Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

 

Dr. Anirban De, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, delivered the invited lecture Use of Geotechnical Centrifuge to Study the Effects of Surface Explosions to the Mid-Hudson Branch of the American Society of Civil Engineers in Newburgh, N.Y., this past October.

Dr. Robert Geraci, assistant professor of religious studies, gave the public lecture  In Whose Image? Cloning, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Souls at First Presbyterian Church of Katonah, N.Y., on March 8.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) has awarded a $500,000 contract to HDR Engineering, with Manhattan College as the major subcontractor. The award is for the study of stormwater management practices within the New York City drinking water supply watershed. The duration of the study is five years. The principal investigator for Manhattan College will be Dr. Scott Lowe, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. Read.

Dr. William Merriman, dean of the school of education, was nominated and elected to membership in the New York Academy of Public Education. The academy was founded in 1912 to provide a forum for constructive educational thinking and leadership. Merriman was inducted into the academy at the Princeton Club on Feb. 4.

Dr. Claudia Setzer, professor of religious studies, gave the opening talk at a conference on The Human Body and Resurrection at the University of Regensburg in Regensburg, Germany, in December.

Dr. Nicholas De Lillo, professor of mathematics and computer science, recently completed the paper “Simulation of Finite-State Automata Using Java 6.0, Part 2: Advanced Concepts.” It was accepted for publication in the Technical Report Series of the Graduate School of Computer Science and Information Technology, an official publication of the Ivan G. Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Services at Pace University. Part one of the paper was published in November 2008.

Dr. Powell Draper, assistant professor of civil engineering, co-authored a chapter in the book Felix Candela: Engineer, Builder, Structural Artist, which was named one of the best architecture books of 2008 by ArchNewsNow.com.

Dr. Nada Marie Assaf-Anid, professor of chemical engineering, served as programming board chair for the Environmental Division at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Centennial Meeting in Philadelphia this past November. She chaired three sessions: One Hundred Years of Environmental Law and Policy; Water and Waste; and Inorganic Contaminants in Water. In addition, Assaf-Anid chaired the session The Global Engineer and presented the paper “Are We Preparing Our Students for a Flat World?” which was co-authored by Dr. Gordon Silverman, professor of electrical and computer engineering, William Zucker ’79 and Arthur Andrews ‘76. As a result of the conference, she will establish collaborations with engineering schools in Portugal and Brazil and attend two global conferences: The Eighth World’s Congress of Chemical Engineering in Canada and the ACHEMA Congress on Chemical Engineering in Germany.

In addition, Assaf-Anid was recently nominated chair of the Sustainability Section of the Environmental Division of AIChE. She chaired a session in December on Tutorials on Basic Technologies and Issues at the third annual AIChE Energy and Resources Conference, held at the Consolidated Edison Company of New York building, where she presented the paper “Tutorial on Water Purification Technologies.”

Assaf-Anid, Silverman and Dr. Robert Mauro, professor of computer and electrical engineering, submitted a proposal titled Fully Automated Mobile Green-Fuel Factor in collaboration with Saunders High School in Yonkers, N.Y., to the Advanced E-Team Program of NCIIA. The proposal detailed biodiesel fabrication on a truck donated to Saunders by Yonkers’ Mayor Philip Amicone ’71.

Assaf-Anid and chemical engineering graduate student Lauren De Sanctis ’08 have been invited to participate at the Youth Leadership Conference of G.O.A.L.S. for Girls: Propel Yourself Forward, to be held at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York.

Dr. Jonathan Hartman and Dr. Yassir Samra, assistant professors of marketing, published the paper “Crisis Management: An Empirical Investigation of the Effects of Improvisation on New Product Development in the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Industries” in the journal Insights to a Changing World. In addition, Hartman and Samra published “Effect on an Improvisational Approach to New Product Development During a Crisis: An Empirical Study of NPD Teams in the Field of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering,” which Samra presented at the proceeding of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in Philadelphia this past November.