Notable People

$100,000 Math Teaching Award
Ann Marie Alcocer, a Lehman College senior, is one of two CUNY seniors to win a 2011 $100,000 Math for America Fellowship to pursue a career teaching math in New York City’s public schools.

Studying the Fallout of War
The partition of India and Pakistan. The schisms of the Bosnian war. The divisions of Sri Lanka’s civil war. Though those fields of battle are silent now, the “epic events of violence and war play out in peoples’ everyday lives, even years later,” says Nadia Augustyniak, who expects to receive a Hunter College master’s degree in anthropology this summer.

Biomedical Magic
Mark Barahman, of the Macaulay Honors College at the College of Staten Island, is one of four CUNY juniors in 2011 to win highly competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, the premier federally funded undergraduate scholarship to encourage graduate study in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Math Talent Wins Acclaim
Jeewani Boteju and her family were able to leave Sri Lanka for the United States in 2005 after winning a Diversity Visa Lottery. Within a few years of settling in Bayside, Queens, her husband strongly encouraged her to pursue a college education and, in January 2009, she enrolled at Queensborough Community College to study mathematics.

Making a Synthetic Biologist
Joseph Cammarata, of the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, is one of four CUNY juniors in 2011 to win highly competitive, Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, the premier federally funded undergraduate scholarship to encourage graduate study in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Multiple Sclerosis Gives Focus
Kathleen Capogrosso-Brown, who this spring collects two associate degrees from Queensborough Community College, had already decided to leave her career as a public high school teacher when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That set her on a new path toward helping others with the disease.

Undeterred by Disease
Gina Delgado knows what it is to be challenged. As a family advocate for the Mental Health Association of New York City, she made a living dealing with the difficulties that families face on a daily basis

Sommelier Gives Valedictory
Growing up in Hays, KS, – population 20,000 – Theresa Evans treasured the time spent on her grandparents’ farm. Eating meals that came straight from the land to their table led to a career in food and wine and to becoming the 2011 valedictorian of the New York City College of Technology (City Tech).

Planning the Future Subway
Consider the Second Avenue Subway, first envisioned in 1919; first proposed in 1929; first segment opened in 1967 (the Chrystie Street connection); three disconnected segments dug in the 1970s; groundbreaking for the current project’s initial phase – 96th to 63rd Street...

Site-Specific Drug Delivery
Lina Mercedes Gonzalez (Hunter College, 2009, who is earning a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, is one of five CUNY students to win 2011 awards under the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Can Cash End Poverty in Peru?
Although born in the United States, Miguel Guzman was raised in the Dominican Republic until he was 8, and those circumstances may have set him on his career path."Coming to this country was a culture shock, but as you adapt to cultures and languages, your mindset becomes more international,” he says. “It’s not just your block or your neighborhood you know, but your world."

Building Bridges for Kids
It was in her sophomore year at The City College of New York, the first of her three years volunteering at a Harlem Children’s Zone charter school, that Johari Harris says she “realized that I was very interested in working in education because of the disparities that I saw due to a poor educational system and the great things that could happen in a great educational institution.”

Insight into Neuropsychiatry
Johnson Shiuan-Jiun Ho, of Macaulay Honors College at City College, is one of four CUNY juniors in 2011 to win highly competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, the premier federally funded undergraduate scholarship to encourage graduate study in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Hard Work Pays Off
From the moment he and his family immigrated to New York from tropical Guyana, arriving in a blizzard in 1994, Ryan Jaipaul – New York City College of Technology’s 2011 salutatorian, or student with the second highest grade point average – knew he had to work.

Focus on Neuroscience
Celine Joiris, of the Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College, is one of four CUNY juniors in 2011 to win highly competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships, the premier federally funded undergraduate scholarship to encourage graduate study in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Photosynthesizing Electricity
Plants create their own food by using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide to sugars, a form of stored energy. Could science mimic photosynthesis by turning sunlight directly into another form of energy, electricity, far more efficiently than familiar solar panels?

$100K for Future Math Teacher
Jian Liu, a senior at The City College of New York, is one of two CUNY seniors to win a $100,000 Math for America Fellowship to pursue a career teaching math in New York City’s public schools.

Aiming for Supreme Court
Katherine Mateo was at work — she’s a private consultant in HBO’s legal corporate offices — when the call came in from the dean of Stanford Law School. Not only had this 2011 senior in the Macaulay Honors College at Lehman College been accepted, but also the school had offered a full scholarship covering tuition, fees and books.

Aswirl in Optical Vortices
Normally, light flows like waves on the ocean. Spectroscopic devices use regular light to examine the interaction of matter and radiation (think of a humble glass prism turning a shaft of sunlight into a rainbow).

Shooting for the Stars
Anthony Pang (City College, 2011), who will study spacecraft propulsion at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one of five CUNY students to win 2011 awards under the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Quantum Field Theorist
Mathematician Arthur Jacob Parzygnat (Macaulay Honors College at Queens College, 2010), now exploring topological quantum field theory at the CUNY Graduate Center, is one of five CUNY...

Influences of Race and Ethnicity
Evangeleen Pattison (City College, 2010), now in a sociology Ph.D. program at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of five CUNY students to win 2011 awards under the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Mastering TV Production
Turn her loose with a camera and who knows what kind of biting commentary you might see. Take “Pants on the Ground,” in which Brooklyn College B.A. recipient Christine Pigott turned her documentary eye on sagging pants, the prison-born, low-slung fashion statement that, she discovered, found few defenders on the streets around the college.

Leading Others Via Social Work
"My daughters kept me going," says Rosse Mary Savery, 35. "I wanted to set an example for them." As she graduates from Queens College in spring 2011 with a 3.93 grade point average, those are not empty words. Many would not have persevered.

Science, Politics and Pakistan
Zujaja Tauqeer, a senior at Macaulay Honors College at Brooklyn College, is one of only two students from New York State to receive a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship in the fall of 2011. The Rhodes, first awarded in 1902, is considered the premiere academic award in the world.

Struggling for her Family
Jazmine Tavarez, graduating with an A.A. from Queensborough Community College in 2011, has known adversity from an early age. Her family life was turbulent in Queens, where she was born, and in Brooklyn, where she was raised.

Heeding the Call of Brazil
With a world to explore, why stay home? Janie Thomas has already seen quite a bit of it on her own and in the Army. While stationed in Portugal, she picked up some of the language and made Portuguese and Brazilian friends, as well. She went to Argentina on a study-abroad program last January.

"If I could touch people's lives..."
Joshua Usani, City College 2011, was inspired to pursue science when he watched his mother, a nurse, give vaccines to poor children in his native Nigeria. He decided on a medical career when, as part of an ambulance corps, he helped save a man’s life.

Supporting Teachers in Madrid
The opportunity to obtain an excellent tuition-free education first drew Michael Young to Macaulay Honors College at the College of Staten Island. The chance to travel nailed his decision. As an undergraduate he studied in Florence and Tokyo; in the summer after graduation in 2010, Guatemala City.