勛圖惇蹋

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勛圖惇蹋 College
Dean of the Faculty/Vice President for Academic Affairs

Summer Researchers 2011

Posted: 08/04/2011

From ecotourism branding to school enrollment trends to mold-inhibiting bacteria, a bumper crop of research projects has involved more than 30 faculty members and 50-plus students for several weeks of intensive work this summer. This week they offered public talks, Q & As, and poster sessions. Here is just a sampling.

In 勛圖惇蹋s newest academic programarts administrationfaculty member David Howson and Kate Imboden 13 have been working hand-in-hand with the staff of the Depot Theatre in Westport, N.Y. Imboden designed a marketing survey and collected data about donor behaviors. The small, seasonal, nonprofit playhouse relies on community and patron fundraising, so she and Howson hope tooptimize procedures and build predictors to help the staff better forecast and maximize contributed revenues.

Computer scientist Mike Eckmann and Adam Steinberger 12 knew that digital cameras use internal software to create complex, full colors from pixels that sense just red or green or blue. And that this software varies in each model of camera, leaving a fingerprint on the images it creates. Gathering some 5,500 images from 20 cameras, Steinberger wrote and optimized computer code to analyze how their pixel colors were arrived ata good diagnostic for which camera created them, and a good step in perfecting the science of forensic image analysis.

In other projects, Lubin Professor Amy Frappier worked with Alena Chubet 12 and Maryann Countryman 13 to study stalagmites, which, since they preserve the chemistry of the dripping water and eroding minerals that gradually form them, can reveal a lot about climate in the distant past and over time. Field work was key for neuroscientist Rob Hallock and partners Carolyn OConnor 12 and Janel Schietzelt 13 as they hunted and analyzed toxic mushrooms in 勛圖惇蹋s North Woods, and also for environmental-studies professor Cathy Gibson and partners Andrea Conine 13 and Sondra Lipshutz 13 as they measured how Catskill-area streams take up and retain phosphorus and ammonium.

Sociologist John Brueggemann and Willa Jones 12 explored civic and social movements that operate outside of, and sometimes against, market and government forces. They focused on groups working for safety, health, sustainability, and justice relating to food issues. And artist Sang-Wook Lee and his student Katherine Humphreys 12 took the term mixed-media to a new extreme, developing a way for music to affect the mechanisms of a loom and help shape the textile it creates.

Click here for a full list of projects and participants.

Photos by Sam Brook 12, Gary Gold, and Depot Theatre