2021 AAAS Fellows can be found here.

“AAAS is proud to honor these individuals who represent the kind of forward thinking the scientific enterprise needs, while also inspiring hope for what can be achieved in the future,” said Dr. Sudip S. Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals.

These honorees have gone above and beyond in their respective disciplines. They bring a broad diversity of perspectives, innovation, curiosity, and passion that will help sustain the scientific field today and into the future. The new Fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin to commemorate their election (representing science and engineering, respectively) and will be celebrated later this year during an in-person gathering when it is feasible from a public health and safety perspective. The new class will also be featured in the AAAS News & Notes section of Science in January 2022.

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Shuo Zhang has been invited by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to present her most recent research on how surrounding molecular gas clouds offer insight into the activity history of Sgr A*, the now inactive supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Zhang’s talk, “Galactic Center Molecular Clouds: Storytellers of Past Outburst of the Galactic Center Supermassive Black Hole,” is being presented at a virtual AAS press conference to be held on Tuesday, January 11 from 4:15pm to 5:15pm ET via Zoom. For more information about the virtual press conference, click here.

Though inactive nowadays, traces of a glorious past of Sgr A* can be found in the surrounding molecular gas clouds, which reflect incoming X-ray emission from Sgr A* up to a few hundred years ago. Therefore, by studying X-ray emission from molecular clouds at different distances from Sgr A*, we can reconstruct the activity history of Sgr A* in the past few centuries. Shuo Zhang and her post-bac researcher Nathalie Jones ’21 have focused their study on a particular Galactic center molecular cloud, the “Bridge”. Their analysis on archival data by the NuSTAR telescope during 2012-2020, and the XMM-Newton telescope data during 2000-2020 clearly demonstrates an epic 20-year-long X-ray brightening of the “Bridge” molecular cloud, making it currently the brightest diffuse feature in the Sgr A* complex region. Continuous monitoring of this molecular cloud and capturing its peak luminosity will tell us how luminous Sgr A* used to be a couple dozen years ago, which is essential to understand the activity cycle of supermassive black holes. This project is supported by NASA NuSTAR Guest Observation grant #80NSSC20K0035.

“It is amazing to have these molecular gas clouds as storytellers of past activities of the monster black hole in the center of our Galaxy,” says Zhang. 

About the Annual Conference of the American Astronomical Society
The American Astronomical Society is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, with a membership of 7,700 individuals with research and educational interests in astronomical sciences. The 239th meeting is the 2022 winter annual American Astronomical Society conference, which brings together the International astronomer community and shares the most recent discoveries and results in astronomy. Though the major meeting was canceled due to COVID situation, the press conference will take place virtually as planned.

Health and Science Editor at WNYC/Gothamist Nsikan Akpan ’06, who has covered the pandemic from its start, writes about his personal experience contracting the Omicron variant this December. “Imagine feeling teeth-chattering chills, a stifling cough and slight shortness of breath—on and off every six hours. The doctor expects me to make a full recovery, a payoff of the protection from my two vaccine doses plus a booster. But I wouldn’t have known how to track my symptoms without access to health care,” he reports. 

Akpan received the John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service from Bard College in 2021.

 
https://gothamist.com/news/what-a-mild-to-moderate-omicron-case-feels-like?fbclid=IwAR3G3KHAyvBV5Yvh5lcKIt78VhhKK6HAuXNrzYtnSWYvgPM40aiLgpk21Mc

A recent study from the chemistry lab of professor Craig Anderson was published with several Bardians as coauthors. “Bard students working during the Bard Summer Research Institute and during the semester months have been involved in these projects for a number of years and this is a continuation of last year's publication,” said Anderson. “Luminescent  metal compounds have applications in a variety of fields such as chemical sensors and light-emitting diodes. We studied the interaction of these metal compounds with light to determine their photophysical properties. These properties are of importance both for understanding fundamental structure-function relationships, and  because of their potential applications in devices like displays.”

The paper’s coauthors include Belle Coffey ’21, Lily Clough ’23, Daphne D. Bartkus ’23, Ian C. McClellan ’21, Matthew W. Greenberg ’15 (Bard visiting assistant professor of chemistry), and Christopher N. LaFratta (Bard associate professor of chemistry). 

Craig Anderson is the Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Professor of Chemistry and Director of Undergraduate Research in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Bard.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.1c04509

Two Bard College students have been awarded highly competitive Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships by the U.S. Department of State. Art history and Italian studies major Francesca Houran ’23 has been awarded $5,000 towards her studies at the University of Trento in Italy, where she will be the first to participate in a newly established tuition exchange program with Bard. “Through studying abroad, I hope to further my knowledge of the hermaphrodite within the context of the Italian Renaissance and how it influences the gender binary in contemporary Italy. I am also excited to explore the ascending, vertically-oriented architecture of museums, churches, and monuments that prompts climbing and physical ascension as a symbol of conquest and hierarchy,” says Houran. “My overarching goal is to build a foundation for a career in ethical museum curation and nuanced communication of histories surrounding gender, race, and colonialism—a goal that traveling through the Gilman Scholarship will make possible for me as a low-income college student.”

Biology major and premed student Emma Tilley ’23 has been awarded $4,500 to study via Bard’s tuition exchange at the University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands. “I am grateful for the Gilman scholarship and excited for the opportunity to travel abroad and learn more about international healthcare systems and the ways that Covid has impacted nations differently. My additional focus is to continue working on promoting inclusion in STEM on a global scale,” says Tilley.

