Saquib Ahmed, assistant professor of engineering technology, has been awarded a visiting faculty position (VFP) with Brookhaven National Lab (BNL) for summer 2022. This is under the purview of the Department of Energy. He received the same award for summer 2021, as well as a “supplemental VFP” in Spring 2022, which was in the form of federal funding that Buffalo State College could benefit from as well.

Dr. Ahmed is carrying out research in quantum materials and phenomena with counterparts in BNL for this research, using computational know-how and various forms of traditional machine learning and deep learning. He is in involved with the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) within the BNL campus.

Arjun Pathak, assistant professor of physics, published the peer-reviewed scientific article “Near Room Temperature Magnetocaloric Properties in Ni Deficient (Mn0.525Fe0.5)Ni0.975Si0.95Al0.05)” in American Institute of Physics (AIP) Advances, 12, 03522 (2022). The article, coauthored by Buffalo State College physics major Jacob Casey and other collaborators, reports the new material that exhibits a large magnetic entropy change around room temperature, a property useful for cooling technology. The compound still lacks mechanical stability during the thermal cycle. Currently Dr. Pathak’s team is working to improve the mechanical stability and other thermodynamic properties. Dr. Pathak is the principal investigator. Mr. Casey presented this research at the international Joint MMM-Intermag Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, January 10–14 and at the American Physical Society (APS) March Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, March 14–18. The APS March Meeting is one of the largest conferences for physics, chemistry, and materials sciences with over 10,000 participants from all around the world. This work is part of Mr. Casey’s 2021 Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship supported by the Undergraduate Research Office; his travel fund for the March Meeting was provided by the School of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office at Buffalo State.

Bridget María Chesterton, professor of history and social studies education, published the article "Between Yerba Mate and Soy: The Orange as National Food and Landscape in Paraguay from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Late Twenty-First Centuries in Paraguay" in Global Food History (March 2022).

Arjun Pathak, assistant professor of physics, has received a U.S. patent (Patent No.: US 11,289,248 B2) for the discovery of lanthanum-iron-silicon-based new materials that could lead to the realization of clean, highly energy-efficient refrigeration and heat pumping systems. The invention was led by Pathak, along with other co-inventors at the Ames National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the patent was issued on March 29. His invention was made with government support under Grant No. DE-AC02-07CH11358 awarded by the DOE.  

The Embassy of the Republic of Rwanda in Washington, D.C., in collaboration with the Rwandan community in the United States, invited Drew Kahn, Distinguished Service Professor and director of the Anne Frank Project, to participate virtually as a panelist for the 28th Commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, that will be held on Thursday, April 7.

Every year, commemorative events known as Kwibuka, meaning “remember,” are held to pay tribute and remember the lives lost during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi and to provide a collective pledge of preventing genocide from happening again — whether in Rwanda or elsewhere in the world. This calls upon all of us, if we are to ensure the fulfillment of the international pledge “never again,” to remain vigilant against those who promote division, hatred, and denial of genocide.

Under the theme “Remember, Unite, Renew,” this year’s commemoration will focus on the legacy of strength, resilience, and unity that the new generation is called upon to uphold in order to sustain the strides that Rwanda has made.

Timothy W. Gordon, vice president for student affairs, served as a panelist on the NASPA (Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education) Region II Policy Work Group’s virtual program on April 5, discussing “The Future of Student Affairs."

Deborah Silverman, chair and associate professor of communication, served as a judge for the Public Relations Society of America's national 2022 Silver Anvil Awards, regarded as the "Oscars" of the public relations industry, on March 11. PRSA, the world's largest organization of public relations professionals, will announce the award winners at a ceremony in New York City on May 19.  

Aaron Shugar, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, and Rebecca Ploeger, associate professor, in Buffalo State College’s Garman Art Conservation Department, have completed an online resource to aid cultural heritage science educators in teaching complex problems in the field. They worked with Alison Murray, associate professor of conservation science at Queen's University.

They were successful in securing Samuel H. Kress Foundation funding to host an inaugural conference that will take place virtually June 14–16. The conference is designed to allow international educators in the cultural heritage science field to showcase innovative teaching strategies, case studies, and laboratory exercises they have found to be successful in their teaching and in breaking boundaries to make science more relevant to students.

Detailed information about the conference and registration can be found on the Queen’s University Department of Art History & Art Conservation website.

Carlos Jones, associate dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and coordinator of the Africana studies program, provided master classes to third-graders on the rooted experience in jazz dance as a guest artist at Buffalo’s Tapestry Charter School in February. He also was invited by the University at Buffalo to present the lecture “Jazz Dance, Technique, Aesthetics, and Racial Supremacy” on March 14. And he is completing an evening dance residency at SUNY Fredonia’s Department of Theatre and Dance, where he’s conducting research to create new concert dance work steeped in the rooted jazz dance experience. The production is scheduled for the first week in May. His work was featured in an article on Fredonia's news site. 

York Norman, professor of history and social studies education, talked about his recently published monograph, Celal Nuri: Young Turk Modernizer and Muslim Nationalist (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021), on the Turkey Book Talk podcast with William Armstrong March 1. The book examines the life of Celal Nuri, a journalist and politician whose career spanned the late Ottoman and early Republican periods.