The award, which is the Navy’s highest civilian honor, was presented to Byrne by Carlos Del Toro, secretary of the Navy, who said of Byrne, “His unwavering support of our nation’s veterans, paired with his belief in participation and his innovative initiatives and leadership, has greatly enhanced our Department of the Navy’s community engagement. His contributions to our military are incalculable.”

Byrne is the vice chairman of Penske Media Corporation, which owns Rolling Stone, Dick Clark Productions, and South by Southwest, among other brands. He also serves on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, including the Intrepid Museum, the USO, and Citymeals on Wheels.  

“Being recognized by the U.S. Navy is both an incredible honor and a humbling reminder of the importance of service,” Byrne said at the ceremony, which was held at the Penske Media Corporation headquarters. “Supporting our military and veteran communities is something I consider both a duty and a privilege.”

Supporting Fordham Veterans

Byrne was part of the Marine Corps’ Platoon Leaders Class throughout his college years, and after graduating from Fordham, he served on active duty from 1966 to 1969, with a tour in Vietnam in the final two years of his service.

Throughout his career, which includes stints as publisher of Variety and Crain’s New York Business, Byrne has remained dedicated both to Fordham and to efforts to help veterans—in higher education and beyond. In 2012, he founded Veterans Week NYC to honor and support veterans and their families, and in 2017, he established Veterans on Campus NYC, a consortium of New York City colleges and universities—including his alma mater—with students receiving tuition benefits under the GI Bill.

“Gerry is a staunch supporter of Fordham and Fordham veteran and military-connected students,” said Matthew Butler, senior director of military and veterans’ services at the University. Byrne has donated to academic and other initiatives that help the Fordham veteran community thrive at the University and in their post-military careers, and in 2019, he moderated an on-campus conversation with David G. Bellavia, the first living Iraq War veteran to receive the Medal of Honor.

Byrne was inducted into Fordham’s Military Hall of Fame in 2022, at an event that also marked the 175th anniversary of Fordham’s military legacy, which occurs through the ROTC programs and Fordham‘s commitment to serving veterans and their family members with the Yellow Ribbon program. He is also a former member of the Gabelli School of Business advisory council.

“What I learned at Fordham Prep and Fordham College from the Jesuits was ethics and integrity,” he said at the 2022 gathering. “In the Marine Corps, I learned discipline and leadership. When you combine it, it’s amazing what you get out of it.”

In November, Fordham was ranked No. 1 in New York and No. 23 nationwide in the “Best for Vets” rankings published by Military Times.

Denzel Washington received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden during a January 4 ceremony at the White House, where he was described as a generational talent and national role model.

“The admiration of audiences and peers is only exceeded by that of the countless young people he inspires,” the White House citation read. “With unmatched dignity, extraordinary talent, and unflinching faith in God and family, Denzel Washington is a defining character of the American story.”

Washington was one of 19 “truly extraordinary people” Biden recognized for “their sacred effort to shape the culture and the cause of America.” World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and primatologist Jane Goodall were among the other honorees.

The award was a year and a half in the making for Washington, whose many honors include two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, two Golden Globes, and the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. He had been slated to receive the medal from Biden in July 2022, but a case of COVID-19 kept him from attending the ceremony that year.

This year’s honor comes on the heels of his starring role in the film Gladiator II, and as he prepares to return to Broadway to star alongside Jake Gyllenhaal in a revival of Shakespeare’s Othello. Performances are scheduled to begin on February 24 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

Washington last played Shakespeare’s “noble Moor” five decades ago, as a Fordham senior. He starred in a March 1977 production of the play at the University’s Lincoln Center campus, about a dozen blocks north of where he’ll reprise the role next month.

Fordham Roots—and a Legacy of Giving Back

Washington grew up in Mount Vernon, New York, not far from Fordham’s Rose Hill campus. He has often said that he “kind of backed into” acting—and fell in love with it—during his time at the University.