Gilman Scholars receive up to $5,000, or up to $8,000 if also a recipient of the Gilman Critical Need Language Award, to apply toward their study abroad or internship program costs. Since the program’s establishment in 2001, over 1,350 U.S. institutions have sent more than 34,000 Gilman Scholars of diverse backgrounds to 155 countries around the globe. The program has successfully broadened U.S. participation in study abroad, while emphasizing countries and regions where fewer Americans traditionally study. 

As Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “People-to-people exchanges bring our world closer together and convey the best of America to the world, especially to its young people.”

The late Congressman Gilman, for whom the scholarship is named, served in the House of Representatives for 30 years and chaired the House Foreign Relations Committee. When honored with the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Medal in 2002, he said, “Living and learning in a vastly different environment of another nation not only exposes our students to alternate views but adds an enriching social and cultural experience. It also provides our students with the opportunity to return home with a deeper understanding of their place in the world, encouraging them to be a contributor, rather than a spectator in the international community.”

The Gilman Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and is supported in its implementation by the Institute of International Education (IIE). To learn more, visit: gilmanscholarship.org.

“When animals are misguided by evolved behavioural cues to preferentially make mistakes, they are caught in an evolutionary trap,” write Associate Professor of Biology Bruce Robertson, Devin C. Fraleigh ’18, and Jackson Barratt Heitmann ’18 in a newly published scientific paper. “Aquatic insects rely heavily on polarized light cues to locate bodies of water necessary for oviposition and mating. However, where artificial objects (e.g. asphalt, buildings) are at least as effective at polarizing light as natural water bodies, aquatic insects may instead prefer to oviposit on those surfaces where their eggs fail to hatch.”

Published in Animal Behavior, their paper “Ultraviolet polarized light pollution and evolutionary traps for aquatic insects” surveyed the natural and artificial environment to understand the properties of objects that can polarize natural and artificial sources of UV light. They conducted a field experiment to test the importance of UV polarized light in guiding habitat selection behaviour in six families of aquatic insects. The results highlight a quantitatively new type of ecological light pollution capable of creating evolutionary traps for polarotactic insects at night, or even during the day. 

Kate Belin BA ’04, MAT ’05, who teaches at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx, is one of two winners of the 2021 Math for America (MƒA) Muller Award for Professional Influence in Education. This honor is given to two New York City public school teachers who, during their tenure as MƒA Master Teachers, have influenced the teaching profession in exceptional ways.

“Belin brings a creative approach to pedagogy and has dramatically improved math education at their school and beyond. She is being recognized for bringing her deep understanding of mathematics to all students and taking a leadership role to improve education and educational equity everywhere and for everyone,” writes MƒA. 
 
“I am beyond grateful to MƒA for this recognition and for providing a space for teachers to come together as learners and leaders. This award also recognizes the work of the entire Fannie Lou community which has always understood that teaching is political,” said Belin. “We aren’t simply teaching subjects. We are teaching to fight injustices. Our job is to be activists and organizers in collaboration with our students—to mobilize youth for any issues that exist in their community, country, or world, and work together to make it better.”
 
Belin was recognized for her impact on the teaching profession and awarded $20,000 during a virtual MƒA award ceremony on Monday, October 18. In addition, $5,000 was awarded to the school or organization of their nominator. Belin was nominated by representatives from the Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School.

Kate Belin has taught mathematics at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School for the past 17 years, transforming the mathematics curriculum of the school and mentoring student teachers. She was a recipient of the 2011 Sloan Award for Excellence in Teaching Science in Mathematics and was a Fulbright Distinguished Awards Teaching Fellow to Botswana in 2016. Belin earned their B.A. in Mathematics and M.A.T. at Bard College and has been an adjunct professor at City College of New York, Bard College, and the Bard Prison Initiative.
https://www.mathforamerica.org/news/bronx-and-manhattan-teachers-win-prestigious-mƒa-muller-award-20000-prize

Associate Professor of Mathematics Lauren L. Rose has been selected as one of 13 scholars to join the Fifth Class of Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Fellows. These individuals are extraordinary researchers, mentors, and educators whose commitment to supporting and growing women across the mathematical sciences is praised by their students and colleagues. 

Rose is being honored: “For broad efforts in the professional development of women in mathematics, especially undergraduate women; for her commitment to involving people from diverse communities in mathematics, through Math Circles and outreach in prisons; and for her creative contributions to the AWM including the We Speak Series and the Card Project,” states the AWM committee.

“I am very happy to announce the 2022 list of new AWM Fellows. We recognize these individuals for their exceptional dedication to increasing the success and visibility of women in mathematics,” wrote Kathryn Leonard, AWM President. The AWM 2022 Fellows will be recognized during the AWM reception held in January. 

The Executive Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics established the AWM Fellows Program to recognize individuals who have demonstrated a sustained commitment to the support and advancement of women in the mathematical sciences. The Fellows epitomize the mission of the AWM, which is to promote equitable opportunities and support for women and girls in the mathematical sciences.

Bard College is pleased to announce the appointment of groundbreaking computer scientist Valerie Barr as the Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, and Director of the Bard Network Computing Initiative. She begins in fall of 2022.
 
