Program Faculty

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Nick Avossa

Mr. Avossa has been a science teacher at Kingston High School for 32 years. During his tenure, Mr. Avossa has taught a tremendous variety and levels of life science, including AP and College Biology. Mr. Avossa is also a member of the SUNY Ulster Collegian Program. Over the years he has conducted ecological expeditions with his students to Belize and Costa Rica, as well as numerous local sites. Mr. Avossa retired in June, 2020. He currently resides in Florida with his wife of 33 years, Carol.

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Erin Delker

Erin Delker received her B.A. in Psychology, M.P.H in Sociomedical Sciences, and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Epidemiology at the University of California, San Diego. Her research examines the social and economic determinants of health across the life course, with a focus on perinatal and pediatric stages. For her doctoral research, she is using nationally representative data to evaluate racial disparities in preconception cardiometabolic health and incidence of adverse birth outcomes among US women. Erin has a growing interest in the application of epidemiologic and causal inference methods to study effects of specific public health interventions and policies using observational data.
In her future career, Erin is most excited about teaching epidemiology and biostatistical methods as well as bridging the gap between academic research and citizens with use of community based participatory research. In her free time, Erin enjoys going to the beach, hiking, and trying new restaurants around San Diego.  She is very excited to be returning to the Citizen Science program this year!

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Maggie Gaddis

Maggie is a restoration ecologist and biology instructor at the University of Colorado - Colorado Springs. Maggie engages citizen scientists and local land managers to investigate the ecological success of riparian forest restoration and dryland native plant revegetation. She is also interested in the relationship between science instruction and scientific literacy gains in non-majors biology courses and in citizen science training contexts.

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Scott Kellogg

Scott received his MS in environmental science and policy from Johns Hopkins University and PhD in science and technology studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is the cofounder and educational director of the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, an urban environmental education nonprofit in Albany, N.Y., that maintains a demonstration site of regenerative tools and technologies designed to teach ecological literacy to youth.  Scott’s research is centered on the idea of “urban ecosystem justice”—examining through a pedagogical lens how questions of equity, access, and justice pertain to urban ecosystems. He is chair of Urban Agriculture on Albany’s Sustainability Advisory Committee.

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Deborah Keszenman

Deborah Keszenman earned her MD from the Universidad de la Republica’s School of Medicine in Montevideo, Uruguay. Following her curiosity and desire of exploration of new areas, at an early stage of her medical studies she joined the Biophysics Department at the Medical School of the Universidad de la Republica and started to do research in the area of DNA damage and repair.  While working as a physician and teaching Biophysics at the Medical School, Deborah earned a MS and then a PhD in biophysics in the area of Radiation Biology from the Universidad de la Republica–PEDECIBA. Deborah worked at the Universidad de la Republica School of Medicine as a professor for 30 years, beginning there as an honorary lecturer. She also worked as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Sciences, a research member of the Project for Development of Basic Sciences PEDECIBA, Uruguay, and as a general physician in clinical practice in Uruguay. In 2005, she moved with her family to the United States to continue her scientific career at the Biosciences Department at Brookhaven National Laboratory and in 2006 she became a Beam Line Scientist of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL). In 2015, she joined the Group of Biophysical Chemistry as professor of biophysics at CENUR Noroeste in Salto, Uruguay. She focused her scientific research towards problems of radiation biology with potential application in clinical Medicine. Deborah has specialized in the study of cellular responses to oxidative and thermal stress. At present she is investigating the cellular and molecular responses to genomic damage induced by photon radiation as well as high and low linear energy transfer charge particle radiations. Her research expertise includes human tissue and cell systems as well as yeast models for survival and cell transformation/mutational assays and quantitative biochemical mechanistic studies for assessing DNA damage, damage processing and DNA repair in cells and tissues exposed to ionizing radiation. Deborah is returning to Citizen Science as a third-year veteran.

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Sonny Lee

Sonny is an assistant professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University. After receiving his PhD in environmental science from the University of Auckland in New Zealand, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago Medicine. Sonny’s research has always been centered around understanding the interaction between the microbiome and its hosts, and how it is affected by the environment. His research extends from model systems in the ocean to terrestrial, and  from human gut to plants. He investigates shifts in the coral microbiome as a result of climate change, and its impact on the coral host. He is also working on understanding the human immune system and its response to diseases, and how it can be mediated by the gut microbiome. Besides coral and human, Sonny is also keen to understand the influence of severe climate changes on the interaction between the plant host and its microbiome. He uses both laboratory work to investigate the mechanistic explanation of microbe-host cross talk and bioinformatics to analyze huge OMICs datasets. Sonny is always eager to share his experience and knowledge with others, and enjoys the opportunity to make science more approachable. During his free time you can find Sonny scuba diving and discovering the wonders of the underwater world, or trail running in the woods.

