2026-2027 SUNY Research Leadership Academy Cohort

Dr. Bah is an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at SUNY Upstate Medical University, where he directs the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Graduate Program and co-directs the Molecular Interactions and Drug Screening Core. His research investigates intrinsically disordered proteins, biomolecular condensates, and their roles in cellular regulation and disease. A Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences, Dr. Bah is committed to building scientific communities through interdisciplinary collaboration, mentorship, and graduate education. He also co-founded Upstate’s Post-Baccalaureate program (PREP-Up) to expand access to biomedical research training and develop the next generation of scientists.
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Email: baha@upstate.edu

Dr. Bhattacharya is a Professor and the Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University. His research interests are in sodium and lithium-ion batteries, high-efficiency III-V semiconductors and wireless power transfer. He is the principal/co-principal investigator of nine National Science Foundation and two U.S. Department of Energy grants in the last eight years totaling $11 million. He is the main advisor of 11 PhD, 16 MS and 60 undergraduates. He received his PhD and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Florida State University. He is a senior member of IEEE and the main inventor of three U.S. patents.
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Email: ibhattachary1@binghamton.edu

Dr. Bigdeli is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and Acting Director of its Institute for Genomics in Health. A genetic epidemiologist, his research focuses on serious neuropsychiatric disorders, integrating population genetics, multi-omics, environmental exposures, and clinical data to understand variation in disease risk and outcomes. His work spans diverse populations in the United States and an expanding network of international collaborations. Through IGH, he helps cultivate clinical genomics research across departments and disease areas, building collaborations and shared capacity for the study of complex disease. He also serves as Scientific Director of a national VA Cooperative Studies Program, extending these approaches across the nation’s largest integrated health care system.
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Email: tim.bigdeli@downstate.edu

Dr. Chintalapalle is an Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Nanoscale Science & Engineering at the University at Albany. Chintalapalle’s research centers on nanomaterials, thin-films, surface/interface engineering and the manufacturing of functional materials for electronics, defense, security and energy. Central to his work is the development of atomically engineered interfaces that enable high-quality epitaxial growth and enhanced performance. Currently, he serves as the Director of the Ion Beam Facility at UAlbany. He’s a member of both The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and AVS.
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Email: rchintalapalle@albany.edu

Dr. Dura-Bernal is an Associate Professor of Computational Neuroscience at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and a Research Scientist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research. His laboratory leverages supercomputing and AI to build realistic, large-scale simulations of brain circuits, advancing understanding and treatment of schizophrenia, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, and spinal cord injury. He also directs the Global Center for AI in Mental Health at Downstate, leading interdisciplinary work on AI-based psychotherapy and humanitarian disaster response for underserved communities worldwide. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, led major NIH grants, and received multiple scientific honors.
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Email: salvador.dura-bernal@downstate.edu

Dr. Gervich is an environmental planner. He assists communities, regions, and watersheds to create sustainable aspirations for the future and develop plans and policies to achieve those goals.
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Email: cgerv001@plattsburgh.edu

Dr. Green is an Associate Professor of environmental microbiology and Associate Vice Provost for Research at SUNY-ESF. He teaches both field and lab courses in environmental microbiology and his research focuses on applying novel molecular techniques to improve water quality and human health. He was a founding member of the NY State Wastewater Surveillance Network and is currently working to identify sources of excess nutrients to NY’s Finger Lakes. As AVPR, he leads the research compliance office and seeks to enhance ESF’s research competitiveness. 
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Email: hgreen@esf.edu

Dr. Hicar is an Associate Professor and Chief of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University at Buffalo. As a pediatric infectious disease physician, he studies antibody responses to a variety of infections and immune mediated conditions in the hopes to discover etiologies, define novel diagnostics, or design preventative strategies. 
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Email: markhica@buffalo.edu

Dr. Hu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at SUNY Oswego. Her research combines brain imaging and cognitive psychology to understand the neural bases of cognitive control. In her current project, she examines the structural and functional changes associated with aging in healthy adults and individuals experiencing memory trouble, with a particular interest in the role of hippocampus in cognitive control. These findings may ultimately contribute to the development of more sensitive diagnostic tools, improved preventive care, and earlier interventions for dementia and other age-related cognitive disorders.
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Email: sien.hu@oswego.edu

