News Archive: 2020-2024
2024
December 2, 2024
In this installment of "Geeking Out With...," a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Philosophy master's student Antares Brown talks about their research into the philosophy of disability.
November 13, 2024
PhD Student Rafi Abrahams has been teaching the UWS course "Autobiographical Comics" for three semesters. GSAS caught up with Abrahams to talk about the course, how he came up with it, and what he loves about teaching.
November 11, 2024
For the eighth annual First-Generation College Celebration on November 8, 2024, Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) hosted a networking event for graduate students who identify as first generation, meaning that they are the first in their families to earn a bachelor’s degree.
November 4, 2024
In 2023, Alexandra Burkot’s research journey took her to Athens, Greece. There, the Brandeis University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Musicology PhD student spent nine months researching the composer Dimitrios Levidis, particularly his 1943 composition setting a passage from the Iliad; the piece was composed when Greece was under occupation during World War II and was presumed lost for decades.
November 4, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Chemistry PhD student Abichael Belizaire talks about his quest to find hobbies to help him maintain work-life balance and how his lab has inspired him.
October 29, 2024
To celebrate National Cat Day, GSAS students shared pictures and stories of their cats.
October 28, 2024
Josh Broderick Phillips, B/MS’24 in Computational Linguistics, worked closely during his time at Brandeis with Professor Lotus Goldberg, serving as head research assistant in her lab. The collaborative relationship and Goldberg's mentorship helped Broderick Phillips develop his skills, setting him up for future success.
October 11, 2024
Jeff Gelles is the Aron and Imre Tauber Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in the Department of Biochemistry and the Director of Graduate Studies for the graduate program in Biochemistry and Biophysics at Brandeis University. He has been a faculty member at Brandeis since 1989. He spoke to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences about his research work and the advantages of Brandeis’s small, close-knit, interdisciplinary science programs.
October 4, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, NEJS PhD student Lingxuan Liang talks about her research into Jewish Americans and transracial, transnational adoption.
September 24, 2024
Through internships, GSAS students discover new ways to apply their existing knowledge and skills and connect what they’re doing on campus to a range of career opportunities. Six GSAS students and recent alums shared their experiences with internships in the past year, what they learned, and what advice they would give other students.
September 4, 2024
While May is known as Commencement month, the summer is a big time for graduations at Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). On August 31, 2024, forty-eight GSAS students received their degrees: twenty-seven received PhDs, and twenty-one received master’s degrees. Some August graduates spoke to GSAS about their experiences in their program and their upcoming plans.
September 3, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Music Composition and Theory PhD student Ali Puskulcu talks about his journey and process as a composer.
August 30, 2024
For the 2024-2025 academic year, Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) welcomes an incoming class of 195 students. GSAS held an ice cream social for all its students on August 28, 2024; students had the chance to catch up, meet new people, and share what they were looking forward to this year with GSAS.
August 26, 2024
Jorah Dannenberg is the newest faculty member in Brandeis University’s Department of Philosophy. His work focuses on the area of moral philosophy. He spoke to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences about what he studies and why it matters, arriving in Massachusetts after a lifetime in California, and what he likes about Brandeis so far.
August 26, 2024
To celebrate National Dog Day, GSAS students shared pictures and stories of their dogs.
August 8, 2024
Peizhao Li, PhD’24, was initially attracted to the Computer Science PhD program at Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) because of its strong faculty and its location close to Boston. Once he started in the program, he found that he had great opportunities to develop as a researcher.
August 6, 2024
In this installment of the Geeking Out With... series, we try something a little different and introduce the GSAS staff, their roles, and their passions!
July 29, 2024
Bill Abbate, PhD’65 in Chemistry, was unable to attend Commencement at the time and never received his robes--but GSAS and Institutional Advancement were able to get them to him this summer! He talked to GSAS about his memories of his time at Brandeis and his advice for students today.
July 1, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Physics PhD student Zachary Curtis talks about his work in the Science Communication Lab and the importance of communicating science clearly.