One of the first people on campus to recognize Washington’s potential was English professor Robert Stone. Decades earlier, he had acted with the legendary Paul Robeson in a Broadway production of Othello.

“Denzel gave the best performance of Othello I’d ever seen,” Stone told Fordham Magazine in 1990, referring to the 1977 Fordham production. “He has something which even Robeson didn’t have … not only beauty but love, hatred, majesty, violence.”

Since his college days, Washington has become a Hollywood and Broadway legend, deeply respected not only as an actor but also as a producer and director.

No matter how many accolades he amasses, however, he makes time to give back: For more than 25 years, he’s served as national spokesman for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. And he gives to the Fordham community. In 2011, he made a $2 million gift to endow the Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre and a $250,000 gift to establish the Denzel Washington Endowed Scholarship for an undergraduate student studying theatre at Fordham.

Through the chair, scholarship, and campus visits, Washington has been a mentor to young Fordham artists.

Eric Lawrence Taylor, FCLC ’18, a former recipient of the Denzel Washington Endowed Scholarship, described the actor’s subtle mentoring style best in a 2018 interview: “In a very cool, non-publicity-seeking way, Denzel Washington has been mentoring artists of color for a long time,” he said, “and really providing space for a lot of us to succeed.”

VIDEO: Watch Denzel Washington Receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Fordham’s 6 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients

The Presidential Medal of Freedom—the nation’s highest civilian honor—is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, to world peace, or to other significant societal, public, or private endeavors.

Washington is now the sixth Fordham graduate to receive the medal since 1963, when it was established by President John F. Kennedy. Here are Fordham’s other honorees:

Cardinal Terence Cooke: A New York City native, Cooke was ordained a Catholic priest in 1945 by Fordham graduate Cardinal Francis Spellman, archbishop of New York. He taught at the University’s Graduate School of Social Service during the 1950s and earned a master’s degree from Fordham in 1957. After Cardinal Spellman’s death in 1968, Cooke was named archbishop of New York and, later, military vicar to the U.S. armed forces.

President Ronald Reagan honored him posthumously in April 1984, six months after Cardinal Cooke died of leukemia at age 62, calling him a “man of compassion, courage, and personal holiness.”

Sister M. Isolina Ferré: Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in 1914, the youngest daughter of one of the island’s wealthiest families, Ferré entered the Missionary Servants of the Holy Trinity in 1935. In the 1950s, her work as a nun brought her to New York. She earned a master’s degree in sociology from Fordham in 1961 while gaining national recognition for her work with Puerto Rican youth gangs in Brooklyn. She later established community aid centers in Ponce, and in 1988 founded Trinity College of Puerto Rico, a school that provides leadership and vocational training.

President
 Bill Clinton honored her in August 1999, praising her ability to combine “her deep religious faith with her compassionate and creative advocacy for the disadvantaged.”

Irving R. Kaufman: A 1931 Fordham Law School graduate, Kaufman is perhaps best known as the federal judge who sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death on April 5, 1951. But he also ruled in some landmark First Amendment, antitrust, and civil rights cases during four decades on the bench.

When he died in 1992 at age 81,
 The New York Times wrote, “It was Judge Kaufman’s hope that he would 
be remembered for his role not in the Rosenberg case, the espionage trial of the century, but as the judge whose order was the first to desegregate a public school 
in the North, who was instrumental 
in streamlining court procedures, who rendered innovative decisions in antitrust law and, most of all, whose rulings expanded the freedom of the press.”

President Ronald Reagan honored Kaufman in 1987 for his “exemplary service to our country” and “his multifaceted effort to promote an understanding of the law and our legal tradition.”

Jack Keane: A retired four-star U.S. Army general and widely respected national security and foreign policy expert, Keane grew up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He began his military career at Fordham as a cadet in the University’s Army ROTC program. After graduating in 1966 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, he served as a platoon leader and company commander during the Vietnam War, where he was decorated for valor. A career paratrooper, he rose to command the 101st Airborne Division and the 18th Airborne Corps before he was named vice chief of staff of the Army in 1999. Since retiring in 2003, he has often provided expert testimony to Congress. He received the Fordham Founder’s Award in 2004, and he is a Fordham trustee fellow.

