Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Research Newsletter - City University … · 2009. 3. 19. · surfaces, and three-dimensional spaces. Before joining the Lehman faculty

www.cuny.edu/research Page 1

Greetings from the Vice Chancellor

Let me start by wishing you all an enjoyable and productive summer. It has been an extremely busy spring, in part because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided an injection of research funds into the federal agencies. The biggest caveat was that the money had to be disbursed quickly, and that has meant responding to requests for applications and submitting grant proposals quickly, on a timescale of just a few weeks in many cases. Thus far, I am proud to say that CUNY researchers have been magnificent in their commitment to deliver these grant proposals. Submissions have been made to the NIH shared instrumentation program and high-end instrumentation program, and the NSF major research instrumentation program deadline is coming up on August 10. The new NIH Challenge Grant program resulted in 65 proposals from CUNY researchers. . We are closely monitoring the number of ARRA-funded awards across CUNY and will continue to keep you updated.

We have also been busy with planning for the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) which is projected to come on-line in 2013, as well as working closely with our Facilities Planning and Construction group on an initiative to renovate both research and teaching laboratories at many of our campuses. Finally, we have launched a number of new initiatives this year including the following:

• Junior faculty mentoring program – which pairs senior faculty members with early career faculty members to foster grantsmanship and facilitate grant proposal submissions in cases where a junior faculty member has been unable to identify an appropriate mentor within their own department or campus.

• Grant writing workshops – that are helping junior faculty understand the nuts and bolts of writing a grant proposal to the federal agencies.

• CUNY Science Café – which brings some of CUNY's research faculty to Kouzan Japanese Restaurant on the upper west side of Manhattan to discuss newsworthy scientific topics in a casual setting that has been attracting an eclectic audience of faculty, science writers, and interested members of the public

I hope you are participating in some of these initiatives, and welcome your suggestions for other ways we can support faculty and student research in the upcoming academic year.

HIGHLIGHTS

Page 2

New NIH grant awarded to

CCNY to study autism

Page 3Lehman postdoc receives

prestigious fellowship

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Faculty Spotlights

Diana Bratu (Hunter)Mände Holford (York)

Gillian Stewart (Queens)

Maribel Vazquez (City)

Page 6

CCNY researcher creates new artificial blood protein

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Queens graduate student

discovers 4 new mammal

species in DRC

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Birds can produce song

without learning

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ARRA Stress: impact of stimulus funding on grant

offices

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Queens researchers

develop new flexible laser

Page 12

NYCSEF finalists score at

ISEF 2009

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Poor suffer more chronic disease

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 SPRING 2009

Research NewsletterOffice of the Vice Chancellor for Research

Gillian SmallVice Chancellor for Research

http://www.cuny.edu/research



Last month, Drs. Sophie Molholm and John Foxe, neuroscientists at City College (CCNY) were awarded $2.8M from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health to embark on a five-year study examining whether and how multisensory integration – the nervous system’s integration of different sensory stimuli – is impaired in persons with autism.

As part of their on going research, they are conducting a series of studies that are designed to examine the way in which children with autism spectrum disorders between the ages of six and fifteen years attend to and integrate sensory information (touch, sight, and hearing).

“Atypical integration of multisensory inputs has been suggested as a major component of autism,” says Dr. Molholm, an Associate Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at CCNY. “If we can learn when and where in the neural processing stream these sensory integration deficits occur, this knowledge will play an essential role in defining the neuropathology of autism.”

“The data acquired during this project will provide a strong empirical test of deficits in multisensory integration processes in autism,” adds Foxe, a Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at CCNY. “But, we also need to understand how multisensory integration develops and changes

over childhood in order to establish useful models against which predictions about disorders can be made.”

The findings will be used to test the integrity of multisensory processes in children with autism. The results of those tests will have implications for clinical management of persons with autism as well as for models of autism. Professor Foxe noted that failures in multisensory integration are thought to be a core deficit not only in autism, but also in other clinical conditions, including schizophrenia.

More information on this project and how to participate can be found at the Children’s Research Unit website: www1.ccny.cuny.edu/ci/cru.

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 WINTER 2008VOLUME 4, ISSUE 3 SPRING 2009

LEHMAN MATH PROFESSOR HONORED WITH 2009 FELIKS GROSS AWARD

Dr. Jason Behrstock (Mathematics & Computer Science) was honored on May 5 at the CUNY Graduate Center with the prestigious Feliks Gross Endowment Award.

Dr. Behrstock’s research focuses on geometric group theory and low dimensional topology, or the study of objects such as braids, surfaces, and three-dimensional spaces. Before joining the Lehman faculty in 2008, Prof. Behrstock taught Mathematics at Columbia University and the University of Utah. He has received funding through the National Science Foundation, as well as the Dorothy Pieper Merit Award for Outstanding Entering Doctoral Studies while completing his Ph.D. at SUNY Stony Brook.

“This award seeks to draw attention to the important scholarship of our young faculty,” said Susan O’Malley, president of the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences, which administers the Feliks Gross Endowment Fund. “They work so hard to achieve tenure and too often do not receive the proper recognition.”

Now in its twelfth year, the award recognizes outstanding research, or potential for such, in the sciences and humanities within CUNY. Feliks Gross, for whom the award is named, was a noted scholar and social activist who transformed American scholarship in the years following World War II. He held a number of positions within academia, including a professorship at Brooklyn College. CUNY established this award in his honor.

