That’s what three Fordham students—in two different labs—just spent their summer doing. Working with their professors, they aimed to illuminate various aspects of the replisome, the internal complex that drives the replication of bacteria’s DNA. Their findings could eventually help create innovative antibiotics that target resistant bacteria—a global problem they all cited when applying to the University for their funded summer research.

“It is a very major public health issue,” said one of the students, Sinwoo Hong, noting the “discovery void” within the field of antibiotics that has prompted broad concern.

An Evolving Public Health Threat

Nearly 5 million deaths annually are related to bacteria that have evolved to thwart existing antibiotics, a problem mainly driven by the antibiotics’ misuse and overuse, according to the World Health Organization. The need for new approaches has scientists looking beyond current antibiotics, many of which are designed to disrupt the formation of proteins or the cell wall in an individual bacterium.

One less-explored area? The interplay of proteins that kicks into gear when bacteria replicate their DNA, which “in general is not a major target for current antibiotics,” said Nicholas Sawyer, Ph.D., assistant professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department and research mentor for one of the students.

Hong, a senior biological sciences major on the pre-med track, learned about the problem of antibiotic resistance in one of her classes and was intrigued by the tools available in on-campus labs for examining bacteria. This summer, with a grant from Fordham College at Rose Hill’s summer research program, she worked with Elizabeth Thrall, Ph.D., assistant professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department, on a multiyear project focused on the replisome in Bacillus subtilis, or B. subtilis, a bacterium related to a number of human pathogens.

Moving the Science Forward

Using fluorescence microscopy in a lab at the Rose Hill campus, Hong studied various parts of the replisome and pinpointed the impact of amino acid mutations on bacterial DNA replication.

Another student working with Thrall on B. subtilis in the summer research program, sophomore chemistry major Katrin Klassen, took a different approach—in a project supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, she focused on a protein involved in a replication process that often produces DNA mutations, one way that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria emerge.

Thrall and Sawyer are incorporating the work by Hong and another student, Ashley Clemente, into a paper on the synthesis of new DNA, the focus of Thrall’s lab for the past few years. “We’re kind of taking the basic science approach of just learning how this molecular machine functions, and then that may reveal some key interactions that can be specifically targeted,” said Thrall.

She noted another often-cited solution to antibiotic resistance—“we need to use antibiotics judiciously, not for routine use in agriculture or using them to treat viruses.”

In Sawyer’s lab, Clemente, a junior chemistry major whose summer research was supported by Fordham’s Clare Booth Luce program for women in the sciences, experimented with peptides that could inhibit one of the key interactions in the replisome of E. coli. She’s driven by a love for putting chemistry concepts into practice—“When you actually see it in action, it’s truly amazing,” she said.

Serving the Greater Good

Over the summer, Klassen and the other students grew as scientists—“I would not be able to do everything that I’m able to do now without this dedicated time to work on a lot of different experiments,” she said.

Hong particularly enjoyed seeing her work adding to that of past Fordham student researchers. “Seeing all those data compiled and then just looking at the results in the end, it’s very rewarding.”

Clemente drew inspiration from her research’s possible impact. “I love seeing how chemistry can actually be applied,” she said, “and how it can actually help people, and how it can be used for the greater good.”

How tiny? They’re measured in nanometers, which is one-billionth of a meter. Like the width of a marble compared to the width of the Earth.

By going that small, Koenigsmann and his students have innovated in the areas of biomedical sensors and sustainable energy technology. Now his lab has a new project: scrubbing the air clean of viruses like the one that causes COVID-19.

Preventing Cases of COVID-19

Koenigsmann sees a way to improve on a type of indoor air purifier—activated by ultraviolet light—that destroys particles of coronavirus and other viruses but can also create tiny amounts of toxic byproducts under certain conditions.

Such devices have been around for decades, and were used in hospitals to remove tuberculosis from the air, “so it’s a proven technology,” said Koenigsmann, an associate professor in the chemistry department. “It’s just [that] as it becomes scaled up and more broadly used, and in environments where the air is not tested as regularly, that’s where you can run into problems.”

He and his team are working on new technology that could break down viruses without releasing toxins, which could lead to new types of purifiers that destroy viruses on a greater scale. On a recent summer day, in a lab at the Rose Hill campus, they were getting ready to run experiments using ductwork and a filter containing new types of nanoparticles.

The lab also includes a high-temperature reaction chamber and other tech for making the nanoparticles themselves—indispensable because they’re so small.

Surface Appeal

Koenigsmann, an associate professor in the chemistry department, has long been fascinated with “being able to tune fundamental physical properties” of a substance by changing its size or other aspects.

Break a substance down into smaller units, he explains, and suddenly it’s a lot better at reacting with things, since a lot of small particles will have more total surface area than a few large ones.

How much more? If you’re turning something into nanoparticles, one square meter per gram could become hundreds of square meters per gram. “For the same amount of mass, you gain a tremendous amount of surface area,” he said.