President Donald Trump honored Keane in 2020, lauding him as “a visionary, a brilliant strategist, and an American hero.”

Vin Scully: A 1949 Fordham graduate, Scully is best known for his nearly seven-decade stint as voice of the Dodgers—first in Brooklyn, later in Los Angeles—and widely considered one of the best sports broadcasters of all time. He got his start at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station, announcing football, basketball, and baseball games before joining the Dodgers broadcast team in 1950. Scully was inducted into the broadcasters’ wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, and Fordham presented him with an honorary degree in 2000.

President Barack Obama honored Scully in 2016. “Vin taught us the game and introduced us to its players. He narrated the improbable years, the impossible heroics, [and] turned contests into conversations,” Obama said.

The “pass the phone” challenge—a trend in which members of a group quip about the next person to appear on camera unbeknownst to them—is normally an occasion for light ribbing among friends. Instead, the Fordham grads, all members of the Class of 1983, used the occasion to speak earnestly of their love and support of one another throughout the years.

“We cannot believe how much attention this video received,” said Cara Rothenberg, who filmed the video and posted it on her TikTok account. “My sister and I spent our lives surrounded by this version of positive masculinity and we are better for it. The Fordham boys, and their wives and children, are all family to us.”

The TikTok has amassed more than 650,000 views and generated more than 150,000 comments so far.

“I’m stunned,” said her father, John Rothenberg. “When we heard the number of views, we said, ‘Is that us? Is it because we keep clicking on it?’’’

The friends met when they were all placed in the same residence hall in the fall of their first year at Fordham. Irv Gonzalez, who had just arrived from Florida, counts sharing the first college meal with those new friends as one of the great blessings of his life.

“It’s more than friendship—I was an only child until August of 1979,” he said. “We’ve been there for all the great stuff in each others’ lives. We’ve seen our kids get married. Who would have thought?”

Two of the grads also had solo shows running at New York and Philadelphia galleries this fall.

Teresa Baker, FCLC ’08, whose piece Sunset Turns South was part of “Amarcord,” had her first New York City solo show open at Broadway Gallery in September. “Mapping the Territory” featured her large-scale, asymmetrical paintings, many of which featured the use of natural materials like deerskin and willow branches, in a nod to Native American traditions.

Amie Cunat, FCLC ’08, contributed Sparkler II to the alumni show. An assistant clinical professor in the Fordham visual arts department, she recently had a solo show titled “West McHenry” running at Philly’s Peep Projects, where her colorful abstract work ranged from small acrylic paintings on linen to large mixed-media pieces meant to evoke cross-sections of houses. 

Vincent Stracquadanio, FCRH ’11, an adjunct professor of visual arts, curated the alumni show, which spread out across the Ildiko Butler Gallery, the newly renovated Lipani Gallery, and the Hayden Hartnett Project Space in the Lowenstein Center. 

“A big thread with all the artists in the show is that they came to Fordham and found either a class or a professor here that just kind of swept them away, and it’s this path that they’re still on,” Stracquadanio said. “They left fully changed as an artist because of the teaching at Fordham.”

Today, as the administrator for the parkland along the Bronx portion of the river, Martinez oversees a vibrant collection of green space that offers everything from canoe tours to dolphin sightings.

As a political science major at Fordham, Martinez dreamed of a career in politics. He interviewed with New York City Council member Phil Reed after graduating in 1996, and Reed passed his resume along to Tim Tompkins, who had recently founded Partnerships for Parks—a nonprofit dedicated to connecting the city’s communities with their public parks through volunteering opportunities.

Martinez worked for the organization for 17 years, many of which were spent as an outreach coordinator for Bronx parks that he says were neglected over the years. “It was an opportunity to give people the ability to fight for change in their neighborhood,” he said.

