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Craig Anderson, 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, has been awarded a Research in Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The proposal has been awarded $375,699 in funding, and focuses on examining the effects that ligand architecture and metal oxidation state have on the properties of luminescent platinum compounds. This is Anderson's fourth NSF RUI since 2011, with the four totaling over $1,000,000 for research with Bard College undergraduate students. The three previous awards have supported the publication of sixteen research articles with more than seventy undergraduate coauthorships.

“I am extremely excited as this award provides opportunities for our undergraduate students to participate in research projects,” said Anderson. “I think undergraduate research is one of the highest impact practices that contributes to the success of our students. I would like to thank my students, my chemistry colleagues, Bard OIS, and Bard College leadership for their assistance with this proposal.”

RUI proposals support Primarily Undergraduate Institutions faculty in research that engages them in their professional fields, builds capacity for research at their home institution, and supports the integration of research and undergraduate education.

The NSF is an independent federal agency that supports science and engineering in all 50 states and US territories. It was established in 1950 by Congress to promote the progress of science, advance the nation’s health, prosperity and welfare, and to secure the US national defense. Its investments account for about 25% of federal support to US colleges and universities for research driven by curiosity and discovery. NSF aims to keep the US at the leading edge of discovery in science and engineering, to the benefit of all, without barriers to participation.

On Friday, April 26, 2024, the Bard College Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing will present “Why We Die,” a talk featuring Venki Ramakrishnan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and author of the book Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality. The event will be held at the Olin Auditorium on Bard’s campus, taking place from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm, and will include a Q&A followed by a reception. For more information, please contact [email protected].

The last few decades have seen dramatic advances in human understanding of aging and death, and along with that knowledge comes an impulse to negate some of the causes of aging to improve health in old age. Some would wish to postpone aging and death, perhaps indefinitely. Ramakrishnan will explore these issues, including our current understanding of the causes of aging and efforts to tackle it, while also touching on the potential social and ethical implications of such work.

Venki Ramakrishnan grew up in India and left at the age of 19 for the US. After a long career there, he moved in 1999 to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He works on the structure and function of the ribosome, an enormous molecular complex that reads the genetic information on mRNA (itself copied from a stretch of DNA) to synthesize the proteins they specify. His work also showed how many antibiotics work by blocking bacterial ribosomes, which could help to design better antibiotics. For this work, he shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. From 2015-2020, he was president of the Royal Society, a Fellowship of many of the world's most eminent scientists and the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence. Ramakrishnan is the author of a popular memoir, Gene Machine, a frank description of the race for the structure of the ribosome and the science and personalities involved, and Why We Die, about the biology of aging and our current efforts to combat it.

This talk is made possible thanks to the support of the Office of the Dean of the College and the Division of Science, Mathematics, and Computing.

Bard alumna Michelle Reynoso ’22 (BHSEC Manhattan ’18) has been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in support of her graduate work in materials research at Columbia University. The program aims to ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the US, and the five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $37,000. Julia Sheffler ’22 has also been awarded an honorable mention by the NSF for her work in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Paul Cadden-Zimansky, associate professor of physics at Bard College, was interviewed on the Quantum Spin podcast by host Veronica Combs about his work as a physicist, as well as his role as a member of a committee convened by the Physical Society to coordinate the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, a global initiative that will celebrate 100 years of quantum mechanics in 2025. The year-long initiative will celebrate the profound impacts of quantum science on technology, culture, and our understanding of the natural world. “Quantum mechanics over this past hundred years has become the central theory for our understanding of the physical world,” Cadden-Zimansky told Combs. “It is our best physical theory, it is our most well tested physical theory, it applies to things that aren’t just small, you can see effects of quantum mechanics on galactic scales. And so, I think most physicists have an understanding of that—they didn’t appreciate that when they first constructed quantum mechanics.” He continues, “I think over the course of a hundred years, the story has kind of been, ‘No actually, this is really this grand framework for understanding everything around us.’”

How does one combat disparities in access to computer science classes for historically marginalized populations? One answer, proposed in a paper coauthored by Bard alum Megumi Kivuva ’22, could be embroidery. “We’ve come a long way as a country in offering some computer science courses in schools,” Kivuva said to the University of Washington. “But we’re learning that access doesn’t necessarily mean equity. It doesn’t mean underrepresented minority groups are always getting the opportunity to learn.” Using Turtlestitch, an open-source coding language, Kivuva and their coparticipants worked with 12 students from demographically diverse backgrounds, using a unique pedagogical approach “where the students had a say each week in what they learned and how they’d be assessed,” the University of Washington reports. “We wanted to dispel the myth that a coder is someone sitting in a corner, not being very social, typing on their computer,” Kivuva said. The subsequent paper on their findings, “Cultural-Centric Computational Embroidery,” won Best Paper at the inaugural technical symposium of Special Interest the Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE).

The Mathematics and Statistics Department at Hope College invited Bard Associate Professor of Mathematics Lauren Rose to give an interactive discussion to faculty and students about the card game Quads, which she invented with Jeffrey Pereira ’13, who helped design Quads as part of his Senior Project. During her talk “Quads: A SET-like Game with a Twist,” Rose explained the rules of the game—players try to create as many quad groupings as they can, given several conditions—and participants had a chance to try their hand at it. “SET is a popular card game that you can teach a five-year-old (because you don’t need to be able to read) but there’s a ton of math in it,” said Rose. “SET contains three cards … so we asked, ‘What if we did four cards?’” Although the rules are straightforward, the game and its variations apply mathematical concepts including combinatorics, probability, geometry, and algebra. Rose and other mathematicians continue to study the underlying layers of math and logic that drive the game play. The paper, “How Many Cards Should You Lay Out in a Game of EvenQuads,” coauthored by Tim Goldberg ’02, Raphael Walker ’21, Julia Crager ’23, Felicia Flores ’23, Darrion Thornburgh ’24, and Daniel Rose Levine ’24, was recently published the journal La Matematica. The cards in the official Quads game, published as EvenQuads by the Association for Women in Math, feature images and biographies of female mathematicians on one side, which Rose hopes will encourage women to consider entering the traditionally male-dominated field of mathematics.

Bard College is pleased to announce that Bard students Reed Campbell ’25, a junior biology major, and Emma Derrick ’25, a junior physics major, have been announced as recipients of the 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholarship. The Goldwater scholarship supports college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.

Campbell, who is currently studying abroad at the University College Roosevelt in the Netherlands, has conducted research with his advisor, Dr. Cathy Collins, as well as at the University of Delaware's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environmental Ocean Sciences during an REU internship. He hopes to earn a PhD in Marine Ecology and conduct research in marine conservation at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. 

Derrick has conducted research with her advisor, Dr. Antonios Kontos, on Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) to analyze the effects of annealing on the development of defects in mirror coatings.  After Bard, Emma aims to earn a PhD in Experimental Gravitational-Wave Physics, after which she hopes to secure a faculty position, conduct research, and mentor and collaborate with students. 

The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, established by Congress in 1986 in honor of Senator Barry Goldwater, aims to ensure that the U.S. is producing highly-qualified professionals in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering. Over its 30-year history, Goldwater Scholarships have been awarded to thousands of undergraduates, many of whom have gone on to win other prestigious awards such as the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Fellowship, Rhodes Scholarship, Churchill Scholarship and the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship that support the graduate school work of Goldwater scholars. Learn more at goldwaterscholarship.gov/