Bal initially majored in biology at Fordham, but he switched to computer science in his junior year. Working closely with Damian Lyons, Ph.D., director of the University’s Robotics and Computer Vision Lab, he used technology originally associated with gaming to help herpetologists at the zoo track and study the movements of Kihansi spray toads. The toads had been classified as extinct in the wild in 2009, but in the past decade, scientists at the Bronx Zoo, headquarters of the Wildlife Conservation Society, have been breeding the toads on site and helping to reintroduce them to their native habitat in Tanzania.

According to Lyons, Bal expanded the code to effectively track the toads solely using depth imagery. He also added a color-tracking feature so that made it possible to zero in on the toads when they moved, such as jumping onto a leaf. Bal also created new software to generate behavior analytics.

As an undergrad, Bal also was a volunteer EMT with Fordham University EMS, and he worked as a software engineer intern at Amazon, an experience he said he helped him not only get job offers but also learn “how to work professionally, scalably, and consistently in the real world.”

Today, he’s a software engineer at SpaceX, working on ground network software systems for Starlink, the aerospace manufacturer’s satellite internet service. But one day down the line, Bal said he hopes to launch his own company.

What Fordham course has had the greatest influence on you and your career path so far? How and why was it so influential?
Professor Damian Lyons’ Brains and Behaviors in Beasts and Bots. It was basically a class where we looked at different animal behaviors and then emulated them with robotics (e.g., a bug might walk around until it hits a wall, then it’ll turn and keep moving until it hits a wall, rotate, and so on. At one point we made a robot that did the same). It was a lot of fun, but I would say research outside of class was way more impactful. Classes are good for developing baseline skills, but the best way to solidify your knowledge, grow it, and put it to work is to utilize the resources available to students on campus outside of required coursework, like labs and research opportunities.

Who is the Fordham professor or person you admire the most, and why?
Definitely Lyons. Without the opportunities and encouragement he provided, I’m certain I wouldn’t have made professional progress at the same rate that I have. He introduced me to complex, real-world problems and helped me understand how to break them down into manageable chunks to create something useful. That overall thought process and all of the small nuances I learned along the way have been invaluable in my professional career.

What are you optimistic about?
I’m optimistic about our future. I think that the next few generations will have an extremely large impact on humanity’s trajectory due to their intersection with powerful and exciting technologies that they’ve grown up with, as opposed to previous generations that still remember what it was like to not have smartphones or the entire internet at their fingertips.

Whether you’re thinking of visiting classic attractions in Manhattan or exploring a new borough this holiday season, we’ve got you covered.

Please note: All events and activities here are outdoors or virtual. Those that are outdoors are subject to COVID-19 rules and changes. Please take the proper precautions, follow city and state guidelines, and visit the sites’ individual websites to get more information.

Manhattan

The Winter Village at Bryant Park
Lace up your skates and enjoy some free ice skating at Bryant Park’s 17,000-square-foot outdoor rink, just a few blocks from Grand Central. Surrounding the rink are more than 170 shops and food stands where you can grab local gifts or try something new to eat.

Explore Rockefeller Center
There’s nothing that screams the holiday season more than the legendary tree at Rockefeller Center. This year’s 79-foot-tall Norway spruce will be up and lit until Jan. 16, so there’s plenty of time to stop by and grab a photo or two. Visitors can also reserve time to skate at the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink for $20 and up, or head up to the Top of the Rock and take in 360-degree outdoor views of the city, with tickets starting at $34.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Go behind the scenes of The Nutcracker thanks to a new virtual exhibition from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. “Winter Wonderland: George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” aims to take viewers through the early years of the classic holiday ballet’s life.

Bronx

New York Botanical Garden: GLOW
Just across the street from the Rose Hill campus, the New York Botanical Garden has an outdoor exhibit called GLOW, a 1.5 mile outdoor illuminated light spectacle and a holiday night market holiday featuring diverse vendors and booths. Tickets for GLOW are $35 for adults and $20 for children under 12.

