Pawliczak, a mechanical engineering doctoral student at Binghamton University, has won several prizes, most recently in October, when she received the Best Student Poster Award during the 56th International Symposium on Microelectronics, held by the International Microelectronics Assembly & Packaging Society in San Diego.

Pawliczak’s research involves electrospray technology — employing electricity to disperse a liquid or fine aerosol — to create a thin (as in nanoparticle thin) film for electromagnetic interference (EMI) protection in electronics manufacturing. The silver film provides a low-cost, space-conscious way to protect against EMI.

“There is a push in the industry to miniaturize devices, from cell phones to hearing aids, so it’s important to maximize the available internal space,” Pawliczak says. “The idea is that electrospray will open the doors for many different applications of this technology.”

Pawliczak conducts her work in the Microfluidics and Multiphase Flow Laboratory of Paul R. Chiarot, professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. This research was a new direction for Chiarot’s group when the Semiconductor Research Corp., a research consortium that promotes collaborations among academic institutions, technology companies and government agencies, presented the research opportunity in 2020.

“Emma took on this project and ran with it, and at this point now has complete ownership of it,” Chiarot says. “She directs it herself, interacts with company liaisons at Texas Instruments, NXP Semiconductors and Intel, and she’s gone on to make great contributions in this space. She is a very careful and thoughtful scientist.”

The New Hampton, N.Y., resident knew from an early age that she wanted to pursue mechanical engineering. “I watched my father bring home drawings and documents throughout my life, coming up with creative solutions to complex problems,” she says. “Instead of looking at obstacles as work, he looked at them like puzzles. So I wanted to be like my dad. I thought I was going to go into construction, but now I work on a much different size scale, in the micro and nano range.”

It was an easy decision to attend Binghamton when she first toured the campus as a high school junior. “It was an immediate connection. I loved the energy of the campus,” she says. “As soon as I got my early action acceptance letter, I confirmed my enrollment the same day.”

Pawliczak received her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Binghamton in 2020 and then stayed to continue her graduate studies. Her career, so far, includes three peer-reviewed journal publications and seven conference paper publications. She has given more than 20 conference talks and poster presentations across the country.

She hopes to complete her doctorate in 2025.

“I will be interning at Intel this summer and I am extremely excited for the experience,” Pawliczak says. “I often go back and forth between entering industry or pursuing a career in academia, but I look forward to any and all paths my degree may lead me.”

When Marcin worked in Binghamton’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, she developed a partnership with Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Colombia, a prestigious language, philology and linguistics center that offers several master’s degrees. Through this partnership, students at both universities had the opportunity to converse: Students at Binghamton practiced their language, and the students at Caro y Cuervo experienced Spanish spoken as a foreign language. When those Colombian graduate students connected virtually with their Binghamton student peers, she witnessed how naturally the conversations flowed.

“I truly believe that the best way to learn a language is by using it, and it’s about being creative in using technology to connect people,” says Marcin, who holds a master’s degree in integrating technology in the classroom from Walden University and a doctorate from Binghamton’s Translation Research and Instruction Program. “Language is for usage. It’s not about how many questions you can answer correctly or how many words you have memorized. Not everyone is meant to become a grammarian.”

As one of the committee members tasked with revising the New York State standards for world languages, Marcin is aware of the dire need for public school language instructors. She created Lenguas Club (which translates to Languages Club) with the hopes of helping current classroom teachers accomplish their teaching goals while increasing students’ proficiency. Her program uses technology to immerse students in Spanish language and culture by involving them in virtual small group conversation sessions led by a native speaker from Instituto Caro y Cuervo.

Marcin, a lecturer in the Global Studies Program, gained strategic guidance on business viability when she went through the Binghamton Accelerator Program, offered by the Division of Research’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Partnerships. She then participated in the regional National Science Foundation I-Corps Program to determine potential customers and to explore business models at the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator in downtown Binghamton.

This semester, less than two years after the initial concept, Lenguas Club is in its first pilot run with high school students in the Binghamton City School District.

“So far I am pleased with the results we are seeing in these classes,” says Alice Kiereck, the district’s department chair of ELA, ENL, and World Languages for grades 6-12. “Marisol’s thorough knowledge of the New York State World Language standards has been an asset as we create a program that will best serve the students.”

Getting high school students to actually speak Spanish has always been one of the department’s biggest hurdles, Kiereck says. “Initially there was some hesitation around the amount of speaking required in this program,” she adds. “However, the instructors have been patient and encouraging, and students have become more comfortable engaging in the work.”

The district opted to test a three-day program, which provides conversation club, language lab, bi-weekly deep dives, curriculum alignment and assessment reports. On the days that students do not have virtual meetings, they work with their classroom teacher to deepen their language learning. As the business grows, Marcin hopes to offer other languages besides Spanish and English and envisions future users to include individuals and businesses.

“The AHA is such a big and well-respected organization, so it is a nice validation to see that they value my research and ideas,” says Weiss, a biomedical engineering doctoral student who received a competitive two-year pre-doctoral fellowship.