“Professor Barr is a national leader in efforts to broaden participation in computing even as she champions innovative approaches to connecting computer science with a wide array of intellectual disciplines,” said Vice President and Dean of the College Deirdre d’Albertis. “Over the course of her career she has demonstrated tremendous creativity as an institution builder. Valerie Barr’s appointment will strengthen Bard’s commitment to the study of computing within the liberal arts and amplify these efforts throughout the Bard network.”
 
“I am deeply honored to be offered the Margaret Hamilton Professorship, which recognizes the numerous contributions Hamilton made to the practice and processes of large-scale software development,” said Barr. “I am also excited to join the Bard faculty. I have watched the growth of the Bard Network for many years, and am pleased to become part of this innovative and exciting institution,” she said. “A key question I hope to explore is what do all students, not just computer science students, need to know about computing in order to actively critique and challenge the current pace and impact of technological change? My many conversations with Bard faculty convinced me that Bard, with its rich array of interdisciplinary programs, many of which reach across the Bard Network, will provide a wonderful arena in which to explore this question.”
 
Valerie Barr comes to Bard from Mount Holyoke College, where she is currently the Jean E. Sammet Prof. of Computer Science. She recently completed four years as chair of Mount Holyoke’s Computer Science department, and is also cochair of the Data Science program. 
 
In addition to teaching, Barr has distinguished herself in curriculum development and computing education, leading directly to the creation of interdisciplinary programs with a goal of changing the demographics of computer science. Her research projects have been funded repeatedly and extensively over the past two decades by the National Science Foundation. She is past-chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Council on Women in Computing, and has served as a program officer for the National Science Foundation. She is a member of the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium.
 
Barr’s research interests include computer science education, particularly new curricula that will engage diverse groups of students in the liberal arts setting; working collaboratively with colleagues in other disciplines to apply computing to problems in their fields; reanalyzing degree attainment data to better identify and understand long standing trends in the areas of gender, race, and ethnicity; and in software testing, particularly as applied to various kinds of artificial intelligence and language processing systems. 
 
Prior to Mount Holyoke College, Barr was on the faculty of Union College, where she served as Director of Interdisciplinary Programs, and Hofstra University. She has also taught at Pratt Institute and Rutgers. She received her master’s degree from New York University and Ph.D. from Rutgers. 
 
The Margaret Hamilton Distinguished Professorship of Computer Science was established by Bard College President Leon Botstein in honor of trailblazing computer scientist Margaret Hamilton, who led the NASA software team for the Apollo program’s first moon landing. Hamilton is an honorary degree recipient of Bard, as well as a parent and grandparent of Bard alumni/ae.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the global importance—and challenge—of understanding the ecology of infectious diseases, especially in regard to the impact biodiversity has on the transmission of zoonotic diseases. A new paper in Ecology Letters coauthored by Bard Biology Professor Felicia Keesing and Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, argues that one key to improving this understanding is more rigorous and creative study of dilution effects, which occur when the diversity of an ecological community reduces the transmission of disease. Dilution effects have been used for decades to manage the transmission of parasites and pathogens in plants, animals, and people.

“The impacts of diversity on the emergence and transmission of pathogens have never been more relevant,” write Keesing and Ostfeld in their paper, “Dilution effects in disease ecology.” “Over the last 20 years, attention has focused on whether the patterns that can be made to happen—when someone chooses which organisms are present in a system—ever happen naturally, as diversity changes under natural conditions, This is a particularly important question because diversity within natural ecosystems is changing rapidly in response to human impacts such as habitat fragmentation, overexploitation, pollution and climate change.”

In their paper, Keesing and Ostfeld discuss how and where dilution effects have been used to manage infectious diseases. “We explore the ecological mechanisms that underlie these effects, and then turn to more recent questions—whether dilution effects occur in natural communities, and if so, whether these effects are impacted by changes to natural biodiversity,” they write. “We review the evidence for when and how frequently natural dilution effects occur, outline some of the challenges of studying them and describe common mis-applications of the concepts, as well as important outstanding questions.”

Keesing and Ostfeld write that analyses reveal that natural dilution effects are common, but studying them remains challenging “due to limitations on the ability of researchers to manipulate many disease systems experimentally, difficulties of acquiring data on host quality and confusion about what should and should not be considered a dilution effect.” Important questions for future research, they write, include: “Does the pattern of variation in host quality vary in predictable ways for different metrics (e.g. reservoir competence, vector preference) and across types of disease systems? How do interactions within hosts affect dilution effects in multi-pathogen systems? How common are positive relationships between ecological resilience and host quality? What are the shapes of these relationships when they do occur, and what are their underlying causes? What are the best metrics for measuring transmission across disease systems? What are the characteristics of natural disease systems that show dilution effects and those that do not, and what does this suggest about whether we might apply our understanding of dilution effects to manage diseases in nature?”

Keesing and Ostfeld conclude that there is much to learn about the relationship between biodiversity change and the emergence of pathogens, and that more study of dilution effects will be essential. “Important questions include how biodiversity, and its loss, affect the emergence of pathogens of non-human hosts; how we can effectively determine whether hosts can actually transmit pathogens, as opposed to simply becoming infected with them and how to manage our behavior and use of landscapes to minimize spillover events,” they write. “Acknowledging what we have learned about dilution effects in nature over the past 20 years is critically important, as is understanding their similarities and differences to the dilution effects that operate in managed disease systems like agricultural fields.”

