Alexis Blavos
Alexis Blavos, Health Department, had an article titled “Advocacy Skill Development in Public Health Education Curriculum: A Pilot Study” published in Health Promotion Practice. Also, she and colleagues presented a plenary titled “Utilizing the Power of AI to Advocate for Equity Where You Live, Work, and Play” at the 2024 Health Education Advocacy Summit, held Oct. 19 to 21 in Washington, D.C.
Theresa Curtis
Theresa Curtis, Biological Sciences Department, was awarded a new National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop and commercialize a new instrument to assist researchers in characterizing cells.
In this collaborative grant, Curtis will be working with the company Applied BioPhysics Inc., Troy, N.Y., and statisticians from Cornell and Mount Holyoke College. The device is based on Electric Cell-substrate Impedance Sensing (ECIS), a well-established technology using impedance measurements to quantify cell morphology and behavior. The research group proposes to take advantage of the multivariant nature of the ECIS measurement to ultimately select features that, when plotted in a 2 or 3-dimensional coordinate system, will allow the user to visually confirm the identity of their cells as well as detect subtle unwanted anomalies in culture that could jeopardize experimental results. Animal cell culture plays an indispensable role in biological and biomedical research and the production of biopharmaceuticals, but misidentification of cell lines, subtle forms of contamination, as well as epigenetic changes often affect the outcomes of experiments. With the grant money ($154,772) coming to SUNY Cortland, Curtis will be able to pay students during the semester and over the summer for two years to work on this project.
David A. Kilpatrick
David A. Kilpatrick, Psychology Department, did a spoken presentation at the New England Research on Dyslexia Society on Friday April 4. The conference was held at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. His presentation was “The persistence of phonemic proficiency deficits in high school students with reading disability: How orthographic mapping theory explains dyslexia.” David represented SUNY while other presenters were from Harvard, Yale, MIT, the University of Connecticut and Florida State University, which for decades has been a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development funding hub for dyslexia.
Timothy J. Baroni
Timothy J. Baroni, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences, Lance Lacey '04 and colleagues from Harvard University, University of Florida, University of Georgia, University of Central Oklahoma, UNAM Mexico an the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks published "Hydnum (Cantharellales) of the Neotropics: four new species and new reports from Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Panama" in Mycological Progress 24:13. 2025. This 14-page paper documented these new species of Hydnum, and confirmed six additional eastern North American species as also occurring in this tropical region for the first time using morphological and molecular data (ITS and TEF-1 sequences). An identification key to all known Hydnum species from these neotropical habitats was provided as well.
John Suarez
John Suarez, Galpin Institute for Civic Engagement, designed and co-facilitated a pair of civic engagement workshops for 20 Empire State Service Corps interns. In one, Joseph Scanlon (associate professor, political science, SUNY Monroe Community College), David Rogers (president, SUNY Morrisville) and Suarez coached the SUNY students to identify career and civic readiness skills demonstrated in their internships. In the second, students explored applying those skills to address a specific issue. Four SUNY Cortland students participated, Kalyiah Haynes, Kaylynn Claudio, Sahteve Lindsay and Tylar Macintyre.
Jeffrey Radloff and Dominick Fantacone
Jeffrey Radloff, Childhood and Early Childhood Education Department, and Dominick Fantacone, Research and Sponsored Programs, published a book chapter, "The Dangerous Use of X-ray Fluoroscopy on African Mine Workers,” in Justice-Oriented Science Teaching and Learning, edited by David Steele and Alison K. Mercier, published by Springer, p. 435-455. The book is available at this link: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-76297-0.
Denise D. Knight
Denise D. Knight, English Department, gave an invited talk on “The Marriage of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Charles Walter Stetson” in January at the Providence Art Club in Providence, R.I. Former SUNY Cortland President Judson Taylor and his wife, Elise, attended the talk.
Steven Dangler and Paul Vanvalkenburg
Steven Dangler and Paul Vanvalkenburg, University Police Department, recently attended an Investigators Roundtable Training Conference as part of SUNY’s ongoing commitment to safe campus environments. University police investigators, supervisors and officers from 23 SUNY campuses and system administration attended the conference, which was held in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and featured investigators from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Topics included: training in sexual assault investigations through the use of social media and the Internet; trends in drug trafficking reviewed by the New York State Intelligence Center and the New York State Police; an update on the federal Clery Act, Violence Against Women Act, and recent changes to Title IX by SUNY’s Office of the General Counsel.
Taylor Lynch
Taylor Lynch, Career Services, received a President’s Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication at the annual SUNY Career Development Organization (SUNYCDO) conference held June 13 in Suffern, N.Y. The university’s internship and student employment coordinator served as secretary and new member relations coordinator for the SUNYCDO Board of Directors during the 2023-24 academic year.
Kevin Dames
Kevin Dames, Kinesiology Department, and Sutton Richmond from Malcom Randall VA Medical Center presented their project “Are Your Balance Data Telling Tall Tales? Impact of Height on Stability Assessments” at the 48th annual meeting of the American Society of Biomechanics held Aug. 5 to 8 in Madison, Wis. This work demonstrates the limitations of height as a normalization factor in position-based center-of-pressure outcomes across eyes open and closed static upright standing balance trials. In contrast, time to boundary effectively eliminates the body size concern by scaling center-of-pressure motion to an individual's base of support area. Clinicians or researchers reporting differences in position-based center-of-pressures measures between cohorts may be detecting effects of body size inequality rather than indicators of disease progression, aging or imposed interventions. In contrast, TtB is not related to height and may be used to discern the effects of clinical conditions and fall risk without concern for anthropometric inequalities.