Grove School of Engineering at The City College of New York

Research News
160 Convent Avenue, Steinman Hall, New York, NY 10031 | Phone: 212-650-5435 | Email contact: camp@ccny.cuny.edu

FALL 2018/WINTER 2019

GROVE SCHOOL FACULTY RESEARCH INITIATIVES RECEIVE
GOVERNMENT RECOGNITION AND SUPPORT

DR. ELIZABETH BIDDINGER WINS 2018 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY EARLY CAREER AWARD FOR
STUDIES IN BIOMASS ELECTROREDUCTION
Elizabeth Biddinger, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, has won a 2018 U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Award. Funded through the Office of
Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Dr. Biddinger will receive $750,000 over five years for
her research in the emerging field of biomass electroreduction—processes that use
electricity to transform organic substances into fuels and chemicals. Her proposed
research entitled “Reaction Mechanism and Kinetics for Electrochemical Hydrogenation
and Hydrogenolysis of Biomass-Derived Species“ was selected as one of 84 projects
to receive funding from scientists and engineers nationwide. Elizabeth joins Professor
Naresh Devineni of Civil Engineering, a 2017 DOE Early Career recipient, as only
the second faculty member in CUNY to receive this prestigious award. The program
supports the development of individual research programs of outstanding scientists
early in their career. This honor comes on the heels of Biddinger’s 2016-2017 ECS
Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship grant to pursue her work on improving battery
safety. Biddinger and her research group presented their studies on “Tunable Reversible
Ionic Liquids: Structurally Determined Property Manipulation” at the AiMES 2018
Meeting this past October. The meeting drew scientists from all over the world to
present their work and discuss the future of batteries and energy applications.

DR. ROBERT J. MESSINGER RECEIVES U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION RESEARCH

GRANT TO AVERT FUKUSHIMA-STYLE NUCLEAR DISASTER
The likelihood of a nuclear disaster in the United States could soon be radically reduced
thanks to a new nuclear safety program in development at The Grove School of
Engineering. Robert J. Messinger, Assistant Professor, Chemical Engineering, CUNY
Energy Institute, is the recipient of a $450K Faculty Development Grant from the
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to establish a research program aimed
at significantly improving the emergency electrical power systems of nuclear power
plants, and mitigating core damage frequency and core meltdown risks during station
blackout (SBO) and extended-loss-of-alternating-current-power (ELAP) events.
The research is also focused on developing novel rechargeable aluminum and zinc
batteries as advanced back-up power systems, and teaching safety modules focused
on emergency power systems and reactor shutdown within nuclear engineering
courses at CCNY.
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DR. ALEXANDER KHANIKAEV’S GROUNDBREAKING STUDIES IN PHOTONICS AND ACOUSTICS
CONTINUE TO SECURE FUNDING FOR EXPANDED RESEARCH
Alexander Khanikaev, Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering, is the recipient of three
additional grants to fund his research in photonics. His research group was awarded a National
Science Foundation (NSF) grant for $390K for his study entitled, “Novel Aspects of topological
photonics in open optical systems”; a $442K grant from The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible
for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military, for a study entitled,
“Harnessing the ultimate limits of light-matter interactions with polaritonic metamaterials”;
and a $30K grant from the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) for “Novel approaches in nonreciprocal
optics with magneto-photonic metamaterials.” Thanks to the successful expansion of Dr. Khanikaev’s laboratory to
study acoustics, his group’s recent research paper entitled “Observation of bulk polarization transitions and higher-
order embedded topological eigenstates for sound” will be published in an upcoming issue of Nature Materials.

