Noteworthy: Research grants, awards and publications

A man in a suit and tie sits at a table with a name card that reads "University at Albany Jeff Freedman."
Jeff Freedman of UAlbany's Atmospheric Sciences Research Center will participate in an upcoming New York State Energy Planning Board panel about the impact of climate change on New York's energy system. (Photo by Patrick Dodson)

ALBANY, N.Y. (Feb. 27, 2025) — The latest developments on University at Albany faculty and staff who are receiving research grants, awards and other noteworthy attention.

  • Jeff Freedman of the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center will be part of a panel discussion about the impact of climate change on our energy system during the New York State Energy Planning Board meeting on Monday, March 3. You can watch live starting at 2 p.m.
  • A new book co-edited by Anthropology Professor Marilyn Masson titled Faces of Rulership in the Maya Region was published by Harvard University Press last month. Across 15 chapters, Masson and her co-editor, Patricia A. McAnany from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explore the changing faces of Maya rulership and their foundational ties to symbolic material objects, architecture, ancestral beings, deities and written monuments.
  • An essay by Nancy Newman, associate professor in the Department of Music and Theatre, was featured in an article in the Feb. 10 issue of The New Yorker. "Femme Vitale: Alma Mahler-Werfel, a woman with qualities,” an article by longtime classical music critic Alex Ross, cites Newman’s 2022 article for the Journal of the American Musicological Society titled, “#AlmaToo: The Art of Being Believed,” which offered a feminist reexamination of the life of legendary and controversial composer Alma Mahler.
  • Edward Valachovic, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, published a paper in the journal PLOS One titled “Seasonal and periodic patterns in US COVID-19 mortality using the Variable Bandpass Periodic Block Bootstrap.” By applying a novel statistical method, the study revealed seasonal patterns of COVID-19 prevalence that can aid future efforts to predict and prepare for surges in COVID cases.
  • Alex Valm, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, and Yunlong Feng, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, and Ruogu Wang, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences, published a study in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics titled “A framework of multi-view machine learning for biological spectral unmixing of fluorophores with overlapping excitation and emission spectra.” The work describes a new machine learning approach for analyzing biological images — such as those produced by fluorescence microscopes — that makes it possible to differentiate among hundreds of different targets in the biological sample.
  • Alexis Weber of the Department of Chemistry was selected as a finalist for the Chancellor's Distinguished PhD Graduate Dissertation Awards, which recognize work done across the SUNY system to address some of society's most pressing issues. Weber’s dissertation explored the use of vibrational spectroscopy for forensic investigations.