The Department of Natural Sciences continues to foster an active environment for student research and academic development. This spring brings several notable updates to the department, ranging from the launch of new degree programs to a series of student publications and fellowship awards.

Here is a look at a few of the latest developments from their faculty and students.

Expanding Academic Offerings

In a significant update to its curriculum, the Department of Natural Sciences has received approval to launch two new undergraduate majors starting in the fall semester. Students will soon be able to pursue a BS in Environmental Science or a BA in Environmental Studies — providing new pathways for those focused on sustainability and the environment, and positioning Baruch to meet the growing demand for careers in New York City's green economy, which the NYC Economic Development Corporation projects will grow by 144% in the coming years.

Both programs emphasize critical thinking, data analysis, and communication skills across scientific and policy contexts, with hands-on opportunities through faculty-led research initiatives — including the Billion Oyster Project — a harbor restoration effort to restore one billion oysters to New York Harbor by 2035. Baruch also plans to establish transfer pathways into both majors with Kingsborough, Queensborough, and Hostos Community Colleges.

"Our goal is to prepare undergraduates with the analytical, quantitative, and communication skills they need to succeed in climate-related careers across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors," said Department Chair Stephen Gosnell.

Check out their new department website now!

Student/Faculty Research Collaborations and Publications

Undergraduate researchers have recently co-authored several papers across diverse scientific disciplines, contributing to peer-reviewed journals. Recent student publications include:

Ianos, A., Zhou, J., Qiao, T., Wei, T., & Qiao, B. (2026). Nanoplastics penetration across the blood–brain barrier. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1039/D5CP04125B

Luu, T., Ramroop, J. R., Lee, M. K., Kaur, H., McGrail, C. W., Govind, S., & Spokony, R. F. (2025). Juvenile hormone mimics induce a cellular immune response in Drosophila melanogaster. microPublication Biology, 2025. https://doi.org/10.17912/micropub.biology.001797

Stanek, T. J., Leung, W., Shaffer, C. D., Genomics Education Partnership, Olaveja, I., Laughlin, A., … & Ellison, C. E. (2025). Recombination suppression drives expansion of the Drosophila dot chromosome. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 42(12). https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf304

Kulatilleke, C. P., Sarango, B., Shaporova, V., & Pan, Y. (2026). Stability constants of macrocyclic tetrathioether complexes of nickel and cobalt. Transition Metal Chemistry. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11243-025-00702-1

*Student contributors are indicated in bold

Student/Faculty Conference Presentations

Department researchers also recently traveled to Chicago, IL, to present their work at the 67th Annual Drosophila Research Conference, hosted by the Genetics Society of America in March 2026. Student presentations included:

Spokony, R. F., Siegel, H., Healy, C., Naseem, Y., Alvarado, I., Goyins, K., Jumamyradova, A., Ying, J., Pan, A., Soshnev, & Barton, L. J. (2026, March). Expected and surprising developmental requirements of juvenile hormone degradation enzymes in Drosophila melanogaster.

Pan, A., Tang, B., Feria, A., Turaeva, A., Cardenas, Lady, Calero, R., & Spokony, R. F. (2026, March). Genetic variation in larval sessile crystal cell number.



A. Ianos and B. Qiao (2026, February). Microtubules in Breast Cancer (oral presentation), Life Science Switzerland, Zurich, Switzerland

A. Ianos and B. Qiao (2026, February). Nanoplastics Penetration across the Blood-Brain Barrier (oral presentation), Life Science Switzerland, Zurich, Switzerland

A. Ianos and B. Qiao (2026, January) Microtubules in Breast Cancer, National Collegiate Research Conference. Boston

J. Zhou, A. Ianos, and B. Qiao (2026, January) Nanoplastics Penetration across the Blood-Brain Barrier, National Collegiate Research Conference. Boston

A. Ianos and B. Qiao (2025, September) Nanoplastics Penetration across the Blood-Brain Barrier, The 3rd Annual NanoBioNYC symposium, New York

*Student contributors are indicated in bold

Student Awards and Recognition

The department is pleased to recognize Mariam Moazzam, a Fall 2025 Baruch graduate, who has been selected as a Columbia SPS CUNY Fellow for the 2026-2027 academic year. During her time at the college, Moazzam minored in environmental sustainability and conducted hands-on research with Dr. Ana Gonzalez-Nayeck focusing on marine cyanobacteria.

Natural Sciences student Alvi Khan has been selected as a candidate for the prestigious Jonas E. Salk Scholarship. The accomplishment reflects a highly successful collaborative effort, underscoring both Khan's dedication and the invaluable guidance of the faculty mentors who supported the application process.

