Executive Vice President
Access Industries
I have great respect and admiration for what talented scientists can do. The brilliance of science is producing solutions to problems and making the world better. Being a Board member for the Academy enables me to assist in that process in any way I can.
MAR 06, 2024
DeepFest dissects true potential of AI to transform everything from cancer medicine to social fabric
edge
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FEB 22, 2024
Ambivalence Over AI: We Are All Prometheus Now
Undark
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FEB 02, 2024
Governor Hochul Announces Release of Technical Chapters of New York State Climate Impacts Assessment
New York State – Governor’s Press Office
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FEB 01, 2024
How a fake, 10-second recording briefly upended New York politics
Politico
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JAN 31, 2024
Don’t let geopolitics get in the way of scientific cooperation with China
The Hill
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JAN 28, 2024
The ‘Barbie’ movie could help push more girls into STEM fields
The Washington Post
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JAN 17, 2024
Prestigious Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the UK to bestow £480,000 to nine scientists across the UK
Science X
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DEC 21, 2023
Campus leaders shouldn’t be judged on their political pronouncements
Times Higher Education
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DEC 13, 2023
Trust, truth, and representation
Research Outreach
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DEC 12, 2023
Elham Azizi, PhD, Wins 2024 Innovators in Science Award from New York Academy of Sciences
Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center
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DEC 05, 2023
Schreiber receives scientific innovator award
Washington University School of Medicine
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DEC 2023
Consciousness: Not just a problem for philosophers
Big Think: Dispatches from The Well
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OCT 05, 2023
One judge’s ruling threatens American scientific research and representation
The Hill
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OCT 02, 2023
Feinstein Institutes’ Ross Prize awardees win 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Business Wire
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AUG 24, 2023
Restricted Funding Is Stifling Scientific Progress
Chronicle of Philanthropy
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AUG 10, 2023
Joonho Lee named a laureate of the 2023 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists
The Harvard Gazette
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JUL 02, 2023
Humanists and social scientists must help shape the future of AI
Times Higher Education
JUN 27, 2023
How NYC hospitals are using artificial intelligence to save lives
Gothamist
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MAY 19, 2023
Scientist in residence helps Coney Island students see the city’s wildlife beyond pigeons
Chalkbeat
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Convergence: A Journal for Young Researchers by Indigo Research and The New York Academy of Sciences is dedicated to publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed academic work from young people (pre-university), exploring a wide range of subjects with a focus on work that explores the convergence of disciplines related to current and future existential risks including climate change, human rights and structural inequities.
The journal will cover the following types of submissions:
To be considered as an Academic Reviewer, please contact us at education@nyas.org.
The University in Ruins
LinkedIn Pulse
Faculty-administrator distrust is making US universities ungovernable
Times Higher Education
The End of Disenchantment and the Future of the Humanities
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Ambivalence Over AI: We Are All Prometheus Now
Undark
Higher Education’s Donor Problem
TIME
Don’t let geopolitics get in the way of scientific cooperation with China
The Hill
Campus leaders shouldn’t be judged on their political pronouncements
Times Higher Education
Why we need to build an implicit trust in science
Khaleej Times
Episode 24-18 (The International Science Reserve and AI) | TechNation Radio Podcast
The Uses and Abuses of the Modern University | The Politics Guys
The Delicate Balance of Teaching and Research in Modern Academia | unSILOed Podcast
What Are Universities For? | Commonweal Magazine
dotEDU | Beyond Berkeley: Lessons from a University Chancellor on the Front Lines
Chasing Leviathan | Free Speech, Controversy, and the University with Dr. Nicholas Dirks
The PhD Life Raft Podcast | The Changing Culture of the University with Nicholas B. Dirks
When Science Speaks | Applying Scientific Insights to Global Challenges, with Nicholas Dirks, Ph.D.
The ThoughtStretchers Education Podcast | Science, Truth, And Trust
Published February 01, 2024
By Nick Fetty
Nicholas B. Dirks, President and CEO of The New York Academy of Sciences, reflects on the challenges he encountered and the lessons he learned during his long career in university leadership, from being chair of the Anthropology department at Columbia, to his time as EVP and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences also at Columbia, and then as chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, in a newly published book.
City of Intellect: The Uses and Abuses of the University was released in the United States by Cambridge University Press on Feb. 1. The book, described as “part autobiography, part practical manifesto,” details Dirks’ years in leadership roles at Columbia and Berkeley during an era of vast changes in the culture of academia.
