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August 2024

Research @ Pace

A newsletter highlighting faculty research & scholarship

Faculty Spotlight

Meghana V. Nayak, PhD, is a Professor of Political Science and Chair of Women's and Gender Studies (NYC). Professor Nayak has just published her first novel, Tilt, on intergenerational trauma and global politics. The book will be featured at upcoming events at the iconic feminist Bluestockings Cooperative/Bookstore, and other local, independent bookstores. Tilt has received praise and endorsements from the Chicago Review of Books and award-winning authors Jen Soriano (Nervous: Essays on Heritage and Healing) and Anjali Enjeti (The Parted Earth), as well as nominations for book prizes.

 

Professor Nayak also co-authored, with students Aryaa Moudgal and Shalini Basu, a chapter on gender and caste oppression for the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Feminism and International Relations. She is excited to work with students Ellis Clay and Shalini Basu this fall on a NEH Humanities Initiatives Grant-funded project to "map" mutual aid in New York City and to work with a local feminist Indigenous collective to support research for a new policy tracker related to Gov. Hochul's Task Force on Missing BIPOC Women and Girls. In addition, Professor Nayak serves with Pakistani scholar Sara Shroff as the co-editor of the "Conversations" section of the International Feminist Journal of Politics, focusing particularly on reparative and restorative dialogue. Finally, she has been consulting for the past ten years with organizations that support asylum seekers fleeing gendered persecution.

Darren Hayes, PhD (Information Technology, NYC, Seidenberg School of CSIS) is an Associate Professor and a Faculty Fellow at Pace. Professor Hayes is the founder and director of the Digital Forensics Research Lab. His research focuses on privacy and security concerns associated with mobile applications. Additionally, they also support law enforcement and NGOs in the areas of child exploitation, violence against women and girls, and counter-human trafficking. He has also developed numerous courses in digital forensics, computer security, and threat intelligence at undergraduate and graduate levels. Recently, he has prepared new course outlines for a new program in cell site analysis and geolocation investigations.

 

Prof. Hayes has been a visiting professor and has collaborated with several universities internationally. He has developed a new dual degree program with Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome and the first students from Italy will arrive at Pace in Fall 2025. For the past two years, he has also been a faculty mentor in the Seidenberg Undergraduate Research Summer Program.

 

Prof. Hayes has served on several academic conference committees. He is a member of the Review Board for MDPI’s Information Journal and has also served as Review Editor for Frontiers in Big Data, Cybersecurity & Privacy. His CISSP Cert Guide, 5th Edition (Pearson) will be published this month. His recent publications also include a book chapter titled Forensic Analysis of the iOS Apple Pay Mobile Payment System, “ in the Nineteenth Annual IFIP WG 11.9) as well as an article titled “Optimizing Reward-Based Crowdfunding” in IEEE Engineering Management Review (2023). His article “Nonlinear Multimode Optical Fiber Bragg Grating” has been published in the Asian Journal of Physics.

Faculty News

Enhancing emergency care for pediatric patients in the out-of-hospital setting is of paramount importance and holds significant societal benefits, as it has the potential to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Unfortunately, safety events, such as medication errors and delayed interventions, are common in this domain and can lead to severe consequences, including childhood morbidity and mortality. Many of these safety events can be attributed to the relative lack of experience and knowledge among pre-hospital providers in caring for acutely ill and injured children in out-of-hospital settings. Despite some efforts, there remains a lack of effective decision support tools for pre-hospital providers to assist with the recognition of clinical conditions and to reinforce protocol adherence.


Zhan Zhang, PhD (Information Technology, NYC, Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems), was recently awarded $419,294 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to design and develop a novel, evidence-based, context-sensitive decision support tool for pre-hospital providers treating pediatric patients in out-of-hospital settings. The research team will use artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyze a large scale of patient records to characterize medical errors in the pre-hospital care of children. Subsequently, they will design, develop, and evaluate a decision support tool aimed at addressing the identified medical errors. This project will also engage a diverse body of students from various programs to foster collaboration and create a rich learning environment.