June 24, 2024
Imposter syndrome is a common struggle among graduate students — and among people at all levels in academia! Here, Brandeis faculty and staff share their thoughts on why imposter syndrome is so common and advice on what's helped them battle it.
June 3, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Sociology and Social Policy PhD student Manning Zhang talks about her research into Boston gymgoers and how it reflects her interests in culture and health.
May 16, 2024
On Sunday, May 19, 2024, Brandeis University will hold its 73rd Commencement. Following graduation, newly minted GSAS alums will be heading on different paths. Here, some graduates reflect on their experiences at GSAS and their plans for the future.
May 14, 2024
In recent months, students in Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences have earned a variety of prestigious external grants and fellowships for the upcoming academic year. GSAS talked to four of these students, from the Sociology, Physics, History, and Anthropology PhD programs, about their research, what they’re looking forward to in the upcoming year, and what advice they have for other students pursuing grant applications.
May 6, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Musicology PhD student Anna Valcour talks about her immersion in opera as both a performer and a researcher.
May 1, 2024
For 2024, Brandeis University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences honored students across programs with the annual Graduate Student Teaching Awards. These awards go to graduate student instructors or teaching assistants who have made great contributions in their programs.
April 30, 2024
On April 5, 2024, GSAS students participated in the 2024 Three Minute Thesis Competition, Brandeis's third. They presented their research in three minutes for a general audience, won prizes, and gained valuable skills along the way.
April 29, 2024
While graduate school is a notoriously busy place, it’s always a good choice to make time to think about career planning and the future. The Brandeis University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Professional Development team supports students through this often tricky process through a variety of programming and services, including the Career Fellows Program. Now in its third year, the program brings together students across departments who are committed to career exploration, building a cohort who connect with each other while attending a range of professional development workshops, informational talks, and networking sessions.
April 17, 2024
From April 1 through 5, 2024, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University held its second annual celebration of National Graduate-Professional Student Appreciation Week. This event, started in 1993, is dedicated to celebrating graduate students across fields.
April 17, 2024
While Division of Science graduate students are hard at work in their labs, they’re also beginning to think about their plans for life after graduate school. Here to help is the Career Development for the Sciences (CDS) group, which organizes programming, including workshops and many guest speakers, to help students get a sense of the many paths available to them and the skills they need to get there.
April 12, 2024
The PhD program in English was recently featured in an article from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The article discussed the recent changes that the program's faculty have made to the curriculum.
April 8, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Computational Linguistics master's student Brynna Kilcline talks about her love of reading and how it helps her de-stress.
April 5, 2024
Sarah Mayorga of Sociology and Bing Xu of Chemistry are the 2024 co-recipients of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Mentoring Award. In their nominations, Mayorga and Xu both received high praise from their students.
March 18, 2024
Paul Argenti first entered the Brandeis English Department as a PhD student in 1975. After a couple of years, though, his professional career went in a completely different direction, and he ended up as Professor of Corporate Communication at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, where he has been for the last forty-three years. It’s never too late to follow your first love, however, and as of 2021, Argenti, while continuing to teach at Dartmouth, is back at Brandeis completing the English degree.
March 13, 2024
Jinmin Lee earned her PhD in Politics from Brandeis in 2014. Since then, she has written several successful Korean books. Her most recent book, Philo and Sophie Leave the Cave, came out in 2023. The book is aimed at teaching children about famous philosophers and their ideas.
March 7, 2024
When Marcie Brewer, AGS’19 and EdM’20, first decided to apply for Brandeis’s Teacher Leadership program, she was at a crossroads in her career. She saw the program as an opportunity to build leadership skills and see if administration was right for her. Brewer ultimately decided that being a teacher leader was “the best of both worlds,” allowing her to be in the classroom with students and also lead initiatives. In the process, she got more out of her experience at Brandeis than she ever expected to.