City College Researchers awarded $2.8M to Study Multisensory

Integration in Autism




Dr. Abby Cuttriss, a postdoctoral research fellow at Lehman College, recently received one of twelve fellowships awarded to New Zealand’s brightest young researchers. Every two years, under New Zealand’s Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, a small number of postdoctoral researchers are awarded the three-year fellowships that provide stipends, and research and travel expenses (~ US$216,000). This program is designed to foster the development of New Zealand’s emerging and future science leader. Among this round’s recipients, Dr. Cuttriss was one of only two fellows awarded to conduct research outside of New Zealand.

Her successful application was, in part, facilitated by travel funds provided by the Dean of Natural and Social Sciences at Lehman College and the Vice Chancellor for Research. These funds allowed Dr. Cuttriss to travel to Australia to present at an international meeting where she won Best Paper Award for an early career scientist in the journal, Functional Plant Biology, and to New Zealand, where she made the necessary contacts with New Zealand researchers to develop her competitive fellowship application. Dr. Cuttriss is currently studying the role of

carotenoid compounds in enhancing stress tolerances in grasses, in the lab of Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel, Professor of Biological Sciences (Lehman), in collaboration with Dr. David Christopher at the University of Hawai’i.

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 WINTER 2008

LEHMAN POSTDOC RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS FELLOWSHIP

FROM NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT


Dr. Abby Cuttriss receiving the Best Paper Award from Dr. David Day, President of the Australian

Society of Plant Scientists

The Research Foundation of CUNY (RF-CUNY) subscribes to COS Funding Services to allow free access to the resources for CUNY faculty and staff.

COS offers database access to a variety of grants, fellowships, and other award opportunities and provides alert services for new grant announcements

based on your search criteria.

COS Funding Opportunities can be accessed

from any CUNY campus computer without logging in. For more information, see

http://www.cos.com/rfcuny.shtml

Did You Know?

HUNTER HIGH SCHOOL

STUDENT WINS 2009 LEVY

SCIENCE AWARD

The Ezra Levy 2009 High School Science Awards have been announced and one of CUNY’s own was honored with an award. Gianluca Arianna, who is part of the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM) Program at Hunter High School, is one of only four students throughout the five boroughs to receive this prestigious award in 2009.

The Ezra Levy awards recognize outstanding high school science students and awards are determined jointly by the NY Metro Awards Committee and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). Each recipient gave an oral presentation on their research project at the awards dinner. We join the award committee in congratulating and recognizing Gianluca’s research project, "Dynamic Aggregation Properties of Three New Photodynamic Therapeutics,” conducted while working in the lab of Dr. C. Michael Drain (Chemistry, Hunter).






Dr. Diana Bratu admits that the exploits of a “fly scientist”

may not appear very interesting at first glance. However, the research she is conducting in her lab at Hunter College is one of the most promising, albeit competitive, fields in her discipline with applications for the life sciences, medicine, agriculture, and environmental science.

Most cell biologists take snapshots of molecular phenomena and then try to piece together a history with fuzzy photographs. Instead, Bratu binds molecular beacons to the messenger RNA of flies making them fluorescent, and records actual video of the cellular activity in drosophila, commonly known as fruit flies.

She explains that the benefit of fluorescence in vivo imaging of RNA is that, “It’s much more interesting to see not just where they are, but how they got there.” With her own biophotonics lab at the age of 35, perhaps the same can be said of Bratu herself.

Diana Bratu moved to Queens from her country of birth, Romania, just in time for high school, an academic step she enthusiastically anticipated. “I thought ‘high’ school meant it was an elevated level,” she says. “It wasn’t.” Anxious to challenge herself, Bratu completed high school in 2.5 years and was accepted into New York University, where she received her Bachelors degree in Chemistry and Mathematics.

Unsure of what to do next, Bratu applied to medical school but was declined. In retrospect she says, “I’m so glad I didn’t get into med school!” because what came next would change her life. After asking around for projects to work on, she got a position in a molecular genetics lab to “make sense of some new technology” they developed. That technology was the groundwork for what would come to be known as biophotonics.


FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

DIANA BRATUASSISTANT PROFESSOR

BIOLOGY, HUNTER COLLEGE

Dr. Mände Holford grew up in New York City and

attended Brooklyn Technical High School – the highly competitive and specialized magnet school for math and science. There, her training began. But not until college, when she worked as a research assistant for her chemistry professor at the York College, did her passion for science really take off.

Dr. Holford assisted Dr. Lawrence Johnson and together they studied the proton cycle of H. halobium bacteria. It involved a mixture of both biology and chemistry, and she was captivated. She worked with Dr. Johnson for the rest of her undergraduate training, and then decided to go onto graduate school at Rockefeller University to earn her Ph.D. in synthetic protein chemistry.

Multidisciplinary research continued to tug at her. After graduating, she managed the science education program for high

school students at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. There, she enjoyed delving into biology—especially when it came to organisms.

In her postdoctoral research, Mände was finally able to fuse biomedicine and nature into a real world application. Her projects focused on the evolutionary history of venomous marine gastropods (cone snails, terebrids and turrids) and their toxins. Specifically, Dr. Holford is credited with reconstructing the first molecular phylogeny for the terebridae. Up until this point, only cone snails had been studied for the pharmacological use of their toxins.