Bronx Zoo: Holiday Light Show
An immersive light display, more than 260 lanterns of animals and plants, and animated light shows, are just a few of the features of the Holiday Light Show at the Bronx Zoo. Ice carving demonstrations and competitions, a holiday train, wildlife theater, and seasonal treats are also available. Tickets are $39.95 for adults, $34.95 for seniors, and $24.95 for children 3-12.

“Chill Out” at Wave Hill
Enjoy the outdoors at Wave Hill, a public garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades in the Bronx that aims to “connect people to the natural world in meaningful and lasting ways through myriad programs.” During “Chill Out,” visitors are encouraged to explore the winter gardens with the help of expert naturalists, gardeners and wellness guides. Tickets are $10 for adults and $6 for students.

Brooklyn

Dyker Heights Christmas Lights Tour
Walk around the Dyker Heights, Brooklyn neighborhood to see some of the most extravagant decorations in the city. The breathtaking displays feature ground to roof lights, life-size Santas, and Christmas carols coming from the houses. They can be seen from 11th to 13th Avenues (also known as Dyker Heights Blvd) from 83rd to 86th St in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Lightscape
Explore more than 1 million illuminated lights along an enchanting trail that also features a holiday soundtrack. Displays include the Winter Cathedral Tunnel, Fire Garden, and Sea of Light. There will also be displays from local artists, such as a series of poems by author Jacqueline Woodson. Tickets are $34 for adults and $18 for children 3-12.

Queens

Queens County Farm Museum: Illuminate the Farm
More than 1,000 lights in hand-crafted lanterns have taken over the Queens Farm as a part of the NYC Winter Lantern Festival. About six acres of the historic farmland are now a field of illuminated farm animals, vegetables, flowers, holiday delights, and more. Tickets are $24.99 for adults and $16.99 for children 3-12. From Dec. 24 to Jan 2, adult tickets are $29.99.

Queens Botanical Garden
Step outside and take in an outdoor exhibit by artists from Kew Gardens called “Here, There, and Everywhere.” The exhibit was “was born of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic stress and political division it engendered,” and aims to remind visitors of the “beauty of the world, its strangeness and its transience, and employ the power of imagination.”

Staten Island

Winter Lanterns at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden
As part of the NYC Winter Lantern Festival, seven acres of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden will be lit up with 27 LED holiday installations. Along with the lights display, a variety of holiday vendors will be on hand to create a festive experience. Admission is free.

Now, student-developed software that works with the camera technology promises to help conservationists better understand how to protect future generations of the toads so that they can continue to thrive in their natural habitat in Tanzania. Next year, two more students will pick up the project.

From Africa to the Bronx, and Back Again

Discovered in 1996, the Kihansi spray toad lived in a five-acre microhabitat created by the spray of waterfalls in the Kihansi Gorge, which came under threat with the construction of a nearby dam that dramatically changed the habitat and decreased the size of the mist zone. The species was last seen in the wild in 2005 and was declared extinct-in-the-wild by 2009 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, likely due to the environmental changes and the emergence of a deadly fungus.

As the toad population declined, a partnership between the Bronx Zoo and the Tanzanian government, and the World Bank facilitated the collection of 499 spray toads to be brought to the Bronx to initiate an off-site conservation program. Custom microhabitats replicating their home in Tanzania were built in bio-secure facilities at the Bronx Zoo and later at the Toledo Zoo where they successfully bred the toads in the hopes of reintroducing them to the wild.

Back in Tanzania, the government managed the Lower Kihansi Environment Management Project to create a gravity-fed misting system. The project resuscitated the toads’ habitat and in 2010 the first 200 toads were returned to Tanzania to a breeding facility at University of Dar es Salaam. The first of several reintroductions to the gorge occurred in 2013, making them the first amphibian species to be reintroduced after being declared extinct in the wild.