Upcoming Events and Deadlines

• April 15: The Fourth Annual Conference on Climate Research, Teaching, and Collaboration. RSVP here
• May 1: Deadline for the Susan Locke Awards, which recognize creative projects and research related to sustainability. The awards are open to all Baruch undergraduates and are given in two categories — Research and Creative Projects — with prizes of $500, $250, and $100 for first, second, and third place respectively. For full details and submission guidelines, see the prize information at the end of this newsletter or contact program director Steven Swarbrick at steven.swarbrick@baruch.cuny.edu.

David Gruber's Project CETI Captures Rare Sperm Whale Birth

Project CETI, a research group led by Professor David Gruber, has recorded a sperm whale birth on video for the first time ever. The study's findings reveal that the birth process is a group effort, demonstrating how families rally around a newborn with outside females actively assisting the mother.

Read the coverage here: CNN | Science News | Project CETI

Honoring Professor Mindy Engle-Friedman



The Baruch Performing Arts Center will host the Mindy Engle-Friedman Memorial Climate Concert on April 21, featuring a special performance by the West Side Woodwind Quartet. All proceeds from the evening will directly benefit the Dr. Mindy Engle-Friedman Climate Scholars Endowment, supporting the next generation of students dedicated to climate research and environmental sustainability.

Click on the image below for tickets.

FEATURE: Translating the Unspeakable: Weissman Alumna Danielle James Acclaimed for her Translation of Holocaust Survival Memoir

Translation is often a solitary and invisible art—one where the writer’s highest ambition is to disappear entirely into the voice of another. Yet, for Baruch College alumna Danielle James, the act of translating Tobias Schiff’s Return to the Place I Never Left was less about concealment and more akin to an intimate wrestling with both text and personal history.

Last month, James—an already recognized CUNY Alumni 50 Under 50 honoree—added a National Jewish Book Award to her list of accolades for her technical and creative rendering of Schiff’s Holocaust memoir published by Wayne State University Press. An award of this kind is a rare and startling achievement for a debut translation.

Not surprisingly, her journey towards this uncommon literary milestone did not follow a conventional path. “I never knew I wanted to become a translator,” she confessed, tracing her love of the literary back to childhood experimentation with creative writing and a pivotal transfer from Medgar Evers College to Baruch. It was there that she found a new appreciation for the skills inherent in her passion. “The English department is Baruch's best-kept secret,” she said, acknowledging how this unique environment fostered her craft.

When it came time to select her first major project, she returned to a text she had read and re-read since she was a teenager growing up in Belgium, feeling the story deserved a wider audience. For James, a connection to the text was as much blood as it was ink. Her own grandparents were Holocaust survivors who managed to survive the war while living in Antwerp. “In sharing Schiff's story, in a way, I'm also sharing part of my own,” she reflected.

Faced with the daunting task of carrying the weight of Schiff's account across an oftentimes impassible linguistic divide, James approached the work with an almost monastic process. “My very first draft, I translated into a notebook by hand,” she recalled. Already in this version, she had made the deliberate choice to preserve the original’s jarring, versified style. “The form of this particular memoir is unique—it looks like poetry on the page.” In its Flemish original, the manuscript is entirely devoid of standard punctuation, utilizing line breaks and lacking capitalization for anything other than proper nouns.

“It may sound counterintuitive, but I feel the directness of the language and the way he lays it out, makes it, at once, a very accessible and very different kind of read than what most readers would expect from a book like this. I had to protect that.” 

She also acknowledged the inherent friction of the translator's task. “Many times, you can't just do a word-for-word translation. It’s impossible. So, I tired instead to ask: how will this audience I have in mind respond to this sentence or this word; how will it make sense to them?” 

By preserving the jagged and urgent breath of Schiff’s original prose, James has clearly ensured that his prose is not merely legible to an English-speaking audience, but that it haunts and inspires them, retaining the original's strong representation of resilience—and even hope.

Learn more here.

The Ax and the Archive: Resurrecting the History of Latino Youth Movements

In early 2022, a trove of little-known American history was quietly returned to the shadows. The ambitious exhibition, curated by Professors Johanna Fernández and Felipe Hinojosa and slated for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino, was to newly map the contours of mid-century Latino youth movements and their rarely acknowledged contributions to the civil rights protests of the 1960s. The undertaking was nearly halfway complete when the museum’s administration unceremoniously pulled the plug. For the exhibition’s curators, the cancellation was not merely a bureaucratic setback; it was an abdication of empirical history for the sake of political theater.