GSOE AWARD RECIPIENTS

DEAN BARABINO HONORED BY THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Dr. Gilda Barabino, Frances Berg Professor and Dean of the Grove School of
Engineering, was honored by the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy (OSTP) and presented with 2018 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science,
Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM). The first African-American
woman to serve as dean of engineering at a college that is not an HBCU, Dean
Barabino is a pioneering voice for inclusion and diversity in STEM, speaking at and
leading conferences across the nation. As a member of the National Academies of
Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on the impacts of sexual harassment in academia, Dean Barabino
contributed to a consensus study report on Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in
Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine presented at the 2018 American Society for Engineering Education
Conference. At the Grove School of Engineering, Dean Barabino mentors Ph.D. students and countless faculty,
peers, and staff with her work, contributing to the equitable academic and professional development of the future
STEM workforce.

ACI WALTER P. MOORE AWARD, JR. FACULTY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE AND INNOVATION
Dr. Ardavan Yazdanbakhsh, Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering, was selected by the
American Concrete Institute (ACI) Board of Direction to receive the ACI Walter P. Moore,
Jr. Faculty Achievement Award for his innovative and broad-reaching ways of educating
students about environmentally-conscious concrete design. Dr. Yazdanbakhsh will be
honored during the ACI Spring 2019 Concrete Convention and Exposition in Canada.

2018 CUNY INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH GRANT (IRG) - THIRD YEAR IN A ROW FOR COMPUTER
SCIENCE FACULTY
Dr. Ronak Etemadpour, Assistant Professor, Computer Science, has been awarded the 2018
CUNY Interdisciplinary Research Grant (IRG). This IRG award marks the third consecutive
year of wins for the Computer Science faculty and showcases their successful interdisciplinary
collaborative research efforts. Dr. Etemadpour’s award winning proposal is entitled “A Visual
Analysis Tool for Multidimensional Environmental Dataset.” Along with Co-PI Dr. Prathap
Ramamurthy, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, the study will examine how
visualization and visual analytic tools have become integral to the knowledge discovery process.
They will use New York City as a test bed to focus on commonly used data sets that impact
national security, science and policy. In their project, Drs. Etemadpour and Ramamurthy propose a web-based visual
analysis tool to help policy makers make better decisions when analyzing urban behavioral patterns such as energy
consumption, urban planning and management. Dr. Etemadpour’s research interests include data visualization,
the role of human perception on data analytic tasks, and the role of human cognition on multidimensional data
visualization understanding.
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 GSOE FORMS PARTNERSHIPS IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY

CCNY EARTH ENGINEERING CENTER RECEIVES NATIONAL RECOGNITION FOR ADVANCES IN

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Dr. Marco J. Castaldi, Professor, Chemical Engineering, Director of the

Earth Engineering Center and the Earth System Science and Environmental
Engineering program, led a successful two-day 2018 EEC/WTERT Bi-Annual
Conference focused on “Sustainable Waste Management: The Forefront of
Innovation.” The conference brought together 125 international industrial
and academic researchers from fourteen countries including France, Belgium,
Chile, Sudan, Kenya and China. Key insights were featured in “Rethinking the
Way We Manage, Repurpose Waste” on Waste360.com. Dr. Castaldi was
also interviewed by BNN Bloomberg and gave an informative talk on plastic
recycling challenges and thermal conversion. The news segment entitled
Power Shift: Waste-to-energy plants as a step to tackling the plastics crisis is
streaming currently on BNNBloomberg.com.

GROVE SCHOOL AND UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO RESEARCH EXTREME WEATHER RESILIENCY
IN ISLANDED COMMUNITIES

The Grove School of Engineering and the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez
plan to virtually recreate Hurricane Maria and its impact on Puerto Rico.
Principal Investigator Dr. Jorge E. Gonzalez, Professor, Mechanical Engineering,
leads the study into critical infrastructure, future risks, and expected damages
due to catastrophic climate events affecting coastal tropical regions in the
Caribbean. Research will integrate cutting-edge weather forecast models, data
driven identification and characterization of damage to physical infrastructures
and integrated analysis of community generated data, with creative solutions
for planning long-term recovery and rebuilding of Puerto Rico. The research is
part of a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation and provides
students from CCNY and partner schools with opportunities for unique training
and learning via field data collection, community engagement, and design.
The Grove School’s Dr. Reza Khanbilvardi, Professor, Civil Engineering, and
Director of the NOAA-CREST Center is a Co-Principal Investigator.