And more surface area means more reactions. For instance, a battery made from nanoparticles offers vastly more internal surface area for conducting an electric current. And air purifiers operating on the same principle offer more surface area for reacting with viruses and churning them up.

Filtering Coronavirus

In some of today’s air purifiers, Koenigsmann said, titanium dioxide chews up a virus particle in a chemical reaction that yields carbon dioxide when it runs its course—but formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, or other toxins when it doesn’t.

To address this problem, Koenigsmann and his team are working on new types of nanomaterials that, because of their size and composition, will fully break down virus particles, giving off only carbon dioxide and opening the door to purifiers that are safe to use more widely.

His undergraduate students contribute a lot to the project—“They’ll tell you things that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself,” he said. “I’m actually learning as my students learn.”

The uses for nanotech seem endless, Koenigsmann said. “The ability to tune things like conductivity, color, catalytic activity, just by making the same material one shape or one size versus another [has] so many possible applications,” he said.

“He was a great scientist and a remarkable thinker. He loved every aspect of chemistry,” said his colleague Shahrokh Saba, Ph.D., a current chemistry professor who taught with Clarke for more than four decades. “Even a week or so before he passed, he was asking me to do something related to chemistry for him.” 

Clarke served as chair of the chemistry department for six years. His collective research in biochemistry and neurochemistry led to more than 100 published articles and book chapters. Some of his research led to the creation of drug treatments, including one that he personally benefited from when he had a case of shingles. At Fordham, he helped to establish the University’s nuclear magnetic resonance facility, where faculty and students study the molecular structure of substances, said Saba.

‘I Never Dreamed of the Possibility’ 

Clarke was born in Kingston, Jamaica, on March 20, 1930, to Izzet Dudley Clarke and Ivy Clarke, née Burrows. He was a “rising star,” said Peter, but it was difficult for him to pursue his passions at home. 

In 2017, Clarke spoke to Fordham News about his educational journey. 

“I was the eldest of four children and the first in my immediate family to attend high school. There was no university in Jamaica at that time, and my parents couldn’t afford to send me abroad for higher education,” he recalled.

Clarke’s adviser at St. George’s College, a Jesuit high school, reached out to Fordham for help. 

The University’s president at the time, Robert Gannon, S.J., offered Clarke a scholarship. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1950 and continued at the University as a chemistry department assistant. He went on to complete his master’s degree in 1951 and his Ph.D. in 1955 from Fordham.  

“I never dreamed of the possibility of such accomplishments as I was growing up,” Clarke said. 

‘A New Life’ as a Chemist and Bronxite 

In 1962, he returned to Fordham as an associate professor of chemistry. He was promoted to full professor in 1970, later serving as department chair from 1978 to 1984. 

“Don Clarke’s calm, kindly disposition provides an interesting contrast to his fierce love of learning and his intense dedication to his field of biochemistry,” reads his citation from Fordham’s 2022 Convocation, where he received a standing ovation for his longtime service. 

Clarke was a fellow of the American Chemical Society, where he also served as chair and councilor of the New York section. Before joining Fordham’s faculty, he held research positions at the University of Toronto, Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York Psychiatric Institute, and Columbia University, continuing his work with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine while working at Fordham.

“He was a stream of references, papers, educational techniques, lab procedures, and amazing insight into the fundamentals of academic chemistry,” said Frank Sena, Ph.D., an adjunct professor who first met Clarke when Clarke was a young faculty member and Sena was a chemistry doctoral student. “Very recently when this semester began, I wrote to him expressing how strange it was without him on Thursday afternoons. … [John Mulcahy Hall] will be emptier without him.”

Clarke retired from Fordham last year, concluding nearly 70 years at the University—as both a faculty member and a three-time Ram. 

“The fact that he had gotten the president’s scholarship in 1948, there was always [this sense of]payback, I think, on some level,” said his son Peter, adding that Fordham became his father’s second home. “It was the thing that helped him leave Jamaica and start a new life. Fordham treated him well, so he treated Fordham well.”

For more than 50 years, Clarke lived in a Bronx house that was about a mile from the Rose Hill campus, said his son. He walked across Fordham Road to campus every day, carrying his briefcase, until it became difficult for him to walk. (Instead, he took the bus.) 

In his spare time, Clarke was an avid puzzle solver who worked on The New York Times crossword puzzle every day, according to his family obituary. He inspired his great-grandchildren to play Sudoku.  

Clarke is predeceased by his parents and his wife, Marie Clarke, née Burrowes; daughter Carol Halper; sons Stephen Clarke and Ian Clarke; and daughter-in-law Dawn. He is survived by his children Paula Clarke, David Clarke, Sylvia Clarke, and Peter Clarke; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. 

A funeral Mass for Clarke was held at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Stamford, Connecticut, on Feb. 29, directly followed by his burial at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. A Fordham memorial service will be held at the University Church on April 6 at 11 a.m., followed by a reception. Gifts in Clarke’s name may be made to Fordham University or the Exchange Club of Stamford. 

In October, the department won the Jean Dreyfus Lectureship Award, a highly competitive award from the Dreyfus Foundation that was only given to seven universities in the United States this year.