Enter Fordham

The Fordham piece of the project began about five years ago when Kelly Cunningham, FCRH ’14, worked with James MacDonall, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology, to study the pecking behavior of pigeons. At the time, contact switches and touch-screen sensors were the state of the art for recording pigeons pecking at a target as part of psychological learning experiments, but a disadvantage of that simple mechanism is that when the pigeons’ beaks began to hurt, they stopped pecking at the switches. Further complicating things was the fact that this technology missed when pigeons were distracted or facing the wrong way, said Lyons.

As a computer scientist under the tutelage of Lyons, Cunningham worked in Fordham’s Computer Vision Lab to institute the use of the Microsoft Kinect sensor for the study. The Kinect is a motion-sensing input system initially developed for Xbox. Its cameras presented a flexible and inexpensive image-based approach to solving the tired-beak problem, as well as a way to observe behaviors beyond pecking.

Lyons and Cunningham wrote a paper published in a Psychometric Society journal in 2014 on their findings, which caught the eye of Avi Shuter at the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo. Shuter is the Senior Wild Animal Keeper in the zoo’s Department of Herpetology.

He was researching the behavior of the Kihansi spray toad, and he thought the technology might be helpful in the zoo’s efforts to better understand the animal. He reached out to Lyons, who in turn put Armando Califano, FCRH ’17, GSAS ’19, on the case.

Taking the Toads to Task

With the help of an undergraduate research grant from Fordham College at Rose Hill, Califano refined the tracking system developed by Cunningham, shifting the camera from Microsoft Kinect to the Intel RealSense, which had more accurate depth perception. But Califano could only take the project so far before entering graduate school, and the experiment was put on hold.  That’s when Philip Bal, FCRH ’19, came into the picture.

In Bal’s junior year he decided to shift his focus from biology to computer science—making him a perfect candidate to pick up the project.  Over the past year and a half, Bal wrote new software that would use the camera to track the toads and generate behavior analytics, ultimately by distinguishing toads from other moving and stationary elements in their tanks. With Lyons overseeing the computer technology and Shuter overseeing the biology, Bal was able to further develop software that responded to the needs of zookeepers.

A Tiny Target

The average size of the toad is no more than an inch, at most. The tanks that they are kept in are the typical fish tank size, about two feet wide, two feet deep, and about three feet high. The camera sits an inch and a half away from the glass. Researchers choose a subsection of the tank to focus on, just a few dozen cubed inches along the bottom or the top. A focal length is established to determine how deep into the tank the camera will take measurements. The camera has two lenses: one that’s recording color, and infrared that records movement.

“We have to do a whole bunch of calculations, try to figure what’s actually a toad moving and eliminate the noise, like moving leaves,” said Bal. “The first thing we do to track toads is to match them to a particular movement.”

Providing a More Accurate Picture

The group gathered approximately two days of footage that took up four and a half terabytes of stored data. Up until then, previous behavioral studies relied on direct observations of toads by scientists at predetermined time intervals. Those projects were an important start, but this new technology and software will give researchers a more complete view of toad behavior, said Shuter.

“Previous studies almost didn’t see any toads hopping,” said Shuter, who worked with the Fordham students and Lyons. “This can be a pretty shy species of toad that hides or stays still when you walk by. A lot of their behavioral repertoire also seems to be made up of split-second movements, like quick calls or hops. So, that’s part of the reason why I thought that a system where a computer could catch all that would give us a more accurate idea of what’s going on.”

One of the things that distinguish the Fordham research from other studies on these toads was that the technology and software were new.

“This is from the ground up; it didn’t exist before,” said Shuter, adding that as a result, the project is more complex than previous studies. “I’m amazed that it has only taken this long to get to where we’ve gotten since it’s totally from scratch.”

Bal said that the project taught him quite a bit about programming.

“I learned what I was capable of, I created thousands of lines of code I never thought I would be able to write,” he said. “This is one of my favorite things to talk about, my passion project.”

Shuter said that when the zoo first recovered the toads in the year 2000, the focus at the time was to build up a colony in captivity that could be relied upon in the event that the wild population continued to decline. The zoo was able to bring the number of toads to almost 2,000 toads.

