91社区

As a D.O./Ph.D. student at the New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYITCOM), Kelly Borges has focused her dissertation research on the role of vascular calcification in the development of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease.

鈥淎s we age, our vessels are calcifying somewhere in our bodies. Atherosclerosis or heart disease will add to that calcification burden,鈥� she says. 鈥淢y hypothesis is that if you have a higher burden, you may be more predisposed to Alzheimer鈥檚.鈥� 

Borges came to NYITCOM to pursue her dual degrees after working in clinical research at both the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, experiences that solidified her interest in clinically relevant research and her desire to serve as a principal investigator on major studies. Now beginning the second year of her doctoral study, she is in the process of applying for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) fellowship to fund her research鈥攖he first student in the history of 91社区 to submit this type of grant proposal.

She has an excellent role model in her doctoral advisor聽Olga Savinova, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical sciences whose research to improve the understanding of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and deliver a new treatment for heart disease is supported by a聽five-year $1.8 million grant聽from the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Borges and Savinova exemplify 91社区鈥檚 efforts to support and increase cutting-edge research by students and faculty, efforts that have grown organically over the last 15 years and more formally under the leadership of President Hank Foley, Ph.D., who announced last year a goal for the university to achieve Research 2 (R2) status by 2028.

鈥淎cademia is changing at an astonishing rate,鈥� says President Foley. 鈥淔or many institutions, the simple transfer of knowledge has not been sustainable. To survive and thrive, we need to not only be in the business of transferring knowledge but of creating new knowledge.鈥�

Throughout history, universities have been the hub for the advancement of discovery, innovation, and creation of new knowledge. In the United States, that activity and the scholars behind that drive are concentrated at research universities.

But colleges and universities differ in the priority they place on research activity. In the United States, the leading measure of an institution鈥檚 research activity and output has been through independent assessment by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. The assessment, conducted every three years, uses empirical data鈥攑rimarily the number of doctoral students graduated and the university鈥檚 research expenditures鈥攖o confer an institution鈥檚 classification, ranging from those that are teaching colleges only to those with the highest research activity.

Currently, 91社区 is classified as doctoral/professional (formerly known as R3), grouped among schools with moderate research activity and those that have medical schools. R2 is designated to higher education institutions with 鈥渉igh research activity.鈥�

In general, this requires graduating at least 20 doctoral students each year and spending more than $5 million each year on research.

Those efforts are underway.

A Road Map to R2

A chemist who holds 16 patents, President Foley says his own 40-year research career was sparked by assisting a professor with research as an undergraduate. 鈥淚t had a profound impact on my college experience,鈥� he says.

When he took the helm of 91社区, one of his first priorities was to ensure there was enough research activity among faculty to provide those types of experiences to students.

During his tenure, three doctoral programs were launched, including D.O./Ph.D. in osteopathic medicine/biological sciences, engineering, and computer science.

鈥淚t became very evident to me early on that there was a drive among our best faculty to move toward doing more research and to providing the highest level of graduate education,鈥� he says. 鈥淥nce I realized we had a critical mass of people who wanted to pursue this, I was 100 percent behind committing resources to move the institution forward in this direction.鈥�

In 2023, Jerry Balentine, D.O., was promoted from executive vice president, interim provost, and chief operating officer to provost and executive vice president, a position created to evaluate new opportunities for university growth and expansion and oversee resource allocation, especially in the area of faculty research. Prior to that, one of his initiatives was to hire an outside consulting firm, which interviewed faculty, administrators, and staff to develop a road map to achieve R2 status. The report, issued in summer 2022, resulted in the hiring of 91社区’s first vice provost for research, Jared E. Littman, Ph.D., who joined the university in June 2023 and will lead research efforts.

In June 2022,聽Michael Hadjiargyrou, Ph.D., chair of biological and chemical sciences and director of the D.O./Ph.D. program, was named 91社区鈥檚聽first distinguished professor. And in July 2023,聽Anthony (Martin) Gerdes, Ph.D., chair of biomedical sciences at NYITCOM, was named 91社区鈥檚聽first university professor. 鈥淭hese are designations bestowed at top research universities to recognize outstanding faculty who have accomplished an extraordinary scope of scholarly research and are highly regarded in their fields,鈥� says Balentine. 鈥淓stablishing these professorships supports our goals of becoming an R2 university.鈥�

Another important step is evaluating and adjusting existing processes and policies to support research. For instance, the university鈥檚 standard laptop provided to faculty would not be adequate for someone engaged in advanced mathematical modeling. 鈥淭hose are the kinds of things we鈥檙e looking at,鈥� says Balentine.

An inventory and assessment of current research space is also underway. Renovation of engineering labs on the New York City campus is already in progress. In September, construction began on the Biomedical Research Innovation and Imaging Center (BRIIC), a 20,000-square-foot basic science and microscopy laboratory that will support medical and interdisciplinary microscopy research. The project will provide a 2,880-square-foot open lab space with 48 lab benches designed with flexible infrastructure to allow for reconfiguration of the benches as needed to accommodate researchers. Additional research spaces include a 3-D STED (stimulated emission depletion) microscope, core labs, fume hoods, tissue culture rooms, freezer room, and an autoclave.

New faculty are being hired to build areas where 91社区 already has research strength. 鈥淧articularly at the nexus of the sciences, engineering, and medicine, we鈥檙e in a very strong position to grow research, and we鈥檙e doing everything we can to try to drive that forward,鈥� says President Foley.