Hosting Lectures on CRISPR, DNA Repair, and Proteins

The award enables the department to host a lecturer of their choosing. Fordham proposed Taekjip Ha, Ph.D., a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Ha, who has done pioneering research in the field of single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and is a leader in the field of CRISPR technology, delivered two lectures at the Rose Hill campus on April 12 and 13. One, titled “Light, CRISPR and DNA Repair” was geared toward the scientific community, while the other, “Single Molecule Views of Nature’s Nanomachines” was crafted for the general public. The latter focused on how biophysicists are using light-based tools to examine proteins—nature’s nanomachines—one molecule at a time.

The criterion for the award was based partly on the department’s efforts in scholarly research and education in the contemporary chemical sciences, as well as information about the number of chemistry majors at the institution and how many go on to graduate school.

The principal investigator responsible for assembling the information was Elizabeth Thrall, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical/biophysical chemistry. Ipsita A. Banerjee, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department, and Joshua Shrier, Ph.D., the Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chair Professor of Chemistry, were co-investigators for the award, which also provides funding for two students to conduct research this summer.

Schrier and Thrall were also awarded, along with Yijun Zhao, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computer and information science, Fordham’s inaugural James C. McGroddy Award for Innovation in Education.

The team, which will share a $10,000 prize, was honored for path-breaking interdisciplinary work that has transformed lab courses in chemistry by incorporating data science and machine learning into the undergraduate curriculum.

Biochemistry Professor Honored with Three Awards

Banerjee, who became chair in 2018 and whose research involves harnessing bionanotechnology to tackle cancer and other illnesses, attributed the Dreyfus award to the strengths of the department, which in recent years has added faculty, won highly competitive grants such as those from the National Science Foundation, and is in the process of adding a biochemistry major.

She said the win also reflects the department’s choice of Dr. Ha. Ha, who spent time after his lecture chatting with STEM students at a reception, clearly impressed the judges, she said.

In addition to the Dreyfus award, Banerjee was also individually honored this year with three awards. She received the Middle Atlantic Region American Chemical Society’s 2023 E. Emmet Reid Award in Chemistry Teaching at Small Colleges, the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Westchester Chemical Society, and Fordham’s Distinguished Research Award in the Sciences and Mathematics.

“I’m very honored, but at the same time, it also makes me want to work harder and try to do more for our students, particularly when it comes to research,” she said.

“Research is my passion, and working with students is what I love.”

This year’s graduates faced months of uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered college campuses across the country in March 2020. Even when they returned that fall, many of their classes were still being held online. And face masks became a part of everyday life.

Dawn Saito, an associate clinical professor in the Fordham Theatre program, and Christopher Koenigsmann, Ph.D., an associate professor of chemistry, witnessed firsthand the resilience that students exhibited in those four years.

“It was really a profound time for discovery and an exploration of how to continue to be creative,” said Saito, who teaches acting and movement classes.

 “I had not seen their faces during the rehearsal process, so it was even more poignant, because of the sacrifices, to get to that place.”

 At the height of the pandemic, when classes were all virtual, acting students had to learn techniques associated with acting for film, instead of stage, because film acting could be done on video. They learned how to incorporate graphics and animation. When they returned to in-person instruction, they had to figure out how to do scene work with half their face covered by a mask.

“I think the scene work that they did really was quite profound and still had a tremendous impact, because not only do actors use their faces, they use their intentions as characters and physical impulses to tell stories,” she said.

When the program resumed mainstage performances in the fall, students rehearsed with masks on, but took them off for shows. “These students found ways to adapt to every situation. They were on Zoom, and then they were masked, and then, thankfully, they could take them off,” she said. When they did, she said, there were gasps in the room.

Koenigsmann has been working on research with three graduating seniors—Julia Mayes, Ian Dillon, and Rosario Troia—since the fall of 2020. Like their theater counterparts, they had to adjust to working in a lab, then at home, then back in a lab. Through it all, they were able to contribute to the research of Koenigsmann’s lab, which is focused on creating atom-size structures that can be used to detect glucose.

“Chemistry research is fundamentally a hands-on thing. It requires you to go into a lab to produce samples and to test them,” he said. “During the summer of 2020, even I was like, ‘What are we going to do?’ We figured it out.”

Essentially, the students flipped the research process. While labs were off limits, they used the time to conduct a literature review, which brought them up to speed on what others had learned from conducting similar experiments. When they returned to the lab last spring, they were fully ready to pair that knowledge with experiments. They still had to learn how to make samples in the lab, but Koenigsmann said they were able to share that knowledge with their younger colleagues, which was extremely beneficial.

“When something is written on paper, that’s great. But there’s a lot to be said about having a senior student there with you and giving you tips. You know, ‘don’t do it this way, do it like this,’ or ‘here’s this helpful extra little step that maybe I didn’t write in the procedure,’” he said.

The paper that will feature the results of the students’ research will be published a little later than planned, but the fact that they were able to pivot and still contribute is a testament to their resilience, Koenigsmann said.