GSOE FACULTY TO DEVELOP AN INDUSTRY-UNIVERSITY COOPERATIVE RESEARCH CENTER

Drs. Jorge Gonzalez, Mark Arend, Prathap Ramamurthy, Fred Moshary, and
Masoud Ghandehari (NYU), will bring together multi-disciplinary research
capabilities of US universities and partner industries to develop smart
technologies that enhance energy sustainability and resiliency for individual
buildings and for urban centers. The Center for Building Energy Smart
Technologies (BEST-East) is a partnership between The City College of New
York, New York University and the BEST-West center node at University of
Colorado-Boulder. The team was awarded a $15K planning grant from the
National Science Foundation to organize this Industry-University Cooperative
Research Center (IUCRC).

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 GROVE SCHOOL LEADS CYBERSECURITY INNOVATION
DR. ROSARIO GENNARO
TAPPED BY FACEBOOK
TO HELP “SECURE THE
INTERNET”
In Facebook’s first Secure
the Internet Grants Program
awards ceremony held this past
August in Las Vegas, Dr. Rosario
Gennaro was awarded $75K
for his proposed study into
“Public Evaluation of Private
Perceptual Hash Algorithms.”
Dr. Gennaro explains hashing
is the transformation of a string
of characters into a usually
shorter fixed-length value or
key that represents the original
string. Hashing is used in
many encryption algorithms.
Dr. Gennaro will examine the
design of adversarially robust
perceptual hashing where
the algorithm can be publicly
evaluated without the adversary
manipulating the image to
bypass the algorithm. His
proposal puts forward possible
approaches to this problem.
The Secure the Internet Grants
Program invited university
researchers and faculty, non-
profit organizations, and NGOs
from around the world to
submit research proposals for
the development of practical
technology to improve the
security of internet users.
Facebook engineers chose
10 winning proposals and
awarded a total of more than
$800K in grants.
GROVE SCHOOL PROFESSORS CONTINUE INTERNATIONAL
COLLABORATION WITH KYUTECH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
IN JAPAN
Left to Right: KYUTECH-Japan: Professors Kenji Kawahara, Kenichi Kourai, Kazuya
Tsukamoto, Eiji Hayashi, Masato Tsuru; CCNY-USA: Abbe Mowshowitz, Tarek Saadawi,
Myung Lee, Akira Kawaguchi
Drs. Tarek Saadawi and Myung Lee, Professors, Electrical Engineering, and Drs.
Abbe Mowshowitz and Akira Kawaguchi, Professors, Computer Science, continue
to cultivate the scholarly exchange program between Kyutech Institute of
Technology and CCNY,a partnership first established in 2016. Currently, the US-
Japanese collaboration focuses on research projects that leverage each nation’s
expertise to address compelling research challenges associated with supporting
the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Recently, the
collaborative team received the NSF JUNO2 award. The $450K, three-year project
supports R&D for trustworthy networking for smart and connected communities.
Additional support from the Japanese Science Foundation is expected.
GROVE SCHOOL KEY PARTNER IN CYBER NYC INITIATIVE BY THE
NEW YORK CITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
Grove School of Engineering will play a major role in the
implementation of Cyber NYC, a $30 million initiative by the
New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC)
to transform New York into a worldwide hub for cybersecurity
innovation. Drs. Rosario Gennaro, Professor, Computer
Science, and Tarek Saadawi, Professor, Electrical Engineering
are structuring a Master’s program in Cyber Security to be
offered jointly by both departments of Computer Science and
Electrical Engineering. CUNY and its partners will take the lead in
designing a multifaceted university-wide applied cybersecurity learning initiative,
bringing together academic, private sector, and industry leaders to expose students
to the vital and rapidly emerging field. The effort will include the development
of industry-informed curricula and new instructional vehicles for their delivery; a
Tech-in-Residence program that will pair students with top leaders from the tech
sector; a citywide forum that brings academic and industry leaders together for
a two-way conversation and the creation of a regional cybersecurity conference;
the recruitment of cybersecurity professionals as adjuncts in an expanded Tech-
In-Residence Cyber Corps; a citywide Cybersecurity Discipline Council; and the
development of a new graduate program in Cybersecurity Studies at the Grove
School of Engineering.
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 GSOE STUDENTS SHINE IN COMPETITION