To read the full paper in Ecology Letters, click here.

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant OPUS 1948419 to Keesing.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.(9.8.21)

Bard College is pleased to announce that Clara Sousa-Silva has been appointed to a tenure track faculty position in the Physics Program. Sousa-Silva will join the faculty of the College in spring 2022 as a full-time assistant professor of physics in the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing. Sousa-Silva is a quantum astrochemist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. She investigates how molecules interact with light so that they can be detected on faraway worlds. Sousa-Silva’s July 2021 TED talk, “The Fingerprints of Life Beyond Earth,” is featured on the front page of the TED website.

About Clara Sousa-Silva
Clara Sousa-Silva spends most of her time studying molecules that life can produce so that, one day, she can detect an alien biosphere. Her favorite molecular biosignature is phosphine: a terrifying gas associated with mostly unpleasant life. When she is not deciphering exoplanet atmospheres, Sousa-Silva works hard to persuade the next generation of scientists to become an active part of the astronomical community.

Sousa-Silva holds a doctoral degree in quantum chemistry from the University College London, and a masters degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Among her many achievements, Sousa-Silva is the recipient of the prestigious 51 b Pegasi Fellowship from the Heising Simons Foundation. The fellowship supports the growing field of planetary astronomy and exceptional postdoctoral scientists who make unique contributions to the field of astronomy. Her work and commentary has been featured in the BBC, WIRED, and the New York Times, among many others. Prior to joining the Center for Astrophysics, Sousa-Silva served as a research scientist at MIT.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(8/31/21)
 

Isabel Polletta’s 2020 Senior Project at Bard has led to a published study in Frontiers in Psychology. Her research with Assistant Professor of Psychology Richard Lopez, who was her Senior Project adviser, has now been published as “Regulating self-image on Instagram: Links between social anxiety, Instagram contingent self-worth, and content control behaviors.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.711447/full

A growing body of evidence suggests that biodiversity loss increases our exposure to both new and established zoonotic pathogens. Restoring and protecting nature is essential to preventing future pandemics. So reports a new Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper that synthesizes current understanding about how biodiversity affects human health and provides recommendations for future research to guide management. To read the PNAS paper, please click here.

Lead author Felicia Keesing is a professor at Bard College and a Visiting Scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. She explains, “There's a persistent myth that wild areas with high levels of biodiversity are hotspots for disease. More animal diversity must equal more dangerous pathogens. But this turns out to be wrong. Biodiversity isn't a threat to us, it’s actually protecting us from the species most likely to make us sick.”

Zoonotic diseases like COVID-19, SARS, and Ebola are caused by pathogens that are shared between humans and other vertebrate animals. But animal species differ in their ability to pass along pathogens that make us sick.

Rick Ostfeld is a disease ecologist at Cary Institute and a co-author on the paper. He explains, “Research is mounting that species that thrive in developed and degraded landscapes are often much more efficient at harboring pathogens and transmitting them to people. In less-disturbed landscapes with more animal diversity, these risky reservoirs are less abundant and biodiversity has a protective effect.”

Rodents, bats, primates, cloven-hooved mammals like sheep and deer, and carnivores have been flagged as the mammal taxa most likely to transmit pathogens to humans. Keesing and Ostfeld note, "The next emerging pathogen is far more likely to come from a rat than a rhino.”

This is because animals with fast life histories tend to be more efficient at transmitting pathogens. Keesing explains, “Animals that live fast, die young, and have early sexual maturity with lots of offspring tend to invest less in their adaptive immune responses. They are often better at transmitting diseases, compared to longer-lived animals with stronger adaptive immunity.”

When biodiversity is lost from ecological communities, long-lived, larger-bodied species tend to disappear first, while smaller-bodied species with fast life histories tend to proliferate. Research has found that mammal hosts of zoonotic viruses are less likely to be species of conservation concern (i.e. they are more common), and that for both mammals and birds, human development tends to increase the abundance of zoonotic host species, bringing people and risky animals closer together.

“When we erode biodiversity, we favor species that are more likely to be zoonotic hosts, increasing our risk of spillover events,” Ostfeld notes. Adding that, “Managing this risk will require a better understanding of how things like habitat conversion, climate change, and overharvesting affect zoonotic hosts, and how restoring biodiversity to degraded areas might reduce their abundance.”

To predict and prevent spillover, Keesing and Ostfeld highlight the need to focus on host attributes associated with disease transmission rather than continuing to debate the prime importance of one taxon or another. Ostfeld explains, “We should stop assuming that there is a single animal source for each emerging pathogen. The pathogens that jump from animals to people tend to be found in many animal species, not just one. They’re jumpers, after all, and they typically move between species readily.”

Disentangling the characteristics of effective zoonotic hosts – such as their immune strategies, resilience to disturbance, and habitat preferences – is key to protecting public health. Forecasting the locations where these species thrive, and where pathogen transmission and emergence are likely, can guide targeted interventions.

Keesing notes, “Restoration of biodiversity is an important frontier in the management of zoonotic disease risk. Those pathogens that do spill over to infect humans—zoonotic pathogens—often proliferate as a result of human impacts.” Concluding, “As we rebuild our communities after COVID-19, we need to have firmly in mind that one of our best strategies to prevent future pandemics is to protect, preserve, and restore biodiversity.”

