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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Gregory Backus '11

Greg is a theoretical ecologist who uses mathematical models to simulate the risks and benefits of unconventional conservation management strategies. He graduated from Bard in 2011, where he majored in biology with a senior project about competitive interactions between trees and shrubs in a fragmented landscape. He went on to complete his PhD in Biomathematics at North Carolina State University where he studied patterns in animal vocalizations and novel genetic engineering tools to manage invasive species. As a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Davis, Greg is studying ecological models of species’ dispersal with climate change. These models can help determine when, if, and how we might translocate dispersal-limited species further poleward as the climate shifts around them. As someone who spends most of his days studying ecology on computers, Greg enjoys spending his free time hiking where he can actually see ecology in action. Other days, he might just stay on his computer, playing video games and making music. He’s looking forward to returning to the Bard community for Citizen Science!
 

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Daniel Bliss

Daniel Bliss holds a PhD in Neuroscience from UC Berkeley and recently completed a postdoc in the Center for Neural Science at NYU. His research has focused on visual short-term (working) memory and its representation in the cerebral cortex. Starting this 2020-2021 academic year, Daniel is an Adjunct Professor in the Natural Sciences Department at Fordham University.
 

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Christopher Carmean

Christopher earned his BS in biochemistry from Eastern Connecticut State University and his PhD in molecular metabolism and nutrition from the University of Chicago. After his PhD, he spent 3 years conducting diabetes research at Kobe University in Japan as a postdoctoral research fellow. Currently, he is a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois. Christopher investigates the diabetogenic effects of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals, employing pancreatic β-cell lines, human primary tissues, and mice as model systems. It’s ultimately his goal to exploit the novel mechanisms by which endocrine disrupting chemicals to identify opportunities for the treatment or prevention of type 2 diabetes.

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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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Georgia Doing '15

Georgia is a proud Bardian ('15) who is in perpetual awe of how microbes decide to influence and react to dynamic environments and each other. After graduating from Bard with a joint major in Biology and Computer Science she found a marriage of the two disciplines in her ongoing PhD work at Dartmouth College. Her current projects take machine learning-based approaches to analyze gene expression in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa grown in co-culture with other microbes and ex vivo materials. She is determined to identify biologically meaningful patterns in large compendia of sequencing data that she can test in the laboratory using genetic and biochemical methods. She believes there is no limit on the number of times a dataset should be interrogated or the number of minds by whom it should be re-analyzed. Much of her work relies on public, previously published datasets and she is passionate about data availability and the open-source movement.
 

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Megan Fork

Megan is an ecosystem scientist interested in understanding human-influenced aquatic ecosystems. She is currently a postdoctoral scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, having earned her PhD from Duke University, M.S. from Florida International University, and B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on the direct and indirect effects of human activities such as climate change, urbanization, and construction/alteration of water bodies on the ecology of streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. She combines concepts and approaches from multiple disciplines to characterize how these anthropogenic drivers impact the complex interactions that drive the movement and transformations of nutrients, carbon, and water in aquatic ecosystems. ​

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Danielle Fournier

Danielle Fournier received her BA in neuroscience at Wheaton College (MA) and is currently a PhD candidate in the Program of Experimental and Molecular Medicine at Dartmouth College. She is a behavioral neuroscientist interested in neurobiology of learning and memory. Her current doctoral research focuses on the contributions of a neocortical brain region, the retrosplenial cortex, to learning and behavior in a rodent model. To do so, she uses various stereotactic surgical methods to manipulate brain activity to determine if the retrosplenial cortex is involved in the acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval of memories. She uses a variety of associative learning paradigms including Pavlovian fear conditioning to examine learning and memory. In her free time, she enjoys exploring New Hampshire and Vermont hiking trails.
 

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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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Pam Lincez

Dr. Pam Lincez is an autoimmune and infectious disease scientist, scientific communications and marketing professional, educator and social enterprise entrepreneur. In alignment with the UN Sustainability Development Goals, Pam is on a mission to democratize health knowledge through education and knowledge dissemination activities. As an advocate for social change, Pam co-founded and leads the Whole Human Foundation as the Executive Director and produces the Whole Human Summit unique conference series. Pam has also volunteered as a board member for the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology to support programming for equity, diversity and inclusion in STEM and she continues to help produce independent non-fiction and fiction film projects that support minority, immigrant, and Indigenous voices.
 

