Chemistry students Brandon Ladd, Walter Paz Orozco and Thomas Sobiech (pictured, from left), accompanied chemistry faculty members Fehmi Damkaci and Vadoud Niri Aug. 21 to 24 to the 252nd American Chemical Society National Meeting in Philadelphia. Ladd, a chemistry major, presented the research “Removal of Heavy Metal Ions by a Polymer Matrix Containing Dithiocarbamate as a Chelating Group,” developed under Damkaci’s guidance. Biochemistry major Sobiech and Paz Orozco, who dual majors in biochemistry and biology, presented the research “Synthesis of 1,3,4-Oxadiazole and 1,2,4-Triazole-3-Thione Derivatives.” Damkaci gave a talk describing the results of the STEM peer-mentorship program, which is sponsored by an NSF STEP grant. Niri gave a talk titled “Volatile Organic Compound Removal by Common Indoor Plants Using Solid Phase Microextraction and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry” that garnered considerable international media attention after Washington Post columnist Sarah Kaplan blogged about it in “Speaking of Science.” (More details in a future Campus Update.)
Marketing and management professor Sarfraz Mian delivered a keynote address, “Entrepreneurial Ecosystems,” at the International Symposium on Technology Entrepreneurship and Incubation in Islamabad, Pakistan, last month.
Ampalavanar Nanthakumar, professor of mathematics, published a research article “Multivariate Kurtosis as a Tool for Comparing Copula Models” in the International Journal of Statistics and Probability on June 22. Also, he presented a paper, “A Comparison of Quantile Regression and Copula-based Conditional Regression Results for Body Mass Index,” at the 10th annual International Conference in Statistics held June 28 to 30 in Athens, Greece.
Over the summer, computer science professor Damian Schofield published papers with five recently graduated human-computer interaction students:
* Schofield and three of his former students—Alexa Spillane, Edward Hinge and Andrew Houck—and Gautam Pal of the Tripura Institute of Technology in India published “Using Social Media and Gamification to Measure Engagement with Study Abroad Programs” in the International Journal of Innovation and Research in Educational Sciences
* Schofield and Daniel Ivancic, along with Lisa Dethridge of RMIT University in Australia, published “A Virtual Perspective: Measuring Engagement and Perspective in Virtual Art Galleries” in the International Journal of Arts and Technology
* Schofield and Brian Kern, with John McGloon of ComScore Inc., published “Corporate UX Guidelines: Policies and Publication” in the International Journal of Business and Management Invention.
Philosophy professor K. Brad Wray presented a paper titled “What Support Do the Theoretical Values Offer the Scientific Realist?” at the annual Conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, in Cardiff, Wales, in July. Wray also published a paper, “Methods and Continuity in Science,” in the May issue of the Journal for General Philosophy of Science (Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie).
Jolanda Tromp of the computer science faculty took several SUNY Oswego human-computer interaction students to Spain over the summer and they worked on projects at a virtual reality laboratory in Granada.
In Memoriam
Judith A. Benedict, longtime art faculty member, passed away on Aug. 24.