“The struggle back then was to make more, make more, make more, and we didn’t publish research about their natural history or biology, aside from what would keep them alive, healthy, and breeding in zoos,” said Shuter. “Now, we’re a little bit calmer and things are going well in Tanzania, and we have a good handle on how to keep them alive. So now, we’re starting to look more into, ‘what’s their behavior like?’”

At a recent meeting at the zoo, Bal presented some interactions he observed in the data, including “meetings” of toads, characterized by a certain distance between the toads and the amount of time spent together.

Shuter plans to continue observing these interactions, and also plans to examine fighting behaviors and look to tell them apart from mating—also referred to as amplexing.

And he may get some help from the next cohort of Lyons’ students.

“These guys might end up doing some track analysis for that,” said Lyons, gesturing to two younger students in the lab. “That’s great! We might be able to distinguish fights from amplexing.”

The more crowded the neighborhood, the more social the bird. Such are the findings of an interspecies study by Fordham College at Rose Hill junior Lindsay Thomas.

Thomas, who is majoring in biology and minoring in sociology, unveiled her research at the Sixth Annual Bronx Science Consortium Poster Symposium on Wed., Oct. 3. Her work focused on observing birds, and how humans interact with them, in New York City parks. She hypothesized that birds live in different “avian communities” across the city, and, just like their human counterparts, their behavior often reflects the environment of their neighborhood.

In crowded parks, like Central Park, Thomas found that birds and humans interacted closely. People could get close to birds before the birds would take off and seek refuge in nearby woods—and not even that far into the woods. In less crowded parks, like Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, birds flew away much sooner when people approached them, and they fled much deeper into the wooded areas.

“In Central Park the birds are competing for the same areas of the park as humans so they tend to hang out in areas such as footpaths and fountains,” said Thomas. “Unfortunately, birds also tend to use humans as easy food sources due to frequent hand feeding.”

Thomas wasn’t alone in tracking bird-human observations; she was supported by New York City high school students recruited for the study through Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology), a program funded by the National Science Foundation that pairs teens with educators from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Fordham researchers.

One of the students, Angel Torres, riffed on Thomas’ work. Out in the field he noticed that birds were more vocal in crowded parks where they were competing with humans and city noise; they were less vocal in quieter parks. However, regardless of the park, when the same species of bird was observed in close proximity to others of the same species, vocalization rates increased.

Thomas’ groundwork for the research began after Tiffany House, her counselor from CSTEP (Fordham’s Collegiate Science, Engineering, and Technology Program), encouraged her to apply for a summer research internship with Project TRUE. As Thomas lives in Rockland County, CSTEP funded her housing for the internship.

Through the Wildlife Conservation Society, she was matched with Jocelyn Harrison, a conservation educator from Central Park who helped her iron out research methods and questions. She was also mentored by Fordham graduate student Emily Casper. By July, she was explaining research methods to three teens and working in the field gathering data with them.

Observing her own mentors opened up new possibilities for Thomas.

“It was great seeing people who were more along in their careers, like Jocelyn. I didn’t know that her job even existed,” she said of the conservation educator. “And I didn’t know we had such a diverse graduate program in biology until I met Emily. Her research is in marine biology! I thought you had to go somewhere else to study that.”

After college, Thomas hopes to pursue fellowship opportunities. Her interests lie at the intersection of policy, public health, and the sciences.

And as inspired as she was by her mentors, Thomas was also inspired by her mentees.

“One of the major takeaways,” she said, “was just working with the high school students and seeing how smart and driven they were.”

Thomas said she went to a low-income high school where budget cuts led to reduction of advanced placement classes.

“When I started this program, my main goal was to provide the students with guidance that I didn’t have at their age,” she said. “If I heard they were interested in college, I would be really on to it and encourage them.” Last month one of the students sent her a college essay to read.

“I tried to offer support beyond the program, support that I didn’t get,” she said.