Weiss conducts her work in the lab of Tracy Hookway, assistant professor of biomedical engineering. The team uses cell culture, 3D modeling of stem cells and live imaging of tissue for regenerative medicine therapy.

“Natalie has been a huge asset to my lab,” Hookway says. “She’s incredibly intelligent and very ambitious, and she’s not afraid to ask questions.”

Weiss’ research involves creating working models of human hearts and then testing various drugs and therapies with the goal of resolving or improving cardiac fibrosis. She uses stem cells derived from human skin to make heart muscle cells and then combines them with proteins, sugars and a gel polymer, which is then piped into a 3mm donut ring mold (of sorts). The process takes about a week and a half, but once the cells are added to the mold, the ring forms overnight into a simplified, beating human heart model.

“By testing on these models, it saves time, money and testing on animals,” Weiss says, adding that she often has 40 rings going at a time. “What I’m hoping to do, once the models are a little more advanced, is replicate the stiffness of cardiac fibrosis in the model and then test a couple of drugs and see if it responds in a positive way.”

As a high school student in East Meadow, Long Island, Weiss knew she was interested in the medical field. She volunteered in an emergency room and got her EMT certification.

“I’ve also always loved problem solving — taking things apart and figuring out how they worked,” she says. “I wasn’t aware I could put those two interests together until a biomedical engineering major kept popping up again and again as I was researching college programs.”

She received her undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering at Stony Brook University in 2019, and then started her graduate career at Binghamton that fall. She selected the program because she was impressed with Hookway, who would become her advisor.

“I wanted someone who I can connect with,” Weiss says. “Dr. Hookway really seemed like someone who would advocate for her students, so I knew she was going to care about my progress and help me out.”

Once Weiss completes her doctorate, she hopes to complete a post-doctoral fellowship and then become a professor and run her own research lab.

The behavioral neuroscience doctoral student at Binghamton was among 28 winners of the 2022 SUNY Graduate Research Empowering and Accelerating Talent (GREAT) Award, designed to encourage undergraduate and graduate SUNY students to apply for competitive graduate fellowships to fund their master’s or doctoral studies. The prize provides $5,000 in flexible funding from the SUNY Office of Research and Economic Development, and is given to students who have already received national recognition from either the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program or the NIH’s National Research Service Awards.

Towner, who expects to finish his degree in December, plans to use his GREAT Award funding to attend research conferences, which will help him network and potentially secure a postdoctoral position in another research lab. “After three to five years, the end goal is to become a tenure-track faculty member,” the San Diego, Calif., native says. “I’ve always wanted to be a professor and to have that face-to-face connection with students, seeing the future faces of the field.”

Towner, a first-generation college student, earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees in psychology at California State University San Marcos. His initial experience in a preclinical lab involved researching adolescents and the long-term effects of drugs of abuse. “It was an area of interest that was close to home for me,” he says. “A lot of my friends and family experienced substance or alcohol use disorders.”

That research experience helped prepare Towner for the rigors of Binghamton’s program, says David F. Werner, associate professor and director of graduate studies for the Psychology Department and member of the Center for Development and Behavioral Neuroscience. “Trevor was able to hit the ground running,” he says. “He is very motivated and independent, and he is integral to a lot of research in the lab. Trevor is one of the most productive individuals to date.”

Towner’s current research in Werner’s lab focuses on long-term behavioral and neural consequences associated with adolescent, binge-level alcohol exposure. “The research is important because of the staggering number of people who start drinking in adolescence,” Towner says. “We need to understand how our behavior and brains might change as a result of repeated exposure to ethanol during this time when the brain is undergoing substantial maturation.”

Alcohol exposure can lead to an increase in habit formation in adulthood, greater anxiety-like behavior and increases in risk taking. “What is that neural mechanism that is driving that behavioral change?” Towner asks. “Is it something that is a great enough issue to be corrected, potentially through pharmaceutical and behavioral treatment? Only through conducting the experiments will we have a better insight into future directed therapies.”

Gauck, a biological anthropology student at Binghamton, was among 28 winners of the 2022 SUNY Graduate Research Empowering and Accelerating Talent (GREAT) Award. The prize encourages undergraduate and graduate SUNY students to apply for competitive graduate fellowships to fund their master’s or doctoral studies.

The GREAT Award comes with $5,000 in flexible funding from the SUNY Office of Research and Economic Development, and is given to students who have already received national recognition from the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program or the National Institutes of Health’s National Research Service Awards.

Gauck received an honorable mention from the NSF, and was delighted to discover she had won a GREAT Award. “I wasn’t anticipating it, so it was a nice surprise,” says the Pilot, Va., resident. “I would definitely encourage students to apply for national fellowships. Even if they don’t get the ‘big one,’ they still have a chance to receive funding and support from the SUNY system.”

After earning her bachelor’s degrees in anthropology and biological sciences at East Tennessee State University in 2018, Gauck considered medical school but decided she didn’t want to simply treat patients: “I realized I was more interested in looking at ‘why’ — Why are some people more likely to get sick than others? Why do we still have diseases after thousands of years?”

