* Derrick Brazill, Biological Sciences, Hunter College (2004)
* Bingmei Fu, Biomedical Engineering, City College (2004)
* Ranajeet Ghose, Chemistry, City College (2004)
* Urs Jans, Chemistry, City College (2002)
* Jacqueline Li, Mechanical Engineering, City College (2002)
* Hernan Makse, Physics, City College (2003)
* Hiroshi Matsui, Chemistry, Hunter College (2002)
* Ross Nehm, Biology & Education, City College (2003)
* Benjamin Ortiz, Biological Sciences, Hunter College (2003)
* Tatyana Polenova, Chemistry, Hunter College (2003)
* Mark Shattuck, Physics, City College (2002)
* Despina Stylianou, Mathematics Education, City College (2005)
* Ioannis Stamos, Computer Science, Hunter College (2003)
* Kolluru Subramaniam, Civil Engineering, City College (2003)
* Sergey Vitkalov, Physics, City College (2004)

1 Nature 433, 392-395 (2005).
2 Nature Physics (2006).
3 Nature 415, 614-617 (2002).

“The City College has participated in the RCMI initiative since it was established in 1985,” noted President Dr. Gregory H. Williams, who is Principal Investigator for the grant. “The program has played a vital role in strengthening our science faculty and enabling us to provide better facilities and expanded research opportunities for our students. This new commitment from NIH will enable us to build on our 20-year track record of accomplishment, and we thank NIH for its ongoing support.”

With the proceeds of the grant, City College plans to add four scientists to its faculty, one for each of the four research specializations within the Center for the Study of the Cellular and Molecular Basis of Development: Bio-molecular Structure and Function; Cancer; Neurobiology, and Immunology. The Center is
the research arm that was created through the RCMI funding. Under the direction of Dr. Jerry Guyden, Professor of Biology, it has developed into a center of research excellence with an increased level of national recognition.

The grant pays the first two years of salary for new faculty plus support personnel and funds refurbishment of laboratory space and travel to conferences. After the second year, the faculty member receives a funding line from the state of New York. In addition, CCNY plans to use some of the proceeds to replace an existing Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting machine and to acquire a Confocal Microscope. The microscope, expected to cost over $215,000, will support the work of nine principal investigators and over 40 other research personnel and obviate the need to use for-fee facilities at other research institutions in New York and Boston.

Since becoming a charter participant in the RCMI initiative in 1985, City College has been able to hire 21 additional faculty members in biology, chemistry, physics and biomedical education and to renovate laboratory facilities to accommodate them. With the exception of the latest hires, who were appointed in 2003, all have obtained tenure.

The current RCMI faculty rank among City College’s most prolific researchers. Since 1990, collectively they have brought in $35 million of research support above and beyond the RCMI grants and have published over 400 papers and given more than 600 research presentations at conferences around the country.

(Courtesy of Garnet Lewis, City College)

The Gene Center was founded in 1985 to foster inter-departmental collaboration in genetic research. Since its inception, the Gene Center’s faculty has grown to 43 professors from departments ranging from chemistry to anthropology. According to Program Director Robert Dottin, the NIH grant will help develop and maintain the Center’s six research facilities, and recruit faculty from an increasingly wide variety of disciplines. Dr. Dottin hopes the grant will enable further interaction among disciplines in the coming years and thinks that “almost every element of science research at Hunter will benefit from this grant.”

The Gene Center successfully competed for this highly selective award from the Research Centers in Minority Institutions Program. Only eighteen institutions currently receive grants through the RCMI Program and the Gene Center is one of only eight graduate schools to receive this coveted award. Centers such as the Gene Center not only foster environments that are conducive to excellence in basic, clinical, and behavioral research, but they establish a critical mass of scientists that more closely reflects the growing ethnic and cultural diversity of the U.S. population.

