Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

P A C E U N I V E R S I T Y W W W. P A C E . E D U / D Y S O N 26 SETTER STORIES SETTER STORIES Director of Research and Graduate Education and Psychology Professor Sonia Suchday, PhD, will serve as the new Pace Center for Global Health's operations director, ensuring the Center's effo s are well integrated into Pace's academic and research initiatives. Clinical Assistant Professor of Political Science Laura Tamman, PhD, and Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies Melvin Williams, PhD, have been awarded Civic Engagement Mini-Grants through Pace's Center for Community Action and Research's longtime pa nership with Project Pericles. Project Pericles is a higher education nonprofit dedicated to advancing civic pa icipation and social responsibility across college campuses through faculty leadership programs, community-engaged learning, and co-curricular initiatives. Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Science Anne Toomey's (PhD) book, Science with Impact: How to Engage People, Change Practice, and Influence Policy, won a 2025 Silver Nautilus Book Award for the category of Relationships and Communication. Alumni Awards/Appointments José Luis Castro '88, World Health Organization director-general special envoy for chronic respiratory diseases, will lead Pace's new Center for Global Health, an initiative focused on chronic respiratory diseases and other communicable and non-communicable diseases in urban environments through research, advocacy, and education. Castro also joins Pace as a visiting scholar in our Biology and Psychology Depa ments. Pace University's Sonia Suchday, PhD, university director of research and graduate education and professor of Psychology, New York City campus, will serve as the Center's operations director. Dyson Advisory Board member and Biology Adjunct Professor Donald Moore '76, MD, Biology, Pre-med, a former a ending physician at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, has been appointed by Governor Hochul to serve on SUNY Downstate's Community Advisory Board. STUDENTS Standout Scholars Morgan Amos '25, Biochemistry, will begin the PhD program in Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University and Robe Wood Johnson Medical School in fall 2025. Upon graduating, she received the Distinguished Graduating Fellow, Career Services, and Chemistry and Physical Sciences depa ment's Outstanding Academic Record, Biochemistry, awards. Master of Environmental Science and Policy students Samantha Cronk '25 (above le ) and Jasmine Moayedzadeh Rad '25 (above right), advised by Clinical Professor of Environmental Studies and Science Michael Rubbo, PhD, presented their thesis research at the 2025 No heast Natural History Conference. Cronk's poster was titled "Wildlife Use of Beaver Dams as Aquatic Crossings," and Rad's poster was titled "Effects of A ificial Lighting at Night (ALAN) on Water Quality and Amphibian Pe ormance in Aquatic Ecosystems." Cronk's project was awarded third place in the graduate student category. A string of successes for Biology students at national and regional conferences: At the Eastern Colleges Science Conference held on March 30 at Wilkes University, three Pace Biology students won best poster awards, each in their own category: Samara Durgadin '25 won best poster in the category of Botany, with her work, "Melatonin Inhibits Circumnutation in Arabidopsis thaliana," conducted with Associate Professor Eric Brenner, PhD. Ellen Haverstick '26 won best poster in the category of Biochemistry with her work on "Characterization of a Novel Mutation in Coagulation Factor X." James Hill '25 won best poster in the category of Genetics/Molecular Biology, with his research entitled "Transcriptomic Analyses of Thermally Stressed Montipora capricornis and Symbiodinium sp. Uncovers Novel Pathways Associated with Coral Bleaching," conducted with Associate Professor JeanMaire Molina, PhD. Samantha Cronk Jasmine Moayedzadeh Rad News & Notes

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