Gauck completed her master’s degree in biological anthropology at Binghamton and is in the first year of her doctoral studies. She works in the lab of Katherine Wander, associate professor of anthropology, which supports research in anthropology and global health. The lab works in collaboration with multiple research institutes and universities on questions involving nutrition, infectious disease risk and chronic disease risk in infants, children and adults. The team has ongoing projects in Tanzania, Nigeria, Bangladesh, China and the islands of Vanuatu.

Gauck’s current research looks at the risk factors and health consequences associated with co-infections of intestinal parasites and tuberculosis in northeastern Tanzania. She plans to use her GREAT Award funding to travel to Kilimanjaro and to purchase kits so she can conduct biomarker assays. Her goal is to create a pilot program as the potential basis for her dissertation, which would then allow her to gain funding through larger grants.

“Meg is a creative and insightful researcher and a joy to collaborate with,” Wander says. “Her ideas are innovative, pulling together insights from many fields to answer important questions about human biology that anthropology alone cannot answer.”

When Gauck graduates, she plans to work in the field of infectious disease. “I’m very interested in tuberculosis, so who knows where that will take me,” she says. “I could go into academia or I could work for research labs in the private or public sector. More than anything, I’d like to continue researching and finding ways to apply what I’m finding either through public health policy or teaching.”

“The piece displays all the hallmarks of a very promising artist, with a unique fusion of playfully complex rhythms, surprising harmonies and genre-crossing riffs that is ‘very Julian,’” says Daniel Thomas Davis, associate professor of music. “Beyond that, it’s particularly special to see and hear a student create a major new composition for an ensemble in which they’ve been a performing member for a number of years.”

When Cubeiro, a vibraphonist with the ensemble, asked the group’s director about the possibility of performing an original composition last fall, he agreed to it without hesitation. “Julian is an incredible jazz musician and his level of ability on the vibraphone from the get-go was extremely high,” says Michael Carbone, director of jazz studies. “The first read-through of the piece was, ‘Wow … this is incredible.’ The piece is so well put together and colorful.”

It took Cubeiro 60 hours to compose “Kolymbithres,” which is named after a beach on the island of Paros in Greece. It’s where he spent his summer break with friends, getting “into the weeds” of composing, drawing inspiration from the beach and the emotions that came with that — relaxation, happiness and bliss.

The Flushing, Queens, resident taught himself how to play and harmonize on the piano starting at age 3, and later expanded into percussion and electric bass. Cubeiro didn’t experience playing in a band until he was a senior in high school, but since he was already comfortable with percussion, he found the vibraphone a natural fit: “I could see the keyboard in front of me so it was a colliding of those two worlds.”

His first love will always be piano, though, and it is key to his creative process: “Playing the piano is almost meditative or therapeutic. I enjoy just playing something without thinking,” Cubeiro says. “I like to sit down without a goal and just play chords. And when I play something memorable, I build on it.”

He didn’t start creating his own music until he was teenager, writing his first song during his junior year of high school. Cubeiro initially learned about composition by taking existing songs and recreating them in a free, open-source musical notation software called MuseScore.

He has hundreds of voice memos on his phone that run from a mere 10 seconds to 25 minutes, named after their key, an emotion or another artist, just so he has an idea of what’s saved.

“‘Kolythimbres’ was initially named something like ‘Warm night melody in E major,’” he says, “and it came from a 10-second snippet that I recorded in October 2020. I’m not the greatest when it comes to naming things. It’s last in the process for me.”

Cubeiro has about 30 completed songs, and he hopes to compose music for video games, movies or television shows and to teach music.

His compositional strength is pulling together genres and styles that don’t seem to belong together, Davis says, “and he creates something deeply personal in the process — video game aesthetics, minimalistic repeating figures, Big Band color and harmonies, and ear-catching tunes all woven together into a dynamic tapestry of sound.”

Her research involves understanding how people with psychopathic personality traits obtain “successful outcomes” — such as achieving occupational success (i.e., promotions, awards) or getting away with “bad behavior” (i.e., being unethical or having criminal behaviors).

The I-Corps program provides a month-long intensive course where participants discover the commercial potential behind their research or innovation and what their ideal customer base might be. It is designed for faculty, students, postdocs, researchers and startups with a research project that has real-world applications, a prototype or an early-stage product or technology.

The regional program provides a $3,000 grant to conduct customer interviews and further any prototypes; the national program provides a $50,000 grant.

Welsh’s work is conducted under the guidance of Mark F. Lenzenweger, distinguished professor of psychology, in his laboratory of experimental psychopathology. Together they co-authored “Psychopathy, charisma, and success: A moderation modeling approach to successful psychopathy,” which was recently published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

“Some psychopathic individuals who have been quite successful have been described as charming or charismatic,” Welsh says. “We wanted to know if charisma serves as a protective or moderating factor that allows psychopathic individuals to be more successful. Our most recent project suggests that psychopathic individuals who are highly charismatic are able to get away with ‘bad behavior’ and avoid punishment more often than psychopathic individuals who are less charismatic.”

