News

On Tuesday, February 24, at 7 pm the Center for Environmental Sciences and Humanities at Bard College is presenting the first ever Saw Kill Watershed Community Database, a publicly accessible data tool housing datasets developed by community members, researchers, and Bard faculty and students since the late 1800s. Funded in part by the Hudson River Foundation, Bard Community Sciences Lab, and Hudson River Estuary Program of the DEC, the database is designed to expand in real time as the community surrounding the watershed continues to unearth historical information about the Saw Kill, and conducts community sciences in the watershed with efforts such as ongoing sampling.

The database will be launched at a celebration held at the Elmendorph Inn at 7562 N. Broadway, Red Hook, NY, at 7 pm on Tuesday, February 24. The event is free and open to the public, with refreshments provided.

“This project is like a love letter from Bard to the community we have been part of and served for over 100 years,” said Elias Dueker, associate professor of Environmental and Urban Studies at Bard. “Students, faculty, and staff are working side by side with community leaders to make the database as comprehensive as possible. We have found information in people’s closets, basements, paper files, art, photos, and stories. I don’t think there is anything like this project across the country, but I hope we can inspire other communities to rediscover how much they already know and study about their watersheds—just how much information is waiting there to help them step up to environmental challenges that seem at emergency-level today.”

The project—a collaboration between the Center for Experimental Humanities, Bard Biology and Environmental Studies, and community groups including the Saw Kill Watershed Community, Riverkeeper, and Hudson River Watershed Alliance—represents over 50 years of Bard's commitment in nurturing community efforts to provide meaningful stewardship of the Saw Kill Watershed, which provides drinking water and recreation for both Bard and the surrounding region. By compiling all available information and ongoing environmental research about the watershed in one accessible repository, the project is intended to serve as a versatile resource: as a teaching tool for local schools, for new residents wanting to learn about their surroundings, for community members who may have concerns about what they are observing in the watershed, and to provide meaningful data required to inform policy decisions that would affect the Saw Kill and its communities. For more information, please visit: cesh.bard.edu/csl/saw-kill-monitoring-program

Felicia Keesing, the David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing at Bard College, has been elected a fellow of the British Ecological Society (BES). The fellowship is bestowed in recognition of outstanding contributions to ecology through research, teaching, leadership, policy, and the practical application of ecological science. BES is the oldest ecological society in the world, and brings ecological experts together to seek science-based solutions for some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Keesing is a community ecologist who studies the consequences of interactions among species, particularly as biodiversity declines. Her recent work focuses on how biodiversity influences the probability that humans and other animals will be exposed to infectious diseases. She has worked in Kenya since 1995, studying how the disappearance of elephants, giraffes, and other large mammals influences the way African savannas function. Keesing has also worked extensively to improve biology education for undergraduate students.

Founded over a century ago, the British Ecological Society was the first Society in the world committed to understanding our earth through ecology, the science studying the relationship between living things and their environment. That goal remains today with a global community spanning 120 countries and a strategic mission to find ecological solutions for a planet under threat.  

Separately, Keesing has also been awarded a month-long residency by the Rockefeller Foundation, an organization that promotes the well-being of humanity by finding and scaling solutions that advance opportunity and reverse the climate crisis. The residency will take place at the Bellagio Center on Lake Como in Italy, a retreat center funded by the foundation. Residencies at the Bellagio Center are intended to foster 'breakthroughs essential to humanity’s well-being.' The Center’s residency program has hosted Nobel Laureates, economists, writers, Supreme Court justices, and world leaders.

Bard College Assistant Professor of Physics Abhinav Prem has received a two-year research award from the US Department of Energy to develop new methods that make quantum computers more stable and reliable. The project, “Leveraging Novel Symmetries for Noise-Resilient Topological Quantum Computation,” is a joint collaboration with professor Stephan Haas at the University of Southern California (USC) and was funded under the DOE EXPRESS 2025 program. Bard is the lead institution and recipient of $300,006 of the $500,000 award.

Quantum computers promise dramatic speedups for problems like materials design, drug discovery, and complex climate modeling. But unlike conventional computers, quantum bits — or qubits — are extremely sensitive to their surroundings. Small disturbances such as heat, vibrations, or stray fields can flip or erase quantum information, causing errors that quickly cascade and wreck a computation.

Instead of trying to stop every disturbance, professor Prem uses a different strategy: build “tracks” that guide errors into predictable paths where they can be caught and corrected. These tracks come from mathematical structures called symmetries and from exotic states of matter known as topological phases. By designing systems where errors are forced to behave in regular, controllable ways, this research program aims to create quantum memories and operations that are naturally resilient, reducing the overhead for constant external correction.

“Think of an error as a runaway train,” Prem explains. “If the train can go anywhere, it will crash. Our project is about building the tracks that force those errors to move along very specific, predictable pathways. By constraining how errors propagate, we can effectively 'catch' and correct them before the train goes off the rails. This approach could lead to scalable quantum devices that are inherently resilient to inevitable environmental noise."

The two-year project will combine theoretical work with practical protocols aimed at near-term quantum devices, and will support one postdoctoral researcher each at Bard and USC.