News

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Where does someone who is at the top of their game in both basketball and biology go to college? For Christina Kiser, the answer was Bard, hands down. 
 
The native of North Providence, Rhode Island, was recruited for the women’s basketball team at Bard, and also is a recipient of the prestigious Distinguished Scientist Scholarship. “Through high school I knew I wanted to go to med school and be a surgeon,” says Kiser, who early on joined Bard Emergency Medical Services, an experience that “solidified my desire to work in the medical field,” she says. “And my access to hands-on research was really important. Getting into a lab setting as early as the first year is almost unheard of. The Bard-Rockefeller Semester in Science is a fantastic opportunity that no other school can provide.”
 
In her Senior Project, Kiser examined antibiotic resistance and effective treatments. Having taken both epidemiology and human rights courses, she wanted to underscore not only the diseases but the social problems behind them: “changing the system itself from within.”
 
On the sports side, Kiser is copresident of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, which aims to bridge gaps between athletics and the rest of the Bard community. And she works three jobs: at the front desk of the Stevenson Athletic Center, at the Dean of Students Affairs Office, and as a babysitter for several families. 
 
Outside her major, she has taken several psychology courses “simply for fun,” history, and literature, “which pushes me to write in a different way from science, since I am able to put my opinion in there. Because that’s unfamiliar, it’s been a struggle but I’ve enjoyed it.” But her most memorable experience has been the pre–first year Language and Thinking Program (L&T). “It is how I was introduced to college, my first time feeling I had to be an adult, having to take responsibility for myself. I tend to be introverted and had to force myself to be out there. L&T was difficult in terms of learning, critical thinking, and a lot of reading. But when I finished, I felt I’d gotten past various barriers. It prepared me for ‘real’ college courses.” 
 
Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude, Kiser’s Senior Project adviser, has been a huge influence. “The energy in her classroom is unparalleled, you just feed off it. She also is so involved with the Bard community as one of the house professors [who oversee informal student communities], and she comes to most student events. I go to her for almost everything.” 
 
In light of that sense of community, Kiser feels inspired by “the atmosphere at Bard, encouraging people to both display and find their true selves. People feel they don’t have to hide who they are. It’s a place where your voice can be heard.” And having her voice heard led to the most rewarding part of her time at Bard: “The friendships I’ve been able to build here. Having the opportunity to foster those friendships is not something you see at other colleges.” 
 
Her advice to prospective Bard students: “Try to come to campus. Photos can’t do it justice. People don’t realize that coming to Bard, which feels rural and secluded, means access to beautiful surroundings two hours from New York City. The small class size is also so important; you can foster close relationships with professors. I’m in a class of nine students, and know everyone very well.”
 
Finally, she says, “It was vital for me to see where I was going and visit the surrounding area, have candid conversations with students and ask important questions. And I needed to know about the dining experience. I love food.”

Levi Lakota Lowe’s arrival at Bard was like going on a successful blind date: he came to Bard sight unseen—and fell in love with the campus as soon as he saw it. The senior from Jamestown, California, had heard of Bard from the director of a play he’d acted in during high school. 
 
“My first impression was of a campus that’s huge and gorgeous, monumental and so beautiful,” he says. Academically, he was drawn to Bard because “I was attracted to the double major aspect and the fact that it was a small school. I wanted to do things with brains—neurology—and heart—drawing.” Deciding to pursue art on his own, he became a double major in biology and philosophy “because I’m obsessed with questions. What I love to do in my free time is think of new ways to do things and approach new things, and look at their philosophical implications. I love this type of thinking.” His Senior Project in philosophy looks at dependence theory and addiction, advised by Kathryn Tabb, assistant professor of philosophy.
 
Science at Bard is also exciting. “We have really high-tech stuff. We were able to collect soil, inventory the bacteria in it, and extract, isolate, and replicate its DNA.” His Senior Project, with Associate Professor of Biology Gabriel Perron as adviser, examines how temperature affects bacteria that are common in hospital infections. 
 
Lowe’s interactions with Tabb, Perron, and Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude have inspired him. “Brooke is super welcoming and so warm and excited about things,” he says. “I got interested in genetics in her class.” And his associations with fellow students “have completely changed my life. My friends have taught me about morals, patience, relationships, confidence, community.” 
 
His advice to students looking at Bard? “Be willing to talk with people. Ask questions—it’s insane how much the faculty are willing to help you. Go up to a professor after class. It could change the whole course of your life.” He adds, “I have never seen so many resources. All the advice, whether academia or personal, is awesome.”
 
Extracurricular activities for Lowe make Bard “a place to destress,” such as the Surrealist Circus, which creates pop-up events with puppets, costumes, stilts, and acrobatics. Lowe also belonged to the Bard Bars rap club and Brothers at Bard, a mentoring group for young men, “which was a great place to be surrounded by people of color.” Slacklining among trees on campus is a favorite pastime, though juggling two majors means that finding time for activities outside of class is a challenge. 
 