A distinguished historian and anthropologist and an accomplished academic administrator, Dirks offers a frank assessment of some of the challenges facing higher education. In a recent TIME Ideas column, Dirks wrote “There are far too many examples of the failure of universities over the past decade to defend academic freedom when it goes against conventional wisdom on campus.” The attempted canceling of provocative guest speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos, Bill Maher, and Ann Coulter are several examples that occurred during Dirks’ stint as the leader of the Berkeley campus.
While he acknowledges the need for change at the institutional level, however, he has also expressed concerns about external forces and attacks on the university that are exerting increasing pressure “[on] the overall climate for faculty governance, for academic freedom and for fundamental issues that…are definitely under…threat right at the moment.”
In addition to leading The New York Academy of Sciences, a position he has held since 2020, Dirks continues to serve as a professor of history in the Graduate School at UC Berkeley and is the Franz Boas Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Columbia. Dirks has published major works on the history of the state in early modern South Asia, the colonial history of the caste system, the significance of the Indian empire for modern Britain, on social and cultural theory, and on debates in historiography. He has been a lifelong advocate of the liberal arts, interdisciplinary studies, and India. In the face of multiple challenges and changes, however, Dirks asserts that universities must “reinvent themselves” to remain relevant.
“[W]e also need to really rethink some of the legitimate concerns people have about how we [in higher education] conduct ourselves at every level—cost, administrative bloat, disciplinary silos, relevance, enacting academic freedom and free speech—across the board,” Dirks said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed. “All of those things have to be done in order to regain [public] trust.”
And yet, his new book extends remarks he made some years ago, that “The time has come to defend the university vigorously, even as we insist on seeking to open it up further: to new ideas, to even more vigorous debate, to more students who have never had the opportunity for advanced education, to engagement with the world, and to the public more generally for whom the idea that college is a public good needs stressing and demonstrating today more than ever.”
Adolescent and young women are often undernourished and overlooked and few, if any, efforts are made to educate this population about best food habits. This presents current and future risks: undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies impair their growth at the critical phase of puberty and menarche, increases the risk of complications during pregnancy and childbirth, and carries an elevated risk of non-communicable diseases in future life.
However, this period is also viewed as a window of opportunity for nutrition action as it is when growing girls begin to assume adult roles and establish dietary patterns that often carry through adulthood and to their future families. While there has been progress in recognizing the nutrition plight of adolescent girls and young women in recent years, knowledge of their dietary patterns, nutrient deficiencies, or food choice motivations remains fragmentary, hampering the elaboration of effective strategies to improve their nutrition.
Funded by La Fonation Botnar, the Academy and partners carried out an Action-Research program over three years (2020-2022) in Colombia and Vietnam to document the diets of adolescent and young women (14-22 years old); identify nutrient deficits in their diets; elaborate recommendations to improve their nutritional status using locally available and affordable foods; and engage with them in incorporating those recommendations in their diets through a Social Innovation Challenge. Awards and resources were transferred to the most promising solutions to enable their implementation.
Pre/post measurements of the interventions’ impact showed significant improvement in the diets of participants. Using local foods as a point of departure proved successful in creating interest and in concretely anchoring choices that significantly and positively affected their food intake. Social media proved to be a playful and powerful means of mobilization when designed and controlled by participants. Building on concerns of importance to this population—self-image, self-esteem, peer status—was also a strong lever for behavioral change. This initiative may serve as a model for future interventions targeting this population group. In addition, it created an extensive scientific output to advance our knowledge of the problem and how it may be addressed.
World Vision/Colombia
International Center for Education and Development (CINDE). Colombia
School of Nutrition and Dietetics, University of Antioquia, Medellin Colombia
Thai Nguyen University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vietnam
National Institute of Nutrition, Vietnam
The World Food Programme, Rome
La Fondation Botnar
Activities undertaken by this Action-Research program in nutrition are summarized below:
The entire Action-Research process is described at length in nine peer-reviewed publications published in a Special Issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
List of papers (hyperlinks to come once published in Open Access on Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences)
To learn more about our Action-Research on Adolescent and Young Women Nutrition program, contact us at nutrition@nyas.org.