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

MÄNDE HOLFORDASSISTANT PROFESSOR

CHEMISTRY, YORK COLLEGE


In this issue, we highlight four young women scientists who are breaking new ground in their areas of study

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As a young girl growing up on a horse farm in Westchester

County, New York, Dr. Gillian Stewart dreamt about

becoming an explorer like Vasco da Gama or a biologist like Charles Darwin. Reflecting back on this memory in her lab at Queens College, Dr. Stewart realized that the ocean gave her the chance to do both.

Throughout her career as a biogeochemist, Dr. Stewart has focused primarily on elemental cycling in the ocean. Her lab at Queens College is a testament to her curiosity about the ocean’s many mysteries. There, the overarching theme is the role that organisms in the ocean play in elemental cycling—specifically how carbon gets transferred most effectively from an organism such as phytoplankton. By taking a closer look at how the ocean rids itself of atmospheric carbon dioxide, Dr. Stewart and her students are trying to answer some bigger questions about greenhouse gases and the environment.

“We won’t be able to change life in the ocean for carbon capture, but there are regional things we can do to make the ocean as healthy as possible,” says Dr. Stewart.

Dr. Stewart knows a lot about carbon tracers. She studied isotope polonium-210 during graduate school at Stony Brook University, and the element has piqued her curiosity about the ocean’s unique ecosystem ever since. Recently, she has become interested in how seasonal changes affect carbon in the ocean based on the changeover of different organisms in the water during the four seasons. Since most oceanographic work in her field has been done during the warm months of the spring and summer, Dr. Stewart would like to conduct research during fall and winter. She is currently seeking grant approval for a trip next year to the subarctic Pacific to do just that. “This non-productive time can tell us a lot.”


FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

GILLIAN STEWARTASSITANT PROFESSOR

SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL & EARTH SCIENCES

QUEENS COLLEGE

Dr. Maribel Vazquez has big ideas for some of nature’s

smallest structures. A mechanical engineer by training, she now conducts research in microfluidic systems and nanotechnology to examine the behavior of cells and control their migration throughout the body.

Every serious sports fan understands the implications of the dreaded torn anterior cruciate ligament (or ACL). Even the most seemingly innocuous injuries can disable a player for months as the healing process runs its course. She believes we can accelerate the recovery of such ligaments by better understanding how cells move and what kinds of chemicals they respond to.

But while faster cell migration means less time on the disabled list for athletes, stopping such cellular activity could mean more effective life-saving treatments of brain cancer.

“In this case, what we are trying to do is understand exactly why the cells move and then get them to stop,” says Dr. Vazquez. “And my lab combines existing technology at both the micro- and nano-scales to find new solutions to these problems.”

Her lab uses different “chemical cocktails” to lace the interior of carbon nanotubes – remarkably resilient structures that measure only 100 microns thick, or about the width of a human hair. She then places the cells within the tubes and maps their movement across different concentration gradients of chemicals. “If we know how they move and what chemicals they are attracted to, we might be able to stop the cancer cells in their

FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

MARIBEL VAZQUEZASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, CITY COLLEGE




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The National Institute’s of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded $15.9M to City College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) to continue its unique partnership in cancer research, education, and outreach under the NCI’s U54 program. This funding mechanism pairs investigators at a minority-serving institution with an NCI-designated cancer research center. CCNY was one of only three funded partnerships in the current cycle.

The Partnership for Cancer Research, Training, and Community Outreach will build on collaborations already in place between CCNY and MSKCC. The program will have four primary objectives: 1) develop translational research programs in cell biology, immunology, and biomedical research; 2) collaborate with diverse communities to define and address cancer disparities; 3) recruit and retain students who are interested in cancer research, particularly minority students, through enhanced education and training opportunities; and 4) recruit new key faculty at both institutions.

The main scientific project, led by Drs. Avrom Caplan (CCNY) and Neal Rosen (MSKCC), is focused on the development of novel chemotherapeutic strategies based on inhibition of the molecular chaperone Hsp90. Five pilot projects deal with a range of basic scientific and clinical problems, from the molecular mechanisms of chemotherapy-induced cognitive decline (Karen Hubbard, CCNY/André Ragnauth, CCNY/Tim Ahles, MSKCC) to enhancing primary care physicians’ capacity to improve cancer patients’ access to clinical trials (Mark Weiss, MSKCC/Maria Binz-Scharf, CCNY).

“By combining our talents, both institutes will be well-equipped to build and nurture programs in areas that will help address disparities in underserved minority and economically disadvantaged communities,” states Dr. Karen Hubbard, Professor of Biology at City College and co-PI of the project.

NIH AWARDS $15.9M TO

FUND CITY COLLEGE/MSKCC

PARTNERSHIP


Dr. Ronald Koder, Assistant Professor of Physics (City College), along with University of Pennsylvania professors Dr. Leslie Dutton, Dr. Christopher Moser and members of the Dutton lab, built a new type of protein that can transport oxygen, mimicking human neuroglobin, that carries oxygen to the brain and peripheral nervous system. The design and engineering principles used were novel and one day, the approach may pave the way for creating artificial blood for use by emergency care professionals or in other emergency situations. The natural design of proteins ultimately lies in their underlying sequence of amino acids. To build their protein, the team started with just three amino acids which code for a helix-shaped column. From this, they assembled a four-column bundle with loop that resembles simple candelabra. They added a heme unit, a chemical group that contains an iron atom, to bind oxygen molecules, and another amino acid called glutamate to add strain to the candelabra to help the structure open up to capture oxygen molecules. Since heme and oxygen degrade in water, the researchers designed the exteriors of the columns to repel water to protect the oxygen payload within.