March 6, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Psychology PhD student Jillian Franks talks about her research into empathy and the surprising ways in which her love of theater has informed it.
February 16, 2024
Jonathan Anjaria, Associate Professor of Anthropology and GSAS’s Faculty Director of Professional Development, and Moriah King, PhD student in Anthropology, published the essay “Enabling Community-Engaged and Public-Facing PhDs'' in the American Council of Learned Societies report Preparing Publicly Engaged Scholars, which came out on February 1, 2024. In their essay, Anjaria (who is King’s advisor) and King shared their perspectives on the ongoing conversation about how doctoral students can conduct community-engaged projects while enmeshed in an academic world that is not always set up for them.
February 12, 2024
When Genevra Valvo, AGS’17, applied to Brandeis’s Teacher Leadership program, she was looking to address immediate challenges in her role as an ESL teacher at Waltham’s Kennedy Middle School. “We had similar questions and challenges every year,” said Valvo, who was then in her third year in the school, “and I thought I would be interested in talking with mentors and teacher leaders to develop skills to think about how to try new things and new approaches.” At the time, she wanted to see what else was possible–and through her time in the program and after, she learned many new approaches that she continues to apply to a range of challenges today, as she continues to work in the Waltham Public Schools.
February 12, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, History PhD student Joseph Weisberg talks about his research on Jewish American relationships to slavery and how he arrived at his research focus.
February 7, 2024
In the wake of 2020, responding to changes in the world and in academic job markets, Brandeis’s English faculty decided to change the structure and requirements of their PhD program. Among these changes? Allowing dissertations beyond the traditional book-length manuscript that the discipline usually demands. With the new curriculum coming into effect in 2021, the fruits of this change are now appearing in dissertations that take a wide range of forms.
February 1, 2024
On January 12, 2024, GSAS and the Mandel Center for the Humanities co-sponsored a daylong PhD student retreat. Aimed at first- and second-year PhD students in the Divisions of Creative Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, this event followed last year’s successful pilot, which was funded by the Connected PhD grant. Organizers Ulka Anjaria, Director of the Mandel Center for the Humanities, and Becky Prigge, Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for GSAS, planned the retreat as one that would address the crucial skills that PhD students need to succeed in graduate school.
January 23, 2024
For Marie Comuzzo and Anna Valcour, the idea to start a writing group for Brandeis PhD students sprang from their recognition of the importance of community in facilitating writing success. After supporting each other through the writing process, the two third-year PhD students in Musicology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies were inspired to bring the idea to more students.
January 17, 2024
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Anthropology PhD student Medha Asthana talks about their passion for music in all spheres of life.
January 5, 2024
This past December, Liz Mahon finished the fall semester with a bang by traveling to the nation’s capital to try out her three minute thesis on a new audience. Accompanied by Alyssa Canelli, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs for GSAS, and by Ollie the Owl, Liz was ready to compete in the finals for the North American 3MT Competition, hosted by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).
2023
December 15, 2023
In this installment of Geeking Out With..., a series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies master's student Ayla Cordell talks about her passion for her job with GSAS's professional development team.
December 12, 2023
Rachmiel (Rocky) Klein had been planning on a PhD in Mathematics since late high school. Applying to programs right out of undergrad, he said, was “a very humbling experience;” while he was not accepted into any PhD programs on his first attempt, he was accepted into Brandeis’s MA program in Math. Interested in Brandeis because of its strong topology program, its proximity to both nature and Boston, and his desire to move to the East Coast, Rocky decided to enter the MA program and work to enhance his resume before applying to PhD programs again.
December 1, 2023
After graduating from Brandeis with her BA in 2017, Annie Fortnow, Hornstein MA/MBA’23, spent four years working for Jewish organizations. Wanting to continue making change within the Jewish community, she thought getting a graduate degree would help her make a bigger impact. Because she wanted to get an MBA with a Jewish lens, she looked into the Hornstein Program, which she knew about from her days as an undergraduate.