Before joining the I-Corps program, Welsh thought her research, if used in a screening tool, might attract the interest of law enforcement, human resources and other hiring departments. After holding 20 customer discovery interviews with people from various industries, she found that her first adopters would likely be talent acquisition and recruiting agencies or staff who screen candidates for senior- and executive-level positions for moderate-sized to large organizations.

Anyone involved in personality science, organizational behavioral/industrial psychology or personnel selection and business administration scholars will find Welsh’s research to be instructive and rich with insights, Lenzenweger says.

“I see Emma making notable contributions to our understanding of psychopathy that will influence how many of the leading workers in the area will conceive of this disorder,” he says. “She is an engaged and creative emerging psychological scientist who brings her own ideas to research challenges, and this emphasis on originality makes her a clear standout.”

Welsh, who did her undergraduate work at New York University, says she appreciates how Lenzenweger encourages his graduate students to generate original and creative ideas. “Working with Mark has been absolutely wonderful because he encourages you to pursue your passion,” she says. “He wants his students to build their own program of research.”

Welsh, who grew up in Alpharetta, Ga., is staying open-minded about where her career path may take her.

“My findings through the I-Corps program have shown me that my research has a lot of potential industry applications, so the job I might want may not exist yet. I may need to create it. There is a gap and I can fill it,” she says. “I love both my clinical work and my research, so I hope to be able to continue to do both and merge my interests.”

Even though the Johnson City resident will be focusing on geology with an emphasis on saltwater intrusion on aquifers and groundwater, it was her experience as an independent study student in the lab of Weixing Zhu, professor of biological sciences at Binghamton, that helped her discover her love of research.

She joined his lab in the summer of 2019 and has been working with doctoral student Vashti Mahadeo to collect, sort and identify ground arthropods (beetles, spring tails, mites and spiders) to compare biodiversity in urban and rural riparian (forested or wooded lands adjacent to a body of water) zones.

“She’s not even a biology major, but my work together with her interest in ecology overlap,” Mahadeo says. “She brings her geology background in and it meshes well.”

During the winter, Sprague-Getsy examined soil samples from these zones for pH and conductivity. She collected them with Mahadeo last summer. “She is almost like a graduate student in my lab because she is so highly dependable,” Zhu says.

“I’ve gotten so much out of the experience, from learning how to read papers to presenting research,” Sprague-Getsy says. “I get treated as an equal by Dr. Zhu and Vashti even though I’m an undergraduate student. I’ve really appreciated that and it has helped build my confidence.”

She presented her research on the biodiversity of coleoptera (beetles) in urban and rural riparian zones during the Illinois TRIO McNair Virtual Symposium in July 2020. Federal TRIO programs are educational opportunity outreach programs designed to motivate and support students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Sprague-Getsy was accepted into the competitive Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program in 2020, which provides research opportunities to disadvantaged undergraduate students with strong academic potential in preparation for doctoral studies.

During her Binghamton career, Sprague-Getsy has also been a student research collaborator at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a Binghamton University Acres farm intern, and a tutor and TRIO mentor through Student Support Services. She also completed an independent study under the supervision of Joseph Graney, professor of geological sciences and environmental studies, where she and another student tested the impacts of road salt and the combustion of wood chips at the campus heating plant and the resulting atmospheric emission of wood fly ash on the soils on and adjacent to the campus.

Zhu says he’s proud to be part of Sprague-Getsy’s success.

“She has used Binghamton University to its full advantage of what we can offer, and my lab is just one example,” he says. “If you look at her résumé, she is really engaged in different activities, particularly as a mentor. She’s a role model and an example, and she is exceptional at using the resources available to her to achieve a goal.”

That research has now become a line of study in the lab of her mentor, Marvin R. Diaz, associate professor of psychology. “Rhea is an excellent example of a highly motivated and driven student who will achieve great things in her career,” he says. “Her dedication was contagious and she made a significant impact in my research program.”

Marfatia first approached Diaz about his work when she was a freshman, and she became one of his research assistants as a sophomore. Diaz’s Alcohol and Development Lab, part of the Developmental Exposure Alcohol Research Center, looks at neurobiological, physiological and behavioral adaptations that occur during development as a result of alcohol, drug and stress exposure.

Marfatia initially researched prenatal ethanol exposure and its effects on anxiety-like behaviors in offspring by conducting breeding, drug exposures and behavioral and data analysis. After she received the Summer Scholars and Artists award in the summer of 2019, she designed her own research project involving prenatal methadone exposure and its effects on learning and memory in offspring.

“The opioid epidemic is obviously increasing at an alarming rate, and there are understudied aspects in pregnant women and the effects on their offspring,” Marfatia says.

