News

Juliana Maitenaz ’22, who graduated with a BA in Global and International Studies and a BM in Classical Percussion Performance, has been selected for an independent study–research Fulbright scholarship to Brazil for the 2023–24 academic year. Her project, “Rhythm and Statecraft,” seeks to identify Brazilian percussion and rhythms as a method of cultural communication. Maitenaz aims to conduct her research in São Paulo and will focus on how percussional elements in the Brazilian traditions of Carnival and Samba School performances are instrumental to the country’s statecraft and national identity. The goal of her research is to examine international communication and collaboration through cultural and musical diplomacy. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to learn more about the role Brazilian percussion plays as an inspiring means of cultural communication,” Maitenaz said. 
 
Evan Tims ’19, who was a joint major in Written Arts and Human Rights with a focus on anthropology at Bard, has been selected for a Fulbright-Nehru independent study–research scholarship to India for the 2023–24 academic year. His project, “From the River to Tomorrow: Perceptions of Kolkata’s Water Future,” studies the perceptions of Kolkata’s water future among urban planners, infrastructure experts, and communities—such as those who work in river transport, fishing, and who live in housing along the banks—most vulnerable to water changes along the Hooghly River. He will analyze the dominant narratives of the city and river’s future and reference scientific and planning literature in understanding the points of confluence and divergence between scientific and colloquial understandings of the river, particularly as different stakeholder communities approach an uncertain water future. “In light of urban development and climate change, Kolkata’s water is facing significant change over the coming decades,” said Tims. “It is crucial to understand the complex, layered relationships between stakeholder communities as they seek to negotiate an increasingly uncertain water future.” While in India, Tims also plans to teach a climate fiction writing workshop. In 2021-2022, he was Bard’s first recipient of the yearlong Henry J. Luce Scholarship, which enabled him to conduct ethnographic research on Himalayan water futures and lead a climate writing workshop in Nepal and, later, in Bangladesh. Earlier this academic year, Tims won the prestigious Schwarzman Scholarship to China. As an undergraduate at Bard, Tims also won two Critical Language Scholarships to study Bangla in Kolkata during the summers of 2018 and 2019. Read an interview with Tims about Southeast Asia's place in contemporary climate fiction here.
 
Elias Ephron ’23, a joint major in Political Studies and Spanish Studies, has been selected as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) to Spain for the 2023–24 academic year. While in Spain, Ephron hopes to engage with his host community through food, sharing recipes, hosting dinner parties, and cooking together; take part in Spain’s unique and visually stunning cultural events, like flamenco performances, and Semana Santa processions; visit the hometown of the great poet and playwright Federico García Lorca; and, as a queer individual, meet other queer people. “Having learned Spanish, French, and German to fluency or near-fluency, I understand that language learning requires many approaches. Some are more commonly thought of as ‘fun’ or ‘nascent’ modes of learning, while others more clearly resemble work. I hope to marry this divide, showing students that language learning is both labor and recreation; they may have to work hard, but it can be a great deal of fun, too,” said Ephron. In addition to his work as a writing tutor in the Bard Learning Commons, Ephron has received multiple awards, including the PEN America Fellowship and the Bard Center for the Study of Hate Internship Scholarship.  
 
Eleanor Tappen ’23, a Spanish Studies major, has been selected as a Fulbright ETA to Mexico for the 2023–24 academic year. Tappen has studied abroad in Granada, Spain, received her TESOL certification (which involved 40 hours of training), volunteered in a local elementary school in the fall of 2022, and works as an ESL tutor at the Learning Commons. For Tappen, a Fulbright teaching assistantship in Mexico is an intersection of her academic interest in Mexican literature and her passion for accessible and equitable language learning. During her Fulbright year, Tappen intends to volunteer at a local community garden, a setting she found ideal for cross-cultural exchange and friendship during her time at the Bard Farm. She also hopes to learn about pre-Colombian farming practices, whose revival is currently being led by indigenous movements in Mexico seeking to confront issues presented by unsustainable industrial agricultural practices. “I’m thrilled by the opportunity to live in the country whose literature and culture have served as such positive and significant points in both my academic and personal life. During my time as an ETA in Mexico, I hope to inspire in my students the same love of language-learning I found at Bard.”
 
