Noteworthy: Research grants, awards and publications

ALBANY, N.Y. (Aug. 29, 2024) — The latest developments on University at Albany faculty and staff who are receiving research grants, awards and other noteworthy attention.

• Janet Currie, Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and president of the American Economic Association, will deliver the 2nd annual Pong S. Lee Memorial Lecture on Friday, Sept. 6. The lecture will be held in the Standish Living Room of the Massry School of Business at 4 p.m. Register by Sept. 2. The Pong S. Lee Endowment was established through a generous gift from Seung Park, PhD ’74, to the Department of Economics to invite distinguished speakers to the University to address a broad range of economic issues.
• Cheryl Andam, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the RNA Institute, recently published a new paper on antimicrobial resistance in the journal Nature Communications. The study, “Clonal background and routes of plasmid transmission underlie antimicrobial resistance features of bloodstream Klebsiella pneumoniae” was selected by the editor to be featured in the Editors' Highlights in the journal’s Microbiology and Infectious Diseases section.
• Annabelle Armah, a PhD student in UAlbany's clinical psychology program, was awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for her project, “Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Risk in Black Mother-Infant Dyads: Postpartum Depression, Physiological Synchrony, and Infant Regulatory Development.” The project will identify consequences of postpartum depression on Black infants’ development, as well as risk and protective factors to promote health among Black mothers, infants and families.
• Shawn Bushway, professor in the School of Criminal Justice and the Department of Public Administration and Policy at Rockefeller College, will deliver a public lecture at 4 p.m. Sept. 18 at SUNY Oneonta on trends in racial disparities in the criminal justice system over the past 10 years. The lecture, “Is New York State a National Leader in Criminal Justice Reform? Successes and Opportunities for Improvement,” will examine dramatic changes in crime rates and prison populations, as well as background checks and the collateral consequences associated with them.
• A UAlbany-founded company won $50,000 in the SUNY Startup Summer School 2024 Demo Day. Sangali, headed by Allix Coon, a post-doctoral researcher, and Rabi Ann Musah, the associate vice provost for the Learning Commons and the Williams-Raycheff Endowed Professor in Chemistry, provides rapid and accurate wood species identification testing. This enables the lumber industry to certify materials and verify that wood has been legally harvested, reducing delays in the movement of goods. 
• Jorge González-Cruz, Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Environmental and Atmospheric Sciences and the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, received the Helmut E. Lansberg Award from the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The award honors research that creates societally significant contributions to the understanding of urban climate through modeling and observation. González-Cruz will officially receive the award at the AMS annual meeting in January in New Orleans.
• Professor and Chair of Mathematics and Statistics Cristian Lenart has received a 3-year, $180,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project, “New Perspectives in Combinatorics for Lie Algebra Representations and Schubert Calculus.”
• Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Antun Milas received the prestigious Frontiers of Science Award along with Kathrin Bringmann (University of Cologne) and Karl Mahlburg (LSU) for their work on quantum modular forms and homological blocks of 3-manifolds at the 2024 International Congress of Basic Science in Beijing. 
• Paul Morgan, Social and Health Equity Endowed Professor at the School of Public Health and director of the Institute for Social and Health Equity, coauthored a new report, "Explaining Achievement Gaps: The Role of Socioeconomic Factors," published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The study explored causes of racial and ethnic achievement gaps in elementary education; findings suggest that socioeconomic factors play an important role in shaping these disparities. The study has received wide media coverage, appearing in Education Week, K-12 Dive, ABC News and EducationNC.
• Alan Oliveira, a professor of science education in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Theory & Practice, is co-principal investigator on a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project to develop a community of practice for community college chemistry faculty throughout the Northeast. The collaborative project with SUNY Geneseo and SUNY Adirondack includes a subaward of $200,000 for UAlbany. It will address professional isolation by increasing collaborative teaching partnerships between two-year college instructors and faculty from four-year schools and doctoral institutions, and is expected to have a positive impact on the region’s transfer pipeline into STEM. This past spring, Oliveira traveled to Vietnam on a Fulbright Specialist Award where he spent six weeks sharing best practices for teaching physics to faculty, staff and preservice teachers at Hanoi Pedagogical University 2. 
• Ian Ross Singleton, a lecturer in the Writing and Critical Inquiry Program, authored an article in Full Stop titled "Rebirth in the Ash Heap of istoriya," a review of Dominique Hoffman's American English translation of Olena Stiazhkina's novel, Cecil the Lion Had to Die, about four families navigating life in 1986 Soviet Ukraine.