ZINCOTRON ADVANCES GSOE’S PERFORMANCE IN AICHE’S ANNUAL CHEM-E-CAR

COMPETITION®

Our 2018 Chem-E-Car team scored a double win at the AIChE’s Annual Chem-E-Car Competition® finals, taking
third place against international and domestic opposition, and winning the Spirit of Competition Award for the
fourth year running. The Chem-E-Car Competition® engages college students in designing and constructing a car
powered by a chemical reaction that will safely carry a specified load over a given distance, and stop using only the
tuning of the reaction. Our Chem-E-Car team, with faculty advisor Prof. Elizabeth Biddinger, designed “Zincotron”
and made it to 0.120m from the target line, the closest a CCNY car has ever achieved in competition.

MASTER’S IN TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE ALUMNI WIN TOP PRIZES AT INTERNATIONAL PITCH

COMPETITION

Team MenoPal (from left) Bo Guan, Chaya Edelman, Mican Meneses and Cira Cardaci with fellow CCNY alum and Nestle
SHIELD senior medical director and head of medical innovation Dr. Warren Winkelman.

CCNY Master’s in Translational Medicine (MTM) biodesign teams took home the top prize and an honorable
mention at the Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD 2018 Pitch Event: A Journey to Innovation in Skin Health. The MTM
alumni team, Menopal, was awarded $25,000 and the opportunity to work with SHIELD in further developing their
women-focused innovation: a wearable device for menopause management. MenoPal was also recently awarded
a National Science Foundation I-Corps™ grant to conduct customer discovery around their product. SkInsight, a
second team comprised of MTM alumni, won an honorable mention for their software application for individuals
dealing with symptoms of atopic dermatitis.

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 GSOE RESEARCH TO BENEFIT THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY

DR. MITCHELL B. SCHAFFLER RESEARCHES OSTEOPOROSIS: WHY DO OUR BONES BECOME

BRITTLE AS WE AGE?
Osteoporosis and bone fragility are a major public health threat affecting more than
40 million people in the United States. Mitchell B. Schaffler, Wallace H. Coulter and
Presidential Professor, Department Chair, Biomedical Engineering, researches the
biomechanical and molecular mechanisms by which skeletal tissue, such as bones,
grows strong or decays as people grow older. Dr. Schaffler’s work continues to build
on recent discoveries by his team of researchers who found that osteocytes—the cells
that reside inside bones—possess a specialized complex of proteins and membrane
channels that act as mechanical sensors, which deteriorate with age and hormone-
level shifts. As a result of this work, Dr. Schaffler was recently awarded a five-year,
$3.2 million grant from National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin
Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The award was granted for research titled “Structural, Molecular
and Functional Specialization in Osteocyte Mechanosensing.” This new grant will fund his research into determining
how changes in osteocytes contribute to the development of osteoporosis and bone fragility.