An estimated 3.5 billion people around the globe are at risk of calcium deficiency due to inadequate dietary intake. While primarily associated with bone health, calcium has also been shown to reduce the risk of preeclampsia and associated complications, which are leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality. Populations in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs), especially in parts of Asia, Africa, and South America, are at greatest risk of low calcium intakes, and have the higher rates of mortality from maternal hypertensive disorders, according to the Global Burden of Disease.
In partnership with the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Academy assembled a Scientific Advisory Committee composed of five calcium experts, followed by a larger group of 22 specialists named “Calcium Task Force” to guide the global agenda for Calcium. In March and April 2021, the Academy convened two virtual meetings with the Calcium Task Force. This Task Force is composed of experts in micronutrients, malnutrition, pediatrics, gynecology and obstetrics, biochemistry, public health, supplementation and food fortification. During these two virtual meetings, the Task Force assessed the evidence on global calcium deficiency and its health consequences, and useful indicators of calcium absorption and intake. It also considered potential interventions such as calcium supplementation for pregnant women to improve pregnancy outcomes and associated implementation challenges, as well as food-based interventions to improve the intake of this vital micronutrient, especially in populations with low calcium intake. The group was also commissioned to identify the research gaps and provide guidance for interventions and policies based on the most current available evidence.
On March 1-3, 2021, the Nutrition Science Program of the New York Academy of Sciences convened the first of two meetings of the Calcium Task Force. The agenda was structured around three major topics: epidemiology of inadequate calcium intakes and associated health outcomes, calcium supplementation for pregnant women, and food-based interventions to improve calcium intake.
The second meeting was hosted on April 26-28, 2021. The Calcium Task Force refined the discussions of the first meeting, drew conclusions and recommendations based on available evidence, and identified areas for future research for the three major topics.
The discussions and conclusions from the Calcium Task Force meetings were presented in three peer-reviewed publications. Additional activities are associated with the Calcium Initiative, including: two systematic reviews conducted by Tampere University to assess the impact of maternal dietary calcium supplementation (alone or with vitamin D) during pregnancy on maternal and infant health; feasibility assessments of the food-based solutions carried out by HarvestPlus; modeling analyses for the cost-effectiveness of interventions and the locally available foods that could provide additional calcium. The following articles associated with this initiative were published in a “Calcium Special Issue”:
1. Calcium Deficiency Worldwide: Prevalence of Inadequate Intakes and Associated Health Outcomes
3. Interventions to improve calcium intake through foods in populations with low intake
4. Current Methods for Calcium Status Assessment: Dietary Intake and Biomarkers
The Academy offers early-career researchers unparalleled opportunities to learn and network across institutions, disciplines and industries. Our ultimate goal is to help them build the skills they will need to secure careers in the near-future as well as to prepare them for emerging roles in the ever-evolving workforce landscape. In addition to providing our own programming including workshops, courses and networking events, we also partner with a variety of non-profit organizations, academic institutions and for-profit companies to develop best-in-class professional development opportunities for more than 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Our Professional Learning programs include:
There are several ways we partner with external organizations to offer our early career community with high-quality professional development opportunities:
Download the New York Academy of Sciences STEM Education 10-Year Impact Report, 2024.
GENERATION STEM: Empowering Scientists of the Future
To discuss ideas for partnering on a professional learning program, contact us at education@nyas.org.
The Academy is proud to offer resources to help high school students interested in STEM careers navigate the journey towards succcessful post-secondary studies. Our free video series focus on four areas that are essential to students considering STEM fields: College Readiness, Communication, Leadership Skills, and Creative Problem-Solving. Check them out!
The college admissions process can be arduous, confusing and stressful. We make it simple by breaking it down into a step-by-step guide that includes tips on developing study skills, finding the right college, and financing your education.
> College Readiness Video Series
What characteristics do great leaders possess? Our Leadership Skills videos cover the essentials that students need to succeed in any career, including those in STEM fields.
Success in a STEM career is often dependent on the ability to share important but complex information in a way that people can understand. Our Communication video series highlights the skills students need to communicate more effectively.
STEM professionals solve some of the most challenging problems in the world using the art of design thinking. Students gain an introduction to this important mindset in this engaging video series.
President
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The New York Academy of Sciences looks to the future and continues to empower the next generation of STEM professionals. As the science and technology landscape rapidly evolves, this is particularly an exciting time to be part of the Academy.