A synthesizer was first used to chemically stick the amino acids together in a controlled sequence to make the helix-shaped columns. Once the desired sequence is achieved, E. coli bacteria were used as a biological host to synthesize the complete protein. To test whether the protein captured oxygen, the team analyzed the solution in which the reaction took place. They found that the solution turned from dark red to a lighter red color signature that is nearly identical to the color of natural neuroglobin. The study was funded by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health and reported in the March 19, 2009 issue of Nature.

Koder et al. 2009. Designing and engineering an O2 transport protein. Nature, 458, 19 March 2009, 305-310.

NEW PROTEIN COULD PAVE WAY FOR ARTIFICIAL BLOOD…

AND IT'S MADE FROM SCRATCH

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TEAM INCLUDING CUNY GRAD STUDENT DISCOVER FOUR NEW MAMMAL

SPECIES IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Despite multi-day hikes into remote, forest areas, having team members abducted by Mai-Mai rebels, and hastily retreating after continued harassment by these militia forces, CUNY doctoral student, Terrence Demos (Queens College, Biology: EEB) and a research team led by Dr. Julian Kerbis of the Field Museum of Natural History, discovered four species of small mammals new to science.

The team, that included four accomplished Congolese scientists from the Centre Recherche des Sciences Naturelles and twenty support staff, set out from the shores of Lake Tanganyika in July 2008 for a five-week biodiversity survey of small mammals of the Itombwe Massif in Democratic Republic of Congo. This remote montane region is home to many of Africa's well-known creatures, including Chimpanzees, Forest Elephants, and the endangered Eastern Lowland Gorilla. Through surveys of bird and insect fauna, this forest has been recognized as Africa's richest montane ecosystem for rare and geographically-restricted species, and no large-scale survey of mammals of the areas has been conducted since 1908, when Rudolph Grauer led an expedition for the Vienna Museum of Natural History.

Serious security issues and socio-economic problems plague this region of the continent and this forest is being pressured by human activities, including agriculture, charcoal harvesting, livestock grazing, timber, and mineral extraction. The illegal mining of coltan, an ore from which tantalum is derived (used in the production of cell phones), has added to the destruction of habitat. While portions of this forest are slated

for formal protection, the aforementioned human pressures make it critical to assess the levels of biodiversity while forest patches remain 'intact.'

After leaving Lake Tanganyika, the team spent four days searching for primary forest, camping en route. They finally set camp on the edge of an agricultural field, but adjacent to numerous patches of undisturbed, montane rainforest. During their first night at camp, the entire team was surrounded and 'arrested' by Mai Mai militia. After hasty negotiations, only the Congolese team leader was removed from the camp, only to be returned safely to camp the following day after the necessary ransom was paid. The team carried on their survey for over a week before the same, armed Mai Mai returned and abducted three Congolese staffers. This prompted the dismantling of the camp and a speedy retreat to a less-ideal forest region that remains under the control of DRC Federal troops, where they continued their surveys before packing up and returning to the CRSN Research Station at Lwiro, eastern DRC – the focal point of field research in the region.

Despite these obstacles and reduced survey time, the team collected over 600 specimens of forty small mammal species. Amazingly, the team discovered four new species: a new species of shrew at their first forest site, and two additional shrew species and a species of climbing mouse in the cloud forest zone at their final camp site. Based on these findings, the team is confident that these montane forests are home to more undiscovered species of mammals, as well as other new plant and animal taxa.


The cloud forest zone where two new shrew species and one new climbing mouse species were discovered

The Itombwe Mountains from the expedition's cloud forest camp

Terrence Demos

Terrence Demos




Organic cyano compounds (nitriles) are important precursors for many important pharmaceuticals and other compounds. In addition, they are present in a number of natural compounds, providing defense chemicals for many animals and plants. For example in plants, cyanides are usually bound to sugar molecules in the form of cyanogenic glycosides and defend the plant against herbivores. For most commercial production, the dehydration of aldoximes is the most common method of obtaining nitriles, but these reactions usually require multi-step synthesis pathways and/or harsh conditions (e.g., high temperatures) or metal catalysts.

Chemistry professor Mahesh Lakshman (City College) and his graduate student, Manish Singh, have developed a new method that yields nitriles via a simple dehydration of aldoximes at room temperature, involving a commercially available reagent used in peptide synthesis, which also minimizes

by-products. Under the mild reaction conditions of this new method, oxime dehydration could be applied to relatively fragile substrate molecules in the production of important compounds such as the antiviral compound, adeninyl ribofuranonitrile. These types of molecules generally require complex and costly synthesis pathways. In their studies, Lakshman and Singh found that the new method could double the yield of adeninyl ribofuranonitrile using different from a commercial precursor, and in one case could eliminate some cumbersome synthetic steps.

This study, published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry, has been one of JOC's Top-20 Most Read articles of the previous month, since its publication in March 2009.

Singh and Lakshman. 2009. A simple synthesis of nitriles from aldoximes. Journal of Organic Chemistry 2009, 74, 3079-3084.

The age-old question of nature vs. nurture is raised again in a new study by biologists, Drs. Ofer Tchernichovski and Olga Fehér, and PhD student Sigal Saar of City College (CCNY) and Drs. Partha Mitra and Haibin Wang of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). The study, featured in the journal Nature, shows that even when raised in isolation, zebra finches will, over several generations, produce a song similar to that sung by the

species in the wild. The ability of finches to produce song which so closely resembles that of wild finches, outside of traditional environments in which song language is taught by an adult, examines once again the relationship between how we are shaped by our genetics and what impact environment plays upon those genetic dispositions. The process of song acquisition in young birds exhibited in this study raises important questions about possible similarities in the ways that of human babies acquire language and the role of environment and heredity in the development of language.