After a period working in the Parks Department’s personnel division, Martinez landed his current job. He manages a staff of city employees and partners with the nonprofit Bronx River Alliance to help restore and protect the river, and to engage the community in activities centered around the water.

“You have this unique feature running through the Bronx that a lot of people don’t think about,” he said. “I see myself in the role of connecting people to the river and helping them navigate the system—showing what they can contribute and how they can also benefit from it.”

And his message for those who haven’t visited the Bronx River?

“Take advantage of this natural resource. And once you do, spread the word and let people know that it’s here and experience all it has to offer.”

A decade ago, Fordham officially became a “changemaker campus.” But the changemaking impulse has been at the heart of a Fordham education for generations. Read more about other Fordham changemakers.

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Whether she’s exploring the life and legacy of a feminist sex educator (The Disappearance of Shere Hite) or the right-to-die legal battles surrounding Terri Schiavo (Between Life & Death), a common thread binds together many of the films she’s produced.

“They each unmask underlying power structures in society through deeply personal narratives, and question how we can do better to create a more equal and more just world,” said Ferdinando, a 2004 Fordham graduate and the executive producer of NBC News Studios.

She began working on her latest film—The Sing Sing Chronicles—in 2016. That’s when she visited Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez at the maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility, about 30 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, where he’d been serving 25 years to life for a murder he didn’t commit.

“He was a father desperate to get home to his children, and even though there were many glaring issues in his case, he’d exhausted all of his appeals,” Ferdinando said. “I connected with JJ immediately, and it was clear there was an important story to tell.”

Eight years and more than 1,000 hours of archival footage later, The Sing Sing Chronicles—a four-part docuseries—is bringing that story to light. The series premiered at the DOC NYC film festival on November 16, and it aired on MSNBC the following weekend. (It’s available for streaming on NBC’s website.)

The Sing Sing Chronicles highlights the bond NBC News investigative producer Dan Slepian formed with Velazquez over two decades—an unlikely connection that led to the exoneration of six men who were wrongfully convicted, including Velazquez, who was granted clemency in 2021 and finally exonerated on September 30 of this year. The docuseries is built on more than 20 years of investigative reporting by Slepian, who also recently authored a book recounting the experience.

As showrunner and executive producer of the series, Ferdinando said she’s extremely proud to be a part of a project detailing the complications of the criminal legal system and how a wrongful conviction can impact generations.

Launching a Media Career at WFUV

The award-winning journalist and filmmaker credits her success to the principles of journalism she learned as an undergraduate at Fordham, where she double majored in communication and media studies and Spanish language and literature. While completing her studies, she worked as an anchor, producer, reporter, and eventually news manager at WFUV, Fordham’s public media station.

“That radio station changed my life,” said the Staten Island native who chose Fordham after becoming familiar with the Lincoln Center campus while attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

She did her first news broadcasts on WFUV shows Mixed Bag with 1967 Fordham grad Pete Fornatale and Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight, where she continued working five years after graduating.

With 20 years under her belt at NBC, Ferdinando recently returned to the University for “Fordham to the Frontlines: Alumni Journeys in News & Media.” The event, sponsored by the Career Center, featured several other successful grads and brought them together with students—an experience she described as “really heartening.”

“Career paths are unpredictable,” Ferdinando said. “If you don’t put yourself out there and say what you want to be doing, it’s hard to bring that to fruition. We really encouraged them to hone in on what they want to be doing and go after it.”

—Erica Scalise, FCRH ’20

As a journalism and new media major, she was connected with Brigid Sullivan, a 1970 graduate of Fordham’s Thomas More College and vice president for children’s media and educational programming at WGBH in Boston.

Sullivan provided Conde feedback on her resume and networking. For Conde, it was invaluable knowledge. 

“Having this amazing person in the media industry with me made me feel a little bit less lonely,” said Conde, a native of Venezuela native who won an Emmy for her work on the Univision program Despierta America.

