Biochemist Mandë Holford is blazing a trail in the sciences, working to identify the therapeutic potential of venom from snails, squid and other marine creatures to treat diabetes, hypertension and other diseases. Holford’s Hunter College colleague, Jin Young Seo, has developed interventions to address cultural factors that dissuade Korean American women in New York from getting breast cancer screenings. Their colleague at City Tech, physics professor German Kolmakov, is collaborating with a former student to develop quantum computer technology to enhance cybersecurity.
All three are doing research that directly benefits the communities where we all work and live and simultaneously preparing the next generation of researchers to continue the quest.
“I try to introduce the excitement of science and the fact that we know almost nothing, and so anything you can bring to the field is welcomed. I wanted to show urban city kids that a career in science was possible,” says Holford, one of more than 10,000 researchers at the City University of New York.
They are part of a long tradition of researchers at the nation’s largest urban public university dating back well over a century. Advancing scientific discovery in the public interest is central to CUNY’s core mission and deeply embedded in its legacy. To cite just one example, in each of the three pandemics of the past 100 years – polio, HIV-AIDS and Covid-19 – a CUNY-educated researcher either developed the first vaccine or contributed a key breakthrough in treatment.
And just this month, that was reaffirmed when 10 CUNY colleges were designated as leading U.S. research institutions under this year’s Carnegie Classifications of Institutions of Higher Education. The influential classification system groups colleges and universities by how much they spend on research and how many research doctoral degrees they award each year.
This year’s list maintains the CUNY Graduate Center, which together with its Advanced Science Research Center and affiliated campuses confers more than 350 doctoral degrees a year and has annual research expenditures averaging $57 million in the top-tier Research 1 stature, one of only 187 R1s nationwide.
Hunter College joined City College as a Research 2 institution in the new classifications for the first time, also marking the first time two CUNY colleges have achieved that status. In addition, seven CUNY senior colleges were designated as Research Colleges and Universities, a third category added this year for institutions that have significant research activity.
This consequential work driven by passionate research faculty has been growing. CUNY research teams garnered $672 million in external funding last year, a university record for the second year in a row and a marker of CUNY’s role as a critical part of New York State’s research infrastructure.
CUNY’s triumph comes amidst a climate of alarming uncertainty in federal funding for university-based research. We remain fully committed to our faculty researchers, their students and the work they do every day to advance discovery and knowledge.
Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public university system in the United States.