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant OPUS 1948419 to Keesing.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.(4.5.21)
 
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/17/e2023540118

On March 31, EXTINCTION – THE FACTS, Sir David Attenborough’s documentary exploring the extinction crisis and its consequences, premieres on PBS. The program features interviews with Bard College Biology Professor Felicia Keesing and other leading scientists discussing the extinction crisis, and its grave consequences for us all—threatening food and water security, reducing our ability to control our climate, and putting us at greater risk of deadly pandemic diseases, including COVID-19.

“We have a moment when we can change our world and make it better,” says Keesing in the documentary. “Often the best reservoirs for the pathogens that can jump to humans are smaller-bodied species, like rats and mice and certain kinds of bats. When we have intact natural systems with high biodiversity, these species are kept in check, but when humans destroy habitat, the large predators and herbivores disappear first. Which means the smaller-bodied species are the big winners. They proliferate wildly, they live at super high density and are the ones far more likely to make us sick.”

EXTINCTION – THE FACTS reveals what is happening to the natural world, how human activity drives extinction, and why we haven’t acted sooner to stem these losses. With the world at a critical turning point, the documentary asks what governments, industries, and individuals can do now to change our course. EXTINCTION – THE FACTS premieres Wednesday, March 31, from 8:00-9:00 p.m. ET. For more information or to view the documentary, please visit pbs.org/show/extinction-facts.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.(3.29.21)
 
https://www.pbs.org/show/extinction-facts/

“You and your students should continue to wear masks and socially distance in the classroom,” Morrison, a professor at the University of California Riverside, writes in response to a vaccinated teacher asking about classroom precautions. “Since your students are not vaccinated, they can get infected with the virus, get sick and also spread it to others. Based on what we know so far, there is a possibility that you could get infected and transmit it to the unvaccinated persons that you interact with inside and outside of the classroom.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/opinion/covid-vaccine-guidelines.html?referringSource=articleShare

The APS Rising Star designation recognizes outstanding psychological scientists in the earliest stages of their post-PhD research careers. “As an APS Rising Star, you are among the brightest minds in our field,” said APS in its announcement. At Bard since 2019, Lopez earned his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College. He is the recipient of the National Research Service Award to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research from the National Institutes of Health, as well as multiple teaching awards.

Richard Lopez earned his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College and subsequently served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Translational Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Lab at Rice University. He has taught psychology and neuroscience courses at Dartmouth College and the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the National Research Service Award to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research from the National Institutes of Health (National Cancer Institute), as well as multiple teaching awards including the Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award from the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning. His work has appeared in journals such as Psychological Science; Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews; Cerebral Cortex; Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience; and other outlets. His recent published work has examined important individual difference factors implicated in successful regulation of cravings and emotions in daily life. BA, Princeton University; PhD., Dartmouth College; Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University. At Bard since 2019.
 

Bard alumna Catherine Dickert ’94 oversees the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) Division of Mineral Resources (DMR), where as director she manages day-to-day operations of a statewide program charged with the regulation of oil, gas, and solution salt mining wells, geothermal and stratigraphic wells deeper than 500 feet. She also represents New York State on the Ground Water Protection Council and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission. Dickert is involved in reshaping DMR policies to meet the goals of Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act through the development of emerging technologies that can help more efficiently detect potential pollution sources. Catherine hails from Saratoga Springs and holds a BA in Biology from Bard College and an MS in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology from the University of Vermont. She has been with DEC for five years.
https://www.dec.ny.gov/about/114424.html

Bard College announces the appointment of Juliet Morrison ’03 to the College’s board of trustees. Morrison is an assistant professor in the microbiology and plant pathology department at University of California Riverside, where she specializes in combining computational analysis with immunological and virological methods to address questions at the host-pathogen interface. She has spent the last 17 years studying innate immune responses to viral pathogens such as dengue virus, rhinovirus, poliovirus, yellow fever virus, and influenza virus.

“I am thrilled to welcome Juliet, a distinguished scientist and young alumna, to the Bard Board,” said Bard President Leon Botstein.

About Juliet Morrison
During her graduate studies at Columbia University, Morrison discovered that a viral protease facilitated poliovirus and rhinovirus interferon resistance. In her postdoctoral training at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she discovered and characterized two novel and disparate mechanisms whereby the NS5 proteins of dengue virus and yellow fever virus inhibit interferon signaling to enhance viral replication and pathogenesis. At the University of Washington, Morrison showed that influenza disease severity correlates with host transcriptional signatures of increased cytokine production, and decreased coagulation and lipid metabolism signaling.

Morrison has received several awards for her work in the field of science and medical research, including the John and Samuel Bard Award in Science and Medicine from Bard College in 2020, the Calderone Junior Faculty Award in 2017 from Columbia University, and the Women in STEM Award from Bronx Community College in 2017.

