When Baruch graduates recall the effect their professors have had on their lives, what first comes to mind likely involves inspiring classes, mentorship, or sound advice. But while teaching is incredibly impactful, Baruch faculty are also esteemed scholars. Faculty from all three schools routinely pursue research on a multitude of topics, both independently and in collaboration with College colleagues and beyond. Not only do their avenues of research inform and enhance their classroom teaching, some of their discoveries might even change the world.
Here, we highlight two areas of research by Baruch faculty that have garnered recent attention in their fields.
NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT
In January, a multidisciplinary research team including Baofu Qiao, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry in the Department of Natural Sciences, published a groundbreaking study, “Controlled adsorption of multiple bioactive proteins enables targeted mast cell nanotherapy,” in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The study focused on an innovative approach to the treatment of allergies using selectively tailored nanoparticles, microscopic structures capable of exerting a therapeutic effect on the mast cells responsible for allergic reactions.
A computational chemist who joined the faculty of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences in 2022, Dr. Qiao conducted the fundamental computer modeling studies on protein-polymer interactions while a research associate professor at Northwestern University. “If we understand the atomistic interactions—how the components are reacting with each other—then we can explain many kinds of microscopic observations,” he says. In his experiments, “surprisingly, we found that the surface of the nanoparticles is adaptive. It adjusts its polar and nonpolar domains based on the antibody neighbors.”
The results of Qiao’s modeling study formed the basis for his colleagues’ design of the nanoparticles, which carried both a specific allergen and antibodies capable of switching off the mast cells that generate an anaphylactic response to allergen exposure. The nanotherapy was ultimately tested on modified mouse models whose tissues contained human mast cells, with impressive results: no mice manifested allergic response, and no side effects were observed.
Given that current therapeutics can only treat but not prevent allergic reactions, Qiao’s study’s results are a potential game changer for allergy sufferers and a lifesaver for those prone to anaphylaxis—an acute reaction to an antigen that can result in death. “Our work showed that the design of allergy-targeting nanomedicine is highly promising,” says Qiao. “Currently our experimental collaborators are examining nanotherapeutics for other kinds of allergies. If outcomes are successful, biological trials could be on the horizon.”
THE BEST MEDICINE
Broadly, Dr. Qiao’s ongoing research supports clearer understanding of the structure, properties, and functional interactions of proteins, polymers, and other molecules. “Proteins and polymers are critical to the optimal design of emerging biomaterials and nanomaterials, and have great potential for many kinds of practical applications in fields ranging from medicine to energy and more,” he explains.
Another such practical application in medicine relates to developing better means to regulate the Covid spike protein via an allosteric approach, which targets secondary binding sites rather than the protein’s primary (orthosteric) sites. “Allosteric regulation embodies a ‘butterfly effect’ in proteins in that peptides (or drugs) binding to one site of the protein affect the distal regions,” Qiao says. His ongoing research in this area focuses on enabling the accurate prediction of allosteric regulation specific to individual peptides. This information is key to the design of safer, more effective drugs that are specifically tailored to combat the virus.
Qiao’s research on allosteric regulation in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was recently published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. In recognition of the importance of the topic, the journal designated the article one of its 2024 “HOT PCCP” articles, making it free to access and thus facilitating future research in this area.
While Dr. Qiao relishes the challenges of applying computational chemistry to elucidate the characteristics and behavior of subcellular particles, he is also determined to inspire his students to see research as a part of their futures. “Computational chemistry is becoming more and more powerful with the rapid development of computer facilities and capabilities, and is helping to shape the design of many functional materials and energy applications,” he says. “My biggest challenge, and greatest opportunity, is to train the next generation of computational chemists at Baruch.”
QUESTIONING ASSUMPTIONS
Among the functions of research is to make sure we’re asking the right questions, says Professor Dahlia Remler, PhD, who teaches graduate-level courses on research methods at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. “Thinking about what you’re trying to measure and how to make that measurement happen in the most valid way is an important part of what I teach my students,” many of whom are practitioners in policy analysis, implementation, and management, she explains.
Dr. Remler, a health economist, frequently uses her own research on incorporation of health insurance into U.S. poverty measurement as a classroom example of how to define and solve measurement problems. Dr. Remler’s work since 2010 with professor and interim Marxe School Associate Dean Sanders Korenman, PhD, embodies a realm of research whose outcomes are highly conceptual. “If you want to answer questions related to poverty today, you have to be able to define complex needs for health insurance and health care,” says Remler. “Our challenge was to develop a practical and viable way to measure health insurance benefits—from government or employers—as a resource.”