"It wasn't just about us," Professor Hinojosa said, "it was really detriment to the community. For folks that are essentially in their early eighties at this point... this was a last chance for them to tell their stories on their terms."

Professor Fernández, an Associate Professor in the Department of History at The Graduate Center & Baruch College, CUNY, is no stranger to the friction between the archive and the establishment. The author of The Young Lords: A Radical History, she previously sued the New York Police Department—and won—to force the release of surveillance records, and she facilitated Brown University's acquisition of the Mumia Abu-Jamal papers. Professor Hinojosa, the John and Nancy Jackson Endowed Chair in Latin America at Baylor University, is author of author of two award winning books on the subject: Latino Mennonites: Civil Rights, Faith, and Evangelical Culture, and Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio.

The quiet death of the original exhibition was born of a uniquely modern American panic. Congressional critics and political commentators had complained that the curators were propounding a "Marxist-based historical narrative" and reducing Latino populations to mere "victims". Professor Fernández and Professor Hinojosa found the latter accusation particularly baffling. "That came up a lot, that somehow Latinos standing up for their dignity and their rights is a sign of victimization," Professor Fernández observed. "It's in fact the opposite".

Yet, the narrative was not permanently shelved. 

A recently awarded Mellon-backed initiative has given the project new life. The curators are now organizing a national archival collection effort alongside an oral history project; for the latter, they have enlisted the premier oral history center at UT Austin to record the testimonies of surviving movement leaders before their stories are lost to time.

Presently, the project has manifested as a multidisciplinary academic symposium, Latinx Freedom: Power and Protest in the 1960s, at the Graduate Center April 9 and 10. Ultimately, it will culminate in a sweeping public exhibition timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence later this summer.

Professor Hinojosa emphasized that is was important to the curators to anchor their project in physical evidence. "We have the photographs, we have the documents, we have these archives [...] This isn't some narrative that we're spinning willy-nilly just because this is the way we want to view some kind of grand historical pageant." In bringing these objects and stories together for the first time, Professors Fernández and Hinojosa hope to ensure that the story of Latino youth activism is not remembered as a fringe ideological skirmish, but as a central chapter in the ongoing American democratic experiment.

Baruch Bridges Strategy and Creativity: Meet Habeeba Farid, Weissman Optional Focus Pioneer

For Spring 2026 graduate Habeeba Farid, the worlds of business strategy and visual storytelling were never mutually exclusive—they were two sides of the same coin. As one of the very first Baruch students to graduate with a BBA in Marketing alongside the new Weissman Optional Focus in Graphic Communication, Habeeba is proving that Zicklin students don't have to choose between a typical corporate trajectory and their creative passions. They can do both.

Originally from Astoria, Queens, Habeeba came to Baruch initially enrolling as a business operations major. However, her lifelong love of art and design quickly steered her toward digital marketing, where she discovered the joy of visual problem-solving. "I've always loved art and I've always loved designing things," Habeeba shares. As she began experimenting with design platforms, she realized she wanted to take her technical skills to the next level and further incorporate her passion into her studies. That’s when she discovered the newly launched Graphic Communication program at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences.

The beauty of the Weissman Optional Focus is how it allows two disciplines to speak to one another, and for Habeeba, the transition between business strategy and graphic design felt entirely organic.

Professor Grace Hamilton, Habeeba’s capstone instructor in ART 5900, notes how her academic crossover resulted in a particularly powerful final project. "Habeeba is a fantastic student—she brings a genuine sense of joy to the classroom. Constantly evolving, she approaches her work with curiosity and intention," says Professor Hamilton. "Her capstone project is a testament to who she is as both a designer and a business-minded thinker, and bridges her values with her design practice."

As Habeeba prepares for graduation, her dual training has perfectly positioned her for the contemporary professional landscape. She plans to leverage her Zicklin background by working in digital marketing strategy at an agency, while simultaneously contracting as a freelance graphic designer to keep her creativity flowing. "Her remarkable attitude and her academic training together are going to serve her tremendously well, no matter what next step she decides to take," adds another of her teachers, Professor Zoe Sheehan Sandana. “She will be missed."

Curious about expanding your own academic horizons? The Weissman Optional Focus is designed to help Zicklin students integrate the arts and sciences into their business degrees. Speak with your advisor today to see how you can customize your Baruch experience.