Dean Horace E. Anderson Jr. , JD (Elisabeth Haub School of Law) was named to the “2024 Trailblazers in Education” list published by City & State New York magazine. The list recognizes “100 professionals who are keeping New York at the fast-paced forefront of higher education" and includes presidents, professors and provosts, lobbyists, lawyers, nonprofit entrepreneurs, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of education.

Luke Cantarella, PhD (Film and Screen Studies, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences) received a grant of 230,000 from the New York State Entertainment Workshop Diversity program to launch as new summer program called Art Craft NYC in partnership with productive designer, Cheyenne Ford. The program is an intensive training for individuals interested in working in Art Departments on Film and Television production in the New York region with an emphasis on creating new pathways and opportunities into the profession to diversify the field. This year's inaugural class of 14 students completed a five-week program led by working professionals including special guest such as Wynn Thomas (Do the Right Thing, Da 5 Bloods) and supported by United Scenic Artists Local 829 and Motion Picture Studio Mechanics Local 52. The program is open to early-career professionals with or without a college degree and is completely tuition free. As one participant wrote upon completion, "I just want to say thank you for creating this program. I truly am so grateful for this opportunity and I have learned so things. I actually have the skills to be successful in the industry."

Pace University’s International Disarmament Institute co-directors Emily Welty, PhD (Peace and Justice Studies, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences) and Matthew Bolton, PhD (Political Science, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences) received funding from the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) to facilitate a retreat, 14 and 15 May 2024, for UN personnel, identifying lessons learned from the first phase of implementation of the Youth Leader Fund for a World without Nuclear Weapons (YLF), a Japanese government-funded project. The workshop took place at Pace University’s Downtown Manhattan campus and involved students Antje Hipkins, Sophie Mason, Tyne Skelton and Alexis Pickering in event planning and note taking.




Kimbelry Collica-Cox, PhD  (Criminal Justice, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences) received a grant from Westchester County for the Puppies on the Block (POB) program. POB is a puppy fostering program, housed at the Westchester County Department of Correction (WCDOC). The program is overseen by Professor Collica-Cox and the WCDOC program staff; rescues are provided to the facility by Paws Crossed Animal Rescue in Elmsford, NY. Pace undergraduates who participate in the award-winning Parenting, Prison & Pups Program, a civic engagement opportunity, also have the opportunity to help with this puppy fostering program. While the program takes place in NYS, most of the rescues are transports from the states of Georgia and North Carolina, which have some of the highest rates of animal euthanasia in the country. The program is administered on two separate housing blocks. The first block consists of female residents in a drug treatment community known as Solutions, which is directed by St. John’s Riverside Hospital. Many of the residents have a co-occurring mental health diagnosis. The second block consists of young men, ages 18 to 24, who are incarcerated in YOP (the Young Opportunities Program).



Puppies are brought to each of the housing blocks to be fostered by the residents and are housed in the facility for two to three weeks prior to being put up for adoption. Once adopted, many families agree to take a photo/video for the residents to see their foster’s forever family. During their stay, the residents care for and socialize the puppies to increase their chances of adoptability. Usually, the program only fosters puppies. However, for the past month, the women were fostering a pregnant dog named Pretty who gave birth to a healthy puppy on August 8, 2024. In less than two weeks, she will return to the jail with her pup to complete the fostering process. To date, 44 residents have completed the program and 30 puppies were fostered. Preliminary results from the first two years of program implementation indicate that participants in Puppies on the Block at the WCDOC had statistically significant increased levels of self-esteem, happiness, self-control, and empathy, in addition to decreased levels of anxiety, stress and depression, after only four weeks of program participation. Participants also presented with reduced disciplinary infractions and reduced grievances. With a rise in mental health issues among jail-based residents, benign, cost-effective interventions such as these prove to be very valuable and can be easily replicated in other carceral institutions. 