For the study, an environment was created where finches, who had been isolated while young, passed the song they had developed without adult tutoring onto their offspring. Following

this group over several generations where the experimental environment was replicated, some variations in song production were noted, but it was found that those variations were not random in nature, but were instead in keeping with the accepted cultural song of the “normal” finch society.

In the end, it may be that both nature and nurture play a vital role in the developmental process as the researchers state: “In a sense, the results of our study show that song culture is the result of an extended developmental process, a “multigenerational” phenotype partially genetically encoded in a founding population and partly in environmental variables, but taking multiple generations to emerge.” “I think, we humans, and songbirds, are probably born with some innate predisposition to communicate in a particular way," added Dr. Fehér.

See the episode of PBS’s NOVA Science Now about Dr. Tchernichovski’s research here:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0304/01.html

Dr. Tchernichovski will be a panelist for “Avian Einsteins” – part of the World Science Festival 2009.

“Avian Einsteins” will take place on Saturday, June 13 from 2:00–3:30 PM at the NYU Skirball Center. Tickets are available here: https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7170805

Fehér. et al 2009. De novo establishment of wild-type song culture in the zebra finch. Nature, 459, 28 May 2009, 564-568.

FROM SILENCE TO SONG: DE NOVO SONG PRODUCTION IN ZEBRA FINCH


NEW CYANIDE SYNTHESIS METHOD REMAINS A JOC “MOST-READ ARTICLE”


Peripitus: Wikimedia



http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0304/01.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/0304/01.html

https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7170805

https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7170805


Among the most exciting events to impact the American scientific community in recent memory were the announcement and ratification of President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). With this sweeping legislation, came funding opportunities for research and infrastructure of the nation’s research and educational institutions not seen for nearly a decade. But while the knowledge of billions of federal dollars earmarked for the various government agencies, ranging from the Departments of Agriculture and Defense to the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, has piqued the interest of researchers at all levels, much remains unclear about the way these agencies will disperse their allocations. With the requirement, mandated in the law, that all ARRA funds be spent within three years, each agency has chosen a different tact in implementing grant opportunities that tap their ARRA resources. The result so far has been a rash of Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs), many of which, including multi-million dollar equipment and infrastructure grant programs and the new Challenge Grant (RC1) program of the National Institutes of Health, came with very short turn-around periods and differing submission requirements.

These new announcements have created a frenzy of proposal writing on the part of researchers across the nation, but have also created a tremendous increase in workload for the sponsored research offices at the submitting institutions, and CUNY is no exception. For the Office of Research Administration at City College (ORA), the number of proposal submissions for the month of April more than doubled from 30-35 in 2008 to more than 75 this year with several of these submissions from faculty whose research is not currently supported by federal grant money. This number even exceeds busier submissions months such as January that saw between 55 and 60 submissions this year. Mike Prasad, the Director of the Office of Research & Sponsored Programs at Queens College (ORSP), has seen an increase in submission of 25-30% over the past two months, mostly in the form of Administrative Supplements. But Mike and his staff are enjoying a new level of excitement that has come with the ARRA, seeing new faculty faces at their door.

Greg Werhner, Sponsored Programs Assistant at ORA, is still reeling from the past several months’ activity. According to Greg, the preparation and in-office processing has not been too difficult, but the online submission process has hit a brick wall. The cyberinfrastructure that supports the Grants.gov online submission portal has not been able to adequately handle the increased traffic, resulting in heavy delays (up to 5 days) for the

generation of acknowledgement emails confirming that a specified agency had received the submission. Phone calls to either eRA Commons (the Electronic Research Administration portal of NIH) or Grants.gov currently result in waiting on hold for up to 15 minutes. In addition, eRA Commons has reported errors for numbers assigned to funded grants, requiring formal correction requests by ORA staff to allow the submission of competitive grant renewals to NIH. So far, ORSP personnel have had no lulls since the first announcements and have worked until 11 PM on several days over the past two months to ensure that their proposals are submitted on time.

It has become apparent that the new ARRA-related funding announcements are not typical submissions and must be read thoroughly, as each presents its own new guidelines… some requiring online submission, while others still require paper submission. The new Challenge Grant program, for example, brought its own unique requirements, including a new budget design and submission into a single NIH-wide pool.

Even our community college offices have seen increased activity as a result of ARRA. Christina Johnson, Director of the Office of Sponsored Programs at Queensborough Community College, has been so inundated with faculty inquiries that she has presented two grant meetings: one for the humanities and a second for STEM (science, technology, and engineering) disciplines. She anticipates several of her faculty to submit Major Research Instrumentation and Academic Research Infrastructure proposals later this summer and QCC has just submitted an institutional pre-proposal to New York State.

With one of the major deadlines now past (NIH Challenge Grants), CUNY faculty rose to the occasion and submitted a total of sixty-five proposals University-wide, and we can look forward and hope that the proposals will receive favorable reviews and ultimately, generate new funding of our research endeavors. The signs are encouraging, with several CUNY colleges are already reporting new ARRA-related grants, including a new R21 grant at CCNY, a new Teacher Scholarship at the CSI, two new awards at Hunter, and three new awards at Queens College, including a new R15 award and an administrative supplement to a current R01 award.

