Pianist John Kirkpatrick “tirelessly promoted and championed” the music of American composers, wrote Tom C. Owens, editor of

Massey wrote his dissertation on Kirkpatrick while pursuing a doctorate in historical musicology at Harvard University. He expanded the work into John Kirkpatrick, American Music, and the Printed Page, published in 2013 by University of Rochester Press. The book combines biography with analysis of Kirkpatrick’s historical approach to editing. He demonstrates how Kirkpatrick, who died in 1991, became a collaborator as well as an editor, proposing revisions that altered composers’ original intentions.

Ryan Raul Bañagale, an assistant music professor at Colorado College, says his own writing has been inspired by Massey’s approach to scholarship, “particularly his demonstration that the editors of music have as much to do with the writing of history as do the composers themselves.”

Although his book is primarily a scholarly work, Massey says he hopes to reach a broader audience. “Kirkpatrick played a small but important role in the history of American music,” he says, “and one of the goals of my project has been to introduce him in such a way so that some aspects of my research would be appealing to non-musicologists.”

Massey, whose bachelor’s degree is in piano performance and mathematics, said he turned to musicology because he “enjoyed the kind of puzzles that lay at the center of our experience of music.” He came to Binghamton University in 2012, attracted by the “energetic” music department. “Now that I’m here,” he says, “I am enjoying working alongside faculty throughout the humanities who are passionate about their diverse interests.”

During the 2013-14 academic year, Massey is teaching and working on two publications: a definitive list of Virgil Thomson’s compositions at the request of The Virgil Thomson Foundation and a book, due out in 2017 from Oxford University Press, about British composer, conductor and pianist Thomas Adès, one of the most famous living composers working today.

“My book will be the first full-length study of Adès’ music as a whole in English,” Massey says. “I think an in-depth look at his work can give some interesting answers about the different directions that contemporary composition is headed.”

Palfreyman, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston College, came to Binghamton in 2010 to study the American Revolution and the early Republic. His dissertation ponders what happened to the Loyalists — the American colonists who stayed loyal to England — after they lost the American Revolution.

“My research indicates that the vast majority of Loyalists who chose to stay in the states after the war reintegrated back into American society,” he says. The process was never simple or uncontested, but most former supporters of the king quietly became Americans. There was no ongoing, systematic violence in the early republic, as is so often the case in the aftermath of civil war — no permanent political cleansing, no stubborn pockets of insurgents to root out.

“We like to think of the revolution and the founding as unanimous decisions made by a united people,” Palfreyman says. “We often forget that this country was founded, in part, by people who had never wanted to be independent, and never wanted to create a new nation.”

Diane Miller Sommerville, an associate professor of history at Binghamton, predicts that Palfreyman’s research “will constitute a significant contribution to our understanding of the processes of how the new, young government incorporated not only political opponents into the electoral system but also former enemies of the Revolution.”

Because he so enjoys teaching, Palfreyman seeks out a variety of opportunities to educate, including a summer 2013 contribution to the Civil War blog of The New York Times. His article described the 1863 draft riot in Boston, an event not as well known or documented as a larger protest in New York City.

“The draft riots piece definitely gave me an opportunity to write for a different kind of audience,” he says. “It was about setting a scene and letting the natural drama unfold. And that’s what historians really love to do. We love to tell good stories.”

The Red Hook, N.Y., native discovered one downside to expanding his audience. “The online format does provide a kind of instant commentary that is a new thing in scholarly fields,” he says. “And, in my case, not all of the comments were flattering.

“But first and foremost, I’m just happy to see that people care enough to read and comment. I think it’s a mistake to let serious discussions about history be cloistered in scholarly journals and college classrooms.  … I hope to be able to do both in my career — to put in my time in conversation with the specialists in my field but also to tell stories in such a way that makes other people interested in the same things that interest me.”

A native of sun-drenched southern India, where daily high temperatures often exceed 100 degrees, discovers that one of the best places to pursue his interest in solar energy is an upstate New York community noted for its cloud cover.

“Since childhood, I have been interested in energy sources that are nonpolluting and are abundant,” says Siva P. Adusumilli, who received his bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University. “I did some homework, and I found out about Binghamton University’s Center for Autonomous Solar Power.”

Now Adusumilli is a doctoral student at Binghamton while working as a graduate research associate at the center known as CASP. His focus is on earth-abundant solar materials and nanomaterials.

Some substances, such as silicon, are well-suited for use in solar cells but are costly to process and, therefore, drive up the price of the end product. That limits the cells’ potential for wide usage even though the energy source — the sun — is free, Adusumilli says. He also points out the illogic of having to use great quantities of energy to synthesize materials to be used in products designed to produce or save energy. Research in earth-abundant materials, which are relatively much cheaper, is a growing field.

Adusumilli’s work has been in the synthesis of two such substances for use in thin-film solar cells: iron pyrite (aka “fool’s gold”) and zinc phosphide. Charles R. Westgate, director of CASP, says Adusumilli has won numerous student poster contests and drawn attention from colleagues at prestigious universities for his findings. “He has been successful in achieving high-quality films and nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes and is now optimizing their growth for solar cells,” Westgate says.

Unless the price of raw materials drops, solar energy will not be an appealing option for homeowners, Adusumilli says. “When people put in a solar roof, they think, ‘How long is the payback?’ and, if it’s 20 years …” he says, trailing off with a knowing shrug.

Much of CASP’s funding comes from government agencies, but the center “tries to have communication with industry. Companies like IBM and GE — they know what is needed,” says Adusumilli, who sees himself as a research scientist with a U.S. company after graduation. “Since my childhood, I’ve had the image of me in a research lab coat.”

