Photos by Bruce Gilbert

Six distinguished faculty members were honored on March 13 for their achievements in securing externally funded research grants at the third annual Sponsored Research Day on the Rose Hill campus.

The University Research Council and Office of Research presented the Outstanding Externally Funded Research Awards (OEFRA) to recognize the high quality and impact of the honorees’ sponsored research within the last three years and how their work has enhanced Fordham’s reputation—both nationally and globally.

Faculty were honored in five separate categories and were given awards by Jonathan Crystal, Ph.D., interim provost, associate vice president, and associate chief academic officer.

Humanities: George Demacopoulos, Ph.D., professor of theology and the Father John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies, and Aristotle Papanikolaou, Ph.D., professor of theology and the Archbishop Demetrios Chair in Orthodox Theology and Culture

Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou, co-directors of Fordham’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center, shared the award for the Humanities category. Demacopoulos has received awards totaling $928,000 in the past three years, while Papanikolaou has received a total of $888,000. Last April, they secured two grants totaling $610,000 that will be used to fund a multiyear research project devoted toward the issue of human rights.

Interdisciplinary Research: Su-Je Cho, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Childhood Special Education at the Graduate School of Education.

Cho, an expert in the field of special education, has received two external grants totaling more than $2.7 million from the U.S. Department of Education and other foundations in the past three years. Her interdisciplinary project will produce approximately 40 professionals in special education and school psychology, which are the greatest shortage areas in the field of education.

Junior Faculty Research: Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theology

Gribetz has received six external grants totaling $55,000 from the prestigious National Endowment for Humanities and other foundations in the past three years. Her research focuses on the history of time in antiquity and the important role that religious traditions and practices have played in the history of time. In 2017, she received the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise, alongside nine other young scholars, from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

Sciences: Steven Franks, Ph.D., Professor in Biological Sciences

Franks has received five grants totaling more than $5.3 million from the National Science Foundation in the past three years. The results of the studies funded by these grants have been published in 17 peer-reviewed scientific publications since 2016. The papers, which are in high impact journals such as Evolution, Molecular Ecology, and American Journal of Botany, have been widely cited. His work has helped to advance our understanding of responses of plant populations to climate change and the genetic basis of these responses.

Social Sciences: Janna Heyman, Ph.D., Professor of Social Service and Endowed Chair of the Henry C. Ravazzin Center on Aging and Intergenerational Studies at the Graduate School of Social Service

Heyman, who is also director of Fordham’s Children & Families Institute center, has received 10 grants totaling more than $3 million from a variety of external foundations in the past three years. Last year, she co-edited, along with Graduate School of Social Service Associate Dean Elaine Congress, D.S.W, Health and Social Work: Practice, Policy and Research (Springer, 2018). She has taught social work research, advanced research, and social welfare policy courses in Fordham’s master of social work program, as well as policy implementation in the doctoral social work program.

Organized by the Office of Research and the University Research Council and sponsored by the University Research Compliance Council and the Office of Sponsored Programs, the daylong event featuring a keynote speech by Denise Clark, Ph.D., Associate Vice President for Research Administration, University of Maryland at College Park.

A forum of science researchers featured Thomas Daniels, Ph.D., director of the Louis Calder Center, Deborah Denno, Ph.D, director of the Neuroscience and Law Center, Silvia Finnemann, Ph.D., director of the Center for Cancer, Genetic Diseases, and Gene Regulation, J.D. Lewis, director of the Urban Ecology Center, Amy Roy, Ph.D., director of the Pediatric Emotion Regulation Lab, and Falguni Sen, Ph.D., director of the Global Healthcare Innovation Management Center.

New research from a Fordham cell biologist suggests that a diet rich in antioxidants and begun at a
young age can significantly reduce age-related blindness.

Silvia C. Finnemann, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, conducted the three-year-plus study by comparing the vision of three groups of mice fed differing diets.

One group received a diet rich in freeze-dried grapes, a fruit very high in anti-oxidants. Another group received a diet rich in lutein, an antioxidant derived naturally from marigolds. The third group, the control group, received a normal diet.

All of the mice used were from the same genetic strain, said Finnemann—one prone to developing retinal damage in old age in much the same way that humans do.

Results showed that the mice in the control group experienced a 74 percent reduction in retinal function, while the mice fed the lutein-rich diet experienced a 29 percent reduction in retinal function.

The mice that were fed a grape-rich diet, however, did dramatically well: retinal function decreased by only 16 percent.

“We’re not suggesting that you need to eat grapes like crazy, but that a life of having a healthy diet of natural antioxidants makes a difference to changes in the human eye,” Finnemann said.

Finnemann’s study also showed that, to be effective, eating antioxidant-rich foods should begin before the onset of advanced age, preferably in youth or young adulthood.

Mice who were not fed a grape- and lutein-rich diet until they were the equivalent of a human age of 60 showed little or no improved retinal function, she said.

“Once the changes have started to happen, it may be too late to reverse them,” she said.

According to statistics, age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness or partial blindness in the elderly, affecting about 25 percent of the population over 70 years of age in the United States. Finnemann said she hopes her study will lead to the development of new ways to prevent AMD, especially among the burgeoning elderly population of baby boomers.

“Our research shows that, when it comes to AMD, a healthy diet may be better than supplements, and the earlier you begin it, the better the results,” she concluded.

Finnemann’s research assistants include Chia-Chia Yu, M.S., and Ying Dun, Ph.D., both from her laboratory at Fordham; and Emeline Nandrot, Ph.D., a biologist from the Paris-based Institut de la Vision.

Funding was provided by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health, and the California Table Grape Commission.

Results of the study were published in December 2011 in Free Radical Biology & Medicine.

Silvia C. Finnemann, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, conducted the three-plus-year study by comparing the vision of three groups of mice fed differing diets: One group received a diet rich in freeze-dried grapes, a fruit very high in anti-oxidants. Another group received a diet rich in lutein, an anti-oxidant derived naturally from marigolds. The third group, the control group, received a normal diet.

All of the mice used were from the same genetic strain, said Finnemann—one prone to developing retinal damage in old age in much the same way as human beings do.

Results showed that the mice in the control group experienced a 74 percent reduction in retinal function, while the mice fed the lutein-rich diet experienced a significantly lower 29 percent reduction in retinal function.

Those mice fed a grape-rich diet, however, did dramatically well: retinal function decreased by only 16 percent.

“We’re not suggesting that you need to eat grapes like crazy, but that a life of having a healthy diet of natural anti-oxidants makes a difference to changes in the human eye,” said Finnemann.

Finnemann’s study also showed that, in order to be effective, eating anti-oxidant-rich foods should begin before the onset of advanced age, preferably in youth or young adulthood.

Mice who were not fed a grape and lutein-rich diet until they were the equivalent of a human age of 60 showed little or no improved retinal function, she said.

“Once the changes have started to happen, it may be too late to reverse them,” she said.

According to statistics, Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness or partial blindness in the elderly, affecting about 25 percent of the population over 70 years of age in the United States. Finnemann said she hopes her study will lead to the development of new ways to prevent AMD, especially among the bourgeoning elderly population of baby boomers.

“Our research shows that, when it comes to AMD, a healthy diet may be better than supplements, and the earlier you begin it, the better the results,” she concluded.

Finnemann was assisted in her research by Chia-Chia Yu, M.S., and Ying Dun, Ph.D., both from her laboratory at Fordham University and Emeline Nandrot, Ph.D., a biologist from the Paris-based Institut de la Vision. Funding was provided by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health and The California Table Grape Commission.

Results of the study were published in December 2011 in Free Radical Biology & Medicine.

–Janet Sassi