DR. ZHIGANG ZHU LEADS RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT OF A GPS-TYPE APP FOR THE VISUALLY
IMPAIRED
Dr. Zhigang Zhu, professor, computer science, and Director of the City College Visual
Computing Laboratory, is the project leader in the development of ASSIST, an app which
will provide GPS-type assistance to users ranging from the blind or visually impaired to
autistic and disabled people, helping them navigate large public transportation hubs such
as airports and bus stations. ASSIST is part of the Smart and Accessible Transportation
Hub (SAT-Hub) project, which has received $850,000 in funding grants from the National
Science Foundation and multiple partnerships across not-for-profit, academia, and
government. The primary research is being performed in the Grove School of Engineering
in which both graduate and undergraduate students are engaged. Major research partners
include Rutgers University, which carries out research in building modeling and transportation management, and
the not-for-profit Lighthouse Guild, dedicated to reducing the burdens of vision loss and improving the quality of
life for those with reduced vision. The Borough of Manhattan Community College, Goodwill, New Jersey Passaic
County, New Jersey Transit, the NYC Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, NYC Regional Innovation Node at
CUNY, and the NY State Commission for the Blind are also partners. CUNY collaborators include Co-PIs Arber Ruci
and Camille Kamga, and senior personnel Huy Vo, Hao Tang, and Jizhong Xiao.

DR. BINGMEI FU TAKES ON THE ENORMOUS CHALLENGE OF FINDING EFFECTIVE PSYCHIATRIC

DRUGS FOR NEUROPSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS
Dr. Bingmei Fu, Professor, Biomedical Engineering, was awarded a subcontract award
from Columbia University, under Principal Investigator Dr. Kam W Leong, Professor of
Biomedical Engineering, for the project titled, “Integrated Microphysiological System
of Cerebral Organoid and Blood Vessel for Disease Modeling and Psychiatric Drug
Evaluation.” The 2018-2020 project is funded by a $1M grant by the National Center
for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health awarded to
Columbia University Health Sciences. Dr. Fu is the City College PI whose role in the project
is to generate the blood-brain barrier (the microvessel wall in the brain) out of human
induced pluripotent stem cells and determine its structure and function under control
and disease conditions. The overall study is to develop a powerful platform to screen
neuropsychiatric drugs and develop new neuropsychiatric treatment strategies.

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 GSOE ADVANCES DIVERSITY IN STEM FACULTY PUBLICATIONS

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION’S GAANN

GRANT EXPANDS GROVE SCHOOL’S CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING PHD PROGRAM
Dr. David Rumschitzki, Professor,
Chemical Engineering, recently
received a Graduate Assistance
in Areas of National Need
(GAANN) award from the U.S.
Department of Education. The
award, entitled “Doctoral Training
in Chemical Engineering (ChE) at
The City College of New York,”
establishes an integrated research DR. RISHI RAJ COMPLETES THREE
and pedagogical program, NEW BOOKS ON MECHANICAL
headed by Rumschitzki, to train ENGINEERING
future Ph.D. Chemical Engineers
in the three sub-focus areas within Dr. Rishi Raj, Professor, Mechanical
Chemical Engineering: materials, energy production/storage, and Engineering, has 50 years of vast
interfacial science/engineering. The $900K GAANN award, plus experience in research, teaching, and
the over $150K in supplementary support from CUNY, provides consulting in industry and academe on
Dr. Rumschitzki and the chemical engineering faculty with over three different continents. He has used
$1 million in funding to educate and train six to eight Ph.D. this background to produce his three
Chemical Engineering students per year for three years. The latest books: Turbo-Machinery Design:
grant runs through September 30th, 2021, and places a special Part I; Turbo-Machinery Design: Part 2;
focus on recruiting female PhD students and PhD students from and Thermo-Fluid Systems Analysis and
underrepresented groups. Design, 9th Edition. The turbo machinery
design books are not regular textbooks,
but rather use new approaches to excite
GROVE SCHOOL RESEARCHERS TO BUILD A SOCIAL the readers. Part 1 covers fundamentals,
MEDIA PLATFORM TO IMPROVE STUDENT RETENTION and Part 2 deals with aero-thermo design
IN STEM concepts, with a focus on materials.
It includes technical papers and book
Dr. Joseph Barba, Professor, Electrical
chapters based on Dr. Raj’s long career
Engineering, is advancing the aims of the
in the field. His hope is that a first-time
Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program
learner will find it easier to understand
by building a social media platform
where to begin when designing turbo-
designed specifically for students
machinery. Most of the material presented
entering, continuing, or transferring into
in Thermo-Fluid Systems Analysis and
STEM majors at The City College of New
Design, 9th Edition is based on Dr. Raj’s
York. The project is being realized thanks
classroom lectures at The City College
to a five-year, $1.5 million grant from the
of New York. The ultimate goal of the
National Science Foundation. Principal
book is to teach students how to realize
Investigator Barba will develop the social
a physical product based on the concepts
media platform to support community building and information
and analysis of those concepts. He
sharing interventions to assist students during critical transitions
believes the material provided will assist
early on. Co-Principal Investigators include Drs. Feridun Delale,
students in industry and provide tools
Chair, Mechanical Engineering; Jorge Gonzalez, NOAA-CREST,
and challenges for future research. Dr. Raj
Mechanical Engineering; Millicent Roth, Director of the City
has many technical contributions to his
College Academy for Professional Preparation; and Doris Cintron,
credit. He has authored and co-authored
Senior Associate Provost.
a number of other books, including
Practical Chemistry, published in 2016.