Her Bard Senior Project, “Characterization of the Product of a Putative Mitochondrial Isocitrate Dehydrogenase Gene (ICD1) from Tetrahymena pyriformis,” was a study in which a clone of ICD1 was mutagenized to be made readable in E. coli and, after expression, shown to have isocitrate dehydrogenase activity. Her Senior Project advisor was Professor John Ferguson. Juliet received Ph.D. in microbiology from Columbia University in 2009. Juliet lives in Riverside, California.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.(2/24/21)
 

“This stunningly photographed semi-autobiography draws on CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome research into the iconic butterflies to step into a narrative about hybrid identities, diminishing spaces, social evolution and divided territories. The film goes, in the director’s own words, ‘from the vein of a butterfly wing to the border between countries,’” writes Scientific American. “Gambis, a seasoned science communicator and storyteller, manages to strike a delicate balance in tone rarely seen in science-driven movies.”
 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-meets-magical-realism-in-son-of-monarchs

Dynamics has altered forever the once static arenas of space and time. Physicists have even measured spacetime deform and undulate as gravitational waves propagate away from colliding black holes. Regrettably, these dynamics have incompletely invaded the discrete, granular world of quantum gravity. In a new study in Physical Review Letters, Haggard, together with colleagues Seth Asante and Bianca Dittrich of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, uses computer simulations to show that dynamical grains of space can be built up into a complete picture of a small but evolving quantum spacetime.
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.231301

Large-Scale Study, Published in Nature, Supports Findings of Keesing and Colleague Richard S. Ostfeld’s Two Decades of Research on Lyme Disease Ecology and Other Linkages Between Ecology, Conservation, and Human Health

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered by a coronavirus of animal origin has awakened the world to the threat that zoonotic diseases pose to humans. While examples of land-use changes increasing the risk of zoonotic disease have been accumulating for decades, questions have remained about the scale of the pattern and its specific underlying mechanisms. In a new large-scale study, “Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems,” Rory Gibb, Kate Jones, and their coauthors find global evidence that human land use changes natural habitats in ways that favor animals more likely to cause human illness. The study, published today in the journal Nature, strongly supports the findings of Bard College Biology Professor Felicia Keesing and her husband and research partner Richard S. Ostfeld’s two decades of extensive research on Lyme disease ecology and other linkages between ecology, conservation, and human health.

“The transformation of forests, grasslands, and deserts into cities, suburbs, and agricultural land has caused many species to decline or disappear and others to thrive,” write Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and Keesing in a general overview of the primary study published concurrently by Nature. “The winners are often generalists that are small, abundant and have ‘fast’, short lives, such as rats and starlings. Gibb et al. show that, worldwide, these winners are much more likely to harbor disease-causing agents (pathogens) than are the losers. As a result, when we convert natural habitats to our own uses, we inadvertently increase the probability of transmission of what are known as zoonotic infectious diseases, which are caused by pathogens that can jump from animals to humans.”

Ostfeld, and Keesing write that the patterns that Gibb and his coauthors detected from their analyses—which explored 6,801 ecological communities and 376 host species worldwide—were striking and provide strong evidence to lingering questions about the global scale and mechanisms of zoonotic disease transmission. “Is it simply a coincidence that the species that thrive in human-dominated landscapes are often those that pose zoonotic threats, whereas species that decline or disappear tend to be harmless? Is the ability of animals to be resilient to human disturbances linked to their ability to host zoonotic pathogens?” write Ostfeld and Keesing. “Gibb et al. found that the animals that increase in number as a result of human land use are not only more likely to be pathogen hosts, but also more likely to harbor a greater number of pathogen species, including a greater number of pathogens that can infect humans.”

With awareness of and concern about zoonotic diseases surging in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ostfeld and Keesing write that—by showing that the greatest zoonotic threats arise where natural areas have been converted to croplands, pastures, and urban areas—Gibb et al correct the widespread misperception that wild nature is the greatest source of zoonotic disease. This study and others strongly suggest that restoring degraded habitat and protecting undisturbed natural areas would benefit both public health and the environment. “Going forward, surveillance for known and potential zoonotic pathogens will probably be most fruitful if it is focused on human-dominated landscapes,” they write.

To read the full study in Nature, click here. To read Ostfeld and Keesing’s overview, click here.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. More recently, she has focused on science literacy for college students, and she led the re-design of Bard College’s Citizen Science program. Keesing has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, among others. She has been awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000). She is the coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (2008) and has contributed to such publications as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, and Trends in Ecology & Evolution, among others.(8.5.20)
 
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02189-5

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Shuo Zhang discussed her current research and participated in a press briefing Tuesday, June 2, at the 236th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society. In her presentation, “Revealing the Powerful Particle Accelerator in the Galactic Center,” Zhang discussed her research exploring the nature and origin of one of the most striking phenomena in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, the existence of dozens of filamentary structures that can be as long as hundreds of light years. In a series of papers, Zhang and her research partners propose that the supermassive black hole in the Galactic center, Sagittarius A*, is the engine producing energetic particles that eventually light up these filaments in the X-ray and radio wave bands.

Zhang says the theory is supported by recent gamma-ray and radio observations. “Using observations recently obtained by the Chandra space telescope, we see evidence for new X-ray filaments,” says Zhang. “My next goal is to conduct a systematic multi-wavelength search for Galactic center filaments and use their spatial distribution and spectral information to further test our theory.”

The American Astronomical Society is the major organization of professional astronomers in North America, with a membership of 7,700 individuals with research and educational interests in astronomical sciences. The 236th meeting is the 2020 summer annual American Astronomical Society conference, which brings together the international astronomer community and shares the most recent discoveries and results in astronomy. For more information, visit aas.org.