ARRA STRESS

The Impact of Federal Stimulus

Funding Opportunities on

CUNY’s Grant Offices

Greg Werhner of City College’s Office of Research Administration with a stack of new grant proposals





For the past five years, the CUNY Office of Research Conduct has presented a full-day continuing education symposium on human subjects protections issues to the Institutional Review Board members and staff. Each year representatives from the US Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) have served as either Keynote Speakers or members of the faculty for the one day event. OHRP is the federal oversight agency for human research protections. This year, because of the continued success and quality of the CUNY program, OHRP invited CUNY to host one of their Research Community Forum (RCF) events.

The Keynote Speaker will be Dr. John H. Marburger, III. Dr. Marburger is a nationally known figure, having formerly served as the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President, the Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and past President of The State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Marburger is currently a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook.

The RCF will be held on September 11. Recognizing the importance of that day, a plenary session will focus on conducting research in emergency situations and with disaster victims. Confirmed speakers for this panel include Dr. Benjamin Luft of Stony Brook University, who is conducting research following 9/11, and Dr. Joseph Breault from Ochsner Medical Center in Louisiana, who is involved in research following Hurricane Katrina.

The RCF will also feature a series of breakout sessions for all levels of attendees, following five tracks: Fundamentals Track, Getting Things Done Track, Researcher Track, Legal/Ethical Track, and Advanced/Hot Topics Track. Speakers include Ada Sue Selwitz, Director of the Office of Research Integrity at the University of Kentucky; Dr. David Strauss, IRB Chair at New York State Psychiatric Institute and member of SACHRP (the US DHHS Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections); Judy Matuk, Assistant Vice President for Research Compliance at Stony Brook University; and Patricia MacCubbin, Executive Director of Research Conduct at CUNY.

CUNY and the Research Foundation of CUNY have partnered with Stony Brook University and Columbia University to present this exciting event. The three partners represent both public (CUNY & SUNY) and private (Columbia) regional institutions, as well as both biomedical and social/behavioral research interests.

The Research Community Forum will be held September 11, 2009, at the CUNY Graduate Center.

For more information, contactPatricia MacCubbin [email protected] 212-794-5428Arita Winter [email protected] 212.794.5504Tara Smith [email protected] 212-794-5428

ON THE LEGAL AND ETHICAL FRONTLINE

CUNY Invited to Host Federal OHRP Research Community Forum

September 11, 2009


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Respect for

Persons

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Beneficence!

!!!!!Justice

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Did You Know?The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research has hosted a

number of workshops in the past featuring key administrators

from both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the

National Institutes of Health (NIH). Resources from these events

are available through the Events Archive of the CUNY

Research website at the bottom of this page.



mailto:[email protected]







For the past thirty years, vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) have been used for a number of applications including plastic optical fibers (POFs) and other communication systems, optical scanning, optical switches, and displays. For applications, such as Gigabit Ethernet, VCSELs have replaced more traditional edge-emitting lasers and POFs have become the standard for low-cost, short-haul optical communication systems. POFs have a wavelength threshold in the red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (650 nm), and most red-emitting VCSELs are fabricated using traditional and costly semiconductor growth techniques.

In the journal, Optical Express, Dr. Vinod Menon (Queens College, Physics) and members of his lab described a novel class of flexible VCSEL that does not rely on semiconductor technology. Their hybrid device is comprised of inorganic, quantum dot (QD) light-emitting nanostructures embedded in a flexible, organic matrix. The QDs, engineered to absorb and emit light within a narrow spectral range, are suspended in a colloidal mixture and applied to the plastic matrix using an inexpensive and scalable method called spin-coating. This simple manufacturing technique can reduce the cost of VCSEL devices by an order of magnitude over semiconductor methods.

Dr. Menon’s method also allows extensive customization in laser emission, by changing the emission properties of the QDs used in the manufacturing process. A key aspect of this new class of vertical micro-cavity lasers is their use of indium galium phosphide (InGaP) quantum dots. Most QDs used today are either cadmium (Cd) or lead (Pb)-based and result in biohazardous waste production and are highly toxic. InGaP quantum dots are an attractive alternative because they possess no heavy metal content and are far less environmentally hazardous. The mechanically flexible matrix (left) allows the device to be conformed to any shape and testing shows that further optical tuning can be made by bending the matrix around curved surfaces. Dr. Menon sees a potential in these flexible lasers being used in medicine in the form of a light-emitting bandage that promotes wound healing and in flexible display technology (above right).

Menon et al. 2009. Lasing from InGaP quantum dots in a spin-coated flexible microcavity. Optical Express 16(24), 19535-19540.

QC RESEARCHERS DEVELOP NEW CLASS OF FLEXIBLE MICROCAVITY LASER


2.54 cm

CITY COLLEGE ART GRADUATE NAMED 2009 HAYS-BRANDEIS FELLOW

Kyle Meyer, a recent graduate of the City College (CCNY) Art Program, is a 2009 winner of the Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship. He is the eighth CCNY student to be named a Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Fellow since 1994. He plans to use the Fellowship, which carries a $19,000 stipend, to travel to Swaziland this fall to document communities affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic there.

The Harlem resident will be based at the Moya Center, a community center in western Swaziland where AIDS orphans who are heads of households receive assistance.Mr. Meyer chose to do his fellowship in the tiny southern African nation because its HIV/AIDS rate, around 40 percent of the population, is the highest in the world. An activist who has participated four times in the annual AIDS Walk New York, he is tremendously excited at receiving the fellowship. "It offers an invaluable opportunity for me not only to document what's going on in Swaziland and also to help in the fight against the disease."

