Vida Vanchan, professor of geosciences and director of Buffalo State's Global Studies Institute, recently published a book chapter titled "Global Economy: Geographies of Production during Crises" in Contemporary Economic Geographies: Inspiring, Critical and Diverse Perspectives (J. Johns and S. M. Hall, eds.; Bristol University Press, 2024). The chapter examines the key actors and processes that contribute to the global economy and the work by economic geographers in understanding the geographies of production, supply chain disruptions, and economic life. It seeks to develop a more resilient approach in economic geography to understand the changing nature of global economy, production systems, and societies during crises.

Sarbani Banerjee, professor of computer information systems, was honored with the prestigious "Outstanding Service-Learning Course, 16 Hours or More" award at the Dr. Katherine S. Conway-Turner Civic and Community Engagement Office 2024 Celebration of Community Engagement awards ceremony, held Tuesday, May 7, at noon in the Campbell Student Union Social Hall.

Dr. Banerjee's remarkable achievement reflects her unwavering commitment to fostering community engagement within the CIS Department. Through her exemplary leadership, she has seamlessly integrated classroom learning with meaningful community service, enriching the educational experience for her students while making tangible contributions to the wider community.

Vida Vanchan, professor of geosciences and director of Buffalo State's Global Studies Institute, was awarded a research grant from the SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium (SEAC) to conduct a research project during summer 2024 titled "Regional and Global Challenges to Circular Economy: An Analysis of the Manufacturing Sector in Cambodia." This project aims to examine the challenges to the circular economy as firms aim to reduce their environmental impact by minimizing waste and maximizing resource efficiency through an analysis of the manufacturing firms, focusing on the garment, footwear, and travel goods (GFT) industry in Cambodia and its connection to regional and global production networks.

Daniel Cunningham, professor emeritus of mathematics, has signed a contract with Cambridge University Press to complete and publish a second edition of his mathematics book Set Theory: A First Course. In the first edition, the fundamentals of abstract sets, including relations, functions, the natural numbers, order, cardinality, transfinite recursion, the axiom of choice, the ordinal numbers, and cardinal numbers, are developed within the framework of axiomatic set theory. The five anonymous reviewers who assessed Cunningham's proposal for a second edition offered many helpful comments and recommendations. As a result, the second edition will now contain the following new topics: set theoretic constructions of the integers, the rational numbers, the real numbers, and the hyperreals. We will also prove theorems that demonstrate that the standard definitions of limit, continuity, and the derivative have equivalent versions in the hyperreals using infinitesimals. A new final chapter will cover models of set theory and will end with a discussion on Kurt Gödel's inner model of constructible sets and on Paul Cohen's method of forcing. The second edition will also contain solutions to all the exercises. 

Cambridge University Press (CUP) is the publishing house of the University of Cambridge. Dedicated to excellence, its purpose is to further the university's objective of advancing knowledge, education, learning, and research worldwide. Cambridge is a leading global publisher in pure and applied mathematics, with an extensive program of high-quality books and journals that reaches into every corner of the subject. CUP's catalog reflects not only the breadth of mathematics but also its depth, with titles for undergraduate students, for graduate students, for researchers, and for users of mathematics. Cambridge University Press has over 50 offices around the globe, and it distributes its products to nearly every country in the world.

Kim Chinquee, associate professor of English and editor in chief of Buffalo State's ELJ, recently made her eighth appearance in the literary journal Conjunctions (a total of 26 stories so far.) This issue, Works & Days, features six of her fictions alongside writers Sandra Cisneros, Rick Moody, and Joyce Carol Oates. 

Ms. Chinquee's first appearance in Conjunctions was in 2005 with Five Stories (five of her stories).

Published by Bard College, with editorial offices in New York City and Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, Conjunctions is a cornerstone of contemporary literary publishing. Since 1981, the journal has been a living notebook in which authors can write freely and audiences read dangerously.

According to its website: "Bard College's literary journal Conjunctions publishes innovative fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by emerging voices and contemporary masters. For some four decades, Conjunctions has challenged accepted forms and styles, with equal emphasis on groundbreaking experimentation and rigorous quality. We are committed to launching and supporting the careers of unknown authors—William T. Vollmann, David Foster Wallace, Karen Russell, Isabella Hammad, and Raven Leilani all had some of their very first publications in Conjunctions—while providing a space for better-known voices—like John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, William H. Gass, Sigrid Nunez, or Joyce Carol Oates—to work outside audience expectations."