Jason M. Aloisio, Ph.D., GSAS 17, has been awarded one of six Graduate Student Policy Awards (GSPA) from the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

Aloisio, who was chosen along with students from Princeton University, Michigan State University, University of Miami, University of California and Columbia University, will use the award to travel to Washington, D.C. later this month for policy and advocacy training. He won the award in January, when he was a student.

In addition to learning about the legislative process and federal science funding, Aloisio will hear from ecologists working in federal agencies. He will participate in Congressional Visits Day, a capitol hill event co-organized by ESA and sponsored by the Biological and Ecological Sciences Coalition.

There, Aloisio said he hopes to meet New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congressman Adriano Espaillat, who represents New York’s 13th Congressional District.

Aloisio coordinates the urban ecology research immersion program Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology) for the Wildlife Conservation Society. He co-developed the project, which prepares high school students to pursue degrees and careers in STEM fields, in 2011. It receives funding from the National Science Foundation.

He said he is eager to meet Espaillat because he lives in the congressman’s district and because Espaillat sits on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and a subcommittee focused on higher education.

For his doctoral degree Aloisio studied the ecology of green roof ecosystems,; he said he’s come to understand more fully the interconnectedness of policy and science.

“The Wildlife Conservation Society is widely involved with national and international regulations in different countries, and it’s become increasingly apparent how important it is to be involved in the policy process,” he said. “Decisions at the policy level have dramatic implications for conservation and the environment.”

ESA Executive Director Katherine McCarter said that by training ESA members to effectively communicate science to lawmakers, the gap between science and policy can be bridged and help fill the critical need for science-informed policy decisions.

“This valuable, hands-on experience provides these young ecologists with essential science communication skills that will enable them to successfully engage in the policy realm,” she said.

Fordham University and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo has conducted the first known study of bats in an urban area on the East Coast. The study provides evidence of both breeding and migration patterns of several species through the area.

“Bats in the Bronx: Acoustic Monitoring of Bats in New York City,”  published in the journal Urban Naturalist, provides evidence of bat activity in the city and documents the migratory movement of Eastern Red Bats and Silver-Haired Bats through the Bronx in particular.

J. Alan Clark, Ph.D., associate professor of biological sciences and one of the authors of the study, said the biggest surprise was the presence of three bats— Lasiurus borealis (Eastern Red Bat), L. cinereus (Hoary Bat), and Lasionycteris noctivagans (Silver-Haired Bat), during the winter months—a time when it was assumed they’d have migrated away from the area or begun hibernating.

“I was told by some bat experts there would be no winter bat activity, and that I’d be foolish for looking,” he said. “We had no idea how much we’d learn about bats here in the Bronx, so the results are both surprising and exciting.”

To identify bat species and activity levels, the Fordham/WCS team acoustically monitored bats at the Bronx Zoo, Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, the New York Botanical Garden and in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx.

Bat activity was recorded using both acoustic-recording devices on building rooftops and with handheld ultrasonic recording units. Using a software program called Sonobat, the team was able to identify different species by the echolocation calls that the bats produce in flight in order to navigate and locate their prey.

The initial study began in May 2012 and identified the presence of five out of a possible nine species found in New York State: Eptesicus fuscus (Big Brown Bat), Lasiurus borealis (Eastern Red Bat), L. cinereus (Hoary Bat), Lasionycteris noctivagans (Silver-Haired Bat), and Perimyotis subflavus (Tri-Colored Bat).

Of the five species detected, the most-represented was Eastern Red Bats. A July increase of its activity, followed by an August peak and sharp decline in September, suggests migratory movement through New York City, as the pattern is consistent with acoustic surveys collected in the Midwest and East Coast. In addition, an increase in Silver-Haired Bat activity occurred in late October—consistent with the timing of coastal migratory movements for this species.

The initial study, published in June 2016 and still ongoing at the Bronx Zoo, hopes to monitor year-round bat activity in the park and to identify any changes in patterns of call activity that could occur as a result of environmental factors.