“These students were at the forefront of basically reinventing the wheel.”

“People have known about protein interactions since the 50’s. But at the same time, these protein interactions—the ways in which we were able to target and think about them as molecular targets—have really evolved in the past decade or two,” Sawyer said.

In this faculty mini-lecture, he breaks down his research and explains how his work can make a difference.

“Protein interactions are involved in every living system and disease,” Sawyer said. “We can pick and choose what we study, and we’re trying to go after things that are important to people.”

Junior Michael Foster said the space provides an excellent environment for aspiring scientists.

“It’s cool to always be around the equipment and familiarize yourself with it, because a lot of us are looking to go into research careers and this is the sort of the setting that we all want to be in,” he said.

Chemistry Chair Ipsita Banerjee, Ph.D., said state-of-the-art laboratories and instrumentation are critical in the University’s effort to advance STEM research and education.

“[This] lab space can enhance the learning experience of students at Fordham, as it gives them an opportunity not only to conduct experiments required for their physical chemistry laboratory courses, but also for research. It allows for a collaborative learning environment for students to be immersed deeply in science,” Banerjee said.

Robert H. Beer, Ph.D., associate professor of chemistry and the FCRH associate dean for STEM and pre-health education, spearheaded the renovation effort when he was department chair and credited Banerjee with seeing the project through to completion.

“We’ve never had an upper-division teaching lab up here for the advanced students, we’ve only had instructional labs downstairs for first- and second-year students. Having the advanced students up near the faculty offices and their labs helps integrate them into department life,” said Beer. “We worked with faculty members on designing the instructional lab and made sure that could also be versatile and shared with, say, material sciences.”

Over the course of the last decade, STEM facilities at Rose Hill have been enhanced significantly, with the renovation of labs on the second floor of JMH and new state-of-the-art equipment. In 2017, a $10.5 million gift from the late Stephen E. Bepler, FCRH ’64, and his wife, Kim Bepler, funded four chairs in science and math, including a chair in chemistry for professor Joshua Schrier, Ph.D. STEM is also a priority of the University’s current fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student.

Renovations on the sixth floor began with two studies on the potential of the 1000-foot instructional lab that led to $500,000 in CUSP strategic planning funding secured by FCRH Dean Maura Mast, Ph.D., in 2019. The University administration then committed approximately $1.5 million to build out the balance of the renovations, including new labs for Schrier, Nicholas Sawyer, Ph.D., assistant professor of bioorganic chemistry and chemical biology, and Elizabeth Thrall, Ph.D., assistant professor of biophysical chemistry. (Mulcahy Hall’s computer labs also received a major upgrade in 2018, thanks to funding from New York state secured by Fordham’s Office of Government Relations and Urban Affairs.)

State-of-the-art facilities are integral in attracting professors in STEM fields like chemistry, said Beer. Thrall, a relatively recent hire along with Schrier and Sawyer, agreed. When she was considering coming to Fordham from a post-doctoral research fellowship at Harvard University, she was told there was an administrative commitment to improve and restructure the science labs. As an example, she was shown the recently renovated fifth-floor lab of Julia Schneider, Ph.D., assistant professor of organic and materials chemistry.

“She had a very nice lab renovated to her requirements and I was told that the same would be possible for me, so there was there a bit of a leap of faith … but that’s exactly what happened,” she said. “I was also very impressed by the level of research that faculty were doing with undergraduates. It made me feel there’s really this momentum for research in the department that was already at a high level.”

Beer said that renovations can only help add to that momentum.

“The advantages with the new facilities are that you can show them to potential faculty and students and say, ‘This has been done, this has been done, and this has been done,’” he said, gesturing to the expanse of pristine white interiors.

But interiors alone don’t attract faculty. Equipment does. In the case of Thrall, it’s a single-molecule fluorescence microscope that she is still assembling in a room next to her lab. She also pointed to the spectrometers in the instructional lab as an important stepping stone for students to understand the practicalities of chemistry. The lab has ultraviolet-visible and Fourier-transform infrared spectrometers, which use different kinds of light to probe different information about materials.

“The students learn the theory behind spectrometers in my class, and then actually use the tool in their research,” she said. “That kind of synergy is powerful. A student who’s not doing research may not really see the point, but a student who’s using the equipment to monitor bacterial growth may begin to see the purpose.”

As for her own work, she said, without the equipment and lab space, her research would not be possible.

“The measurements I make are very sensitive; I need very specific equipment. Not having that equipment or not having the infrastructure to support the research would make it impossible to do what I do at institutions that can’t provide that kind of support,” she said.

Several students using the labs said the renovated facilities are an integral part of their studies. Junior chemistry major Emily Holmes said she spends most of her time in the clean-lined space with southern windows overlooking most of the Bronx and the Manhattan skyline in the distance.

“I spend my entire day pretty much on the sixth floor. I’ll do my work in the lounge, then I’ll come in here, go to class, and then I’ll go to do research after,” she said.

Junior Emil Jaffal said the effort sends an encouraging message to students in the sciences. “It shows there’s a focus on STEM at Fordham,” he said.