Kim Chinquee, associate professor of English and editor in chief of Buffalo State's ELJ, has been invited as an honorary guest artist of the Prague Summer Program for Writers from July 6 to 28.

The Prague Summer Program is a three-week-long, family-run summer writing residency in Prague, Czech Republic, with a history spanning to the Velvet Revolution. In addition to having ample time to write in a beautiful and historic city, participants take part in weekly workshops, a private conference, weekly readings, special lectures, literary walking tours, and more.

As an honorary guest artist, Ms. Chinquee is invited to program activities and to participate as a featured reader, as well as to use the space and resources to focus on her own writing.

Some past and present faculty of the Prague Summer Program include writers Stuart Dybek, Patricia Hampl, Charles Baxter, Mark Doty, Carolyn Forche, Ann Beattie, William Gass, Donald Hall, and Edward Hirsch.

Joaquin Carbonara, professor of mathematics and coordinator of the Data Science and Analytics Interdisciplinary Unit, was an invited keynote speaker at the Mathematical Association of America Metropolitan New York Section's annual meeting on April 28. His talk was titled "The Secret Life of Data: Mathematics in the Context of AI."

Drew Kahn, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and founding director of the Anne Frank Project, spoke at two international events commemorating the 30th anniversary of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (Kwibuka 30). The first, "Remembering and Honoring Victims of Genocide: An Imperative to Preventing Future Genocides," took place at the United Nations in New York City on April 11. Professor Kahn was invited by Ambassador Ernest Rwamucyo, permanent representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the United States. The second, "Kwibuka 30: Remember. Unite. Renew.," took place at the United States Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on April 15. Professor Kahn was invited by Mathilde Mukantabana, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of the Republic of Rwanda to the United States of America.

Gary Hu, assistant professor and student research mentor in the Computer Information Systems (CIS) Department, took three of his students—Eric Barton, YongJun "Frank" Lee, and Anthony Puleo—to Albany, New York, to compete in the student programming and undergraduate research competitions at the 28th annual conference of the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges Northeast Region, held at the College of Saint Rose on April 12 and 13.

This competition included computer science (CS) and CIS students from 32 colleges and universities from across the northeastern United States. Most students in the competition came from CS programs, which are typically more rigorous theoretically and mathematically than CIS programs, including students from the following well-known universities:

• University of Massachusetts (Amherst, Massachusetts)—a Research I institution and the largest public research university in New England;
• University of New Haven (West Haven, Connecticut)—a private university that was recently named the Top-Tier Comprehensive University in the North by U.S. News & World Report;
• University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan)—a Research I institution that has been ranked No. 3 among public universities nationally by U.S. News & World Report and has consistently ranked among the best universities in the world.

In the programming competition, Buffalo State placed 13th out of 20 teams from 14 schools.

In the undergraduate research competition, Buffalo State placed first out of 46 teams from 25 schools. In announcing the results of this competition, the conference organizer said, "This project has attracted a lot of attention... The winner clearly is SUNY Buffalo State."

The title of the students' research is "AI Enhanced Autonomous Navigation: Integrating GPT-4 Processing and LiDAR in Robotics." Watch a brief visual description of the research and the competition results.

It is worth noting that the project was developed from scratch, including both hardware and software. All software source code was developed by the students, under the direction of Dr. Hu, with no code coming from any existing packages such as online Python, C#, or Linux scripts. The robotic hardware was built from scratch with some assistance generously provided by Jon Rosten of Buffalo State's Engineering Technology Department.

It is also worth noting that since the beginning, this research project has been generously supported by Buffalo State's Undergraduate Research Office, particularly the Early Undergraduate Research Opportunity (EURO) and Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship (USRF) programs.

The students' efforts and results in this competition have shown that Buffalo State CIS students can compete at the highest levels, and that—with sufficient instruction, resources, support, and motivation—they can succeed in whatever endeavors they undertake in the future, big or small.

Joaquin Carbonara, professor of mathematics and coordinator of the Data Science and Analytics Interdisciplinary Unit, was invited to serve on the panel "On the Artificial Intelligence Revolution and Disruption: A Candid Exploration of the Opportunities and Challenges of the AI Revolution, and Disruption in Science and Beyond" at the prestigious Upstate New York Statistics Conference (UPSTAT), held at the Rochester Institute of Technology on April 12 and 13. The UPSTAT conference series, now in its 12th year, has become the flagship statistics conference of the Upstate New York Chapters of the American Statistical Association.