Sullivan said she wanted to pay forward the knowledge she gained from the late John D. Boyd, S.J., her Fordham professor and mentor.

‘With Valeria, I saw a great talent, and I encouraged her to pursue it,” she said.

RamConnect: How to Sign Up

Jerry Goldstein, alumni relations specialist at Fordham’s Career Center, said the Fordham Mentoring program is still accepting applications for both mentors and mentees through Sept. 30. Alumni and students can sign up and list their interests, professional goals, availability, and how much time they can commit. He said it’s constantly evolving to meet the expectations of students.

“Mentorship can mean many different things to many different people. With all of the pressures and time constraints that students face, they really want flexibility,” he said, noting that the Fordham Mentoring Program is one of several programs offered through RamConnect, the University’s online community for professional development. 

When students are matched with mentors, they’re not tied down to rigid schedules focused on a formal set of goals. Rather, mentors and students are encouraged to focus on what works best for them individually.

The program has been growing 5 to 10% a year, and this year, Goldstein is hopeful that in October, the center will pair up 330 students with mentors, a 40% increase over last year. They’re especially interested in signing up students who are interested in health sciences and finance, as well as mentors who can share expertise in the arts.

Goldstein said they generally pair mentors and students from similar fields, but common interests or hobbies that are revealed through questionnaires will also result in successful pairings. Ultimately, he said, it’s part of a larger effort to make RamConnect a community of alumni. 

“In addition to formal mentoring like this, you can choose an informal approach and do flash mentoring, which is just contacting alumni and asking one or two questions or dealing with one issue,” he said.

“Between these programs, we hope that students, soon-to-be alumni, and current alumni will give back to each other and network with each other for the rest of their lives.”

(Photos by Chris Taggart, Bruce Gilbert, and Taylor Ha)

For many parents and families, Fordham’s 2024 Commencement was a time to celebrate grads who didn’t have an in-person high school graduation ceremony. For others, it was a chance to recognize years of hard work and accomplishment. Fordham Magazine spoke with families at the Rose Hill campus on May 18 to get a sense of what the day meant to them.

Next Steps in NYC

Rich Schneider said he was grateful Fordham helped his son, Patrick, gain an “amazing” group of friends as well as the values, work ethic, and analytical skills needed to build a successful career.

“He came in as a shy, quiet boy, and he’s leaving as a smart, confident, outgoing man that’s just ready to take on his next steps in New York City,” he said, adding that Patrick, who graduated from the Gabelli School of Business, will be starting as a corporate banking analyst at Barclays in a few weeks. 

The day was “especially moving,” for Patrick’s mother, Donna, who is also a Fordham graduate.

“I graduated [from Fordham College at Rose Hill] 36 years ago, and my dad graduated in 1954,” she said. “So seeing my son graduate is especially wonderful.” 

Both parents said they appreciate how Fordham balances academic rigor with the support and resources students need to succeed. 

“It’s like a warm, comfy blanket,” Donna Schneider said with a laugh. “But what I like is they don’t hold your hand—they want you to go out and strike it on your own, but they’re for you if you fall.” 

A Heartfelt Goodbye

Commencement was bittersweet for Lisamarie and Maureen Gonzalez-Burris, parents of Jemma Burris, who graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill with a degree in communication and culture and a minor in music.

“Overall the experience has been absolutely incredible for our daughter—and for us,” Lisamarie said. “I’m sad for her, but I’m also sad for us because we’re saying goodbye to the campus.” 

Jemma was drawn to Jesuit schools when she was applying to college and really wanted to live and learn in a big city. That’s why she chose Fordham, Maureen said, even though they couldn’t set foot on campus until Jemma’s move-in day, in August 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“From the get-go, from drop-off, just how much we were embraced—it just felt like parents were being taken care of too, and we just totally trusted the whole experience and have felt so connected to Fordham, even though we live in Los Angeles,” Maureen said. 