Dr. Kayler is a transplant surgeon and NIH-funded health services researcher. She specializes in kidney and pancreas transplantation and living kidney donation. She is Program Director and Division Chief of Transplantation at Erie County Medical Center and Tenured Professor at the University at Buffalo. Author of over 250 publications and a field leader in kidney transplantation, her research focuses on solutions for optimizing organ use, living kidney donation, and transplant outcomes. To empower patients to receive living donor kidney transplants, she builds and tests digital interventions for improving donor search. To enable citizen participation in promoting transplant success, she formed an academic-community partnership with local patients and stakeholders that subsequently formed into an independent nonprofit organization. Passionate about equitable transplant access, she was instrumental in advocating for the repeal of the 30-year NY State ban on multilisting in 2025. She is also co-founder of NY Kidney, a statewide consortium of transplant centers dedicated to democratizing transplant access and care. 
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Email: liisekay@buffalo.edu

Dr. Maresca is an environmental microbiologist working on microbes that live in freshwater and built environments. She moved to the Chemistry department at ESF after 13 years in a Civil and Environmental Engineering department, so interdisciplinary research, teaching, and community building has been a constant in her career. 
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Email: jamaresc@esf.edu

Dr. McDonough earned his Ph.D. at the University in Chicago where he studied how young and older adults create and prevent false memories. He moved to Dallas for a postdoc to investigate preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. His first faculty appointment was in Psychology at The University of Alabama where he extended his research to racial health disparities. He now is an Associate Professor in the Cognitive and Brain Sciences area at Binghamton University where he studies how the environment and lifestyle choices shape the brain-body connection in the aging brain and in risk for Alzheimer’s disease. 
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Email: imcdonough@binghamton.edu

Dr. Mirjafari's research program at SUNY Oswego develops functional organic materials to address key societal challenges in health, energy, and sustainability. The work centers on bioinspired design of ionic liquids that exhibit specific molecular and materials functions, with applications in sustainable aviation fuels, vaccine preservation, and nucleic acid delivery, among others. A central goal of the program is training the next generation of the STEM workforce through hands-on research experience for undergraduate and master's students. He has authored over 90 peer-reviewed contributions and holds a patent on DNA preservation in ionic liquids. Funded by the NIH, NSF, and the ACS PRF.
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Email: arsalan.mirjafari@oswego.edu

Dr. Myers serves as Professor & Chair of the Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering Department at Albany. He combines expertise in numerical and experimental methods to conduct research in multifunctional materials, adaptive composite structures, fatigue of bistable composites and non-destructive evaluation of composite materials. 
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Email: omyers2@albany.edu

Dr. Plotkin received his undergraduate degrees in biology and music from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, PhD in Neuroscience from UCLA, and completed postdoctoral training at Northwestern University. He joined the faculty at SUNY Stony Brook in 2015, where he is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. His research focuses on understanding the brain circuits that underlie action selection and habit formation, and how abnormal function of these circuits may lead to neurologic disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and neuropsychiatric disorders such as OCD. 
Dr. Plotkin's full profile

Email: joshua.plotkin@stonybrook.edu

Dr. Prior is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Binghamton University, where her lab studies how environmental change reshapes biodiversity, focusing on insects, among the most diverse and ecologically important animals. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society, published in journals including Ecology and Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and covered in national media including Science News and Discover Magazine. She co-directs NATCHANGE, Binghamton's Natural Global Environmental Change Center, linking researchers across campus, mentors a large research group, serves as a journal editor, and created Binghamton's annual EcoBlitz event.
Dr. Prior's Full Profile

Email: kprior@binghamton.edu

Dr. Putnam is an Associate Professor at the SUNY College of Optometry and director of the MOSAIC Lab (Mapping Ocular Structure and Activity with Imaging of Cells). Her research integrates advanced retinal imaging and eye tracking to investigate relationships between ocular structure, fixational eye movements, and visual function, with applications to ocular and neurological disease. She is passionate about interdisciplinary collaboration, research mentorship, and developing scientists at all career stages. Dr. Putnam is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry and the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and holds a PhD in Vision Science from UC Berkeley.
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Email: nputnam@sunyopt.edu