Additionally, the study has been expanded to include acoustic bat surveying at the three other WCS parks—Central Park Zoo, Queens Zoo and Prospect Park Zoo—using the same monitoring methods. Initial results from the ongoing surveys reveal that the same five species occur in these three boroughs as well, although the call compositions are represented by different species at each park.

Clark has previously documented the positive effects of green roofs on birds in New York; and it’s clear that what is true for fowl is true for bats as well.

Study co-authors also included Fordham’s Kaitlyn L. Parkins, GSAS ‘15 and Michelle Mathios, FCRH, ‘13,and Colleen McCann, Ph.D., curator of mammals at the Bronx Zoo.

Fordham University students gathered in the Schiff Family Great Hall to take part in the 4^th Annual Bronx Science Consortium Poster Symposium. The event was a presentation of student research on the high school, undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral levels.

“What is really so great about this symposium is the diversity of the projects,” said Ron Jacobson, Ph.D., associate vice president in the Office of the Provost and one of the event’s organizers. “It shows all the interests of our students and the many things the consortium has to offer.”

J. Alan Clark, Ph.D., associate professor of biology and an avian expert, shared his doctoral study on penguin vocalizations. He documented the calls of feeding and mating Spheniscus penguins and tested the penguins’ responses to the calls.

He also gave the students important advice:

“Look for something that interests you, and when you see something weird, question it. There’s a wonderful world to explore, so always keep exploring,” he said, adding in jest they should “become rich and famous” as well.

Project TRUE Students Chasing Opportunity

One of the groups of high school students from Fordham’s Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology) presented a project on what kind of small mammals live within the Zoo’s enclosure.

The project is the result of a $2.6 million grant Fordham received with the Wildlife Conservation Society in order to teach and train local high school students in ecology and other STEM subjects.

The study discovered seven species of mammals that roam free within the zoo, the most prominent being white-footed mice.

“Everyone was so welcoming. I come from a small school where there’s not a lot of interest in stuff like this,” said Stephanie Blackwood of North Salem High School. “It’s great that I got to meet kids my age who are interested in the same subjects.”

“It was much better than sitting at a desk all summer,” added Anye Frimpong, of the Bronx Academy of Software Engineering. “I got to try something new. It makes me want to pursue a liberal arts education.”

HPV Research and the Benefits of Catnip

Fordham undergraduate and graduate students were also in attendance.

Fordham senior Victoria Sieverson’s project addressed the positive benefits of catnip for humans. In her study, she tested the effectiveness of pantolactone, an active ingredient in catnip, as a repellent against black-legged ticks.

“The catnip was effective in repelling the ticks away from human skin for about two hours. When I eventually come back to this project, I want to increase the concentration levels to see if I can get it to last longer,” said Sieverson.

(The ingredient, she said, has no negative side effects on cats.)

Jacqueline Heffner, a Rose Hill junior majoring in physics, discovered a way to detect the presence of the HPV virus without long, drawn out tests.

By creating a microsphere, she was able to decipher whether the virus was present based on shifts in the air’s frequency near the sphere’s edge. By testing for HPV infections this way instead of using biosensors, Heffner believes that diagnosis and treatment can begin more quickly.

“In developing countries, instead of wasting time taking tests and sending them miles away to a facility to get results, doctors can take samples and test the frequency right where they are,” said Heffner. “It speeds up the process and allows those who need help to get it faster.”

In all, some two dozen posters were presented. The projects were created in conjunction with the Bronx Science Consortium, an educational partnership of five Bronx institutions that focuses on bringing together science research and intellectual support from its partners.

–Mary Awad

Four members of the consortium—Fordham, The New York Botanical Garden, The Bronx Zoo, and Montefiore Health System—have teamed up for a series of programs and events dedicated to educating others about the concept of a “healthy planet, healthy people.”