On his return to New York, he hopes to exhibit return his images from Swaziland to show state of affairs there and to raise awareness here in the US. He also plans to start a fund or scholarship program for children affected by AIDS.

Funded by income from the Mortimer and Sara Hays Endowment at Brandeis University, the Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship provides support to students in the visual and fine arts for travel overseas in accordance with a program of study or other activities approved by the selection committee. Only students from a select group of institutions – among them Brandeis, Boston, Columbia, Harvard and Yale Universities in addition to CUNY - are eligible for the Fellowship.




Each year, high school students from throughout the five boroughs of New York City compete in the New York City Science and Engineering Fair (NYCSEF). CUNY College Now and New York Department of Education organize NYCSEF, the city's only

research competition for the high school students from the 290+ public high schools.

For 2009, almost 800 NYCSEF applications from over 900 students were received and nearly 450 projects were selected for competition. The Preliminary Round was held on Sunday, March 1 at City College’s Shepard Hall. The top 25% of student researchers from each subject category, a total of 178 projects, were selected to participate in the Finals Round on March 25 under the life-sized model of a blue whale in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life at the American Museum of Natural History. This year’s final competition was fierce and 19 student finalists were selected (12 individual projects and 3

team projects). These finalists were honored at the NYCSEF Awards Ceremony on April 28 at John Jay College. NYCSEF finalists are selected to represent New York City in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). This year’s ISEF was held on May 10-16th in Reno, NV.

Six of the 19 NYCSEF finalists were mentored by CUNY faculty. Michael Caplan (Bronx High School of Science) presented his individual research on Computational modeling of the quantum mechanical excitations in a light harvesting complex in purple bacteria, under the guidance of Dr. Seog-Jhoo Jang (Queens College, Chemistry & Biochemistry) and won $1000 with his 4th Place Award in Biochemistry. Other NYCSEF finalists to win awards at ISEF 2009 include: Andrew Cohen (4th Place in Energy & Transportation), April Lee (2nd Place in Plant Science), Oliver Chan, James Leung, Cheryl Wu (3rd Place in Electrical Engineering), and Tenzing Tsomo, Tiffany Yau (Special Award from American Geological Institute – 3rd Place). We wish to congratulate all of the 2009 NYCSEF participants and winners.


CUNY NYCSEF FINALISTS WIN

AWARDS AT ISEF 2009


Two new studies demonstrates that low-income families are much more likely to suffer from serious infections such as herpes or hepatitis A than their counterparts in wealthier households. Dr. Jennifer Dowd (Public Health and Demography, Hunter College and the CUNY Institute for Demographic Research), along with collaborators at the University of Michigan, conducted two recent studies that show striking correlations between household income levels and chronic infection in both adults and children, with lower income populations suffering higher rates of chronic infections and clusters of infections than higher income families.

In the context of six infections measured among adults aged 17-90, results showed that while the higher income populations might have been exposed to one or two of these common infections, lower income populations in the same age range may have been exposed to as many as four or five. Researchers looked at H. pylori, the bacterium that causes peptic ulcer disease; hepatitis A and B, which cause liver disease; and herpes simplex 1 and cytomegalovirus (CMV), both implicated in cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other ailments. Similarly, there was a large difference in the prevalence of infection among people who only hold a high school diploma when compared to those who have a four-year college degree, where individuals without a high school education had roughly 50% higher odds of

having an additional infection. Other observations included that low household income was associated with 33% higher odds of additional infection, with high income associated with 45% lower odds compared to their middle income group.

The second study, examining children six and older, demonstrated similar results when looking at the association of infections with height-for-age and socioeconomic status with asthma or other chronic respiratory conditions. Non-hispanic, black children were more than twice as likely to be infected with H. pylori, and nearly 1.5x more likely to be infected with HSV-1 compared to white children. Each additional year of parental education is associated with roughly 8% decrease in the odds of a child being infected with H. pylori, and 11% lower odds of HSV-1 infection. As family income doubles, a child’s odds of having CMV decline by 21%; HSV-1 by 32%; and hepatitis-A by 29%.

Data for these studies was acquired from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, a national study that is representative of the general U.S. population.

Zajacova et al. 2009. Socioeconomic and race/ethnic patterns in persistent infection burden among U.S. adults. J. Geront. Ser. A., 64A(2), 272-279.

Dowd et al. 2009. Early origins of health disparities: Burden of infection, health, and socioeconomic status in U.S. children. Social Science & Medicine, 68(4), 699-707.

POOR SUFFER DISPROPORTIONATELY FROM CHRONIC INFECTIONS




This time, she was accepted into the NYU Medical School to study molecular and cell biology, where she eventually earned her PhD. Returning to the lab that sparked her interest, she recalls a rather unconventional start to her research career: plenty of project flexibility but not much faculty guidance. “But the tough times paid off,” she says. After two postdoc fellowships, in 2006 she accepted her current position in the Department of Biology at Hunter College, where her life was changed yet again.

Above all, she recognizes the wealth of opportunities she has had in New York, particularly within the CUNY system, and she leads a sort of double life now, dividing her time between her two passions. Regarding fly research, she mentions the excitement (perhaps even clamor) surrounding potential funding via the Federal Stimulus Package, and she has already applied for two grants stressing the medical applications of understanding disease through RNA behavior. On the teaching front, the success of her courses on fluorescence microscopy and fine cell structure has Hunter College considering a biophysics concentration.