Roger Bolton Named as Inaugural Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor

In 2024 the Weissman School was honored to receive an historic grant of nearly $2 million from the Edmond J. Safra Foundation—the largest single gift since the Weissman School's naming. The grant honors the life and legacy of the late banker and philanthropist Edmond J. Safra by supporting the teaching of ethics in higher education, and will support the housing and digitization of the newly acquired Edmond J. Safra Republic National Bank of New York archives, establish a prestigious visiting professorship, and provide scholarships for students. The archives will be hosted by Baruch’s William and Anita Newman Library and will house decades' worth of the bank’s records and other ephemera. The archival project will also be accompanied by an original video series, ensuring these resources remain accessible and engaging for both scholars and the public alike.

This fall the Weissman School is excited to welcome Roger Bolton as the inaugural Edmond J. Safra Visiting Professor. The goal of the visiting professorship is to bring in each year for five years distinguished scholars and practitioners from a discipline relevant to the archival collection, with interests and expertise in areas including ethics, communications, philosophy, law, psychology, entrepreneurship, leadership, finance, and business history. As the former Senior Vice President of Communications at Aetna and Director of Global Media Relations at IBM, Bolton brings a lifetime of experience in corporate communications, public affairs, and government relations. He also is the former CEO and President of Page, a premier global professional association for senior corporate communication executives. Prior to his work in the corporate sector, Bolton held roles in public service, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Public Affairs under President George H.W. Bush and as a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan in the White House, where he oversaw the president’s relations with the national business community. As part of his appointment this fall, Bolton will co-teach a course on strategic communication and enterprise authenticity during the semester alongside Prof. Caryn Medved, director of the M.A. Program in Strategic Communication.

This academic year the Weissman School also awarded four inaugural Edmond J. Safra student fellowships in fall 2025: Gisela Garrett, Angy Vasquez, Angella Flores and Bianca Benoliel-Schoenfeld, with six more to be awarded this spring. Awarded to students in the M.A. In Strategic Communication program, the fellowships help support research using the archives and provide full tuition and fee support for both part-time and full-time study.

Applications for fall 2026 fellowships opened on March 15, with a deadline of May 1.

Click here to learn more about the Strategic Communications MA program.

Weissman Student Hope Andros Awarded Briloff Student Prize

Hope Andros, a freshman planning to major in political science, is the recipient of the Abraham J. Briloff student prize for her paper, "Through Bloodshed, Conflict, and Disaster: The People Seek Humanity."

The committee especially admired the paper's central argument, which challenges the assumption that violence exclusively breeds violence. Instead, Andros explores how conflict and brutality can also generate empathy and humane responses. She illustrates this process of humanization using examples drawn from video games, novels, and rock music.

Read all the winning entries here.

New York Premiere of Rising at Baruch Performing Arts Center

The CUNY Dance Initiative presents the New York premiere of Rising at the Baruch Performing Arts Center from April 23–25. In a time of climate change and rising sea levels, this evening-length work explores our deep connection to Earth’s oceans.

Developed over three years, Rising features evocative choreography by Gabrielle Lamb for her chamber company, Pigeonwing Dance. The dancers share the stage with the GRAMMY®-nominated Neave Trio, who will perform Robert Sirota’s lyrical score live, accompanied by recorded text from oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer and naturalist Craig Foster.

• When: April 23–25, 2026, at 7:00 PM

• Where: Baruch Performing Arts Center (Entrance on 25th Street between Lexington and 3rd Avenues)

• Tickets: $35 General Admission / $20 with CUNY ID. Purchase tickets here.

In Memoriam: Stephen Dishart (1958-2026)

The Baruch College community is deeply saddened by the sudden passing of our colleague and friend, Stephen Kenneth Dishart, who died on Tuesday, April 7, 2026, at the age of 67. A naturally gifted teacher in the Department of Communication Studies, Steve brought decades of professional experience to the classroom, challenging his students with complex theoretical insights while equipping them with practical skills. Beyond his teaching, he enriched the department with his quick wit, good humor, and unfailing camaraderie.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Steve held a master’s in communication from Duquesne University and graduated from the Insead Executive Program in France. His extensive career spanned radio, communications, and public relations, notably including his work managing crisis communications for SwissRe following the events of 9/11. In recent years, he found a true calling in higher education, sharing his expertise as a professor at Baruch College, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and New York University.

Students are eager to connect their academic work to the world beyond the classroom. It helps them understand how their education is preparing them to thrive in that larger world. "Pedagogy that encourages that kind of connection liberates them from the bored, dissociated check-the-boxes and jump-through-the-hoops attitude that can be a real impediment to learning" says Esther Allen, Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature.

Read our latest faculty blog series to learn how Prof. Allen prepares students for the world beyond the classroom.

https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/starr/2026/01/12/jennifer-alberghini-i-am-a-weissman-faculty-member-and-this-is-how-i-embed-career-readiness/