Research at the City College​

Home to eight schools and divisions, CCNY is dedicated to the advancement of research and knowledge discoveries.

• The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture (SSA) is the flagship public school of architecture in New York City. Its emphasis on the urban environment as the most important generator of ideas about the appropriateness of programs and forms makes it unique among the constellation of architecture schools in New York and the surrounding region.
• The mission of the CUNY School of Medicine (CSOM) is to produce broadly educated, highly-skilled medical practitioners to provide quality health services to communities historically underserved by primary care practitioners.
• In 2013, the City College of New York formally established the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership (CPS). It united CCNY’s Division of Social Sciences with the College’s Colin Powell Center for Leadership and Service.
• The School of Education (SOE) prepares knowledgeable, reflective and caring educators who are qualified and committed to teaching and leading diverse communities.
• The Grove School of Engineering (GSOE) traced its roots to the earliest days of the City College when a class in civil engineering became a requirement for all students in 1853. Approximately 3,300 students pursue degrees at the Baccalaureate, Masters and Ph.D. levels in a broad range of engineering disciplines. 
• The Division of Humanities and the Arts (HA) at CCNY comprises 8 academic departments and four interdisciplinary programs, conducting research on a wide range of topics through both internal and external grants and fellowships.
• The Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at Center for Worker Education (CWE) is located at the City College satellite campus in downtown NYC. Its mission is to focus on providing excellent college education to working adults from New York City and surrounding regions.
• The Division of Science (DOS) housed the Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics and Physics departments, actively engaged in research funded by most federal agencies and other sponsors.

CCNY is well-known for its earth sciences, remote sensing and energy research. Its NOAA-CESSRST program is a Cooperative Science Center (CSC) funded by NOAA to educate and train a diverse cadre of students and early career scientists and engineers to become highly competent professionals in NOAA related STEM sciences. NOAA-CESSRST involves faculty and researchers from across engineering and science. The CUNY Energy Institute located at CCNY is to create a better energy future for the society by accelerating a just global energy transition to net zero by Attracting, developing and equipping the diverse future energy workforce, Informing energy decision-making through convening expertise and advice, and Enabling industry and consumers to make energy lower carbon, safer and more efficient. CCNY strives to develop better batteries for energy storage, smart grids for more efficient and resilient energy infrastructure and advanced technologies to address global warming challenges. Collaborations across engineering, physical sciences and social sciences at the City College, faculty members from the Grove School of Engineering, Division of Science, School of Architecture, Division of Humanities and Arts, led by Dr. Yana Kuchev, an assistant professor of sociology from CCNY's Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, embark together on a CCNY-funded research initiative called the "College-wide Research Vision Initiative" (CRV) to conduct interdisciplinary research that provide forward-looking views and identify new opportunities at the forefront of research and innovation. This CRV-2022 project titled "Energizing Equity: Co-creating Scalable Urban Resilience via Climate Solidarity" is to answer a framing question: Imagine if solidarity surrounding climate actions were leveraged to reimagine and co-create a future for New York City?

In quantum research, researchers at the Division of Science and Grove School of Engineering are hard at work to develop advanced materials, better understanding of photonics, novel quantum computing algorithms and control of the spin at the atomic level. In cybersecurity, Grove School of Engineering faculty and students are in pursuit of technologies to identify threats and secure network security. Research teams across various disciplines at CCNY are either applying Artificial Intelligence technology or developing better algorithms to their research fields, such as developing better biosensors or more capable robotic devices in assistive living technologies. CUNY School of Medicine, Division of Science, and Grove School of Engineering at CCNY are leading the charge in discoveries in life sciences, from spinal cord injury, neuroscience and engineering, to cardiovascular engineering and musculoskeletal biomaterials.

Cyber-physical systems, autonomous navigation, 3D simultaneous localization and mapping as well as assistive living and swarm robotics are part of CCNY's robotic research efforts, led mainly by the engineering faculty members in GSOE. Transit-related and infrastructure research for transportation are part of the engineering research focus by the CUNY Institute For Transportation Systems (CITS) and the University Transportation Research Center (UTRC) at CCNY

These are only a fraction of research activities at the City College.  In addition, the number of faculty members across the College's schools and divisions who involve undergraduate students in their research has made City College the largest undergraduate research program in the New York metropolitan area. The City College of New York is an R2 University:  Doctoral Universities – High research activity in the Carnegie Classification, and a designated Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) and a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI).

Contact Information

Dr. Ranajeet Ghose
Interim Associate Provost for Research
Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Administration Building, Room 218-F
160 Convent Avenue
New York, NY  10031

email:   research@ccny.cuny.edu