Methadone, a medication used to treat opioid use disorder, can also be prescribed for pain management. Although in utero exposure to opioids does not cause birth defects, some babies may experience withdrawal, also known as neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome. Methadone maintenance therapy in pregnant women can help improve opioid withdrawal in newborns. However, the long-term effects from methadone maintenance therapy in the offspring on areas such as cognitive development, motor skills, physical growth and social/emotional status are not yet fully known.

In Diaz’s lab, Marfatia developed an animal model of prenatal methadone exposure and picked three specific age points (juvenile, adolescence and adulthood) to observe any learning and cognitive deficits as a result of exposure. Her research showed that effects didn’t become apparent until adulthood.

“It’s really exciting that the research is progressing past the framework that I created,” Marfatia says. “I didn’t have much experience or opportunity to work in research until I was in Dr. Diaz’s lab, but it really confirmed that it’s something I’m good at and something I’m interested in. I couldn’t have asked for a better professor and mentor. He knows how to guide students to be the best version of themselves.”

Marfatia graduated summa cum laude in December 2020 with a B.S. in integrative neuroscience with distinguished independent work, an accomplishment completed in 3.5 years. She was on the Dean’s List each semester, worked as a teaching assistant, was part of the Binghamton University Emerging Leaders Program, and was the vice president of finance for Phi Delta Epsilon, the professional pre-medical fraternity.

Marfatia plans to enroll in Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo this fall. For now, she’s working full time on campus at Decker Student Health Services’ COVID-19 rapid testing clinic.

“People don’t often discover the course until they are older,” she says. “I had no idea what nursing research was like, but I wanted to dip my toes in it. I really discovered I liked working with kids and I learned how to better communicate with them.”

Vilda was part of a group that used data analysis to determine whether asthma education helps elementary-aged children better manage their health. Their findings were presented during Binghamton Research Days. She completed training in working with human subjects, became a facilitator through the American Lung Association’s Open Airways for Schools program, and then went to a local elementary school and taught children with asthma how to detect the warning signs of asthma, avoid their triggers and make decisions about their health.

That research experience, along with a three-month student nursing externship in the pediatric intensive care unit at NYU Langone Medical Center, helped influence her career aspirations: Vilda hopes to work in a pediatric emergency department after graduation.

“I just really love that population and the diversity of cases you see. You have to think on your feet and really use your critical thinking skills,” she says. “And I love treating the person rather than the idea that you’re treating a patient with a medical diagnosis. It’s why I chose the profession in the first place. You’re treating the mind, body and spirit, and I try to focus on that every time I have a patient interaction.”

The New Windsor resident knew nursing was her calling by the time she was in high school.

Binghamton University was the first school out of the 30 that she visited. “It was the gold standard for all of the other visits going forward,” she says. “I fell in love with the campus and the welcome I got from the nursing program advisors. Without a doubt, I know I made the right decision. It’s one of the best in the state and as a New York resident, it’s a great value.”

When Vilda graduates from the Decker School of Nursing this spring, she will also leave behind a legacy of mentorship, professional development and networking that will help future students pursue healthcare careers.

The Nursing Student Association, like so many organizations on campus, had to limit traditional social gatherings this school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Vilda saw it as an opportunity to encourage her peers to develop relationships with older classmates and alumni so they might feel better prepared applying for externships or future jobs.

As the outgoing president of the NSA, Vilda oversaw the creation of a professional development chair position. She also designed a series of networking and mentoring events, including a collaboration with the Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development for nursing-specific workshops on resume-writing and LinkedIn. There was also a summer job/externship event where seniors shared their experiences with younger students and an alumni week that featured a virtual panel discussion.

“Alyssa takes pride in serving as a role model to current and future nursing students, and her leadership is valued and respected,” says Sara Wozniak, senior assistant dean for the Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “She is passionate, outgoing, reliable and has an amazing ability to bring people together.”

Gabriella Quartuccia won a $1,000 Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Fund research grant for her project, “Genomic variation in a species complex of ecologically important ants.”

The seed money supports researchers focused on wildlife conservation or related fields of North American fauna. Quartuccia will use the funding to support her dissertation fieldwork this summer, when she plans to collect five worker ants from 30 different colonies in 10 northeastern deciduous forests.

She studies population-level genetic variation in the lab of Thomas Powell, assistant professor of biology. His research focuses on understanding the origin and maintenance of biodiversity — specifically plant-feeding insects and how environmental changes affect evolutionary responses leading to speciation, the evolutionary process where populations evolve to become distinct species, and adaptation.

“One of the things that Gabby is doing well as an innovative young researcher and biologist is blurring the lines between biological processes at ecological and evolutionary scales,” Powell says. “Gabby’s dissertation work is moving us towards a more nuanced understanding of how new species form and how newly formed diversity plays out in ecosystems.”

Quartuccia was a natural fit for Powell’s lab based on her experience and interests in evolutionary genetics and speciation biology. As an undergraduate student at the University at Buffalo, she examined the evolution of brown, black and polar bears using computer modeling. After graduating with a biological sciences degree in 2016, she worked as a veterinary assistant and research technician in a cardiometabolic genomics lab.