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Katherine Liu

Katherine is a philosopher of science studying the social and practical aspects of interdisciplinary research. She completed her PhD in Ecology, Evolution, Behavior at the University of Minnesota where she combined microbial experimental evolution and philosophy of biology to develop novel (conceptual) models for cancer translational research. A major goal of her work is to demystify interactions between science and society, especially in STEM curricula. Professionally, she is passionate about helping students engage in genuine research experiences and getting the most out of them so that they can succeed beyond the university.
 

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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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Dallas Mould

Dallas is a microbiologist interested in understanding the factors which shape how, if, and when microbes interact. She is fascinated with the social ecosystems in microbial life and continues to decode the signals microbes use to communicate their presence to one another using laboratory and computational approaches. The integration of these signals over space, time, and multi-dimensional nutrient gradients determine how a microbe will respond, and ultimately their impact on the host or environment. In her recent work as a PhD candidate in the Hogan lab at Dartmouth College, she illustrated how interactions within a genotypically diverse population, similar to those that frequently develop in natural settings, can promote unpredictably high virulence factor production through specific metabolite exchange. She graduated with a BS from the University of California, Los Angeles where she majored in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics. When not in the lab, she enjoys cappuccinos, memoirs, and community engagement.

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Daniel Newsome ’02

Daniel has been teaching Citizen Science on the Bard Annandale and BPI campuses since 2013. He has a PhD in the History of Science from the CUNY Graduate Center and a BA in Physics from Bard. He also studied painting and drawing at the New York Studio School and has worked in a variety of trades (from stained glass to furniture making) in and around New York City. Besides Bard, he has taught at Stevens Institute of Technology, John Jay College, NYU's Gallatin School, and Columbia University. In addition to Citizen Science, he currently teaches mathematics at Bard College as well as a variety of history of science courses for the Bard Prison Initiative, and recently taught L&T. His specialty is medieval natural philosophy and mathematics, but his interests are by no means limited to this area of study. His teaching emphasizes hand-on experiences. Science, math, music, art, literature... they are all part of the same endeavor. Citizen Science is close to Daniel's heart. It is a class with the potential to bridge the gap between science and art... where humanities students and science students can be the same.

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Haley Ramsey

Haley Ramsey is a Research Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical School. Haley received her BS from the University of Tennessee, an MS from the Science Academy of Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and her PhD 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 Vanderbilt in 2015, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. She 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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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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Joanna Wardwell-Ozgo

Joanna Wardwell-Ozgo earned her BS in Biology from the University of Texas at San Antonio and her PhD in cancer biology from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.  Currently Joanna is a postdoctoral fellow at Emory University School of Medicine. Scientifically, Joanna is interested in understanding internal and external messages that cause changes to the way cells grow. Joanna is the recipient of a NIH K12 IRACDA fellowship and is an active member of Emory’s FIRST, Fellowship in Research and Science Teaching program as well as an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship. She is passionate about science education and engaging her students in the wonders of biology.  Joanna lives in Atlanta with her husband, two daughters, her cat, Evenrude, and a bunch of cactus she brought with her from her home state of Texas. She enjoys reading, cooking and baking, gardening, and DIY home improvements projects.

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Emily White

Emily is a Research Associate in the Bard Center for the Study of Land, Air, and Water and the Director of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) Community Science Coalition. Emily received her B.S. in Chemistry and Environmental Studies from Tufts University, her M.S. in Environmental Science from The Ohio State University, and her Ph.D. in Environmental Chemistry from the State University of New, College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She is interested in the natural and anthropogenically-influenced processes that impact water quality. While at SUNY-ESF, Emily received a NASA Earth System Science fellowship to investigate estuarine carbon cycling. She participated in several oceanographic research cruises, traveling all the way to Antarctica. As a postdoctoral scientist, she studied recreational beach water quality at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In addition to Citizen Science, Emily teaches introductory chemistry and lab science courses for non-science majors focusing on drinking water treatment and methods of environmental analysis. Before coming to Bard, Emily taught introductory and environmental chemistry at Sewanee: The University of the South and conducted research on the occurrence and fate of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in treated wastewater

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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.