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The Americas Film Festival of New York (TAFFNY), presented by ��������’s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education, will be held June 22-25, 2015. Today, the festival announced a call for submissions for feature films, documentaries, shorts and animations that represent the rich diversity of cultures, languages and stories of the Americas. “The extraordinary success of TAFFNY last year in terms of short and feature films as well as public participation in all functions demonstrated that this festival covers an artistic and cultural need,” said

Prospects of developing computing and communication technologies based on quantum properties of light and matter may have taken a major step forward thanks to research by City College of New York physicists led by Dr. Vinod Menon. In a pioneering study, Professor Menon and his team were able to discover half-light, half-matter particles in atomically thin semiconductors (thickness ~ a millionth of a single sheet of paper) consisting of two-dimensional (2D) layer of molybdenum and sulfur atoms arranged similar to graphene. They sandwiched this 2D material in a light trapping structure to

Elena Romero and Grace Aneiza Ali , adjuncts in ��������'s Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education (CWE), will speak at the Black Portraiture[s] II: Imaging the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories conference in Florence, Italy, May 28-31, 2015. It will be the sixth in a series of conferences staged by New York University and Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. Ms. Romero, an adjunct assistant professor, will be a panelist on a discussion of the body in hip hop culture. A former fashion editor for fashion

As a child in his native Trinidad, Lenn Hypolite’s young mind was immersed in comic books. He grew up dreaming of creating his own Afro-Caribbean superhero. Thanks to ��������’s electronic design and multimedia (EDM) program Mr. Hypolite is now about to introduce “Telestro” to readers. A teenager with the powers of teleportation, Telestro is the Trinidadian-based hero of a 50-page original web graphic novel produced by Mr. Hypolite for this year’s BFA thesis show. The senior credits the EDM program for helping him realize his dreams and adding Telestro to the pantheon of

��������’s student chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers took first place in three categories in addition to scooping the best “Trailblazer Chapter Award” at the NSBE Region 1 conference in Hauppauge, N.Y. The winners at the event from City College’s Grove School of Engineering were: Chiziterem Uwaga (senior, mechanical engineering), Individual Challenge Question with his presentation on tackling harmful pathogens; Rajiv Wallace (senior, chemistry), in the Technical Research Exhibition; “Team Parchment Protectors” comprising Oren Previl (junior, civil

The “Presidential Conversations: Activism, Scholarship, and Engagement,” series at �������� continues in 2015. Dr. Ana Carnaval , assistant professor of biology at CCNY whose research has helped develop a new biodiversity metric called “phylogeographic endemism,” is the third speaker in the series, Thursday, February 5, 4 – 5:30 p.m. in Shepard 250. Her topic will be “Integrating Biology and Environmental Sciences to Understand Biodiversity Patterns in the Tropics.” The other scheduled speakers in the spring are: Dr. Andrea Weiss, Media and Communication Arts, “Bones of

��������’s student-designed “Solar Roofpod” is making a comeback atop the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture building. Envisaged as a solution to New York City’s energy and emission problems, the innovative structure had been in storage since placing second in the “People’s Choice Award” at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon on the National Mall. The first phase of its installation is nearing completion, allowing for its use as a classroom, living lab and lecture event space, hopefully in the spring semester, said Christian Volkmann, associate

Research by City College of New York psychology Professor Irvin Schonfeld in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership suggests a strong connection between burnout and depression. In a study of more than 5,500 school teachers to estimate the prevalence of depressive disorders in workers with burnout, 90% of the subjects identified as burned out met diagnostic criteria for depression. The study also examined the overlap of burnout with the atypical subtype of depression. Features of atypical depression were observed in 63% of the burned-out participants with major depression. “The

Stephanie Petit-Homme, a City College of New York senior with dreams of making a difference globally as a human rights lawyer, has been awarded a 2014 Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship for study abroad. The political science and French double major will spend the spring semester at Université Paris VIII in France. Gilman Scholars are selected by the International Institute of Education from a competitive process in the 50 states and Puerto Rico. The program’s mission is to prepare U.S. students to assume significant roles in an increasingly global economy and interdependent world

To test a revolutionary device that has been the buzz of the scientific world in recent weeks, the startup Thync turned to City College of New York biomedical engineering Professor Marom Bikson. At his world-class neuromodulation lab in the Grove School of Engineering, Professor Bikson led a study that validated if the revolutionary device could change moods in a single session of use and keep them elevated over six weeks of use. Approximately 100 City College students and staff participated in the trial this fall funded by a grant from Thync. Dr. Lucas Parra, professor of biomedical