Researching ants was not on Quartuccia’s radar until she joined Powell’s lab. Several wildflower seed-dispersing ants in the genus Aphaenogaster are closely related genetically and so similar in appearance that the boundaries between “species” are often unclear. These ants are responsible for up to 74% of ant-mediated seed dispersal events in the northeastern United States, which means they help shape ecological outcomes of deciduous forests. Add in climate change, deforestation and other human interference, and there are a lot of potential reasons why these ants may be in a state of “incomplete speciation.”

“They were a system that Tom had known about and had questions about in the back of his mind, and so he posed the system to me,” Quartuccia says. “I ran with it because it hits all of the things that I’m interested in. It just kind of fell into my lap, and I’ve grown to love working with ants.”

The Manhattan native had not conducted any fieldwork before she arrived at Binghamton three years ago. Her first day in the field came with a tick bite and a steep learning curve.

“She is a city girl at heart and had some initial trepidation about going out in the woods, but now she’s doing all this ant research by herself in state forests several hours away,” Powell says. “She’s really grown as a natural historian and field biologist, and is doing an amazing job.”

Quartuccia is not sure yet whether she wants to focus on research, teaching or both once she completes her degree, but she does know that she wants to work somewhere she can inspire the next generation of scientists, especially women.

“I wish I had had that exposure when I lived in the city,” she says.

Biophysical chemist Christof Grewer is part of an eight-year collaborative project backed by a $2.4 million National Institutes of Health grant, awarded to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and recently renewed until 2023.

Grewer is a professor of chemistry and the department’s undergraduate program chair. He’s also one of the world’s leading researchers of glutamine, an amino acid found naturally in the body that’s critical for a healthy immune system, and ASCT2, a glutamine transporter, or the “elevator” that carries the amino acid into cells to aid in the production of proteins.

“Cancer cells become addicted to glutamine as an energy source and they import it at a very high rate, so the idea is to target and prevent the glutamine from getting to the cancer cells,” Grewer says.

Avner Schlessinger, a computational biologist and associate professor of pharmacological sciences at Mount Sinai, partnered with Grewer to develop ASCT2 inhibitors. Grewer’s lab creates compounds and oversees functional testing, while Schlessinger’s lab conducts computational analysis and predictions.

“I wanted to collaborate with Christof because he is a top expert in the world in membrane transport biophysics,” Schlessinger says. “I knew I could learn from him and work with him to test both our hypotheses. It’s an ideal collaboration because we complement each other. He is kind and patient in sharing his data and knowledge, which enables us to do better science and really have fun while doing it.”

Grewer and Schlessinger first met during a 2012 conference in Switzerland. Grewer had already established himself as an expert in membrane proteins. During his post-doctoral fellowship at Cornell University in the mid-’90s, he studied glutamate receptors — glutamate is a neurotransmitter and an important molecule in cellular metabolism — and he became a pioneer in using lasers in his research.

After seeing the similar molecular structures in glutamate and glutamine transporters and studying how glutamate transporters responded to blockers, Grewer turned his focus in 2004 to glutamine and an ASCT2 inhibitor. To date, only a handful of labs in the world are involved in similar research.

Grewer and Schlessinger published a pre-print that includes a cryo-electron microscopy structure of ASCT2 and included one of their compounds. Three of Grewer’s doctoral students have assisted in the project; Elias Ndaru was included as a pre-print author due to his instrumental and prolific work in developing compounds.

The compound synthesis and the patent application filing are only the beginning of a long research and development journey. The steps toward potential clinical applications will involve developing the next generation of compounds at ideal potency levels, extensive pre-clinical testing for efficacy and safety, and eventually clinical trials, which will require additional research and development, funding and commercialization partners, such as startups or pharmaceutical companies.

The public tends to think of cancer as one disease when in reality it’s hundreds of different diseases, Grewer says.

“We’re learning every cancer is different and there is not going to be one silver bullet to ‘cure cancer,’” he says. “There are so many molecular aspects and so many different types of tissue involved that treatment may some day be individualized to the patient.”

Grewer has been teaching at Binghamton since 2008 and is thankful to be able work with students while continuing his research. “It’s a nice balance to be in the classroom and to be able to be in the lab,” he says. “It helps me keep up with the latest technologies and developments, and I think my students benefit from that type of experience.”

School readiness scores show boys outperforming girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. “If we look at boosting rich conversation with open-ended questions and associations related to STEM, that might help drive equality,” says Erin Jant, a visiting assistant professor of psychology at Binghamton University. She will continue her collaboration with the Sciencenter in Ithaca, N.Y. this fall, and start her research this spring at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore.

The Sciencenter holds private, monthly family engagement nights for caregivers and 3- to 5-year-olds enrolled in Head Start, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services program that promotes school readiness for kids ages 5 and under from low-income families.

“We’ve been working with Head Start for a long time, and we knew that children were successfully learning about science,” Sciencenter Executive Director Michelle Kortenaar says. “We wanted to create a national model but we needed to prove it. I knew of Erin and her research in how children learn, so I was super excited when she reached out to us shortly after she moved to the area. She’s as interested in our questions as she is in her own research questions.”