Proud Beyond Words

David Collins said he was the “proudest great-uncle” on campus, watching Kalind Gipson graduate from Fordham College at Rose Hill with a degree in political science and a minor in African and African American studies.

“I’m so proud—I raised her mother mostly, and now to see my great-niece, you can’t even believe it,” Collins said. 

Gipson’s mother, Fashawn Cohen, said they “weren’t going to miss this for the world,” after her daughter’s high school graduation was held online.  

“It’s amazing, it’s been a lot of hard work—she’s been working hard since way back,” Cohen said, holding her hand just a few feet from the ground, remembering when her daughter was younger.  

For Kathleen Condon, seeing her daughter, Janice Puder, earn a Ph.D. in school psychology from the Graduate School of Education brought tears of joy to her eyes. 

“It’s an honor, and I’m so proud of her and her accomplishments and achievements,” Condon said. “Her hard work, dedication to everything that she’s going to do in life is just amazing.”

Shania Lauando, who graduated from Fordham College at Lincoln Center, said that she was so happy to have her parents and brothers there to celebrate her graduation, as she’s among the first in her family to earn a college degree.

“It’s a really big accomplishment for me being [a] first-generation [college graduate,] and so I’m really happy to be here and have the support of my family,” she said. 

Her older brother, Donnie, said his family was grateful to be a part of her big day.

“We’re very happy to see the youngest in the family finally graduate and accomplish this big chapter in her life—we’re just overjoyed and very proud,” he said.

“[Tom] gave me guidance on how to carry myself, from looking at my cover letters to hearing me rant [about different issues],” said Harkins, a first-generation law student from New Jersey who plans on attending the Emory University School of Law. “It meant the world [to me].”  

Last fall, Harkins and Hughes—executive vice president and general counsel at Greater NY Mutual Insurance—were paired together through the Fordham Mentoring Program. Since then, they have met nearly every week. In a Q&A and video, the pair discuss their relationship, their favorite moments at Fordham, and advice for soon-to-be graduates. See their conversation in the video above and read more below. 

What is one of your most special memories at Fordham? 

William: My orientation took place on the Plaza. I was a transfer student from the Community College of Rhode Island. Looking at all the skyscrapers, cars, and people around me, I had this moment when I realized that Fordham was bigger than the school itself.

What makes you emotional when you reflect on your time at Fordham? 

Tom: My father attended Fordham for a year and a half. When I was born, he was just under 20 years old and needed to support our family. He took a job in construction and went on to work in the New York City Police Department. Decades later, my daughters Kathleen and Brittany completed their undergraduate and master’s degrees at Fordham. They both said that they completed his degree for him. 

How has Fordham changed your life? 

William: As a first-generation law student, I feel like the academic and emotional support I received have pushed me to expand my goals and try things that I wouldn’t have tried. Fordham also awarded me a merit scholarship that not only allowed me to attend undergrad, but also look forward to law school without worrying about immense debt.

Tom: At Fordham, I developed an intense interest in philosophy. Because of my experience at Fordham, I ended up going to Columbia, where I studied philosophy at the graduate level, and pursued my Ph.D. nearly 25 years later. 

William, what advice would you give to your freshman year self? 

Be more bold. In my first year, I was a little afraid of putting myself out there. It wasn’t until my junior year that I started to feel like I should say yes to every opportunity. That took effect with the mentorship program. You may try and fail, but you’re always going to learn something. 

Tom, what advice do you have for William as he graduates from Fordham and enters the next stage of his life? 

You have an amazing ability to raise issues and think through them. Take advice from people who give good advice. You have an intense interest in the law that you will continue to cultivate, but you also have a good perspective on work-life balance. Keep that balance, and practice the law honestly and courageously. And most importantly, stay true to yourself. Be William. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Remember, on the evening of May 18, New York’s Empire State Building will be illuminated in Fordham maroon for our graduates.

Working with one of her Fordham professors at the intersection of machine learning and neuroscience, Rabia Gondur devised an innovative way to understand how an insect’s brain functions during natural movements.