Current poverty measures used by U.S. government agencies, which provide important information about the country’s economic well-being from year to year, stemmed from research conducted in the 1990s—research that did not address the value of health insurance benefits in its algorithms. But as societal and health economic forces became more complex, “there was a feeling in the policy arena that we can’t continue to ignore those benefits in poverty measurement,” Remler says. Her and Korenman’s decade-plus of research gradually gained the attention of powerful players among researchers and within the statistical agencies involved in U.S. poverty measurement.
A WIDENING CIRCLE
Initial interest came from a National Academy of Sciences panel, which, dissatisfied with the shortcomings of existing poverty measures, commissioned a background paper in 2017 on how to reduce child poverty. “Sanders and I and [Marxe colleague] Rosemary Hyson, a PhD research economist who collaborated on much of our empirical work, did some calculations for the academy. As a result, they recommended that the statistical agencies look more broadly at the viability of our ‘Health Insurance–Inclusive Poverty Measure,’ or HIPM,” explains Remler.
Noting that the new measure better captures the realities of a post–Affordable Care Act society, Remler adds, “Census seems excited about the HIPM. They implemented our approach to calculate rates going back to 2014 and said they’re planning to release it in a Research Report Series this fall.” She’s particularly pleased that an analyst and researcher at the bureau has already presented its implementation at conferences: “We always intended our measure to stimulate more research and further deliberation.”
Remler says the comprehensive, soundly conceived approach she and Korenman took to development of the HIPM holds great appeal for the statistical agencies. “It was very important to them that the health insurance data was easily available and we had eliminated the need for them to make difficult modeling judgments. To them, the HIPM is practical, and they like that.”
STIMULATING DISCUSSION
Remler and Korenman’s article “On the Importance and Intrinsic Difficulties of Incorporating Health Insurance Benefits in Absolute Poverty Trends,” published in the October 2023 issue of Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, explains why the HIPM is widely viewed as valid among the major agencies and many researchers involved in poverty measurement. The research findings presented in the body of HIPM research formed an integral part of a recently released consensus study report, produced by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and sponsored by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, recommending changes to how poverty is measured.
Last fall the members of the consensus study panel—including Korenman, who co-authored the health insurance section of the report—gathered at the Marxe School to present their recommendations to an audience of public policy practitioners and researchers. The event, sponsored by the Marxe School, NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and the Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University of Social Work, concluded with a lively roundtable discussion in which Remler shared details of her and Korenman’s research assumptions and process with the audience.
Opening the event, Marxe Dean Sherry Ryan, PhD, cited the commonalities among Marxe students and those of the other host institutions, all of whom are equipping themselves to “serve and uplift the neediest, to improve ability to analyze causes and consequences of deprivation, and to measure outcomes of policies.”
SLOW AND STEADY
Behind all the announcements of discoveries and publication of research results lie the years—sometimes decades—of conceptualizing, planning, defining, and proving or disproving theories. Researchers are in it for the long haul.
Despite the positive response to the HIPM, it will likely be some time before the United States imposes new agency standards for poverty measurement. Nevertheless, having a new means of measurement is of great value in policy research, Remler explains. “Our data comes from the current population survey, which is what statistical agencies are mandated to use, and from marketplace data on health insurance. But you can do the calculations with other data if they have the right variables, and I hope researchers do that, because that can lead to other discussions and additional enhancements to poverty measurement.”
Dr. Remler recounts Korenman’s frustration with the U.S. government’s official implementation of Supplemental Poverty Measures (SPM) in 2010 that set them down a long and unexpected research path to development of the HIPM. Those measures, based on research conducted 15 years prior, were meant to improve the original federal poverty measure that was used since the 1960s and that had been based on research conducted in 1955. “Knowing I like public engagement, he enlisted me to help write an op-ed about why the SPM was inadequate,” she recalls. “What I thought was going to be a fairly quick op-ed piece became more than 13 years of collaborative research.”
In successful research, collaboration is critical, Remler says. She describes her teaming with Korenman as a fortuitous merging of distinct backgrounds: “I came in as a health economist, Sandy as a longtime social welfare / poverty researcher.
Integrating our different knowledge bases and perspectives was really key to arriving at a method to develop and validate our new poverty measure. So though we’re from the same department, in many ways it’s interdisciplinary research.”
ENGAGED AND ENGAGING
The diverse research pursued by Professors Remler, Korenman, Qiao, and so many of their Baruch colleagues is emblematic of the climate of intellectual curiosity and knowledge sharing at the College. Their success both as researchers and as educators has far-reaching implications not only for the students who learn from and are inspired by them, but also for the world beyond the campus.
“Our faculty aren’t only teachers in the classroom, they are also thought leaders in their disciplines who are advancing new knowledge through their research and creative activity that has the potential to have real-world, life-changing impacts locally and globally,” notes Provost Linda Essig, PhD. “It’s an honor to work with them to create the dynamic intellectual environment that is Baruch College.”