Biology major Macy Jenks ’23 has been selected as an ETA to Taiwan for the 2023–24 academic year. Jenks is an advanced Mandarin language speaker having attended a Chinese immersion elementary school and continuing her Mandarin language studies through high school and college, including three weeks spent in China living with host family in 2015. She has tutored students in English at Bard’s Annandale campus, as well as through the Bard Prison Initiative at both Woodbourne Correctional Facility and Eastern New York Correctional Facility. She also has worked with the Bard Center for Civic Engagement to develop curricula and provide STEM programming to local middle and high school students. “As a Fulbright ETA, I hope to equip students with the tools necessary to hone their English language and cultural skills while encouraging them to develop their own voices,” says Jenks. While in Taiwain, she plans to volunteer with the Taiwan Root Medical Peace Corps, which offers medical care to rural communities, or with the Taipei Medical University in a more urban setting to further engage with the community and learn more about Taiwan’s healthcare systems and settings. With her love of hiking, Jenks also hopes to explore various cultural sites including the cave temples of Lion’s Head Mountain and Fo Guang Shan monastery and enjoy the natural beauty of Taiwan.

Bard Conservatory alumna Avery Morris ’18, who graduated with a BA in Mathematics and a BM in Violin Performance, has been selected for a prestigious Fulbright Study Research Award for 2023–24. Her project, “Gideon Klein’s Lost Works and the Legacy of Czech Musical Modernism,” aims to bring to light the early works of Czech composer and Holocaust victim Gideon Klein (1919–1945), which were lost until they were discovered in a suitcase in the attic of a house in Prague in the 1990s. She will live in Prague for the upcoming academic year and continue her research on Klein, which has been a focus of her studies at Stony Brook University, where she is pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Violin Performance.

Getzamany "Many" Correa ’21, a Global and International Studies major, has been selected as an ETA to Spain for the 2023–24 academic year. Correa was an international student in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Hungary. As an international student in high school, she started an initiative called English Conversation Buddies with the State Department-sponsored American Corner in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has received her TESOL certification (which involved 40 hours of training) and worked as an ESL tutor at the Learning Commons. In Spain, Correa hopes to create a book club that introduces students to diverse authors writing in English, study Spanish literature, and host dinners with the locals she meets. She also plans to volunteer with EducationUSA and support students applying to colleges and universities in the U.S. “A year-long ETA in Spain will allow me to experience a culture and language central to my academic and personal interests, leverage my background in education while furthering my teaching experience, and make meaningful connections through cross-cultural engagement,” says Correa.
 
The Fulbright US Student Program expands perspectives through academic and professional advancement and cross-cultural dialogue. Fulbright creates connections in a complex and changing world. In partnership with more than 140 countries worldwide, the Fulbright US Student Program offers unparalleled opportunities in all academic disciplines to passionate and accomplished graduating college seniors, graduate students, and young professionals from all backgrounds. Program participants pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad. us.fulbrightonline.org.

In “The Chimpanzee Wars,” a recent post to Wild Cousins, her Psychology Today UK blog, Associate Professor of Psychology Sarah Dunphy-Lelii engages in a thought experiment about how the state of knowing and of understanding of who knows and who doesn’t know could potentially impact the politics of power transfer within dominance hierarchies of chimpanzees. 

Among more than 200 Ngogo chimpanzees living in Kibale National Park, Uganda, one undisputed alpha named Jackson ruled for years until internal conflicts split the largest known chimpanzee community into two warring factions—Westerners and Centrallers. After Jackson is killed from injuries sustained in a battle, no younger alpha males step up to seize leadership of the Centrallers. A likely explanation, according to researchers, is that they didn’t know Jackson was dead. Only one Centraller, a potential alpha named Peterson, witnessed his death, and none found his body. Theoretically, Peterson could have used this position to his advantage. “Chimpanzees are socially sophisticated. Their dominance hierarchies are not based solely on physical strength. What we might call politics—the accumulation of social capital through strategic alliances over time—play a significant role in the rise to leadership. Under conditions like this one, between the Westerners and the Centrallers, insight into others’ states of knowledge could be decisive,” writes Dunphy-Lelii. She notes, however, that evidence to date suggests chimps, like Peterson, are not using this information the way humans would. 

Three Bard College alumni/ae—Beatrice Abbott ’15, Megumi Kivuva ’22, and Tobias Golz Timofeyev ’21—have been awarded competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships for the 2023 award year. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) aims to “ensure the quality, vitality, and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States” and “seeks to broaden participation in science and engineering of underrepresented groups, including women, minorities, persons with disabilities, and veterans” through selection, recognition, and financial support of individuals who have demonstrated the potential to be high achieving scientists and engineers early in their careers.

Beatrice Abbott ’15, who majored in political studies at Bard, has won a fellowship for the field of social sciences. She is a master’s student in geography at the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include evidence/forensics, critical migration studies, critical cartography and geographic information systems (GIS), and visual culture.

