Wellness management major Fadi Gaye was among 45 students in SUNY’s Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) to receive the statewide Norman R. McConney Jr. Award for Student Excellence, recognizing ability to overcome obstacles to achieve success. Preparing to become a physician assistant, Gaye is now a diversity study-abroad mentor in the college’s Office of International Education and Programs, where she encourages other students, especially traditionally underrepresented students, to explore options that can help them learn beyond borders. Her own study-abroad experience in a School of Education program that took her to Benin in West Africa, as well as Paris, showed that injustices impacting minorities in healthcare systems are a worldwide problem that she aims to help solve by entering the field. Read full story.

Daniel Baldassarre of the biological sciences faculty co-authored “Vampire finches: how little birds in the Galápagos got a taste for big bird blood,” published Jan. 15 in The Conversation. Baldassarre and co-authors Jaime Chaves of San Francisco State University and Kiyoko Gotanda of Université de Sherbrooke explore how these birds in the biodiversity hotspot have evolved to feast on the blood of much larger birds. The Conversation is a nonprofit publishing organization that aims to work for the public good through fact- and research-based journalism.

Becky Burch conducted research on physical dimensions of superheroes

Human development faculty member Rebecca Burch’s presentation “Captain Dorito and the Bombshells: Hypersexuality in Marvel Comic Characters” was published recently in Juanita Today, which provides a selection of the top speeches, lectures and presentations given at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. The presentation was part of the widely publicized research Burch and Laura Johnsen, then a psychology doctoral candidate from Binghamton University, performed on unrealistic body proportions in Marvel superheroes and villains, and how this representation intersects with reality.

A team of students and faculty participated in the Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference on Nov. 5 to 8. Elina van Kempen (physics) presented “Capillary Condensations: Phase Transitions for Various Confined Systems.” Her co-authors are Julia R. D’Rozario, Marie T. Romano and Carolina C. Ilie (physics). Trieu Le (physics) presented “Photovoltaic Applications: Transition Metal Doped Quantum Dots,” having co-authors Thilini K. Ekanayaka, Annika Neufeld-Kreider, Archit Dhingra, Takashi Komesu, Andrew Yost and Ilie. Ilie -- who is a physics professor as well as the SUNY Oswego Sigma Xi president -- participated as one of the three members of the Credentials Committee at the Virtual 121st Sigma Xi Assembly of Delegates Meeting and represented SUNY Oswego as one of the NE Region Delegates.

Roger Guy, chair of criminal justice, is co-author of “Our Biographies Are All the Same: Juvenile Work in Mexican Drug Organizations from the Perspective of a Collective Trajectory,” published in the British Journal of Criminology. Piotr Chomczynski of the University of Lodz in Poland co-authored the article, which Guy noted has a high impact factor for research.

Webe Kadima, emeritus associate professor of chemistry, and mathematics professor Ampalavanar Nanthakumar co-authored an article titled "Estimating the Prevalence of Asymptomatic Type 2 Diabetes in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo,” which will appear in the East African Journal of Public Health.

Physics professor Shashi Kanbur earned very competitive time on the Gemini Telescopes -- two of the biggest telescopes in the world -- for a research project on “Calibrating H-band Period-Luminosity-Metallicity relation for RR Lyrae variables in the globular clusters.” This research project with Anupam Bhardwaj, whom Kanbur advised as a Ph.D., will observe RR Lyraes in infrared wavelengths to help determine a size-scale for the universe. The pair also are co-authors on “RR Lyrae variables in Messier 53: Near-infrared Period--Luminosity relations and the calibration using {\it Gaia} Early Data Release 3,” recently accepted for publication with the Astrophysical Journal.

Criminal justice faculty member Marthinus (Martin) C. Koen published "Body-worn Cameras: Technological Frames and Project Abandonment" in the Journal of Criminal Justice. Koen noted that the publication is currently the second-highest ranked criminal justice journal, according to impact factor.

Ulises Mejias, as viewed through a smartphone, with his new book about the harvesting of online data

Since the last submitted update, communication studies professor Ulises A. Mejias presented his book The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism (co-authored with Nick Couldry) by invitation at the University of Costa Rica, University of Helsinki, University of Southern California and Universidad Científica del Sur, Peru. He delivered keynotes at the Unboxing AI conference (organized by the European Network on Digital Labour), the Merit Member Conference and Broadband Summit, and the Technological Sovereignty conference (organized by the Instituto 25M Democracia and the Foreign Relations Ministry of Spain). Mejias was interviewed for the series Conversations Across Screen Cultures by the Brazilian art magazine Select, and by the Russian art activist group Follow. In addition, he published op-eds for Al Jazeera (To fight data colonialism, we need a Non-Aligned Tech Movement) and Financial Times (Big Tech’s latest moves raise health privacy fears), as well as an article with Joyce Souza for Jacobin Brasil (O Movimento das Tecnologias Não Alinhadas contra o colonialismo de dados) and a report with Couldry (Health data and global power inequalities: Challenging the world data order) for the journal of the Instituto de Comunicação e Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde, Brazil.

At the invitation of Universitas Prasetiya Mulya in Jakarta, Indonesia, communication studies faculty member Jenny Rosenberg presented a guest lecture titled "Writing a convincing literature review...and other matters of the research process" on Dec. 3. The purpose of the talk was to discuss strategies on how to write persuasive and comprehensive literature reviews that serve as the foundation for ongoing original research projects and innovative business proposals being designed at the university. More than 40 individuals, including students from Universitas Prasetiya Mulya professor Krishnamurti Murniadi's “Business Research Methods” course, as well as graduate students and alumni, attended the talk, followed by an interactive question-and-answer session.

When faculty member Jaclyn Schildkraut and colleague Sarah Daly of Saint Vincent College saw existing publications not providing enough articles on an important topic, they decided to start their own journal. The Journal of Mass Violence Research -- which went from concept to being ready to accept submissions in just 23 days -- expects to produce high-quality and accessible work on such areas as school shootings, mass or active shootings, international and domestic terrorism, serial murder and genocide. Beyond the usual goals for a journal, this one seeks to prevent the kinds of issues it would cover. Read full story.

Communication studies faculty member Joseph Stabb recently wrote “Teaching Tips in the Era of COVID-19,” an article for the national newsletter of the Public Relations Division of The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The article discusses best practices and tips as educators continue to learn the best way to deliver lessons in a pandemic. AEJMC is a nonprofit educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals.

Stabb also has been appointed to the Board of Governors for Shriners Hospitals for Children - Boston for 2021.

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