The first event will be an April 12 lecture at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, “Celebrating the Legacy of Jane Jacobs: A Conversation with Greg Lindsay.” Jacobs was responsible for leading the successful opposition to the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have run along Canal Street. The University will also host talks by science writer Carl Zimmer and Eric W. Sanderson, landscape ecologist for the Wildlife Conservation Society at the Bronx Zoo. Zimmer speaks on April 21 at the Flom Auditorium in the William D. Walsh Family Library. Sanderson speaks on April 26 in the same venue.

Sanderson’s lecture on April 26 is an example of the collaboration between the zoo, which offers complimentary general admission to all NYC undergraduate college student, and Fordham.

The zoo will host a three-day long Earth Fair on April 22, which will include interactive exhibits such as a Carbon Footprint app that lets visitors figure out their own carbon footprint, a discussion about the amazing conservation success story of the rebound of the wild population of white rhinos, and a staging of Reusable the Musical.

John Calvelli, executive vice president of Public Affairs for the Wildlife Conservation Society, said that the partnership has inspired the zoo to consider new ways to reach out to the Bronx community. One initiative he said they’re exploring is providing free passes during the month to children who get their checkups with their doctors at Montefiore.

“By coordinating efforts and planning activities together, we strengthen the links between these vital neighborhood institutions and new ideas are born through collaboration,” he said.

The weekend of April 22 will see a flurry of activity at Montefiore and at the New York Botanical Garden as well. The hospital will host an Earth Day celebration on April 21, and on April 22, the Garden will host tours, a composting bin-making workshop and a screening of the 2013 documentary Seeds of Time, which follows an agriculturalist who is building a biological archive to maintain crop diversity.

For more information, visit the Bronx Science Consortium event page.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.6 million grant to Fordham and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) for a five-year study of a mentoring-and-research training program.

The program pairs Fordham biologists with WCS educators, who will work together to train New York City high school students in areas that promote interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

A team of Fordham graduate and undergraduate students will oversee research projects for 50 teenagers this summer at the four city zoos. The teenagers were chosen from a pool of 350 high school students who applied for the coveted slots and come from historically underrepresented groups in science.

On June 4, the groups met for the first time at the Rose Hill campus for an orientation. During its three-year pilot phase, the project was dubbed Project TRUE, (Teens Researching Urban Ecology).

Amy Tuininga, PhD, interim chief research officer, said that she first worked with Karen Tingley, director of zoos and aquarium programs and business development at WCS to develop the partnership. Out of the connection of our students with zoo educators grew Project TRUE.

Several doctoral candidates were on hand at the orientation to explain the research that all students—from high school to graduate level—will be participating in. The groups will be gathering specimens from earth, air, and water, to create a rich database that will allow biologists to compare the health of marshland and water below, to the bird migration above.

Research will be conducted in parks and zoos throughout New York City.

“We were trying to get students interested in STEM, but there was a gap,” said Don Lisowy, director of education at WCS. “Now we’re providing high school students with a wonderful opportunity to see and do science at the college level, which is their next step.”

At the June 4 event, the graduate students explained their research to their younger participants using sophisticated language. Tingley said that by the end of the summer she expects that the graduate students will become more aware of when their audience need qualifiers and further explanations.

“We work with the grads and undergrads to convey complex scientific information in more interactive and engaging ways,” said Tingley. “I’ll be very interested to see how these presentations look by the end of the summer. You don’t have to leave the vocabulary behind, but you can follow up with descriptors.”

Tingley said that while her team brings expertise in teaching to the biologists, Fordham will bring the instructors into the realm of university-level research.

Junior Joel Castillo, a biology/anthropology major and C-STEP student, said that no matter the tier of research, everybody is learning.

“The undergrads are in a particularly privileged position because we get to take the knowledge that we’re learning doing fieldwork with grad students, as well as the WCS instructors, and to relay that to the high school students.”

Graduate student Acer van Wallendael said that one of the challenges of the program is how to explain science to teens when you’re used to explaining it to colleagues.

“It’s absolutely essential to be able to explain your science to everyone,” he said.