Beau Anderson, PhD (Allied Health, NYC, College of Health Professions) published “Menopausal Transition Symptom Experience and Access to Medical and Integrative Health Care: Informing the Development of MENOGAP” in Global Advances in Integrative Medicine and Health (13: 2024). This is a community engagement study of midlife women to qualitatively evaluate their experiences with menopause and the barriers and facilitators to accessing healthcare for menopause symptoms. This information will be used to design a group medical visit model for midlife women with menopause symptoms that incorporates complementary and integrative approaches. Group medical visits are where a healthcare provider sees multiple patients at once facilitating reductions in healthcare costs and benefits associated with therapy conducted in group settings. This approach is especially well suited to community clinics and addresses healthcare disparities. The application of the integrative group medical visit to menopause has not been undertaken before. 



Professor Anderson also published “Acupuncture practice-based research in the age of artificial intelligence: Developments as of May 2024” in the Journal of Integrative and Complementary Medicine (2024). This review article outlines the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to acupuncture clinical research. Four current AI/acupuncture studies focusing on dementia, thrombocytopenia, cardiac mortality associated with diabetes, and Chinese herbal medicine safety are described. These studies involve many patients and use of electronic health records making a big data/AI approach possible. The purpose of the paper is to showcase the studies and to encourage acupuncturists to engage with discussions regarding the collection of acupuncture data and the way it is aggregated, analyzed and interpreted. Current projects demonstrating structured approaches to practice-based research are also presented to demonstrate smaller scale acupuncture data collection and analysis from private practices. 



In addition to these publications, Professor Anderson is part of a research team at Southern California University of Health Sciences who just received an NIH R01 grant from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. The project entitled “Acupuncture for Medicare Beneficiaries with Chronic Low Back Pain (cLBP): Access, Utilization and Outcomes,” will examine the use of acupuncture by seniors since Medicare started covering acupuncture for cLBP in 2020. The project will analyze Medicare claims data and involve a qualitative analysis of the barriers and facilitators to the use of acupuncture for cLBP for both providers and patients. 

Martha W. Driver, PhD, FSA (English, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences) was recently elected to the Executive Committee of the American Trust for the British Library; she also serves on the ATBL’s Lecture Subcommittee. For the 59th International Congress of Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, in May, she organized eight sessions (which included Women’s Books: Owners, Makers, Patrons; Prognostication, Palliation, and Prayer from Manuscript to Print; Approaches to a Miscellany: NLW Brogyntyn MS ii.1; Old Books, New Technologies; Old Wine, New Skins I: Manuscripts and Books Adapted, Emended, Repurposed; Old Wine, New Skins II: Editions; Interpreting Inventories (1): Ideas of the Inventory; and Interpreting Inventories

(2): Recovering Communities). She also gave a lecture, “’The labour of olde astrologiens’: Looking Again at the Kalender of Shepherds,” organized the speakers’ dinner and ran the Early Book Society business meeting at this conference. On return to New York, she proposed six sessions for the Sixtieth ICMS in May 2025. She was also co-chair and co-organizer of “Women in Late Medieval Britain: Makers, Patrons, and Readers,” the Harlaxton conference, which was held at Madingley Hall, Cambridge University.

Volume 26 of the Journal of the Early Book Society, which Professor Driver edits, was published by Pace University Press; she is currently at work on volume 27 and writing two articles for summer deadlines. 

Ianthe Demos, BA (BA International Performance Ensemble, Sands College of Performing Arts) has been running the OYL International Program, a global training and performance program. Based out of New York City, OYL has been working in Greece since 2007. In 2023 OYL expanded the program to include residencies in Japan and India. Across three different countries, program participants encounter ancient and contemporary artistic practices of three of the world’s oldest and largest theater cultures. Beginning in India, participants encounter a curated selection of performances and workshops that sample some of the vast richness of the country’s performing arts. The program then travels to Japan, where workshops in traditional performance practice are combined with rigorous training inspired by those forms. In Greece, the program brings these experiences together in a period of intensive rehearsal and development. In 2024 the program culminated in five performances of Ellen McLaughlin's Oedipus in village squares in Epirus, a 2,500 seat outdoor amphitheater in Ioannina, and the archeological site of Ancient Corinth. The production included OYL's professional actors - among them Ellen McLaughlin, Rinde Eckert, Leon Ingulsrud, Akiko Aizawa, Georgia Tsangaraki, Richard Saudek, Tina Mitchell, Akyiaa Wilson, Cristina Pitter, Natalie Lomonte and Meropi Papastergiou - performing alongside 30 summer company members from universities across the USA.