Banerjee said she feels it’s the beginning of a new era for the sciences at the University.

“We hope to see more changes like this so that STEM students and faculty can thrive and make a lasting impact in science and technology,” she said.

To make a gift supporting STEM initiatives at Fordham, visit our Cura Personalis giving page.

For Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., chemistry research is the next frontier.

“An emerging area of chemistry is finding ways to create a machine-readable representation of the things in the world, like the structures of molecules or chemical processes, and then using those digital representations for computer simulations and machine learning,” he said.

“Once we have the results of chemical experiments in a digital form, we can unleash the tools of data science to make smarter predictions. By combining this with robots that can conduct new experiments, we create the possibility for a virtuous cycle: Every new data point gives our model a better picture of the world, and algorithms can select new data points that improve that picture and dispatch experimental instructions to a robot to collect new data.”

Schrier joined the faculty in 2018 as the first Bepler Chair in Chemistry, and has devoted much of his time to his study “Discovering reactions and uncovering mechanisms of perovskite formation,” a $7.4 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Perovskites are a class of minerals that can be used in low-cost, high-performance solar cells, x-ray detectors, and lighting. The goal of the project is to develop software and hardware to automate scientific research, using perovskites as a test case.

Robot-Created Minerals

He and fellow researchers at Haverford College, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and MIT have developed a system dubbed RAPID (Robot-Accelerated Perovskite Investigation and Discovery) to create perovskite minerals. Perovskites are minerals composed of both inorganic and organic materials, which makes them are particularly attractive.

“You can replace the organic building unit with hundreds of thousands of different possible molecules. Every time you do that, you get a different crystal structure. It’s kind of like molecular Legos,” said Schrier.

“Our efforts are aimed at the early stage of materials development; we’re not making new solar cells themselves, but we are discovering the materials that will enable better solar cells. It’s like we’re not building a house, but we’re inventing new kinds of bricks you could use to build a house,” he said.

Exploring new structures is important, he said, because by changing the structure of the perovskites, you change the way they interact with light, their electrical properties, and their stability. This is important, he said, because one of the key limitations of existing perovskite solar cells is a lack of long-term stability.

In the three years since the project got underway, Schrier said they’ve synthesized roughly 70 perovskites and performed over 10,000 experiments. While that’s useful, he said, what’s equally important is that RAPID is learning how to do the experiments itself.

2020 Findings

In “Robot-Accelerated Perovskite Investigation and Discovery,” an article published in June 2020 by Chemistry of Materials, he and his colleagues detail how they adapted perovskite syntheses for the RAPID system. Given a set of starting ingredients, researchers were able to conduct 96 randomly chosen experiments in four hours. That created a data set that the computer was able to then use to predict the success of future experiments.

Although he’s based in New York City and RAPID is housed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Schrier is able to work with colleagues in California remotely and his students are likewise able to analyze data safely from their homes. This paper was one of the top-20 most-downloaded papers in 2020, according to the journal.

This initial set of experiments is sufficient to predict the results of any subsequent experiments for that chemical system with 80-90% accuracy. In subsequent work published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C, Schrier and co-authors Mary Kate Caucci, FCRH ’20; Michael Tynes, FCRH ’17, GSAS ’20; and Aaron Dharna, FCRH ’16, GSAS ’20, were able to show that researchers can also extrapolate to entirely new sets of chemical ingredients that have never been seen before, with about 40% accuracy.

“With no knowledge about this new chemical system, just the things that we’ve learned about in the past about other chemical systems, being right 40% of the time is good enough,” Schrier said. “This gives us a higher probability of success on our first batch of 96 experiments. We don’t need to be perfect, we only need to find one success. To use an analogy, machine learning lets us pick better lottery tickets, and the robot lets us buy more lottery tickets. Putting them together gives us the best chance of winning.”

Randomness and Removing Bias

What’s surprised Schrier the most about recent findings is the effectiveness of randomness. Simply selecting the initial experiments randomly often yields better machine learning models than data chosen by human experts, he said.

This focus on randomness has important implications for artificial intelligence, because if human-generated data is used to create machine learning models, he said, we run the risk of creating machines that repeat our own biases. He explored the importance of removing human “fingerprints” in “Anthropogenic biases in chemical reaction data hinder exploratory inorganic synthesis,” which he published in 2019 in the journal Nature.

“This is at odds with the hypothesis-driven experiment design we teach students from grade school through university. What we’ve found is that humans tend to get stuck in a rut, and so instead of exploring all of the possibilities, they just focus on a few,” he said.

“The advantage of using robots is that they do what we tell them, even if it is just random. In this way, we remove our conceptual fingerprints from the data collection process and take a more unbiased look at the world.”

In the Classroom with Non-Science Majors

Although creating minerals from scratch is exciting, work with students is just as rewarding, Schrier said. In addition to mentoring six Fordham undergraduate research students, this fall, he taught a new course called Drug Discovery from Laboratory to the Clinic, which was especially fortuitous given the intense interest in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. The course is part of Fordham’s Manresa Scholars program and combines science with the Eloquentia Perfecta core.

