FYIs

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced the expansion of premium processing for applicants filing Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, and seeking a change of status to F-1, F-2, M-1, M-2, J-1, or J-2 nonimmigrant status. Online filing of Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service, will also be available for these applicants.

The premium processing expansion for certain Form I-539 applicants will occur in phases, and nonimmigrants requesting premium processing should not file before these dates:

• Beginning June 13, USCIS will accept Form I-907 requests, filed via paper form or online, for applicants seeking a change of status to F-1, F-2, M-1, M-2, J-1, or J-2 status, who have a pending Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status.
• Beginning June 26, USCIS will accept Form I-907 requests, filed either via paper form or online, for applicants seeking a change of status to F-1, F-2, M-1, M-2, J-1, or J-2 status, when filed together with Form I-539

Read the full announcement

Congratulations to Professor Cynthia Hahn who has just been named Distinguished Professor of Art History. She has written 10 books and over 40 articles, making major contributions to the history of medieval art history.  With particular interest in reliquaries - their place in devotion and the cult of saints, their materiality, how medievals interacted with them, among other approaches to understanding them - she has re-shaped the understanding of these objects and their place in medieval life.  Among her many honors, she was recognized by the Medieval Academy of America who elected her as a fellow in 2018.  She has held fellowships at CASVA and the Institute for Advanced Study, among many other prestigious institutions.  We are so pleased that she has been given this well-deserved honor.  

The Ph.D. program in Biology congratulates our students who have been awarded dissertation fellowships for the 2023-24 academic year:

Dissertation Year Fellowship
Johanna Bensalel

Ellen Bennett Katz Award
Katherine Anderson
Sara Fresard

Amie James Travel Award
Carolina Henriques
Claudia Jou
Jasmine Pathan
Katerina Yamamoto

Early Research Initiative
Leen Aljayousi
Anna Flury
Zubaida Marufeen Islam
Praveena Naidu
Swastik Pattanashetty Gangadharappa
Malini Prasad

DSRG
Katherine Anderson
Leonard Ash
Yamaly Barragan
Emily Birnbaum
Gavin Duckett
Connor French
Emily LaMarre
Li Li
Rilquer Mascarenhas Da Silva
Samantha Monier
Praveena Naidu
Raveena Parbhudayal
Jacquelyn Tomaio
Rhema Uche Dike
Ella Vardeman
Apoorva Vashisht
Aria Walls
Katerina Yamamoto

The Biology program awarded a total of 16 doctoral degrees across our four subprograms in the 2022-2023 academic year.

Congratulations to Nora Awadallah, Sam Chew Chin, Manal F. Farhat, Gabrielle A. Germain, Melenia I. Giakoumi, Niklas Janisch, Sara Rose Ogrinc Krivoshik, Naoko P. Kurata, Nicole Danielle Lamassa, Keith Joseph Levendosky, Zelda Zara Mendelowitz, Viktoriya Morozova, Albert Ptashnik, Emma J. Purvin, Emily Anne Sible, Nicole B. Williams, and Dustin R. Zuelke on completing their Ph.D.s!

See More Student and Alumni Highlights

Read the article from The Ritz Herald "Google and NYC Universities Invest $12 Million in Cybersecurity Research Program"

Read the article from Crain's New York Business "Google to spend $12M on cybersecurity research at CUNY, NYU, Columbia and Cornell"

Students and faculty presented at the Heritage Languages at the Crossroads (HL@Cross): cultural contexts, individual differences and methodologies conference on May 29^th in Istanbul, Turkey: 

1. Emeritus Prof. Gita Martohardjono, Michael Johns, Daniela Castillo, Pamela Franciotti, Ilaria Porru presented: "Language Use Modulates Processing of Island Constraints in Heritage Speakers and Late Bilinguals"
2. LeeAnn Stover, Prof. Irina Sekerina, Emeritus Prof. Gita Martohardjono presented: "Language Experience Impacts L2 English Scope Computation"

Prof. Kyle Gorman is an organizing committee member for the 2023 ACL Workshop on Computation and Written Language (CAWL), in Toronto, Canada on July 14, 2023.
Two recent graduates will be presenting their papers at the same conference
Wen Zhang (CL MA, 2023) will present her paper, Pronunciation ambiguities in Japanese kanji
Yuying Ren (CL MA, 2022) will present her paper, Back-transliteration of English loanwords in Japanese

This July, Prof. Christina Hagedorn will be presenting her work, “The Role of High-Performance Low Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Management of Tongue Cancer,” at the American Head and Neck Society’s 11th International Conference on Head and Neck Surgery in Montreal, Canada.

Prof. Jason Kandybowicz was invited to deliver a plenary talk at the Annual Conference on African Linguistics 54 (University of Connecticut), June 12-14, 2023. The title of his talk is: Escaping African ‘Islands’

Dr. Suzanne van der Feest is the recipient of a PSC-CUNY Traditional A award for the project "Learning New Sounds: Individual Differences Influencing Productions of Turkish as a New Language". The grant will be used for conducting acoustic and morpho-phonological analyses as part of a larger project in collaboration with Dr. Patricia Brooks and Dr. Valerie Shafer.