 

Camila Bustos, JD (Elisabeth Haub School of Law) published “Climate Change and Internal Displacement in Colombia: Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold?” in the Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law . One of the key challenges stemming from climate change will be climate displacement, as sudden and gradual events disrupt livelihoods and force millions to leave their homes. Despite the existing scholarship’s focus on cross-border movement, the majority of climate displaced people will move internally instead of or before seeking refuge outside their nation’s borders. What obligations do states owe to their citizens when those states have historically not been emitters but have still failed to protect domestic populations from displacement related to environmental disasters and climate change impacts? Through exploring the disaster management framework in Colombia and conducting a case study of the town of Gramalote, this Article discusses the obligations that states like Colombia owe to their internally displaced populations in the context of climate change. 





Melvin Williams, PhD (Communication and Media Studies, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences) was recently featured on CBC Radio-Canada. The August 11, 2024, televised interview analyzed the impacts and dangers of celebrity endorsements in the 2024 US Presidential Election.

The Center for Community Action and Research has received an Ask Every Student Implementation Grant, marking the third time CCAR has received this national grant. The Ask Every Student Program is a joint initiative of the Students Learn Students Vote Coalition, the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, Campus Vote Project, and NASPA and supports campuses in integrating voter registration into university life with the ultimate goal of achieving full student voter participation. CCAR, which oversees the university’s Pace Votes campaign yearly, will be using the grant to fund student leaders in both NYC, through the Pace Votes Leadership Program, and Pleasantville, through the Pace Votes Fellow position. These students leaders, together with CCAR staff and campus and community partners, will be working to ask every eligible Pace student to vote in the 2024 Presidential Election.  

Charlene Hoegler, PhD (Biology, PLV, Dyson College or Arts and Sciences), along with her colleagues, presented a poster at the American Biological Laboratory Educators Conference University of Maryland, College Park. Her study is titled “COVID Challenge: Executing a Biology Laboratory Experiment Off-Campus.” The pandemic of COVID-19 challenged college professors to design and develop remote laboratory learning. During this time, students were confined at home. For the summer of 2020, the investigators had proposed to mentor a biology student research project on the effects of thyroxine in amphibian metamorphosis. This ABLE poster presents their response to the task of executing remote lab research. In the spring 2020, the investigators noticed that our home pool cover contained swimming tadpoles. Since the campus was off limits, my student agreed to transport the tadpoles to her garage as a home lab. Plastic cups and Poland spring water provided for maintenance of the captured tadpoles. The optics on the cell phone magnified tadpoles to measure tail length. A biological supply company sold pre-weighed thyroxine. After she collected and stored water samples from treated tadpoles at home, an assay was developed to measure the urea excreted. This required spectrometry, use of hazardous chemicals and instructor supervision. So, the researchers decided to delay the assay until safe restrictions for campus lab use were re-established. Their student had a productive summer, collected tail length data, and returned to campus later that year to complete her urea assay. In addition, another cohort of students successfully performed the same experiment on campus in 2023. This pedagogical article was accepted for the ABLE Conference Proceedings (forthcoming in 2025).






Congratulations to the Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences Award Recipients!




These awards supported the incorporation of research and creative inquiry into the undergraduate curriculum.







Erica Johnson, PhD (English, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences)

Environmental Humanities in the Field of Postcolonial Studies


Jack Morales, PhD (Writing & Cultural Studies, PLV, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

The Democratic Literacy Oral History Project


Nils Myszkowski, PhD (Psychology, NYC, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences)

Socio-economic factors of literacy: Disentangling measurement biases and individual differences in an international assessment database


Lu Shi, PhD (Health Science, NYC, College of Health Professions) and Scott Youmans, PhD (MS CSD, NYC, College of Health Professions)

Learning Epidemiology through Clinical Innovation: Involving an Undergraduate Class to Assess A Pilot Taichi Program for Aphasia Patients

NSF update

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently added another required document –Synergistic Activities— to the list of documents that need to be submitted for each of the senior/key personnel involved in a proposal to the NSF.