Margolis’ machine learning is in the area of “clinical support systems,” which are computer programs that can learn to make decisions such as diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of medical conditions. “There are various names for these types of computer programs … such as machine learning, data mining or pattern recognition,” says Margolis, who has collaborated with researchers at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla., and at the University of Arizona.

“The work with Moffitt dealt with a newly developed technique that accomplished two difficult tasks: combining the decisions from multiple computer programs intelligently and combining the data from multiple clinical tests intelligently,” Margolis explains. “For example, assume a doctor has several computer programs that try to automatically diagnose lung cancer from a DNA microarray or CT scans. However, each program only works well with certain patients and/or a certain test. This new technique would learn which combination of programs and tests works best for a particular patient.”

The research with Arizona used machine learning to improve methods of evaluating cancer treatment response. “We took the data that is normally used when looking at CT scans, added additional clinical data and then sent it through a machine learning method,” Margolis says. “We showed that machine learning methods could be designed to allow any new type of data to be added, and these methods performed far better than the current ‘gold standard’ method.”

He says they also noticed interesting patterns in “observer variability,” that is, the fact that doctors disagree with each other — and sometimes with themselves. These patterns showed that machine learning methods eventually could be developed to objectively score and train doctors in fields such as radiology.

Margolis says an increase in the use of machines would not affect a patient’s opportunity to receive personalized care. “The goal is for cheaper, better detection methods using computers,” he says. “Nobody would not get the medical test they needed.”

Once he completes his doctorate in systems science, he hopes to work in industrial research. His advisor, Walker Land, predicts success.

“Dan is best described as a unique thinker, one who sees a difficulty as an opportunity rather than a problem,” says Land, research professor of bioengineering. “It’s just the kind of thinking required for successful bioinformatics/biomedical research.”

He quit his job to learn Korean and earn a doctorate. His interests refined from history to literature to culture, focusing on the premodern period. But cultural studies often are limited to the upper class, Pettid says: “I was always interested in the nuts and bolts.”

He wanted to look at all strata of society and chose to do so through food. By telling how people ate, he has been able to show more clearly how people lived. Although there have been Korean cookbooks before, his Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History (Reaktion Books, 2008) is probably the first English work on the history of Korean food. (It does include 20 recipes.)

Pettid disproved widely held beliefs about the “timelessness” of classic dishes. Even kimch’i, Korea’s signature pickled cabbage, underwent dramatic transformation when, in the 17th century, peppers first were imported from the Americas.

The book has made Pettid the “go-to” guy for commentary about Korean cuisine, quoted everywhere from The New York Times to Wikipedia. A Korean publication featured a chapter by Pettid about how to globalize Korean cuisine. His recommendation? Serve traditional meals — “lots of items, lots of flavors” — just as they would be found in Korea. No fusion cuisine; no Westernizing.

Pettid’s studies have moved from food preparers to food suppliers. He now is researching Korea’s agrarian history. He also recently co-edited Women and Confucianism in Choson Korea, which will be published by SUNY Press in November 2011.

In 2001, Rodrigo Nunez, director of Duoc’s professional acting program, came to Binghamton to pursue a master’s degree. The relationship quickly transcended that of student/teacher to that of colleagues eager to collaborate.

“He found my approach to actor training intriguing and exciting and wanted to find a way to introduce it to his faculty and students,” Kremer says. “My first trip to Santiago was to give a two-week workshop to his faculty. His university came up with the funds to send a group of English-speaking Chilean acting students here.”

Together they created a scene festival with one-on-one pairings of Duoc and Binghamton students. “It was a great success,” Kremer says, adding that seven more such festivals have been arranged since 2001.

There also have been full-scale joint productions of West Side Story, directed at Binghamton by both Nunez and Kremer, and The Threepenny Opera, directed first in Santiago and then in Binghamton by Binghamton’s Anne Brady and Duoc’s Sebastian Dahm. A third joint production is planned for the 2012-2013 season.

Next up for Kremer: Directing Glengarry Glen Ross this summer in Duoc’s new professional theater for its alumni in downtown Santiago.

Besides having a translator available, Kremer will have collated two copies of the play, one in Spanish and one in English, so that he can, shall we say, always be on the same page as his actors. He’ll also be relying on facial expressions and body language.

“You can watch actors,” Kremer says, “and it doesn’t matter what language they’re speaking. You can tell if they are telling the truth.”

Her monograph The Merchant Houses of Mocha: Trade and Architecture in an Indian Ocean Port, published in 2009 by the University of Washington Press, explores how maritime trade saturated Mocha, a major player in Yemen’s coffee trade.

Research has carried the globe-trotting researcher from Yemeni villages that “look like they’re falling off” hillsides to Dutch and British libraries that house detailed records of European trade ventures. “I use a lot of different sources,” says Um, who has been praised for her innovative merging of archival and architectural materials to recount the glory days of a city whose commercial center now lies mostly in ruins.

She is returning to those sources for her latest research into commercial exchange and merchant tribute in Yemen from 1600 to 1750. Essentially, local rulers expected gifts before granting trade privileges. “Gift exchange was much more than a simple exercise of good manners or polite gestures,” Um writes. “Rather gifts were serious and necessary aspects of merchant protocol.”

Um says that, although other scholars have acknowledged the importance of gift-giving, “they often cast this preoccupation … as examples of the insatiable appetite that fickle oriental despots had for trinkets.” She, however, has seen the opposite. “I’ve been intrigued by how totally prosaic most of the gifts were,” Um says, listing trade items such as firearms, textiles and porcelains.

Although her current research focuses on the Dutch and British East India Companies, Um stresses the Europeans “were minor players in Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade whose importance has been blown out of proportion.” They were, however, better record keepers, carefully documenting each gift given.