Megumi Kivuva ’22, who majored in Spanish studies and computer science with a concentration in Experimental Humanities at Bard, has won a fellowship for the field of STEM education and learning research. Kivuva is a PhD student in computing education at the University of Washington. Their research “aims to broaden participation in computing education for Black and refugee students,” and they “use community participatory research to understand the barriers to accessing computing education and codesign interventions to make computing education more accessible to these communities.”
 
Tobias Golz Timofeyev ’21, who majored in mathematics at Bard, has won a fellowship for the field of mathematical biology. He is a PhD student in mathematical sciences at the University of Vermont. The fellowship will allow him to focus on his research project, "Decoding Parallel Processing in the Brain using the Connectome Eigenfunctions." 

As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the GRFP has a long history of selecting recipients who achieve high levels of success in their future academic and professional careers. The five-year fellowship period provides a three-year annual stipend of $37,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, as well as access to opportunities for professional development. NSF Fellows are anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering. Each year, the NSF receives more than 12,000 applications to the GRFP program, which has awarded fellowships to its selected scholars since 1952.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2023 Guggenheim Fellowships to three Bard faculty members and four Bard alumnae. Felicia Keesing, David and Rosalie Rose Distinguished Professor of Science, Mathematics, and Computing, Laura Larson, cochair of photography at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Jordan Weber, visiting artist in residence at Studio Arts, artist Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’20, photographer Sasha Phyars-Burgess ’10, artist Jessica Segall ’00, and artist Martine Syms MFA ’17 have been named 2023 Guggenheim Fellows. 

Chosen through a rigorous review process from nearly 2,500 applicants, Keesing, Larson, Weber, Nguyen, Phyars-Burgess, Segall and Syms were among a diverse group of 171 artists, writers, scholars, and scientists to receive a 2023 Fellowship. Keesing was awarded a Fellowship for her research on the ecology of infectious diseases, Larson for her work in photography, Weber for his work in the arts, Nguyen for her work in the arts, Phyars-Burgess for her work in photography, Segall for her work in the arts, and Syms for her work in the arts. 

“Like Emerson, I believe that fullness in life comes from following our calling,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the Guggenheim Foundation and 1985 Fellow in Poetry. “The new class of Fellows has followed their calling to enhance all of our lives, to provide greater human knowledge and deeper understanding. We’re lucky to look to them to bring us into the future.”

In all, 48 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 72 different academic institutions, 24 states and the District of Columbia, and two Canadian provinces are represented in this year’s class of Fellows, who range in age from 31 to 85. Close to 50 Fellows have no current full-time college or university affiliation. Many Fellows’ projects directly respond to issues like the lasting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, democracy and policing, scientific innovation, climate change, and identity.

Created and initially funded in 1925 by Senator Simon and Olga Guggenheim in memory of their son John Simon Guggenheim, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has sought since its inception to “further the development of scholars and artists by assisting them to engage in research in any field of knowledge and creation in any of the arts, under the freest possible conditions.” Since its establishment, the Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors. The great range of fields of study is a unique characteristic of the Fellowship program. For more information on the 2023 Fellows, please visit the Foundation’s website at gf.org.

Felicia Keesing’s research focuses on the ecology of infectious diseases in New York's Hudson Valley and in the savannas of central Kenya. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. Keesing was awarded the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2000), and has been the recipient of grants from National Geographic Society, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, among others. She was coeditor of Infectious Disease Ecology: Effects of Ecosystems on Disease and of Disease on Ecosystems (Princeton University Press, 2008), and has also contributed to articles such 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. 

Laura Larson’s work looks to the history of photography as a documentary practice to tell personal and sociocultural narratives. From 2002-2019, she was represented by Lennon, Weinberg Gallery in New York, where she presented four one-person exhibitions, including Complimentary (2002), Apparition (2005), and Electric Girls and the Invisible World (2009). Larson’s work has been featured at a variety of institutions, including Art in General, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Centre Pompidou, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Her exhibitions have been reviewed in Artforum, Hyperallergic, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and TimeOut New York. Larson is also the author of two books, Hidden Mother (2017), and City of Incurable Women (2022), both of which feature her research into 19th century photography. 

Jordan Weber is a New York- and Midwest-based regenerative land sculptor and activist who works at the crossroads of social justice and environmental racism. He has been an inaugural Harvard LOEB/ArtLab Fellow, a Blade of Grass Fellow, and an Iowa Arts Council Fellow, and has held residencies at Yale University’s inaugural Environmental Humanities, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and Washington University’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity (CRE2) in St. Louis. He has been the recipient of multiple awards, including the 2022 United States Artists Award, Creative Capital Award, Joan Mitchell Award, Tanne Arts Foundation award, and African American Leadership Forum Grant. Weber is also working with Bard College on plans for a public art project, details of which will be announced later this year.