After Bard, Lowe plans to attend graduate school in philosophy; he hopes to teach philosophy of science or medical ethics at the college level. “Being able to see people interested in what I’m interested in is why I want to be a teacher. 
 
“Bard is a place that forces me to think about things,” he says when asked how Bard has changed him. “It’s helped me see I can do whatever I want, so my studies don’t feel like work. I’ve found a way to do two Senior Projects and carry 21 credits and stay relaxed. I’m so excited about going to class. Bard’s given me a perfect metric for what I feel should be a baseline for an education. I’m charmed by this place; this is my safe haven.” 

Jen Lara arrived at Bard intending to become a physics major with a future in engineering, but an important part of her Bard education included the realization that other interests were dearer to her heart. 
 
“I saw that my real passion is not in the world of engineering. It doesn’t hold the sparkle for me. I've always been teaching, I have always tutored, I've always worked with nonprofits. I want to work in education in the minority community to see women in STEM [science, technology, engineering, mathematics]. STEM is where I can use my talents and abilities to do what I'm really passionate about, which is helping my community to do better in these subjects.”
 
So she is majoring in mathematics, and spent time teaching STEM at a nonprofit and at a local middle school. “Everything in my life revolves around education,” she says.
 
The daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, and the first in her family to attend college, Lara grew up in the Corona, Queens, neighborhood of New York City. Her adviser convinced her to look at Bard, which, she says, was “the only school” that noted her first-generation status could be empowering rather than limiting. “They said, ‘We need to make a plan and find a space for you to be able to accomplish whatever you want to do. We’ll figure it out and we’ll make it happen.’ It was the first time I thought, ‘I don't have to do things by myself.’”
 
Lara became a  peer counselor (PC) at Bard—someone in the residence halls who is trained to deal with many of her fellow residents’ concerns—which helped bring her out of her shell. “My first year I experienced culture shock, and being a PC has made me more social. I like being a support system for students, and the students are just as much a role model for me as I am for them. I take as much as I give. I tell them, ‘Advocate for yourselves; it’s the best thing that you can do.’” 
 
In addition to being a PC and tutoring, she holds two jobs on campus while carrying her academic load. Nevertheless, she says, “I have students in my residence who run clubs and do athletics and their academics—that’s inspiring to me.” 
 
One surprising thing she has learned at Bard is that “I learn very differently from most students. The time and dedication the faculty invested to help me made me realize that there are many different ways to learn. The strong support system makes sure that the way they are teaching matches the way you are learning.”
 
She wants students who are interested in Bard to know the kind of education she is receiving in Annandale: “You really learn how to be confident in your abilities and not be hard on yourself when things go wrong,” she advises. “You should be hungry, when you get here, to build the community that you want. The fact that Bard gives you the opportunity to do that is not something you’ll find at any other school.”
 
“At Bard,” she adds, “you are going to do things that you never thought you were capable of doing. And they might make you feel uncomfortable, but the fact that you can create a support system means you can also create the path that you want to take.”

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).

A longer and wilder lawn can be better for the ecosystem, but it raises questions about the health risks of a potentially larger tick population around your home. “When we’re talking about your risk of exposure, we are talking about two things,” Dr. Keesing told the New York Times. “At work are both the entomological risk — how many ticks there are in the habitat — and also how much time you’re spending in that habitat.” Dr. Keesing discusses the results of her five-year Tick Project study for the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Felicia Keesing is the David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing and has been on the Bard College faculty since 2000.

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.”

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.” 

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.

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.

For the third time, the American Mathematical Society has awarded Japheth Wood, director of quantitative literacy and continuing associate professor of mathematics, and the Creative and Analytical Math Programs (CAMP) of the Bard Math Circle the Epsilon Award. The award aids and promotes programs that “support and nurture mathematically talented youth in the United States,” funding existing summer programs proven to reach and support high school students. CAMP will return to an in-person format this year and will serve local and regional middle school students, with a staff that includes Bard alumni/ae and current students in mathematics and computer science.
 
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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.

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.

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. 

During the 2020 war in Armenia, mycologist and Bard biology professor Patricia Kaishian felt her connection to her Armenian heritage deepen as the country suffered. In response to the war, she and three colleagues formed a collective of American mycologists of Armenian descent, the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, which works to study Armenia’s biodiversity and provide material support to the country’s mycologists. 
 
Patricia Kaishian joined the Bard College faculty last year as visiting assistant professor of biology. In addition to her work identifying and classifying fungi and promoting conservation and biodiversity, Kaishian’s academic work also includes interdisciplinary studies focused on the philosophy of science, feminist bioscience and science communication.

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.