Shuo Zhang, assistant professor of physics at Bard, is interested in observational high-energy astrophysics, including supermassive black hole accretion and feedback, origin of Galactic cosmic-rays and dark matter searches. She studies outburst histories of the supermassive massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and nearby galaxies, in order to understand supermassive black hole activity cycle, particle acceleration mechanism and physics under strong gravitational field. Recently, she initiated an original particle astrophysics project on probing Galactic cosmic-ray particles at MeV through PeV energy scales suing innovative methods, aiming to understand the origin of Galactic cosmic-rays and to reveal power particle accelerators at the center of the Galaxy. Zhang served previously as a NASA Einstein Fellow at Boston University, and a postdoctoral scholar and Heising-Simons Fellow at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. In addition to her research, she is a referee for Nature, monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a panel reviewer for NASA’s Astrophysics Data Analysis Project. She is also a member of several scientific collaborations, including Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, eXTP Space Telescope Observatory Science Working Group, Chandra/ACIS Instrument Team, and NuSTAR Space Telescope Science Team, among others. Her work has appeared frequently in Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Zhang earned a BS degree from Tsinghua University and a PhD from Columbia University.
 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Bard College professors Matthew Junge, mathematics, and Felicia Keesing, biology; and Grinnell College professor Nicole Eikmeier, computer science, a $60,000 grant to develop network models that—by more accurately incorporating social distancing measures—better capture the geographic and social complexity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Awarded through the NSF’s Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program, which provides support for urgent scientific research that responds to emergencies and unexpected events, the grant includes funding for salaries, publishing costs, and several undergraduate research assistants over a six-month period.

Junge, Bard assistant professor of mathematics and lead investigator on the project, says their project aims to develop network models and mathematical theory to test the robustness of some prominent models being used by governments to justify the extreme levels of intervention we are living through. One advantage of a network model, which tries to accurately describe the face-to-face interactions each individual in a society has and how an infection might spread, is that it is relatively easy to implement social distancing into the network.

“Mathematicians are fairly adept at modeling the natural evolution of epidemics, but most ‘off the shelf’ models were not built to describe the dramatic levels of intervention—business closures, travel limitations, and social distancing—that we are living through during the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Junge. “The grant brings together a biologist (Felicia), computer scientist (Nicole), and mathematician (myself) as well as a few undergrad research assistants to tackle this problem over the next six months. Felicia is an expert in infectious disease, Nicole in modeling real world networks, and I am experienced in network infection models.”

Matthew Junge, assistant professor of mathematics, comes to Bard from Duke University, where he served as William W. Elliott Research Assistant Professor. He received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Washington, where he also earned MS, BS, and BA degrees. His areas of interest include probability, statistical physics, and mathematical biology. Junge’s research takes a probabilistic approach to particle systems from physics and biology, including models for chemical reactions, species proliferation, and epidemic outbreaks. He also studies random structures from classical mathematics and computer science, such as permutations and fragmented spaces.

Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, has been on the Bard faculty since 2000. She has a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Since 1995, she has studied how African savannas function when the large, charismatic animals like elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and giraffes disappear. She also studies how interactions among species influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission.

Nicole Elkmeier is an assistant professor of computer science at Grinnell College. She has a PhD in Mathematics from Purdue University and a BA from in mathematics and computer science from Concordia College. Her research is in the field of Network Analysis, specifically focused on studying features of real data and constructing and analyzing graph models which maintain those features. A network, in this case, is a set of nodes (people, web pages, etc.) connected by edges (physical connection, collaboration, etc). She is interested in random graph models, which are used to study how well an algorithm may do on a real-world network, and for testing properties that may further improve algorithms. Her research is at the intersection of math and computer science.
 

“Life in the era of COVID-19, as in all times of crisis, amplifies our basic instincts. Do we become anxious or confident, selfish or generous, rigid or adaptable? The same applies to institutions. And right now, at this moment of national and global crisis, Bard College is demonstrating who we are: student-focused, innovative, entrepreneurial, and civically engaged.” —Jonathan Becker, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard College

A broad network of Bard faculty and staff—including Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco and Ross Exo Adams in the Bard Architecture and Design Program; Maggie Hazen and Melinda Solis in Studio Arts; IT’s Doug O’Connor, Hayden Sartoris, and Christopher Ahmed; and the Philosophy Program’s Katie Tabb—has come together to produce face shields for frontline health-care workers who are grappling with a nationwide shortage of protective gear.

With two 3D printers loaned by Bard physicist Paul Cadden-Zimansky, Exo Adams and Santoyo-Orozco set up a makeshift lab in Tivoli to fabricate reusable face shields for health-care workers. When the lab is fully operational, they expect to produce up to 50 shields per week. Hazen and Solis have begun a production line as well, using 3D printers purchased with proceeds from a GoFundMe campaign established by MFA alumna Luba Drozd ’15 that has raised more than $20,000. A small batch of shields has already been distributed to Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, New York, and the group is now looking for more distribution options in the Hudson Valley. Deliveries of face shields are also scheduled for Albany Medical Center and, in Dover, New Jersey, Saint Clare’s Hospital, where a Bard student’s relative works and on whose behalf the student made a request. Anyone interested in distribution or in assisting with the project should contact Doug O’Connor ([email protected]), who is centralizing the distribution efforts with the help of CCS Bard students.