Reading material for the class, which was for non-science majors, included analyses of Remdesivir, articles on clinical trials for hydroxychloroquine in the New England Journal of Medicine, analysis of the ethics of Moderna’s vaccine distribution plan, and information about the regulatory process of drug approval.

Outside speakers included a research scientist from the National Institute of Health and a pet-pharmaceutical startup entrepreneur who provided insights into the long path from basic research to sustainable business.

“The class just sort of wrote itself given the unfolding of world events that were occurring in the fall. The intersection of science, policy, business, and ethics is a fertile ground for engaging students,” he said.

“Fordham students have a rich intellectual toolbox for these types of discussions. In their core requirements, they’re taking philosophy, theology, economics, political science, and can apply this to the problem at hand. They’re quick to start a debate with, ‘No, no, no. Kant says you shouldn’t objectivize humans. We can’t do this.’”

Meanwhile, RAPID continues to churn out perovskites. Schrier is collaborating with Clavius Distinguished Professor of Computer Science“Mary Kate Caucci” “Michael Tynes” “Aaron Dharna” “Frank Hsu” “Yuanqing Tang”, to look at new ways of performing automated quality control for scientific experiments. He is also working with Rodolfo Keesey, FCRH ’20, in conducting data analysis geared toward using RAPID for other types of perovskite growth methods.

And in a collaboration with Fordham College at Rose Hill senior Lillian Cain and Michael Tynes that was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Chemical Education, Schrier described how algorithms for planning chemical experiments can be incorporated into a first-year general chemistry lab.

“We’re developing tools for doing science in a new way—not just perovskites—and it’s exciting to see Fordham students at the forefront of this new approach,” he said.

What are some of the reasons why you decided to attend Fordham?
I fell in love with Fordham’s campus and its location. I always wanted to go to school in or near a city, and Fordham had the best of both worlds. It had a beautiful campus and was located in New York City. Another reason I decided to go to Fordham was for its liberal arts curriculum and its Jesuit values, which emphasized the care and cultivation of the whole person. I had opportunities to take classes that wouldn’t normally be offered to chemistry majors.

What do you think you got at Fordham that you couldn’t have gotten elsewhere?
Fordham’s access to New York City provided a tremendous opportunity to [translate]what was being taught in class to learning beyond the classroom. I was able to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see famous pieces I had just talked about in my art history course. I attended special exhibits for a history class. I did a tour at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for a sociology class on migration, and I even had a biology lab take place in the New York Botanical Garden right across from campus.

Did you take any courses or have any experiences that helped put you on your current path?
Researching with Joshua Schrier [the Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chair Professor of Chemistry at Fordham]had an incredible impact on placing me on my current path. He introduced a whole new perspective of science and chemistry. I got involved in conducting research later than typical chemistry students. I was initially intimidated [about getting]involved in research because I always felt I never knew enough, especially when it came to computational chemistry research.

Working with Professor Schrier, I realized I didn’t have to know everything right from the beginning. This was my first experience doing any form of chemical research, and I accomplished far more than I ever thought possible. I was introduced to many aspects of computational chemistry, including database mining, computer modeling, data curation, programming, supercomputing, and generating chemical data analysis. I collaborated with other scientists, attended my first conference at the MERCURY Consortium, and reviewed a manuscript for a textbook titled Machine Learning in Chemistry.

Researching with Professor Schrier inspired my scientific inquiry. I’ve come to appreciate the extraordinary fact that what we do in scientific research is continuously unique. Every moment in research was an opportunity to become closer to answering seemingly unsolvable questions or to positively impact society.

What are you optimistic about?
Although our efforts may sometimes feel insignificant, I am optimistic that our actions do have meaning and make a difference in the world. So, any action, however small, is quite powerful. I’m also optimistic about the compassion we can encounter from others, as well as the kindness we can deliver to others in our day-to-day lives.

On Aug. 26., in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the state restrictions on mass gatherings, fall classes at the University commenced under the auspices of a brand-new flexible hybrid learning model.

The model, which was laid out in May by Dennis Jacobs, Ph.D., Fordham’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, is designed to be both safe and academically rigorous. After being forced to pivot to remote learning in March, professors and instructors, aided by Fordham’s IT department, spent many hours this summer preparing to use this model for the fall.

Today, some classes are offered remotely, some are offered in-person—indoors and outdoors—with protective measures, and still others are a blend of both. Whatever the method, professors are engaging students with innovative lessons and challenging coursework.

Rethinking an Old Course for New Times

Barbara Mundy, Ph.D., a professor of art history, said the pandemic spurred her department to reimagine one of its hallmark courses, Introduction to Art History. The course, which covers the period from 1200 B.C. to the present day, is being taught both in-person and in remote settings to 327 students in what’s known as a “flipped” format.

Before classes are held, students are provided with pre-recorded lectures, reading material, and videos, such as Art of the Olmec, which Mundy created with the assistance of Digital and Visual Resources Curator Katherina Fostano and her staff. When students meet in person or via live video, they then discuss the material at length. The content was changed as well; it now also addresses the representation of Black people throughout history and showcases artists who tackle themes of racism.

