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For about 35 years, Dr. Joseph L. Birman, ’47, Distinguished Professor of Physics at The City College of New York (CCNY) has advocated for the rights of repressed scientists, first in the former Soviet Union and later in China, Cuba, Iraq, Iran and the United States. Now he is to be honored for “his tireless and effective personal leadership in defense of human rights of scientists throughout the world” as one of three recipients of the American Physical Society’s (APS) Andrei Sakharov Prize for 2010. Professor Birman is to receive the award, named for the Russian theoretical physicist who

Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Cuzco, 1539 – Córdoba, 1616) was the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Incan princess who would become the first great Spanish-American writer and the first historian of the New World born in the Americas. “The Royal Commentaries,” his history of the Incan Empire and its conquest by Spain, is considered by many scholars to be the most elegant and complete accounting of the rise and fall of this civilization in what is now Peru. Last month, Dr. Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Distinguished Professor of Hispanic Literature and Culture at CCNY and the CUNY Graduate Center

In 2006, Dr. Robert P. Anderson, CCNY Associate Professor of Biology, co-authored a paper that introduced a mathematically rigorous method for modeling species’ geographic distributions, based on known occurrences and environmental factors including climate. The paper, “Maximum Entropy Modeling of Species Geographic Distributions,” has become one of the most-referenced sources on the topic, being cited 192 times to date, according to Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com. According to Professor Anderson, much of the paper’s attention stems from the ability of the approach it describes to predict

Biologist Susan Lee Lindquist will deliver the Fourth Annual Sharon Cosloy-Edward Blank Lecture at The City College of New York (CCNY) 4 p.m. Thursday, November 19, in Room 95, Shepard Hall. The title of her talk will be “Engineering Simple Cells to Study Complex Human Diseases.” A reception will follow the lecture in Room 150, Shepard Hall. Dr. Lindquist is Professor of Biology at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a member and former director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She specializes in protein

Politicians and policymakers often tout the economic and social benefits of large-scale transportation infrastructure investments, but often the projects they promote are approved without the benefit of thorough economic analysis. So says Dr. Joseph Berechman, Professor and Chair of Economics at The City College of New York. In a new book for the trade, “The Evaluation of Transportation Investment Projects,” (Routledge, 2009) Professor Berechman contends investment decisions about multi-billion dollar capital projects rely too heavily on preliminary cost estimates and demand forecasts. These

Program to Increase Diversity Draws Raves from 26 Aspiring Lawyers At a time when minority enrollment in law school is declining, the new Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom Honors Program at The City College of New York (CCNY) is working to reverse that trend. This fall, the first cohort of 26 Skadden, Arps Scholars enrolled in the intensive two-year program. All juniors, they were selected through a highly competitive process. Students in the program are raving about it and the advantages it will offer them when they apply to law school. “This program is unique nationally because no other

Two years ago, while working on her M.A. thesis about delinquency in Bushwick, Stefanie Joshua, a City College student with no filmmaking experience, decided that the socio-economic plight of her old neighborhood could make a good documentary. The sociology student, who completed her degree in 2005, took a filmmaking class and wrote, produced and directed “Bushwick Homecomings,” a 38-minute film about the Brooklyn neighborhood’s social and economic changes between 1970 and 2000. The film, which won the “Best USA Documentary” award at Britain’s 2008 Swansea Life Film Festival, has been acquired

The City College of New York’s scenic campus, with its landmark neo-gothic buildings, is about to get greener. The 162 year-old institution is now part of the nation’s first official “Heritage Rose District.” A variety of heritage roses including the rare “Green Rose” were planted by a group of CCNY officials, Heritage Rose Foundation members and community residents on the west side of the 35-acre campus, along Amsterdam Avenue (between 135th and 136th Streets) on October 24. This followed the “Heritage Rose District” ground breaking in Harlem and Washington Heights earlier in the day by

Seven Alumni to Receive Townsend Harris Medals for Outstanding Postgraduate Achievement The Alumni Association of The City College of New York will present its 62nd John H. Finley Award jointly to actor F. Murray Abraham and the Theater for the New City (TNC). The presentation will be made at the Association’s 129th Annual Dinner, Wednesday, November 4, at The New York Hilton. The award, named for CCNY’s third President, is presented annually to New Yorkers who have given exemplary service to their city. Mr. Abraham is a distinguished star of the silver screen and stage who has promoted

The City College of New York (CCNY) will offer a new, interdisciplinary graduate program, “Sustainability in the Urban Environment,” that incorporates emerging approaches from the disciplines of architecture, engineering and science. The program will enroll its first students for the Spring 2010 semester. It will award a Master of Science degree in Sustainability to its graduates. “None of the masters-level programs in sustainability currently listed on the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education website integrate the disciplines of architecture, engineering and