With 1,700 agencies in communities across the nation providing Head Start services to more than a million children every year, Jant’s research could have a significant impact.

Sciencenter’s Head Start event includes hands-on activities, such as manipulating weights, comparing sizes, measuring tools or working with magnets. “It allows the children to explore and build those science process skills, but the conversations they have with their caregiver are so important,” Jant says. “We’ve seen how the type of conversation can change how much is remembered from the experience.”

The families participating in Jant’s research will be assigned at random to one of four groups:

• baseline or the control group (families aren’t given any prompts and are just observed)
• elaborative (caregivers are given prompts to ask open-ended questions like “How do you think we should start?”)
• association (caregivers are given prompts to ask questions like “How is this like the magnets on the refrigerator at home?”)
• combination (caregivers are encouraged to ask both elaborative and association questions)

Families will be recorded as they are playing and interacting with the hands-on activities. Two weeks later, they’ll record a conversation at home as children independently participate in a specially constructed problem-solving task.

“We’re looking at whether the parents are still using conversational prompts they were given and what the child’s memories are,” Jant says. “Are they making those connections from the special activities during the problem-solving task? Which aspects of the museum interactions are critical for learning and remembering?”

Both science centers will follow the same model, allowing Jant to study rural versus urban settings and populations. “We want to look at the interactions across the two spaces and learn what pieces of this program are critical to the space,” she says. “How much of the whole space is being explored? Is it better to keep the hands-on science activities just to first-floor level activities, or does that not matter for engagement?”

Since the start of the pilot, Jant has relied on a team of 12 students from her lab to carry out data collection and to code audio and videotapes. “They are the driving force for this project’s success for sure,” she says, adding that she hopes to connect with Baltimore-area university students interested in research to assist her in the spring. “I think it would create a unique collaboration for my students as well. We could have joint lab meetings and it would expand their network.”

Laura Cook’s minireview was published in the July edition of the society’s “Infection and Immunity” journal. This was the first time the editorial board used an issue to highlight some of the “brightest early-career scientists who embody the future of research on host-microbe interaction.”

The piece, titled “Two-Component Signal Transduction Systems in the Human Pathogen Streptococcus agalactiae,” was co-authored by Lamar S. Thomas, a doctoral candidate in Cook’s lab.

“We only had two months to put together the review, citing 100 different sources, so it was a lot of reading and work,” says Cook, an assistant professor of biological sciences who joined the Binghamton faculty in fall 2018. “I wanted Lamar to help me because it’s good for her career. I was impressed with how much work she put into it, considering the short timelines.”

Cook’s research focuses on Streptococcus pyogenes, a bacteria that causes strep throat and skin and soft tissue diseases like impetigo and cellulitis. She also studies Streptococcus agalactiae, which commonly live in the gastrointestinal and genital tracts but can cause invasive infection in newborns, maternal women and older individuals with underlying chronic conditions.

“It’s not ideal that the only and best course of treatment is antibiotics,” Cook says. “We’re working toward identifying new treatment strategies. We hope our research moves in the direction of identifying new vaccine candidates.”

Cook did her undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Minnesota. Her post-doctoral studies took her to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she focused on quorum sensing (the ability to detect and respond to cell population density by gene regulation) in streptococci and the role of cell-to-cell signaling as they colonize the host.

While working in the lab of Michael Federle, she began using animal models of bacterial growth, and her use of a mouse model of vaginal colonization developed into her current research.

Cook, Thomas and several undergraduate students are studying how streptococci grow and interact on mucosal surfaces in the vaginal tract and nasopharynx of mouse models.

Federle said he appreciated Cook’s coordination of his group of bacteriologists with a group with physicians at another university, both of which were researching reoccurring strep throat diagnoses among adolescent patients. The two groups were looking at relevant questions that could be asked in a clinical setting and were researching therapeutic options outside of antibiotics.

“She was really good at finding collaborators and teams of scientists that can work together,” Federle says. “That’s one of the biggest impacts that she’s going to have at Binghamton University.”

Another strength is Cook’s approachability and innate ability to make people — especially students — comfortable. “She’s a good person to collaborate with because she takes on big goals and ideas and she takes them on with ease,” Federle says. “She asks the right questions — questions that are going to need collaboration through interdisciplinary work.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the associate professor of history a $60,000 fellowship in January to complete her research and write her second book. She expects “Trafficking, Travel, and Illicit Migration in Early Twentieth-Century French and the Americas” to be published in 2022.

“Elisa’s work really touches on central questions of our own day,” says Eileen Boris, Hull Endowed Chair and distinguished professor of the department of feminist studies at UC Santa Barbara. “She reconstructs the social and political history of people who traversed the Atlantic for a living while studying the ideas of border control, belonging and citizenship, civilian surveillance, racial profiling and policing of sexuality.”