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Jennifer Manganello

Jen is a Professor at the University at Albany School of Public Health. She is a health communication scholar who uses theories, concepts, and methods from the fields of public health and communication. Her main area of expertise is health communication. Jen’s work in this area has primarily focused on the effects of media and/or technology use on health attitudes, knowledge, and behavior, health information seeking among youth and parents, and identifying best practices for the dissemination of health information to the general public, including through news and social media. This includes how to best develop messages about research, data, and science. She also studies health literacy, media literacy, and science literacy, and examine the use of digital technology for health information and health interventions, also known as eHealth. Before starting at UAlbany, Jen was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania. She earned my Ph.D. from the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  

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Haley Ramsey

Haley received her B.Sc. from the University of Tennessee, a M.Sc. from the Science Academy of Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and her Ph.D. from the Medical University of Vienna, where she was credited with creating the first murine model of alloreactive mismatch T memory cells for use in bone marrow, heart, and skin transplantation studies. Prior to joining the Savona Lab in 2015, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. She is currently designs pre-clinical studies for novel therapies in Acute Myeloid Leukemia, and effects of therapy on tumor metabolism.


 

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Marta Shocket ’09

Marta earned her PhD in ecology, evolution, and behavior from Indiana University, and completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University. Her research explores how temperature and other environmental drivers affect disease transmission, combining field observations, lab experiments, and mathematical modeling. Her PhD focused on a fungal pathogen that infects Daphnia zooplankton in Midwestern lakes, while her postdoctoral work focuses on mosquito-borne pathogens that infect humans across the globe. She is also interested in science communication and art. While in graduate school, she coorganized a monthly Science Cafe, and commissioned a dramatic digital drawing inspired by the lab’s research. Aside from research, Marta loves playing Ultimate Frisbee (a shock to her past teammates from the Bard rugby team) and watching popular TV shows several years after everyone else. 

 

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Holly Swain Ewald

Holly's research interests include neuroscience, microbiology, evolution, and behavior. Her research is focused on host-pathogen interactions and includes infectious diseases, cancer, and the microbiome. She is particularly interested in questions of health inequity and the role of science education in helping individuals shape their own interests and impact policy.

 

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Robert Todd

Rob earned his BS in Biology from Iowa State University and an MS in Integrated Biology from the University of Iowa. Rob recently earned his Ph.D. in Medical Microbiology and Immunology at Creighton University. His current research focuses on genome instability and adaptation in the human fungal pathogen Candida albicans. Specifically, he uses in vitro evolution coupled with next-generation sequencing technologies to better understand how an organism can rapidly alter its genetic code in response to stress. Rob has previously worked with the National Center for Science Education to establish science outreach programs in communities across the United States. He is passionate about science outreach, particularly in underserved communities. Outside of the lab, Rob enjoys camping, cooking, and going to soccer games. He is very excited to be returning to the Citizen Science program!

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Renata van der Weijden

Renata is a senior researcher at Wageningen University and Wetsus and also supervises PhD students. She earned her PhD from Utrecht University and continued as a postdoc/assistant professor at Delft Universtiy of Technology. Her interest in environmental research was triggered by visits to the U.S. National Parks while living in Pennsylvania. Renata worked as a research associate at the Department of Oceanography at Florida State after receiving her MSc from Utrecht University. Her research area involves water quality and treatment, water-rock interaction, and resource recovery. In 2019, she joined a multidisciplinary team in the Netherlands involved in citizen science focused on rivers and water scarcity.

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Nykia Walker

Nyki earned her bachelor’s degree in cell biology, immunology, and infectious diseases from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to starting graduate school, she worked for Merck and Co. Research Laboratories in the biomarker discoveries group. She earned a PhD degree in stem cell and cancer biology from Rutgers University. As a graduate student, she was involved in stem cell education society, where they sponsored bone marrow drives and educational seminars to teach the public about stem cells. Nyki is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago where she investigates breast cancer cell (BCC) invasion. She specifically studies the cellular signaling transduction cascade between BCCs and macrophages through the release of soluble factors such as exosomes. Her overall goal is to stand up to cancer by developing novel cell based approaches to prevent breast cancer invasion. Besides research, she loves music, dancing, laughing, and teaching kids at church. From September to February, you can find Nyki every Sunday afternoon watching NFL and cheering for her beloved 2017 Super Bowl Champions, the Philadelphia Eagles. She has a 16-year-old poodle named Toby who loves the outdoors, French fries, and ice cream.

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Francis Windram

Francis is a PhD Student at Imperial College London, working in computational theoretical ecology and arachnology. He received his BSc in Zoology from Leeds University and his MSc in Computational Methods in Ecology & Evolution from Imperial. Francis' research is focused around using quantitative methods to evaluate the trade-offs involved in spider foraging, with a particular focus on spider web structure. He is also involved in teaching science and computing at a range of levels both for Imperial and for the British Ecological Society. Francis is an avid climber and musician in his free time, and enjoys recording and producing music and podcasts.