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 ALUMNI NEWS
CITY COLLEGE HONORS TWO
ENGINEERING ALUMS WITH TOWNSEND
HARRIS MEDALS
The Townsend Harris Medal established in 1933
is awarded to CCNY alumni for outstanding
postgraduate achievement and leadership in
their communities. The medal is named after
the founder of The City College of New York,
Townsend Harris, who after being elected
president of the New York City Board of Education
in 1846, established a “free” college in New York
City to make higher education accessible to the
masses. In November 2018, two Grove School of
Engineering alumni were awarded the prestigious
medal. Congratulations to Peter Delfyett, ’80EE,
an internationally recognized professor and
inventor in ultrafast photonics at The College of
Optics & Photonics, University of Central Florida;
and to David Laub, ’42CE, who was a Professional
Troy Celtics player of the American Basketball
League, one year before the NBA was founded.
Laub is also a CCNY Alumni Varsity Basketball Hall
of Fame inductee and a construction executive
who retired in 2017 at age 93.
Grove School
of Engineering
160 Convent Avenue, Steinman Hall
New York, NY 10031
Phone: 212-650-5435
Email contact: camp@ccny.cuny.edu
RESEARCH INFORMATION SERIES
ENCOURAGES INTERDISCIPLINARY
COLLABORATION ON SITE
THE GROVE SCHOOL’S RESEARCH
INFORMATION SERIES (RIS) CONTINUES TO
GROW
As an effective means of increasing collaboration
among researchers from various disciplines, the
Research Information Series (RIS) was instituted in
2016. A series of lectures where faculty members share
their research and increase interaction across disciplines
are held throughout each semester. The RIS seminars
are particularly valuable to newer faculty members who
are able to get a multi-disciplinary view of research at
GSOE, interact with school-wide faculty, and showcase
their own research accomplishments as well.
The 2018 Fall Semester featured the following talks
and speakers:
Thermochemical Biomass Conversion Research and
Development at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory
Dr. Matthew Yung
Senior Engineer, National Bioenergy Center, National
Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Some of the Crypto Behind Cryptocurrencies
Dr. Rosario Gennaro
Professor, Computer Science, Director of the Center
for Algorithms and Interactive Scientific Software
(CAISS), CCNY
Combustion and Catalysis of Carbon Based Materials
for Energy and Environmental Applications
Dr. Marco Castaldi
Professor, Chemical Engineering, Director of the Earth
Engineering Center, CCNY
The Security Analysis of Testability
Dr. Samah Mohamed Ahmed Saeed
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering, CCNY
Moving forward to Spring 2019, the focus of the RIS
talks will be on Climate Change, as well as emerging
research areas and priorities, including Transportation,
Robotics, Energy and the Environment.