Quoting a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut’s book Cat’s Cradle, he said, “Any scientist who can’t explain to an 8-year old what he is doing is a charlatan.”

Follow the teens this summer on their blog!

Beyond the bears, birds, and large body of reptiles, a group of visitors to the Bronx Zoo on Wednesday, Sept. 10, were brought face-to-face with some of the latest research taking place in the Bronx.

With two prestigious institutions—the Bronx Zoo and the New York Botanical Garden—sitting across the street from Fordham’s Rose Hill campus, it would seem like a no-brainer to get students involved at them.

That’s certainly how Amy Tuininga, Ph.D., associate professor of biology, sees it.
Tuininga, the associate dean of strategic initiatives, partnerships, and assessment at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, said that she first broached the idea of getting students to do research and teaching with the zoo when she spotted a talented doctoral candidate who had more than a dash of initiative.

“It seemed like he had potential to innovate teaching in nontraditional settings,” Tuininga recalled.

Eventually, the doctoral candidate, Jason Aloisio, worked with Tuininga and Karen Tingley, the city zoos’ director of education, to found Project TRUE (Teens Researching Urban Ecology). It is a tiered mentoring program that works with faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students to teach city kids about urban ecology. The program, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society, was adopted by the Central Park Zoo and even found its way into city parks.

“For many of these kids, reality is a dirty sidewalk and natural areas are perceived as places where you can get mugged,” said Aloisio. “We’re trying to dispel that perception.”
With the success of the zoo relationship established, Tuininga introduced doctoral candidate Chelsea Butcher to James Boyer, Ph.D., the Marian S. Heiskell Vice President for Children’s Education at the New York Botanical Garden.

The garden’s youth program differs from the zoo’s in that it primarily engages teens who already have an interest in urban ecology. These teens are brought in as “teen explainers” to teach kids ages 3 to 10 about plants in an informal manner at the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. As the teens gain experience and knowledge, they can move on to become “advanced explainers,” said Boyer.

“They all have a passion for the work and it teaches them self-confidence,” he said. “They don’t join the program because they were urban kids without a connection to nature or science. They’re committed.”

The advanced-level explainers get to meet up with Butcher. Boyer said that even though his staff brings plenty of child-studies and educational experience to the table, in Butcher they found someone who can teach plant science as a practice.

“She is constantly correcting misconceptions and gives them a realistic sense of science through experiments,” he said.

Butcher’s background is in urban ecology. She loves field research, but the harsh winter of 2013-14 kept her and the cohort housebound in the garden’s Haupt Conservatory and the laboratory. Beginning in March, she and the teens ran experiments that focused on the adaptation of plants in both rainforest and desert environments. Sample plants from both environments were given water in varying amounts and at varying frequency. Each week the students counted and measured the leaves, and observed whether a plant was getting sick or benefiting from its particular water regimen.

The students presented their observations at the YouthCaN World Conference held at the Museum of Natural History on April 28. The conference brings together students from around the world (in person or via video) to do research presentations about the environment.

Instead of a dry show-and-tell, the garden team presented a sci-fi-infused video intended to capture the attention of their fellow teens. They also presented information they learned from Butcher on ethnobotany—the study of human use of plants for things like food or clothing.
Following their presentation, the teens also implemented a plan to do qualitative research to measure if their lab training paid off.

For this, Tuininga drafted yet another doctoral candidate—this time from Fordham’s Department of Psychology. Sheena Jeswani helped the students develop a survey that will evaluate visitors’ experiences at the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. When the students complete their 120 hours of internship, they’ll have data that shows whether their research helped improve their skills as explainers. The survey will also teach the teens the difference between quantitative and qualitative research.

While the teens walk away learning a lot, so, too, do the doctoral candidates. Butcher, who just won a Claire Booth Luce Fellowship, said the experience has made her a better scientist.

“As scientists, we get focused on our area and it gets difficult to communicate with people outside of our field,” said Butcher. “But with these teens I have to think about how do I get them excited, and that makes me excited.”