Description

Cathy Reinis

Producer

Simeen Sattar

Presenter
Simeen Sattar, PhD, Professor of Chemical Physics, has taught both general and physical chemistry to science majors and laboratory-based courses for nonscience majors that are inspired by her interests, including paints and the examination of paintings, photographic processes, starlight, the science of cooking, and nuclear and chemical weapons. Current research projects include replicating some early experiments in photography and using thin-layer chromatography to identify natural textile dyes. Her publications include articles in J. Chem. Educ., including “Characterizing Color with Reflectance” (cover article, 2019); “Writing with Sunlight: Recreating a Historic Experiment” (2018); “The Chemistry of Photography: Still a Terrific Course for Nonscience Majors” (2017); and “A Unified Kinetics and Equilibrium Experiment: Rate Law, Activation Energy, and Equilibrium Constant for the Decomposition of Ferroin” (2011). BA, Rosemont College; PhD, Yale University. At Bard since 1984.

Patrick DeHaven

Class/Session Manager

M. Elias Dueker

Presenter

M. Elias Dueker joined Bard in 2014 as the Assistant Professor of Environmental and Urban Studies. With a B.A. from Rhodes College, an M.A., M.Phil.,and Ph.D., from Columbia University, he completed his postdoctoral research at Queens College, City University of New York, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. Additionally, he studied at Columbia University’s Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology postbaccalaureate program. He is the recipient of grants and awards from the Hudson River Foundation, Janet Holden Adams Fund, and the DEC's Hudson River Estuary Program among others. His work has been published in Environmental Science & Technology, Biogeosciences, and Science of the Total Environment. Before entering academia, he worked for 14 years in the nonprofit world,   including 10 years as an organizational development consultant addressing issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in institutional structures, serving as the former director of Project Underground, an international environmental and human rights organization, and as a board member of Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a transgender law collective in NYC. He is the founder and Interim Leadership Team member of the Saw Kill Watershed Community, which protects the Saw Kill watershed and its ecological, recreational, and historic resources through hands-on science, education, and advocacy. His teaching interests include water quality, air quality, oceanography, urban ecology, environmental microbiology, and the role of science in addressing environmental justice issues.

Yoram Gelman

Class Manager

Hal Haggard

Presenter
Hal Haggard, PhD, Associate Professor of Physics Hal Haggard and his fellow researchers were awarded a 2019 Buchalter Cosmology Prize at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, on January 6. The annual prize series, created by Dr. Ari Buchalter in 2014, seeks to reward new ideas or discoveries that have the potential to produce a breakthrough advance in our understanding of the origin, structure, and evolution of the universe. Professor Haggard and his colleagues were recognized for research testing the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of black holes.

Thomas Hutcheon

Presenter

Thomas Hutcheon, Assistant Professor of Psychology. His research focuses on cognitive control, which is defined as the ability to select relevant sources of information in the face of distracting or competing sources of information. As everyone has experienced, the efficiency of cognitive control varies. At times we find it easy to sit down at our computers and work on paper. At other times we end up checking our email every three minutes. What causes this variability in performance? Professor Hutcheon’s research seeks to understand the mechanisms that support cognitive control, the factors that influence the efficiency of cognitive control, and how these are influenced by healthy aging. To address these issues, Professor Hutcheon uses a variety of behavioral and statistical techniques including computational modeling and response time distribution analyses.  His work has been published in Teaching of Psychology; Acta Psychologica; The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology; and Psychology and Aging, among others. 

BA, Bates College; MS, Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology. Has taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Agnes Scott College. At Bard since 2014.

Antonios Kontos

Presenter

Antonio Kontos, Assistant Professor of Physics, Diploma in Physics, National Technical University of Athens; M.S., Ph.D., University of Notre Dame. Professor Kontos comes to Bard following three years as a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. He also served two years as a research associate at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab at Michigan State University. His research centers on terrestrial experiments that aid our understanding of astrophysical processes. His particle accelerator work on nuclear reactions has informed models of nucleosynthesis in giant stars, novae, and the big bang; and his more recent work on precision optomechanical measurements was critical to the first experimental detection of gravitational waves last year. In addition to the paper announcing this discovery, he has co-authored 30 other peer-reviewed publications. He plans to continue investigations into classical and quantum processes in precision interferometers by creating an optics lab at Bard that involves student researchers. At Bard since 2017.

Caitlin Leverson

Presenter

Caitlin Leverson, Assistant Professor of Mathematics. Her areas of interest include low-dimensional topology, symplectic topology, contact topology, and knot theory, with a particular interest in three-dimensional contact topology and knot homologies. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and numerous teaching, research, and travel awards from Duke University, where she earned her doctorate; Wellesley College; and the American Mathematical Society. She previously taught at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a visiting assistant professor and NSF Fellow. Publications include “Satellite ruling polynomials, DGA representations, and the colored HOMFLY-PT polynomial” (with D. Rutherford), arXiv.org; and “Augmentations and rulings of Legendrian links in #^k (S¹ x S²),” Pacific Journal of Mathematics. 

BA, Wellesley College; Ph.D., Duke University; NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgia Institute of Technology. At Bard since 2020.

Lauren Rose

Presenter
Lauren Rose, PhD, is associate professor of mathematics at Bard College. She teaches throughout the mathematics curriculum, supervises undergraduate research, and specializes in algebraic combinatorics, discrete geometry, and recreational mathematics. She is co-founder of the Bard Math Circle and Mid-Hudson Math Teacher's Circle, Senior Fellow in the Bard Center for Civic Engagement, Director of the Math Major in the Bard Prison Initiative, and the Director of Outreach for CubingUSA.

Navin Sharma

Session Manager