“Now, I couldn’t choose between teaching and research if I had to,” says Dr. Bratu. “Seeing the excitement in students’ eyes is the best part of this job.”

SPOTLIGHT: DIANA BRATU


SPOTLIGHT: MÄNDE HOLFORD

Dr. Holford’s research presents a largely unexplored resource for biomedicine and therapeutic drug development. Marine gastropod toxins target several components in the central nervous system not previously investigated in drug development. An example is the recent analgesic Prialt (MVIIA-ziconotide). In targeting calcium receptors, this research greatly advances the potential for non-addictive drug therapies. Current marketed therapies target opiate receptors, which makes them highly addictive.

“The possibilities have been greatly increased. Prialt is a breakthrough in drug development,” says Holford.

Over the next three years, she plans to continue exploring marine gastropods toxins. Her research will move into identifying the function of several different terebridae toxins in the central nervous system at the molecular level.

She believes that breakthroughs happen when several different fields combine. To illustrate this point, she hopes to develop an interdisciplinary course on chemical biodiversity at York College that includes a collecting trip to Panama.

SPOTLIGHT: GILLIAN STEWART SPOTLIGHT: MARIBEL VAZQUEZ

Dr. Stewart can tell us a lot right now, however. Her research on the Roughage Effect demonstrates a unique relationship between atmospheric carbon and the ocean’s dust. Dr. Stewart became interested in this concept during her graduate thesis work in the Mediterranean where she measured how well polonium could track organic carbon as it sank in the ocean. She compared it to natural thorium, more commonly used for tracing carbon, but not as mechanistically similar. In her current research, Dr. Stewart has not only found that dust is more than just iron, but that it affects how much carbon sinks and separates into the deep sea. With the use of grazers, Dr. Stewart demonstrated that lithogenic particles reduced grazer’s carbon assimilation. In laboratory culture experiments, she found that the carbon content of fecal pellets from grazers increased when dust was present. The reduced assimilation efficiency of grazers in turn reduced atmospheric carbon concentrations.

Although her research is gaining her notoriety because it provides insight into the use of naturally occurring paleotracers in the ocean, Dr. Stewart wants to continue to pour her energy into her students. Teaching, she says, is her first line of business.

tracks,” she says. “We want to combine these little pieces of knowledge to find better treatments and perhaps even a cure.”

Initially, Maribel wanted to be an astronaut, receiving her mechanical and aerospace engineering degrees from Cornell University. After three years working in manufacturing at Intel Corporation, she found what she liked and pursued her doctorate in mechanical engineering at MIT. “I wanted to do something more practical with my engineering degrees,” she says. “I like to find my own problems and be my own boss.”

She came to City College in 2001 to help found the school’s biomedical engineering concentration, not despite her training in mechanical engineering but because of it. Ten faculty members of all different backgrounds now comprise the Biomedical Engineering Department, creating a “hodgepodge of expertise” that she finds refreshing and effective.

Even with a well-funded lab, advances in biomedical research, and a rewarding teaching career, Dr. Vazquez struggles with one last challenge: “If there was only some way for me to work scuba diving into my research!”

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RESEARCH OFFICEGillian Small, PhD

Vice Chancellor for Research

Avrom Caplan, PhD

Associate University Dean for Research

Laurence Frabotta, PhD

Director, Special Research Programs

Nina Conroy

Internal Grants Coordiniator

Luz Jimenez

Executive Assistant to the Vice Chancellor

LaToya Jackson

Administrative Assistant

Catherine Garcia

College Assistant

Office of Research Conduct

Patricia MacCubbin

Executive Director of Research Conduct and

Special Advisor to the Vice Chancellor for Research

Arita Winter

Research Conduct Associate

Tara Smith

Administrative Assistant

Technology Commercialization Office

Jake Maslow, Esq.

Director of the Technology Commercialization Office

Elaine Lu, PhD

Technology Commercialization Associate

Nitin Virmalwar, MIP, SM

Technology Commercialization Associate

Wei Chen

Technology Commercialization Business Assistant

Martha PianaAdministrative Assistant

Loren Bonner

Newsletter Contributor

Joe Filippazzo

Newsletter Contributor


CALENDAR

JUNEWorld Science Festival

June 10-14, 2009http://www.worldsciencefestival.com

Encore NSF/NIH Grant Writing Workshop

June 19, 2009

CUNY Graduate CenterRegister at: http://tinyurl.com/dz8f98

SEPTEMBEROHRP Research Community Forum

September 11, 2009

CUNY Graduate Centerhttp://web.cuny.edu/research/human-subjects-research/Events.html

Save The DatesServing Science: the CUNY Science Café

Kouzan Japanese RestaurantSpeakers to be announced http://web.cuny.edu/research/Serving-Science-

CUNY-Science-Cafe.html

OCTOBEROctober 6, 2009

NOVEMBERNovember 3, 2009

DECEMBERDecember 1, 2009

Do you know someone on your campus who does not receive the

CUNY Research Newsletter?

CUNY RESEARCH NEWSLETTER

Subscription and Suggestions

Via email at [email protected]

The City University of New YorkResearch Office535 E 80th StreetNew York NY 10075



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Documents

Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Research Newsletter - City University … · 2009. 3. 19. · surfaces, and three-dimensional spaces. Before joining the Lehman faculty