The Gene Center is a highly diverse research enterprise, with 43 scientists of whom eight are minority researchers underrepresented in the Sciences, four are Asian Americans and fifteen are women. The Gene Center focuses on biomedical-related research in the fields of Biology, Chemistry, Biopsychology, Biophysics, and Bioanthropology.

Having surpassed most of the recruitment and productivity goals of the previous five-year grant period, the funded proposal seeks to focus on research on AIDS, Human Behavior, and Bioinformatics — research which impacts the issue of health disparities. The Gene Center will continue to hire outstanding researchers - especially scientists from underrepresented minority populations. In addition to supporting new facilities in Genomics, Internet2 and Digital Electron Microscopy, the award will continue to support professional development; technology workshops; post-doctoral fellows; graduate student researchers; core research facilities; the computer network; shared research equipment; the research infrastructure; colloquia; and symposia.

(Courtesy of Jeanne Waxman, Hunter College)

While more than 8 million children are in paid childcare every day, until now little has been known about their safety. Dr. Wrigley and Ms. Dreby analyzed reports of 1,362 fatalities (among 4,356 care-giving failures) from 1985 to 2003. The fatality data was gathered from media reports, legal cases, and state records. Three forms of child care were investigated: child care centers, nannies working in children’s homes, and family day care providers working in their own homes.

“While accidents can happen anywhere, child care centers are almost 100% protective against children’s deaths by violence,” explains Professor Wrigley. “They are much safer than arrangements in private homes,”
Infants are by far the most vulnerable children in care. Their fatality rate from both accidents and violence is nearly seven times higher than that of children from one to four. Equally striking are differences in infant fatality rates across types of care. The infant fatality rate in the care of nannies or family day care providers is more than seven times higher than that in centers.

Professor Wrigley and Ms. Dreby conclude that centers are the safest form of childcare because they afford children multiple forms of protection. Most importantly, staff members do not work alone. They have others watching them and helping them cope with fussy infants or whining toddlers. This helps them maintain their emotional control. It also helps identify and remove unstable or volatile workers. Center teachers also have more training than most caregivers in private homes and they are supervised by professionally trained directors. Finally, centers control access by outsiders more effectively to keep out people who might pose risks.

These protections help reduce risks of accidental deaths, such as suffocation and drowning. But they are especially important in preventing violent deaths. Not a single shaken baby fatality was found in a child care center, while 203 were reported in arrangements in private homes. The stress of infant crying, in particular, can drive caregivers to impulsive acts of violence. With little professional training, without supervisors or coworkers, and often paid very little for long hours of work, even some experienced caregivers can lose emotional control. Once children are past the toddler years, safety differences between centers and other forms of childcare diminish.

(Courtesy of Nan Shaw, Graduate Center)

An internationally renowned theoretical mathematician, Dr. Sullivan specializes in topology, geometry, and dynamical systems. He was named Albert Einstein Chair in Science in 1981, at the time in cooperation with Queens College. During the 1980s the resources of the chair allowed the founding of a regular seminar in geometry and chaos theory that brought first-rank international scholars to CUNY and New York City. Subsequently, the seminar has been supported by the Graduate Center, pursuing the connections between topology and the mathematical models of nature provided by quantum field theory and fluid mechanics.

Along with the title of Albert Einstein Chair, Dr. Sullivan is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the Graduate Center. Prior to coming to CUNY he held positions at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Berkeley, and Princeton University, and he had a long research association (1973–1996) with the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifique outside Paris. He received his B.A. from Rice University and a Ph.D. from Princeton.

Professor Sullivan’s work has been acknowledged by some of his field’s most prestigious prizes and distinctions, among them: the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry from the American Mathematical Society (1971), the Elie Cartan Prix en Geometrie from the French Academy of Sciences (1981), the King Faisal International Prize in Science (1993), and a 1997 New York City Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology.

In 1991, Dr. Sullivan was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the New York Academy of Sciences, and is a former Vice President of the American Mathematical Society.

(Courtesy of Nan Shaw, Graduate Center)