What to include in your Synergistic Activities information

A list of up to five distinct examples that demonstrate the broader impact of your professional and scholarly activities, focusing on the creation, integration and transfer of knowledge.


NSF requires this one-page document for each individual identified as senior/key personnel.


Refer toPAPPG II.D.2.h(iv) for additional information.


How to format your Synergistic Activities information

Once you have prepared your Synergistic Activities information, save it as a PDF and submit it as part of your proposal via Research.gov or Grants.gov.

Save the Date

The Westchester County Association and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University present the 3rd Annual Profit and Purpose WCA Sustainable Business Conference on Friday, September 13. Join chief corporate sustainability officers and policy experts to find out how businesses, nonprofits, and government are using sustainability concepts to drive profitability and social impact.


Register for this event here

Center for Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE) Announcements

For the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year, the university-wide Center for Undergraduate Research Experiences is announcing the following four undergraduate research opportunities:


1)   2024-2025 Academic Year Provost’s Student-Faculty Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry Award Program

Deadline: Tuesday, September 3, 2024

This university-wide research award program is for undergraduate students entering their sophomore, junior, or senior year in Fall 2024. The program supports projects started in courses, or research and artistic settings that merit further independent development through sustained faculty mentoring and steady student work throughout the academic year. These grant awards will be made for the full academic year and will not support projects that fulfill academic course requirements for 2024-2025. Please share this information with your students.

Learn more and apply here!

 

2)   2024-2025 The Amelia A. Gould Undergraduate Research Assistantship in the Creative Arts

Deadline: Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Dyson College is soliciting proposals from faculty for undergraduate research assistants to support faculty projects in the Creative Arts. This funding opportunity will support faculty-mentored experiential learning for students who will work on immersive research-based creative arts projects as research assistants.

Learn more and apply here!

 

3)   2024-2025 Academic Year Undergraduate Research Assistantship Program funded by Federal Work Study (FWS)

Proposals accepted on a prioritized rolling basis through September 30, 2024; afterwards, applications will continue to be accepted on a rolling basis until funds are depleted.

 

The goal of this program is to fund research assistants to support faculty research projects and offer students research-based learning supported by federal work study awards.

 

To apply, propose a research assistantship position to support your scholarship or creative inquiry. To recruit qualified student applicants, inform your students about the research opportunity now so they can better understand the value of their Federal Work Study funds and how those funds can be earned while serving as your research assistant!

Click here to propose your Undergraduate Research Assistantship position

  

4)   2024-2025 Student Academic Conference Travel Fund for Undergraduate Presentations

For the 2024-2025 Academic Year, both in-person and virtual conference fees for student presenters at external academic conferences are eligible for funding. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis during the academic year subject to funding availability. The presentation must be for scholarly research or artistic projects, and the student must be a presenter at the conference and listed in the conference program.

Conference Travel Fund Application Form 2024-2025

For questions contact:


Norma Quiridumbay, CURE Director of Operations at nquiridumbay@pace.edu



Maria Iacullo-Bird, PhD., Assistant Provost for Research at miacullobird@pace.edu

Prestigious Awards and Fellowships

An information session for students to learn about the benefits of applying for prestigious awards and to hear about specific opportunities highlighting the range of possibilities will be held on September 18th during Common Hour (12:10 pm -1: 10 pm). The session will be held both in person (1 Pace Plaza, W502) and on zoom. Please encourage your students to attend.


Registration is required. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

For questions contact Moira Egan, PhD, Director of Prestigious Awards and Fellowships, at megan@pace.edu.


Do you have a recent publication, grant, or other updates?

Share your research news here!


Stay connected: visit us at www.pace.edu/office-of-research


Questions?

Email: Elina Bloch, PhD, at ebloch@pace.edu