“Because we were looking at a situation where we couldn’t just do business as usual, I proposed that we take this moment to really rethink our intro class, which we’ve been teaching for decades,” Mundy said, noting that the department has expanded in recent years to include experts in art from more diverse sections of the world.

Contemplating the Bard

Before the COVID crisis, Mary Bly, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of English, presented materials to students in her Shakespeare & Pop Culture class and encouraged them to generate their own ideas on them during live discussions. Now she breaks her students up into pairs, and later “pods,” of about six students on Zoom, to form a thoughtful argument about a particular work of art, video, film, or theater.

“An argument is not a description,” said Bly. “It has to have some evidence or context to make their argument, say, for example, ‘This film is a racist portrayal of the play for the following reasons,’ or, ‘The director of this film pits the values of pop culture against Shakespeare and the British canon.”

To propel the conversations, she created a series of video-taped lectures with Daniel Camou, FCLC ’20. In some cases, students are expected to respond with a video of their own.

Embracing New Technologies

Paul Lynch, Ph.D., an associate professor of accounting and taxation at the Gabelli School of Businesses, is teaching Advanced Accounting to undergraduates and Accounting for Derivatives to graduate students this semester. Of the five classes, four are exclusively online, and one is exclusively in person. For his remote classes, he’s turned to Lightboard, which allows him to “write” on the screen. He jokingly refers to it as his Manhattan Project.

“I love being in the class with the students. I enjoy the interaction, and I thought that was missing,” he said. “This gives me the ability to let the students see me as if I was in class writing onto a transparent whiteboard.”

He said he hasn’t had to change much of the content. The only major difference now is that instead of passing out equations on printed paper, he emails students custom-made problems in PDF format, and then edits within that document after they’re sent back.

“I’ve always given them take-home exams, and always worked off Blackboard, so it’s just a natural extension of what I used to do in class,” he said.

In Jacqueline Reich’s class Films of Moral Struggle, students are using the platform Perusall to examine how films portray moral and ethical issues. They watch and analyze films like Scarface, a 1932 movie about a powerful Cuban drug lord, and The Cheat, which shows the early representation of Asians in American films, said Reich, a professor of communication and media studies.

Among other things, students can use Perusall to annotate scenes from movie clips, such as the classic film Casablanca, where they identified shots ranging from “establishing” and “reaction” to “shot/reverse shot.”

“It’s a really good exercise to do in class when you’re teaching film language or talking about editing or lighting, because students can pause and comment on a particular frame,” Reich said.

She meets with 11 students on Zoom on Thursdays and another eight in person at the Rose Hill campus on Mondays.

In another virtual classroom, Peggy Andover, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, is teaching undergraduates at Rose Hill how the laws of the environment shape behavior in an asynchronous class called Learning Laboratory. Andover said that platforms like Panopto, which transcribe her lessons, can make it easier for students to look for specific information.

“Let’s say you’re studying for an exam, and you see the word ‘contiguity’ in your notes, and you don’t remember what it means. You don’t have to watch the entire lecture again—you can search for ‘contiguity’ and see the slides and the portion of the lecture where we were talking about it,” Andover said.

Graduate students teaching in the psychology program are also using Pear Deck to make their virtual classrooms more engaging on Google Slides, she said.

“You have this PowerPoint that’s being watched or engaged in asynchronously, but [Pear Deck] allows you to put in interactive features,” including polls and student commentary, she said.

“Our grad students found it’s a way to really get that engagement that they would potentially be missing when we went to online learning.”

Learning from Classmates

Aaron Saiger, a professor at the Law School, made several adjustments to Property Law, a required class for all first-year law students. Instead of meeting in person twice a week for two hours, his class of 45 students meets on Zoom three times a week for 90 minutes, an acknowledgment that attention spans are harder to maintain on Zoom.

The content is the same, but the way he teaches it had to change. While he was able to record four classes’ worth of lectures to share asynchronously, that wasn’t an option for everything.

“I’m spending less time talking to students one-on-one while everyone else listens, which is the classic law school teaching mode; we call it the Socratic method,” he said. “Everyone else is supposed to imagine that they’re the person being called on.”

Saiger’s solution is having students share two-sentence answers to questions in the Zoom chat function to gauge what everyone’s thinking about a topic, having them do more group work, and leaning more on visual material.

“The difficulties are not insubstantial, but I think we are meeting the challenges and finding a few offsetting advantages that will make it a good semester for everyone.”

Getting Creative with Lab Work

Stephen Holler, Ph.D., associate professor of physics, holds most of his experimentation class in person, with a few students attending remotely.

The in-person group is working on a hands-on solar project that allows them to learn about the material, electric, programming, and optical components of physics.

Students who are attending the class remotely are doing related mathematical work as a part of their semester-long project.

“One student is studying interference coding in optics, so I have him looking at designs in a paper,” he said. “He’s learning all the underlying physics for what goes into a portion of these mirrors that are used in laser systems.”

