Barnard professors play a key role in guiding exceptional students while driving their groundbreaking research forward. Over the past months, 15 faculty members earned prestigious awards and grants, recognizing their innovative contributions and providing crucial support for their ongoing projects both within and beyond the campus community. Barnard’s dedicated Institutional Funding and Sponsored Research (IFSR) team continues to provide invaluable support and expertise, empowering faculty to secure grants that fuel innovative research and discovery.
Anja Benshaul-Tolonen received additional support from the International Growth Centre (IGC) at the London School of Economics in support of the project “Measuring the spatial distribution and local multipliers of local procurement in the mining industry in Zambia.” The project in Zambia maps economic linkages in the mining sector through company acquisition data to create and test policies for sustainable and inclusive local procurement.
Elizabeth Cook received an award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a collaborative project with colleagues at UCLA titled “Center for HeatReady Communities.” This project funds and supports U.S. and international communities in creating tailored, investment-ready heat resilience strategies, leveraging expert teams and over 50 cross-sector partners for equitable outcomes.
Martina Jasova received an award from the Columbia Center for Political Economy to support the project “Monetary Policy, Labor Income Inequality and Credit.” This study shows that when monetary policy is relaxed, small and young companies with limited financial resources tend to see more job growth, higher wages, and longer work hours, especially for existing employees and skilled workers. These findings emphasize that companies’ financial health and access to bank loans play a key role in how monetary policy affects income inequality, particularly during economic downturns, while firms without bank loans are less impacted.
Colin Wayne Leach received an award from the Incite Institute at Columbia in support of the project “Black Lives Matter: Breakdown and (Re)Generation of Racial Justice Movements.” With this grant, Leach will lead a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including Barnard postdoctoral scholar Shaunette T. Ferguson and Columbia psychology doctoral student Nikhi Anand. Together, the team will work to better understand how Black Lives Matter, the movement and the meme, move people for, against, and away from racial justice in the U.S. and U.K.
Eduardo Moncada received an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the project “Criminal Competition and Collective Political Mobilization in Comparative Perspective.” Moncada, alongside several Barnard College students, will conduct fieldwork and collect data on organized crime in Mexico City to understand how the presence of organized criminal groups impacts residents’ ability to access basic public goods. This project seeks to understand when and how criminal organizations influence community-level political mobilization for public goods in socioeconomically marginalized areas.
Reshmi Mukherjee received a new award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the project “Particle and Gamma-Ray Astrophysics with VERITAS and CTA: Understanding the Nature of Cosmic Accelerators.” This project will create a new type of telescope that can detect high-energy gamma rays from space with greater precision than current telescopes, allowing scientists to study cosmic mysteries like dark matter, distant galaxies, and supernovas. By using an innovative design and placing the telescope near an existing observatory, researchers can compare its performance directly, helping to guide future telescope development while also providing hands-on research opportunities for young scientists.
Reshmi Mukherjee also received renewed support from the New York Space Grant program at Cornell University (funds originating with NASA). The sub-award will provide continued support for students conducting astronomy and physics research as part of the Summer Research Institute.
Kara Pham received a Diversity Supplement from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support her work on the project “Novel SCN-OVLT portal system: Dissecting Anatomical and Functional Properties,” with Barnard colleague Rae Silver and a collaborator at Georgia State University. This study identifies a new blood pathway, the SCN-OVLTP, that may help the brain’s circadian clock (SCN) control daily rhythms across the body by sending signals to a specific brain area (OVLT) linked to the spinal fluid. By mapping this pathway in rats and examining how it regulates blood flow in response to the day-night cycle, researchers aim to understand how the SCN coordinates essential body functions on a 24-hour cycle.
Brian Plancher received a new award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his project “Accessible GPU-Accelerated Edge Optimal Control Library and Benchmarks.” The project develops open-source, GPU-accelerated optimization cyberinfrastructure targeting edge robotics applications. This cyberinfrastructure will help researchers leverage optimization to overcome fundamental shortcomings in current software, with a particular focus on optimal control applications for robotics.
Lucy Simko is bringing to Barnard an award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support the project “Beyond App-centric Privacy: Investigating Privacy Ecosystems among Vulnerable Populations.” This project shifts focus from app-specific privacy concerns to the broader “privacy ecosystem,” exploring how data from various sources — like credit card use and location history — poses risks, especially to vulnerable individuals. Through interviews, analysis, and participatory design, it aims to understand privacy risks in healthcare, develop strategies to help vulnerable people protect their privacy, and create a toolkit for professionals like healthcare workers and social workers to better support clients’ privacy needs.
Paige West received additional funding from Synchronicity Earth to extend support for her work with a longtime collaborator from Papua New Guinea, John Aini, on the project “Women’s Empowerment in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea.”
Amy Zhou received an award from the Columbia Center for Political Economy to support the project “Diverging effects of financialization for patients and health care providers.”
Monica Miller received a renewal of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program on behalf of Barnard College. Administered by the American Council of Learned Societies and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the fellowships support diversity and multivocality in the professoriate through funding and programming for a cohort of promising students from underrepresented backgrounds to pursue undergraduate degrees and graduate study in the humanities and related disciplines.
Corey Toler-Franklin received industry gift funding from Activision, a division of Microsoft Gaming. The funds will be used to support her research in computer graphics and vision that uses principles from physics to accurately measure and represent the appearance of complex materials.
Michael Wheaton received an R41 award Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the project “Clutter-GO: Facilitating Delivery and Adherence in Evidence-Based Treatment for Hoarding Disorder via a Patient-Provider Digital Health Tool.” He will be working with collaborators at Virtually Better Inc. to develop an app that will help patients with hoarding disorders engage in treatment.