Dr. Singh, PhD, is an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University whose research focuses on tissue engineering, regenerative biomaterials, and vascularized skin substitutes for wound healing. His translational research program spans biomaterials discovery, preclinical development, and commercialization, and has secured more than $1 million in competitive funding. He is the founder of VascuArch Inc., which is advancing vascularized, shelf-stable skin technologies toward clinical translation. Dr. Singh is also committed to interdisciplinary collaboration, mentorship, and scientific communication and has mentored students and trainees across educational levels while contributing to professional, editorial, and community STEM initiatives.
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Email: gurtej.singh@stonybrookmedicine.edu

Dr. Tan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University. She received her Ph.D. in Biophysics and Physiology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed postdoctoral training in structural biology and electron microscopy at Harvard Medical School. Since launching her independent career in 2016, her research has focused on chromatin biology and genome regulation. Her lab combines cryo-EM with biochemical and biophysical approaches to investigate how histone variants and chromatin-associated proteins regulate chromatin structure and dynamics, and how these mechanisms influence gene regulation and DNA damage repair.
Dr. Tan's Full Profile

Email: dongyan.tan@stonybrook.edu

Dr. Tsai is the Osterhout Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Binghamton University's School of Management, where he is Associate Director of the Bass Center for Leadership Studies and PhD Program Director. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies and serves on the editorial board of The Leadership Quarterly. His research examines leadership in entrepreneurial and technology-mediated contexts, spanning human-robot interactions, virtual teams, and entrepreneurship education. He has secured approximately $1.6 million in federal and international funding as principal and co-principal investigator, and received the 2025 SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.
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Email: ctsai@binghamton.edu

Dr. Volk is a Professor and Associate Chair at SUNY ESF whose transdisciplinary research advances sustainable biomass production, bioenergy systems, and the development of a resilient wood based bioeconomy. Over a research career spanning more than 30 years, he has led multidisciplinary collaborations among universities, government agencies, industry, and nonprofit organizations. His research examines biomass supply chains, climate-smart agriculture and forestry, and the environmental and economic performance of biobased systems. He is committed to building collaborative teams translating research into real-world impact while mentoring the next generation of scientists and leaders.
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Email: tavolk@esf.edu

Dr. Yager is a transdisciplinary researcher on the human dimensions of climate change and the impacts of climate change in high altitude environments. Yager has worked in the Andes of South America for over two decades with indigenous communities and local stakeholders to identify adaptive strategies for sustainable management of mountain ecosystems and critical water resources impacted by climate change. Yager’s research expertise includes the study of global environmental change, mountain socio-ecological systems, remote sensing, peatland systems, outcomes of glacier loss, land cover land use change, and Andean studies. Yager is an Associate Professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, New York and the Director of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (LACS) at Stony Brook University. 
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Email: karina.yager@stonybrook.edu

Dr. Yang is a Professor of Biology at SUNY Geneseo. She received her Ph.D. from Washington State University. Her biology education research investigates the effectiveness of inclusive teaching practices, professional development of faculty in these practices, and culture change in response to adopting new practices. She is the PI of the NSF-funded Biologists and Graph Interpretation (BioGraphI) project, which is a network of faculty who develop and implement curricula featuring counter-stereotypical scientists and data literacy skills. She also studies species interactions and invasion ecology with undergraduates, both in course-based research experiences and independently-mentored projects, and using computational and experimental approaches.
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Email: yang@geneseo.edu

Email: kyu@binghamton.edu

Dr. Zhu, OD, PhD, MD, FAAO, is Associate Clinical Professor and Director of the Myopia Management Clinic at SUNY College of Optometry. She leads clinical and translational research on myopia control, emmetropization, and visual function while mentoring graduate students. Trained as an ophthalmologist in China, she completed postdoctoral research at CUNY, a PhD in Vision Science in Australia, and an OD at the New England College of Optometry. Dr. Zhu serves on the editorial boards of IOVS and Current Eye Research and has held leadership roles within ARVO.
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Email: xzhu@sunyopt.edu