In addition to the three doctoral programs in place, a doctoral program in anatomy is in the process of certification and additional programs in biology and chemistry are under consideration. 鈥淭his should get us to the requisite number of doctoral graduates within five years,鈥� says Balentine.

The Research/Classroom Connection

But research doesn鈥檛 happen in a silo. In the best scenarios, faculty research informs professors鈥� teaching in a way that excites and engages students. Both undergraduate and graduate students benefit from learning on state-of-the-art equipment, in state-of-the-art laboratories and from those working at the leading edge of their discipline.

鈥淥ur strategy as an institution hasn鈥檛 been just to grow, but to enhance the quality of the experience for the students who are here,鈥� says President Foley. 鈥淗aving research experiences where students can work directly with a mentor and develop a portfolio is part of that.鈥�

Eve Armstrong, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics, was one of more than 20 faculty hired in 2019. She has actively engaged undergraduate students to assist in her computational research that explores the death of supermassive stars. 鈥淲e鈥檙e inferring the origins of the physics underlying these explosions based on available data we are able to collect here on Earth, using 91社区鈥檚 supercomputing cluster to run simulations,鈥� she says.

Armand Ahmetaj (B.S. 鈥�23) became Armstrong鈥檚 student research assistant, recruited after taking her introductory physics course. Ahmetaj, who majored in life sciences with a concentration in biomedical engineering and math, says he was attracted to the position for the opportunity to work with the high-performance computing clusters and learn parallel computing鈥攖he ability to run many computational tasks or computational processes in parallel so you could have a more efficient process in terms of time and also in terms of memory. 鈥淚 knew these were skills I could use in other areas of research,鈥� he says.

Initially, Ahmetaj helped Armstrong convert computer files from the University of California, San Diego, her previous institution, to the computing software used by 91社区, which neither were familiar with. 鈥淲e had to learn it together,鈥� he recalls. 鈥淚 would stay up until 3 a.m. trying to figure things out. When we got our first job to run and got results, we were pretty excited. From that point on, I was able to help her make the process more efficient by writing other Python scripts that allowed her to run multiple experiments in a very short time.鈥�

Ahmetaj is co-author with Armstrong on two papers published during his three years working with her. Now beginning a master鈥檚 program in bioengineering at 91社区, he will embark on his own research, drawing from his undergraduate experiences.

鈥淵ou can learn a lot in the classroom鈥攆or instance, gain some expertise in using a software,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut when you鈥檙e using it for research purposes, you get to see the practical application of your skills in real life.鈥�

That鈥檚 not an anomaly.聽Batu Chalise, Ph.D., associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, researches signal processing for radar and communications and currently has two funded projects, one supported by the聽Army Research Laboratory聽and a second funded by the聽Naval Research Laboratory. 鈥淩esearch on future generation radar systems provides an excellent platform for students to understand principles of modern and future radar technology, develop mathematical modeling and algorithms, conduct simulations, collect data in a realistic radar environment, and implement both hardware- and software-based experiments,鈥� he says.

Students who have gained radar experience from assisting on his projects have gone on to get jobs with firms such as Northrop Grumman and Telephonics. 鈥淎nd I have used the outcomes of these research projects to enrich undergraduate and graduate-level courses related to signal processing, digital communications, radars, and probability and stochastic processes,鈥� he says.

Chalise believes an increase in the number of graduate students in his department will be a boon to his research. 鈥淧h.D. students are here for a longer period, spending more time on research, and are expected to dive deeper into hard and unsolved research problems as well as take leading roles on the research problems of the current projects,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his frees up primary investigators to submit new grant proposals, and the chances of securing grants will increase if we are a research-intensive R2 university.鈥�

Institutional Support for Expansion

In many regards, the effort to expand research at 91社区 grew out of NYITCOM. In 2007聽Kurt Amsler, Ph.D., was recruited as associate dean for research charged with growing a research program in the medical school.

At that time, Amsler says the school was primarily focused on teaching. 鈥淭here was almost no one with external funding,鈥� he says. 鈥淔acilities and equipment related to research were modest at best, and there wasn鈥檛 much faculty interest.鈥�

It鈥檚 important to note that research鈥攑articularly in STEM fields鈥攊s not cheap. Amsler says it was an institutional commitment to purchase the scientific equipment necessary to conduct research on a competitive level that got the ball rolling. 鈥淲e started virtually from scratch, beginning with the acquisition of our first confocal microscope,鈥� he says.

Concurrently, the school began hiring faculty who were interested in research as well as teaching, which has led to significant growth in biomedical research鈥攑articularly in areas such as cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure and vascular calcification, and neurological diseases, including in the areas of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Parkinson鈥檚 disease, autism spectrum disorder, Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, and more.

One of the beneficiaries of the push toward becoming a more research-focused medical school is Joanne Donoghue, Ph.D., professor and director of clinical research. While Donoghue has studied exercise physiology and nutrition for 25 years, she has recently emerged as a national leader in esports medicine, which focuses on the prevention and treatment of repetitive-use injury. That expertise has led to consulting for the U.S. Space Force.

Donoghue is enthusiastic to see institutional priority for research expand. 鈥淲e are doing great work here and have so much potential to expand,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ecoming an R2 would enable us to attract top researchers to help us grow our areas of strength and to increase external funding. In the grand scheme of things, we are a young institution. This is a bold and exciting step.鈥�

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of New York Institute of Technology Magazine. .

By Ren茅e Gearhart Levy