Although, Dr. Eno Essien Ebong is currently a postdoctoral researcher working with faculty members both at City College and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, her passion for scientific research started early, when she was a summer undergraduate trainee. In 1995, when Ebong began her studies in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she worked as an NIH-sponsored summer apprentice with Dr. Lorraine Flaherty at the New York State Department of Health Wadsworth Center. Under Dr. Flaherty’s guidance she employed the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to analyze the genetic effects on mice of the chemotherapy drug Chlorambucil. Ebong later worked with Dr. Ernest Cravalho, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, to investigate approaches for measuring in vivo tissue stiffness, with a view towards designing a “glove” device for prostate cancer detection. Throughout her undergraduate studies, Dr. Ebong was also involved in industry research with Hewlett- Packard’s (HP) Chemical Analysis and Health Solutions Groups (now part of Agilent and Philips, respectively). At HP she used sophisticated statistical and engineering methods to design, execute, and analyze experiments related to chromatograph and ultrasound transducer development.

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After completing his PhD in Biotechnology at Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology, Yoshiaki Maeda joined the research group of Dr. Hiroshi Matsui at Hunter College in spring 2010 as a postdoctoral fellow. Yoshiaki quickly became a leader in the lab and he is anchoring two critical projects in Dr. Matsui's lab - biomimetic reconfigurable optoelectric device development and novel material discovery methodology using evolution. The reconfigurable device is currently a hot topic as promising future technology for various federal agencies such as DOD and NSF, and Yoshiaki is applying protein-protein interaction to assemble magnetic nanoparticles that are extracted from bacteria. This interaction can be turned on and off by external stimulus such as pH, ionic strength, and enzyme, and multiple proteins in the membranes around nanoparticles enable the programming of assembly/disassembly.  Yoshiaki is the only researcher in the world to accomplish this technology with biomolecular interaction. 

Dr. Pradhanang received PhD from the State of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Watershed Hydrology, and MEsc in Forest Ecology and Management from Yale University.  Her research goals are to understand how hydrologic processes influence water quantity and movement of sediments and nutrients through watersheds, aiding in the development of policies and management practices to protect water and soil.

Together with her mentor, CISC Associate Director, Dr. Allan Frei, Soni works primarily with the scientists in NYCDEP applying and developing models to evaluate the effects of watershed management practices and climate change on the New York City water supply. The generation, transformation and transport of sediments and nutrients within the watershed are the major focus of her research.

As part of this effort she is currently using different versions of Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) models, one of which is recent development from Cornell University called SWAT-WB (water balance) which captures the complexity intrinsic to saturation excess runoff. Her research also focuses on uncertainty analysis on measured data and modeled results. Future research in this area will build and expand on identifying and quantifying processes controlling biogeochemical processes in the landscape, especially those most relevant to anticipated environmental changes associated with climate change.

Dr. Abby Cuttriss, a postdoctoral research fellow at Lehman College, recently received one of twelve fellowships awarded to New Zealand's brightest young researchers. Every two years, under New Zealand's Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, a small number of postdoctoral researchers are awarded the three-year fellowships that provide stipends, and research and travel expenses (~ US$216,000). This program is designed to foster the development of New Zealand's emerging and future science leader. Among this round's recipients, Dr. Cuttriss was one of only two fellows awarded to conduct research outside of New Zealand.

Her successful application was, in part, facilitated by travel funds provided by the Dean of Natural and Social Sciences at Lehman College and the Vice Chancellor for Research. These funds allowed Dr. Cuttriss to travel to Australia to present at an international meeting where she won Best Paper Award for an early career scientist in the journal, Functional Plant Biology, and to New Zealand, where she made the necessary contacts with New Zealand researchers to develop her competitive fellowship application. Dr. Cuttriss is currently studying the role of carotenoid compounds in enhancing stress tolerances in grasses, in the lab of Dr. Eleanore Wurtzel , Professor of Biological Sciences and in collaboration with Dr. David Christopher at the University of Hawai'i.

Dr. Vijai Shankar Balachandran did his Masters in Applied Chemistry from Anna University, Chennai. He received his Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), India, under the supervision of Prof. Archita Patnaik.  His research was on the supramolecular architectures of functional amphiphiles in two and three dimensions for fabrication of functional materials and evaluating chiral discrimination at interfaces.  His thesis earned him the Werners’ Prize for Best Thesis 2008 and Prof. Ms. Ramamurthy award for Best Thesis 2008.

Currently he is a postdoctoral research associate in Dr. George John’s Soft Materials Laboratory, (Chemistry) at City College. His current research interests are design and development of soft nanomaterials from renewable resources through self-assembly, reconfigurable assemblies, biomimetic molecules, molecular gels and supramolecular aggregation phenomena. One of his recent research works has featured in Angewandte Chemie (International Edition) as a cover page article.

Dr. Matonse holds a PhD in Water Resources Engineering from the State of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY.  His most recent research in watershed hydrology focused on hillslope based numerical solutions to improve groundwater flow simulation and understanding of low stream flow processes. Since joining the CISC in 2009 Dr. Matonse is part of a team under the leadership of Professor Allan Frei (The CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities: CISC) and Dr Donald Pierson (NYCDEP) that is studying the potential impact of climate change on water quantity and quality in the New York City Water Supply System.

His focus is in the operation and performance of the system, how these may change in response to the projected climate change scenarios and what adjustments are necessary to minimize the effects of climate change on water availability, system resilience and reliability. His previous experience includes working as a stormwater engineer and as a professor in the Physics Department of Mozambique’s Universidade Pedagogica where he also served as Department Chair.  His areas of interest include systems engineering and water supply, watershed modeling and extreme events, automated optimization techniques, uncertainty analysis, environmental resources economics and alternative energy sources.