While French women were migrating to cities like Vera Cruz, Buenos Aires and Havana to work in commercial sex trade, there were open immigration policies from Argentina up to Nova Scotia until restrictions became the norm by 1930.

“Historians usually talk about how the growth of nationalism, race and ethnicity affected these policies, but women’s mobility and the problem or perceived problems associated with migratory prostitution play a key role in this development,” Camiscioli says. “I argue that these early debates about border policing, passport control, repatriating, restrictive immigration requirements — all in association with women working in prostitution and societal fears about women’s mobility — helped create current border control regimes and shape understandings of illicit migration today.”

Camiscioli’s work also looks at the distinction between free versus forced migration. Personal letters collected as evidence for police records against prostitutes or their pimps indicate these women generally made the decision to travel abroad. “They wrote about feeling seasick or asked for news about their goddaughter. They had tender ties to their families,” she says. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t dreadfully poor, didn’t have violence in their lives, or that they didn’t experience degrees of abuse and deception, but there are shades of gray between coercion and choice and I think many of these women fell somewhere in between.”

Occasionally, Camiscioli can piece together a rough timeline of one woman’s travels. For example, a family reported their 15-year-old daughter missing but once the Buenos Aires police found her, she said she was sick and didn’t want to tell her family why she was miserable. Consulate records and ship manifests show this individual traveled to several cities before ending up in San Francisco. She reported to the U.S. Census that she was a dressmaker, an occupation often used by women who worked in commercial sex. She traveled to France three times to visit an aunt, and by age 40, she was living in Paris and managing a brothel.

“She was entrepreneurial. And by migrating, she experienced a boost within her working-class status,” Camiscioli says. “I’m astounded by how profoundly mobile these people were and the ingenious ways they got around the system. There’s so much tenacity, and while it can be easy to overly romanticize some of these stories, their sense of freedom and adventure does shine through.”

Camiscioli’s first book, “Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century,” was published by Duke University Press in 2009.

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and French literature from the University of Pennsylvania and received her doctorate in history from the University of Chicago. She is the co-editor of the international Journal of Women’s History (along with distinguished professor of history Jean H. Quataert), and serves on research, teaching and granting committees in France, Belgium and the UK.

“Binghamton University has so much opportunity, energy and vitality,” says assistant professor Florence Varodayan, who joined the faculty in January. “As I settle in, I’m looking forward to learning about the cutting-edge research being performed in labs across campus and seeing how we can work together to build interesting multidisciplinary projects that span different departments. Science is a team sport.”

Varodayan’s research focuses on understanding how neural communication between addiction-related brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, is shaped by alcohol dependence and stress. Her goal is to find innovative therapeutic strategies to provide better treatment for patients suffering from alcohol- and anxiety/stress-related psychiatric diseases.

She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and biology and a master’s degree in chemistry from the Un iversity of Pennsylvania. Her second master’s degree and doctorate in neurobiology and behavior was completed at Columbia University.

From there, Varodayan completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Scripps Research, formerly known as The Scripps Research Institute. There, she worked in the cellular neurobiology lab of Dr. Marisa Roberto, a professor in the molecular medicine and neuroscience departments.

“Florence was a dynamic force in my lab,” Roberto says. “She demonstrated great skill at proposing elegant studies, learning new techniques and developing innovative approaches to scientific investigation. She is poised to make seminal contributions to addiction research.”

At Binghamton, Varodayan plans to continue her research on cognitive dysfunction and alcohol use disorder in affiliation with the Developmental Exposure Alcohol Research Center (DEARC).

“One of the main techniques that we use is electrophysiology, which is this cool opportunity to monitor brain activity,” Varodayan says. “You can actually see individual brain cells communicate in real time.”

The lab is recruiting postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students and research technicians. Varodayan has a long history of mentoring and working with students, and she is looking forward to encouraging curiosity and potential career paths in her new role.

“Sometimes it’s their first experience with research. They are used to there being a correct or right answer,” Varodayan says. “They can bring a fresh perspective to your research because they’re always asking, ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ or ‘Why does it work this way but not that way?’ Their questions can very actively contribute to research in very important ways.”

Varodayan arrives with grants to support her research. In 2017, she received a prestigious, multi-year Pathway to Independence grant from the National Institutes of Health, which supports highly qualified postdoctoral researchers as they transition to independent scientists. The first phase of this $1 million grant involved her mentored research at Scripps Research; the second phase that supports her independent research at Binghamton will start in the spring.

The Chancellor’s Early-Career Scholar award provides funding of up to $500,000 for items such as postdoctoral research fellowships, graduate student stipends, travel, equipment and software. Scholars who can attract more than $2 million of externally sponsored research funding within four years of their appointment are eligible to receive $100,000 in additional funding for the purpose of growing research.

In addition to the grants, Varodayan also learned in February she will receive faculty salary support through the PRODiG (Promoting Recruitment Opportunity, Diversity, Inclusion and Growth) program, which SUNY launched in 2019 to increase the representation of historically underrepresented faculty and women in STEM disciplines.