Excelsior scholarship application available

The Excelsior scholarship application for the spring 2018 semester is now available. Funded by the state, the program is designed to make tuition at SUNY and CUNY schools free of charge for lower and middle-income residents.
Among the eligibility requirements, an applicant must live in the state, attend school full-time, and have a family income of no more than $100,000.
Awards go up to $5,500, according to the state’s website.
To learn more, visit HESC.ny.gov.

Manhattan professor receives NIH grant

Bryan Wilkins, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Manhattan College, received a grant from the National Institute of Health to study the biochemical processes protecting the DNA structure and sequence of living cells.

Wilkins’ work, according to the school, will focus on chromatin remodelers, a protein family that unwraps, slides and re-wraps the DNA around nucleosomes in order to provide the critical access needed by the cell.
Through his research, Wilkins plans to further delineate how this protein group works.

Lehman professors look to the stars

Three Lehman College professors recently documented a “kilonova” explosion — the collision of two dead neutron stars producing a rare intergalactic fireworks display.

Luis Anchordoqui, a professor in the physics and astronomy department, along with research associate Tom Paul and graduate student Jorge Fernandez Soriano, are among the many authors who contributed their findings to “Multi-Messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger,” published in the Oct. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The discovery, observed by astrophysicists around the world, created global interest.

Until Lehman’s professors documented the event as it occurred, the kilnova explosion was something only a researcher could see after the explosion took place.