When you do something simple like pick up your phone or wash your hands, what’s happening in your brain? Quite a lot, actually—neurons are firing everywhere because of all your minor movements, not to mention background activities like respiration.

“Your brain is not just stopping to do this one activity,” said Rabia Gondur, FCLC ’22, a computational research scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island. “It’s very noisy in the brain.”

Cutting through this noise to see which movements fire which neurons is the subject of her research, which she’ll soon present at a prestigious international conference on machine learning.

Gondur devised an innovative approach with help from one of her professors, Stephen Keeley, Ph.D.—a collaboration that began easily during her senior year when his presentation in one of her capstone courses spoke to her interest in research. “I just reached out to him, and he was super accommodating,” she said.

They worked on the research while Gondur—an integrative neuroscience major—completed the requirements for the accelerated master’s degree program in data science at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, after which she landed her job at Cold Spring, where she is part of a computational neuroscience research group.

She will present her research at one of the world’s leading forums for machine learning, the annual International Conference on Learning Representations, taking place in Vienna, Austria, in May.

Using Machine Learning to Study Day-to-Day Brain Function

Gondur’s research is one of many studies seeking to understand a brain’s response during complex, natural behaviors, building on prior studies of more basic movements—for instance, what happens in a monkey’s brain when it reaches left versus right in response to a prompt.

The eventual goal is to get beyond laboratory studies to see, in detail, how the human brain naturally functions. “That’s ultimately what neuroscientists are interested in understanding, is how the brain works in our day-to-day lives,” said Keeley, an assistant professor of natural science who runs a machine learning lab on the Lincoln Center campus.

But to work toward this goal, scientists have to start small—literally. For their study, Keeley and Gondur examined the brains of insects: a fly grooming itself and a moth flitting around to follow a moving image of a flower. For this, they relied on data that their collaborators at other universities gathered using brain imaging technology.

Keeley and Gondur devised a machine learning algorithm to find links between the bugs’ brain signals and the subtleties of their movements, as captured in video stills. It differs from similar algorithms because they added processes to make the measurements more precise and the results easier to interpret.

A New Tool for Brain Research

Such techniques could one day illuminate everything from brain-based diseases to variances in people’s motor skills, Keeley said. For now, their model gives a new tool to scientists trying to tease out relationships hidden in complex data. “If you are interested in genomics, if you’re interested in medicine, if you’re interested in just anything, you can basically tweak the model,” Gondur said.

Keeley is always working with undergraduates on research projects tailored to their skill level. “Rabia came in with quite a good amount of talent, and so I was able to give her a very challenging project, and she was very successful,” he said.

Del Rey was nominated for five awards, including Album of the Year for her 2023 release, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. That award went to Taylor Swift’s Midnights, which featured Del Rey as a guest vocalist and co-writer on the track “Snow on the Beach.”

Swift brought Del Rey on stage with her after winning that final award of the night, and during her speech, she praised her friend and collaborator: “I think so many female artists would not be where they are and would not have the inspiration they have if it weren’t for the work that she’s done,” Swift said. “I think she’s a legacy artist, a legend, and in her prime right now.”

Along with Album of the Year, Del Rey was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album, Song of the Year and Best Alternative Music Performance (both for “A&W”), and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance (for “Candy Necklace,” which featured Jon Batiste). In addition, Jack Antonoff took home the Producer of the Year (Non-Classical) award for his work on both Del Rey’s and Swift’s albums.

The kind of fellow artist support Del Rey received from Swift harks back to an interview and performance she recorded at Fordham’s WFUV in late 2011—just before the release of Born to Die, her major-label debut. Speaking with host Rita Houston, she called herself naturally nervous but said that praise from peers at open-mic nights and early shows helped boost her confidence.

Now, with peers including some of the biggest music stars in the world, Del Rey’s impact as an artist only continues to grow. You can catch her headlining Coachella in April, and she recently teased that her next album, Lasso, will be released in September.