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Dan Gettinger, Bard alumnus and codirector of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, talks about The Drone Primer: A Compendium of the Key Issues.

Biologist Felicia Keesing's research focuses on the cascading effects of ecosystem disruption, particularly how decreased species diversity can lead to an increase in infectious disease.

Felicia Keesing and colleagues simulated a large mammal extinction by fencing off areas of African savanna. Now that research is fuel for speculation about the future of humanity.

The Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College announces the release of The Drone Primer: A Compendium of the Key Issues, an online and print publication about the basic facts, issues, questions, and patterns related to unmanned systems in military, civilian, and commercial contexts. The Drone Primer is a comprehensive and concise handbook covering fundamental themes, questions, and facts about drones in technology, history, law, strategy, and culture. The report includes a portfolio of drone art, a first for a publication of this kind. The primer is free and available to the public.

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. Keesing is a community ecologist who studies the consequences of interactions among species.

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 and her biology department colleague, Mike Tibbetts, currently have two grants from the National Science Foundation to study emerging tick-borne diseases of humans called anaplasmosis and babesiosis. Keesing also studies Lyme disease, another tick-borne disease. She is particularly interested in how species diversity affects disease transmission. Keesing has also received research grants from the National Geographic Society, National Institutes of Health, and Environmental Protection Agency, 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, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Ecology Letters, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Ecology, BioScience, Conservation Biology, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases, and Canadian Journal of Zoology, among others.

Rudd Davis helped create Swarm, a product that tracks foot traffic in stores, helping small business owners streamline staffing and improve sales.

Wallace Benjamin Flint and L. May Hawver Professor of Chemistry Craig Anderson has been teaching at Bard since 2001. He holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Western Ontario and a Ph.D. from the Université de Montréal.

In 2011 he was awarded two major prizes for his work: a $198,000 award from the Chemical Structure, Dynamics and Mechanisms Program of the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation, and the prestigious and selective Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, recognizing both his scholarly research with undergraduates as well as his compelling commitment to teaching, and providing a research grant of $60,000. Mark Halsey, associate dean of the College, notes that “Professor Anderson has a long track record in engaging undergraduate students with exciting and fruitful research,” stressing that many of Anderson’s students go on to graduate study at leading research universities. Professor Anderson’s research is centered on the study of transition metal complexes with general applications toward bioinorganic and catalytic systems, and his work has been published in numerous scholarly publications devoted to chemical sciences, including Organometallics, Inorganic Chemistry, Journal of Organometallic Chemistry, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and the Canadian Journal of Chemistry. His other awards include the Chemical Institute of Canada’s Award of Excellence, Andrew E. Scott Medal and Prize, and the Society of Chemical Industry Award.