Faculty & Staff Accomplishments
We are excited to share recent accomplishments from faculty and staff members at our campuses around the world.
Accomplishments are listed by date of achievement in reverse chronological order, with the most recent first.
Elaine Brown
College of Arts and SciencesElaine Brown, Ph.D., department chair and associate professor of humanities, conducted a narrative medicine workshop for faculty and students at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine on December 3, 2025.
Alessandro Melis
School of Architecture and DesignAlessandro Melis, Ph.D., IDC Foundation endowed chair and professor in the School of Architecture and Design, served as scientific stream leader for Climate-Sensitive Urbanism and Adaptive Metabolisms for The International Conference of Green + Digital + Intelligent Built Environments (GDI 2025). The conference, dedicated to advancing innovation in design, construction, and sustainable development, was held on December 1-3, 2025, in Auckland, New Zealand.
Colleen Kirk
School of ManagementColleen P. Kirk, D.P.S., professor of marketing, was quoted in a Newsday article about consumer holiday spending trends. The article was published on November 28, 2025.
Tanya Van Cott
School of Architecture and DesignTanya H. Van Cott, M.I.D., adjunct assistant professor in the School of Architecture and Design, was interviewed on Christopher Hadnagy's Human Element Series, a social engineering podcast, on November 16, 2025. She spoke about her new novel, Bandwidth, as well as artificial intelligence, empathy, digital technologies, and humanity's shared future.
Jessica Varghese
School of Health ProfessionsJessica Varghese, Ph.D., RN, assistant professor of nursing, authored a guest essay in Long Island newspaper Newsday titled Electric school buses the only option for kids' health, on November 14, 2025. In the essay, she highlighted the health, academic, and economic benefits of electric school buses.
Colleen Kirk
School of ManagementColleen P. Kirk, D.P.S., professor of marketing, published an article entitled "AI Ghostwriting Remorse: Guilt for Using Generative AI in Interpersonal Heartfelt Messages" in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour, a peer-reviewed journal, on November 14, 2025. As consumers increasingly use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to write personal, emotionally meaningful messages, this research finds that doing so elicits guilt because it feels dishonest. Five preregistered experiments show elevated guilt when AI secretly writes a message, but not when using a standard greeting card. The results highlight dishonesty concerns in generative AI-assisted communication and suggest transparency and co-creation can reduce discomfort.
Lynn Rogoff
College of Arts and SciencesLynn Rogoff, M.F.A., adjunct associate professor of English, Department of Humanities, was featured in USA Today's Native American Heritage Month 2025 Special Edition, on November 7, 2025, highlighting her film, Bird Woman, and AI chatbots made with the help of a New York Tech grant.
Jeffrey Raven
School of Architecture and DesignJeffrey Raven, Ph.D., associate professor and director of the graduate program in architecture, urban and regional design, published a book, Planning, Urban Design, and Architecture for Climate Action, with the Cambridge University Press, on November 5, 2025. The peer-reviewed work contains benchmarked knowledge and city projections for urban climate change researchers, city practitioners, and policy makers at all levels of governance to motivate rapid action.
Wei Zeng
College of Engineering and Computing SciencesWei Zeng, Ph.D., assistant professor of mechanical engineering, published an article titled "Optimization of proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack manifold inlet geometry using velocity-assisted gray wolf optimization algorithm," as the last author and one of the corresponding authors in Renewable Energy, a prestigious, high-impact, peer-reviewed journal. The article was published in the November 2025 issue.
Zohre Bairieva
School of Architecture and DesignThe Hyatt Regency hotel, located on the waterfront in Jersey City, N.J., selected artworks created by Zohre Bairieva, administrative specialist of graduate programs at the School of Architecture and Design, for an exhibition in the hotel on November 1, 2025. The exhibition is a permanent display of works from local artists, including paintings, drawings, handmade accessories, jewelry, and other artisanal items.