And in Annandale, members of the Fisher Center’s Costume Shop—together with Audrey Smith from Buildings and Grounds, Rosalia Reifler from Environmental Services, and Saidee Brown from the President’s Office—have sewn nearly 200 face masks for the essential College employees who remain on campus.
 
To learn more about virtual engagement opportunities at Bard, visit Bard Connects.

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.— The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Felicia Keesing, Bard College’s David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, a $241,000 grant for a project to write two papers that—drawing on Keesing’s 25 years of research into linkages between ecology, conservation, and health—aim to provide better conceptual frameworks for the study of the impact of biodiversity on plant, animal, and human health. The NSF grant includes funding for travel to conferences and salaries for several undergraduate research assistants over a two-year period.

As the climate warms and rates of local and global extinctions accelerate, understanding connections between the environment and the health of plants, animals, and humans has become increasingly urgent. While the field of disease ecology has held great promise because of the expectation that its practitioners can facilitate predictions and guide ecological interventions to mitigate health concerns connected to the environment, Keesing says that, too frequently, predictions come too late to be useful, and plans for mitigation must await years of data collection. Her project, “A synthesis of the effects of biodiversity on plant, animal, and human health,” looks to provide predictive frameworks that allow practitioners to take advantage of the results of prior research, adapting them to new situations as these arise.

“Ecology is increasingly seen as a key ally of the health sciences, but concrete examples of how ecology can productively inform health policy remain relatively scarce,” Keesing says. “The proposed syntheses could impact environmental policies that affect the health of humans, other animals, and plants, in part by framing research questions that urgently require exploration and explication.”
 

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Hal Haggard and his fellow researchers were awarded a 2019 Buchalter Cosmology Prize at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 6. The annual prize series, created by Dr. Ari Buchalter in 2014, seeks to reward new ideas or discoveries that have the potential to produce a breakthrough advance in our understanding of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe. Professor Haggard and his colleagues were recognized for research testing the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes.

The $5,000 Second Prize was awarded to Professor Haggard, of Bard College and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and colleagues from the Pennsylvania State University: Eugenio Bianchi, Anuradha Gupta, and B. S. Sathyaprakash (also of Cardiff University). The judging panel recognized their paper, “Quantum Gravity and Black Hole Spin in Gravitational Wave Observations: a Test of the Bekenstein-Hawking Entropy,” as “a remarkable test of the thermodynamic character of black holes, predicting the spin characteristics of an initial primordial population of black holes that thermalize in the early universe, and which could be detectable by current and near-future gravitational wave detectors.”

Haggard’s work is part of an ongoing scientific revolution in the study of black holes. Last year, scientists captured the first direct image of a black hole, less than four years after measuring, for the first time, the gravitational waves created by the collision of two black holes circling one another at nearly light speed. These waves directly oscillate space and time. Contrary to initial expectations, pairs of black holes crashing into each other give rise to most of the gravitational waves we can currently measure. Advanced facilities like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) are now observing and measuring black hole collisions about once a week.

Previously, scientists only knew about two main types of black holes: X-ray binary systems, which often contain one active star and a black hole, in the range of five to 15 times the mass of our sun, that “siphons off” mass from the donor star; and supermassive black holes, a class that includes the black hole imaged in 2019, which measures about 6.5 billion solar masses. 

Prior to LIGO, physicists did not expect that the main class of binary collisions measured would be of two black holes, or that those black holes would have masses in the range of 20 to 80 solar masses. Most surprising of all, it now appears possible that most of the black holes measured through gravitational waves aren’t spinning at all before they collide. Scientists had thought that the majority of black holes were formed in the gravitational collapse of a rotating star. 

Haggard and his colleagues’ paper shows that black holes formed in a different way, as part of the hot primordial soup of the early universe, could naturally have zero spin. The authors also find that these black holes would be expected to have masses of 10 to 100 times the mass of our sun. Their arguments are based on understanding how entropy and temperature determine the physical characteristics of a black hole, for example its spin. 

“I’m delighted about this paper because it brings together so many of the strands of my work,” says Haggard. “Gravitational wave measurements are an exciting probe of the rich interplay between gravitational thermodynamics, black holes, and the early history of the cosmos. It is a rare point of contact between the ideas that go into a quantum theory of gravity, like black hole entropy, and experimental observations that are happening right now.”

The $10,000 First Prize was awarded to Jahed Abedi and Niayesh Afshordi for their work entitled “Echoes from the Abyss: A Highly Spinning Black Hole Remnant for the Binary Neutron Star Merger GW170817.” The $2,500 Third Prize was awarded to José Beltrán Jiménez of Universidad de Salamanca and colleagues for their work entitled “The Geometrical Trinity of Gravity.”

Dr. Buchalter, a former astrophysicist turned business entrepreneur, established the prize series in the belief that significant breakthroughs in the field of cosmology still lie ahead but might require challenging and breaking with accepted paradigms. “The 2019 prizewinners represent bold thinking that can help open up new frontiers in our understanding of physics and of the universe,” said Dr. Buchalter. The judging panel for the annual prizes is made up of leading theoretical physicists noted for their work in cosmology. The 2019 panel included Justin Khoury and Mark Trodden of the University of Pennsylvania and Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Learn more at buchwaltercosmologyprize.org.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.05127

https://citizenscience.bard.edu/