Diane Severin Nguyen MFA ’20 is an artist who works with photography and time-based media. Her solo and two-person exhibitions include IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS at SculptureCenter, New York, and The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Between Two Solitudes at Stereo, Warsaw; Tyrant Star at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Minor twin worlds, with Brandon Ndife, at Bureau, New York; Reoccurring Afterlife, at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong; and Flesh Before Body at Bad Reputation, Los Angeles. Nguyen has also been featured in multiple group exhibitions, including Greater New York at MoMA PS1, New York; Metabolic Rift at Berlin Atonal, Berlin; Made in L.A. 2020: a version at Hammer Museum and The Huntington, Los Angeles; and Bodies of Water: 13th Shanghai Biennale, at Power Station of Art, in Shanghai. Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, and The Escalette Collection of Art at Chapman University.

Sasha Phyars-Burgess ’10 was born in Brooklyn, New York to Trinidadian parents and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is interested in using photography education as community empowerment, and her first monograph, Untitled, explores the African diaspora around the world. 

Jessica Segall ’00 is an artist who uses hostile and threatened landscapes as the sites for her work. While embedded in these sites, she plays with both the risk of engaging with the environment and the vulnerability of the environment itself. Segall's work is built on a foundation of research that often includes cross-disciplinary collaboration and collaboration with scientists, activists and non-human beings. Her work has been featured internationally, including at COP 26, The Fries Museum, the Coreana Museum of Art, the Havana Bienal, the Queens Museum of Art, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the National Museum of Jewish American History, the Inside Out Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Vojvodina, the National Gallery of Indonesia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, in Croatia, the Mongolian National Modern Art Gallery and the National Symposium for Electronic Art. Segall has also received grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Virginia A Groot Foundation, the FST Studioprojects Fund, the Puffin Foundation, the Arts Envoy Program and Art Matters. Her work has been featured in Cabinet Magazine, the New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, Mousse Magazine and Art in America. Her work is in the collections of the Museum de Domijnen and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. 

Martine Syms MFA ’17 is an artist who has earned wide recognition for a practice that combines conceptual grit, humor, and social commentary. Her work has been shown extensively, including solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and ICA London. She has also done commissioned work for brands such as Prada, Nike, and Celine, among others. She is a recipient of the Creative Capital Award, a United States Artists fellowship, the Tiffany Foundation award, and the Future Fields Art Prize. She is in a band called Aunt Sister and hosts Double Penetration, a monthly radio show on NTS. Syms also runs Dominica Publishing. 

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.”

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.
 

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.

 

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.

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.

McDonald’s business, so heavily reliant on beef, is “fundamentally at odds with the Earth’s integrity,” says Gidon Eshel, environmental and urban studies research professor, in an interview with the Guardian. The company, which has announced sustainability initiatives in recent years, would need to commit to dramatically reducing the amount of beef it serves, according to climate experts. Food systems account for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent study, which experts argue calls for immediate and substantive action. “No fig leaf, however persuasive or covering it is, can change that fact,” Eshel says.

Full Story in the Guardian

As we enter the holiday season, many are wondering how best to keep safe while visiting family and friends during the ongoing pandemic. Juliet Morrison ’03, member of the Board of Trustees and assistant professor in the microbiology and plant pathology department at University of California Riverside, spoke with the New York Times about practical masking tips, the efficacy of vaccines, and what the future might hold with respect to COVID prevention and care.

“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.

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.

Research Professor Gidon Eshel, who teaches primarily in the Environmental and Urban Studies Program at Bard College, has coauthored a paper in Nature that provides the most comprehensive estimate to date of the environmental performance of blue food (fish and other aquatic foods) and for the first time, compares stressors across the diversity of farmed and wild aquatic species. The study reveals which species are already performing well in terms of emissions, freshwater and land use, and identifies opportunities for further reducing environmental footprints.

Read the Paper in Nature
Nature Story on Blue Foods
Learn More about Blue Food Assessment

“Our rich and complex emotional lives are a defining feature of what makes us human. Experiencing the full breadth of human emotion is often healthy and adaptive for our species, but there are times when we may be motivated to change, or regulate, our emotions in the service of other goals we may be pursuing,” says Richard Lopez, assistant professor of psychology, who also directs the Regulation of Everyday Affect, Craving, and Health (REACH) Lab at Bard.

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)
 

“Since the evidence is by now overwhelming that long-term human activity is accelerating the emergence of novel pathogens and increasing the risk of pandemics, the question investigators should really be asking is: did some recent, one-off event such as a lab accident exacerbate the already high and growing risk of spillover of a virus with pandemic potential caused by a decades-long shift towards industrialised farming and the wildlife trade?” writes Laura Spinney in the Guardian, citing Keesing’s April 2021 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper.

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.”