While the official Nerd Nite NYC 24-25 season has wrapped, we have a BONUS session on Friday May 2, 2025 at the new CUNY Graduate Center bar and lounge in Manhattan. This special Nite will feature fun-yet-informative presentations about community partnerships, low-cost sensors for environmental research, and open-source satellite data to map damage in conflict settings. What a bonus! Tickets here.
Nerd Nite NYC @ CUNY
Friday May 2, 2025 at 6:00pm
CUNY Graduate Center: 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
Tickets $10 here: https://portal.gc.cuny.edu/EVNT_PL_GCFormNerdNiteForm
Back to the Lectures At-Hand
*Presentation #1
Community-University Partnerships: Can Collaboration Save Us All?
by Kendra Sullivan
Description: The economic benefits that an educated electorate brings to civil society are well documented, but it is equally as true that education access and quality are key determinants of resilience, mitigation, and adaptation planning. Right now is the window to develop a long term funding strategy that bridges these two coextensive sectors through community-university partnerships that strengthen and fortify both the community and the university in the face of climate breakdown.
Bio: Kendra Sullivan is a public artist, an activist scholar, and a poet. Sullivan is the Director of the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she co-directs the NYC Climate Justice Hub, a partnership with CUNY led by New York City Environmental Justice alliance and it member organizations; co-directs of the CUNY Climate Assembly Project, the first climate assembly to be held at a public university as part of the worldwide deliverable wave; and publishes of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. Her research and advocacy advance public scholarship in graduate education from a justice-forward framework.
*Presentation #2
Environmental Sensors For All! The Low-Cost Low-Power Revolution in Environmental Sensing
by Ricardo Toledo-Crow
Bio: Ricardo Toledo-Crow is the head of the NextGen Environmental Sensor Lab at the Advanced Science Research Center of CUNY. The Lab is a resource for the design, fabrication, characterization, and deployment of novel sensing instruments and networks for environmental monitoring and research. Ricardo’s interests are in studying and making low-power, low-profile, low-cost sensors using the current explosion of microtechnology driven by the consumer market of cellular phones, personal cameras etc., to create dense sampling environmental monitoring networks that are widely accessible and available.
*Presentation #3
Mapping War Damage from Space
by Corey Scher
Description: If you’ve seen maps of building damage across Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, or Israel, chances are that it’s the work of a CUNY alum using open-source satellite data to peer through the fog of war. Learn how Corey Scher – working hand in hand with scientists, newsrooms, and humanitarians around the world – uses satellite radar scans to uncover the extent of building damage in armed conflict and disaster settings.
Bio: Corey is a postdoctoral researcher in the Conflict Ecology group at Oregon State. He defended his dissertation at the CUNY Grad Center in January, where his work focused on mapping landscape changes in armed conflict zones. Trained as a geologist and with early interests in satellite imaging radar, Corey began studying physical dimensions of international water resource conflicts in 2016. In 2021, a friend asked if Corey could find out, using satellite imagery, whether their family home had been destroyed by an airstrike in Gaza. Since then, Corey has refined his techniques and become a leader in the use of satellite radar data to analyze damage in armed conflict zones around the world.
After this CUNY show Nerd Nite NYC is on summer break. We return on August 7, 2025 for our annual water-themed show at the WetLab at Pier 40 in conjunction with Hudson River Park and then we officially kick-off our 20th year on Friday September 5, 2025 at Littlefield as our 2025-2026 season begins. Happy summer!
In the meantime, view some recordings on our YouTube channel or connect with us on Instagram or Facebook.