Christopher Koenigsmann, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, is sending lab kits to the students in his general chemistry class so they can conduct experiments from home.

“We were between a rock and hard place—you can’t have the kids in the lab, and at the same time, we can’t not have some kind of hands-on,” he said.

The kits will allow students to participate in labs virtually through a Zoom webinar with their professor, as well as in breakout rooms with their lab teams.

“We adapted as many of our experiments as we could to just use simple household chemicals that are all completely safe,” he said.

Elizabeth Thrall, Ph.D., an assistant professor of physical and biophysical chemistry, likewise sent a kit to students that they can use to build a spectrometer. Students can build it out of Legos, using a DVD and a light source to create different wavelengths of light. They capture them using their computer’s webcam which processes the data. They will then design an experiment that everyone in the class will conduct.

“Designing an experiment so that you learn something, that answers the question you set out to answer, and gives a protocol that someone else can follow so they can get the same results that you got, is really at the heart of what it is to do scientific research,” she said.

—Taylor Ha, Kelly Kultys, and Tom Stoelker contributed reporting.

Chemistry Department Chair Ipsita Banerjee, Ph.D., said the addition of these two scientists will expand not only the department’s ability to provide specialized research opportunities to students, but also the scientific community’s knowledge of important areas like solar energy and genetic diseases. 

“Dr. Schneider’s field of research is in the area of design and synthesis of novel organic semiconductors for building devices such as solar cells,” said Banerjee. “Dr. Thrall’s research may further advance our understanding of the mechanistic processes involved in diseases like cancer and provide more information about how a lack of proper DNA repair mechanisms are involved in genetic disorders.”

In time, these are things that Fordham undergraduates will learn, too. 

“The types of research that we’re doing—the techniques we’re using and the problems we’re investigating—are really cutting edge. These are things that are getting done at top graduate schools across the country,” said Thrall, a two-time Ivy League graduate. “These are approaches that [our]  undergraduates can learn.” 

A Long Line of Chemists

Thrall is an assistant professor of chemistry who started teaching at the Rose Hill campus this September. A Philadelphia native, she comes from a family of chemists. Her grandparents, especially her grandmother Jean Simmons who earned a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Chicago in the late 1930s and taught at women’s colleges, inspired her to become a chemist. Her other inspiration was the science itself. 

“Not to sound cheesy, but chemistry is the central science; it extends into biology and physics,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed the breadth of topics you can explore as a chemist.” 

Her lab at Fordham specializes in single-molecule biophysics: a field that explores how biological systems function by analyzing the behavior of biological molecules, one at a time. The goal is to understand how DNA replication and repair work. 

“It’s remarkable that we can look inside a living bacterial cell and see a single molecule moving around. If you watch the movies that we record in my lab, you’ll see a single spot of light bouncing around rapidly in this small cell. That’s a single protein in the cell,” said Thrall, who has published work in several publications, including Nature Communications. 

Thrall served as a National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Medical School for six years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Columbia University.

This semester, she is teaching a physical chemistry lab for juniors and seniors; next spring, she plans on teaching a lab course and a physical chemistry lecture. Two undergraduate student researchers recently joined her lab. 

A Pastry Chef Turned Chemist 

Schneider is an assistant professor of chemistry who joined the Fordham faculty last fall. She was born in Paris, France, to a French mother and an American father. What drew her to chemistry was the ability to create something new—something that no one has seen before. 

“Every new molecule, every new structure can have new properties,” Schneider said. “There’s a ton to discover.” 

She said chemistry reminds her of her days as a pastry chef in Boston, where she concocted chocolate lava cakes, handcrafted ice cream, and Boston cream pies on a daily basis. 

“It’s nice making something, and then someone eats it at the end of the day. You served a purpose,” she said. “[Similarly,] I love organic chemistry because you get to make something.” 

She earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Southern Connecticut State University and a Ph.D. in chemistry from McGill University, where she was a Vanier Scholar. From 2016 to 2018, she served as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she collaborated with visiting researchers as part of the Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials. 

At Fordham, she teaches organic chemistry I and II labs to sophomore students, who learn how to identify, purify, and separate different compounds. Last summer, she mentored her first three undergraduates through University research grants. They began by setting up her new research lab and then started on the synthesis of a new organic semiconductor. This fall, Schneider and those three students—her new lab mentees—will continue to tackle that project. 

Schneider’s lab specializes in organic electronics. She has extensive experience in solar cells and transistors, but she now works on illuminating the structure-property relationships that drive these devices. 

“Through organic synthesis techniques, we can make materials with any properties we want. So if we want something to make a solar cell, we can design it to absorb light and give us electrons. If we want something to emit light, like an OLED [organic light-emitting diode]on your phone, we can design a molecule that makes that color,” she explained.  

Not all the materials may work, but they will teach us more about the behavior of organic semiconductors. 

“As we discover new properties, maybe that particular molecule won’t be super useful right away,” said Schneider, “but who knows what application it may have in the future.”