November 22, 2023
In this installment of "Geeking Out With...," a new series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, Molecular and Cell Biology PhD student Anjali Pandey talked about her love of science and communicating her research.
November 22, 2023
Natalie Cornett, PhD’21 in History, will publish her first book with Cornell University Press in the fall of 2024. She spoke to GSAS about the process and how she transformed her dissertation into a book.
October 20, 2023
In this installment of "Geeking Out With...," a new series in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions, we talk to Mathematics PhD student Josh Perlmutter about his love of film.
September 26, 2023
Geeking Out With...is a new feature in which we talk to GSAS students about their passions. Here, we talk to English PhD student Miranda Peery about her love of teaching.
August 22, 2023
Shirah Malka Cohen, PhD’23 in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, reflects on her experiences at Brandeis and the reasons she chose to attend.
July 25, 2023
From June 26 to June 30, GSAS hosted Brandeis’s inaugural summer Teaching Institute in Reading-Writing Pedagogy. While particularly aimed at students who are interested in teaching positions at community colleges and access-oriented institutions, it also prepared students for teaching at other types of colleges and universities.
June 5, 2023
When Tong Lin was applying to graduate school for psychology, advisers at her alma mater of Centre College in Kentucky suggested she consider Brandeis. Why? Because even with its high level of research activity and status as an R1 University, Brandeis’ smaller classes and accessible faculty ensure that its students benefit from an extensive support system.
Tong made the decision to attend Brandeis. Today, she holds a master’s degree in Psychology and has just completed her third year as a doctoral student in the department.
May 24, 2023
Liz Mahon, fourth-year Psychology PhD student, only had a few weeks to prepare for the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools (NAGS) Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT) on April 28. After winning first place in her division (Sciences), the People’s Choice Award, and the highest overall score at the Brandeis Graduate School of Arts and Sciences 3MT Competition on April 4 though, she was ready to rise to the occasion.
April 10, 2023
On April 4, 2023, The Shapiro Theater hummed with nervous energy as the finalists for the second annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition filed inside. These ten graduate students from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) had made it through a preliminary round with twenty-five students, and now got to present their research one more time to a panel of judges and a new audience.
March 15, 2023
When it came to considering graduate school options, Michael Fingerman, MA/MBA’22 was advised to choose between pivoting or propelling his career. “Hornstein,” Michael explains of his former graduate program, “is more of a propelling career move.”
February 23, 2023
Read about Michela Zaffagni's experience finding community and collaboration as a PhD student in the Molecular and Cell Biology program.
February 3, 2023
Doctoral candidate, Tyler Hill, first considered attending Brandeis while researching C. elegans. Read about Tyler’s journey to the Neuroscience program at Brandeis and his experience in the Sengupta lab.
January 24, 2023
Last year, English PhD candidate Emiliano Gutierrez Popoca won the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition at Brandeis and proceeded to compete in the national competition.
January 23, 2023
"At the end of 2020, battered by that year, faculty in Brandeis’s English Department committed to reimagining its PhD program. We couldn’t fix the world, but we could fix the curriculum."
2022
October 26, 2022
Zhao enrolled at Brandeis “because of the uniqueness of the MS in Biotech program,” which gave them the opportunity to study both the research and business sides of the industry.
August 22, 2022
Read about Karina Herlambang's journey, and how another Brandeis alumnus helped make Brandeis Karina's top choice for grad school.
August 19, 2022
Read about Rose Morris-Wright's journey, from being a high school educator to earning her PhD in Mathematics.
June 29, 2022
Read about Corey Beckford's exciting journey to the field of philosophy and how Brandeis supported his passion for learning.
May 12, 2022
Emiliano Gutierrez Popoca, a PhD candidate in English, wins the regional Three Minute Thesis competition hosted by the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.
April 12, 2022
The finals for Brandeis University’s first ever Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition were held on the evening of April 7, 2022.
April 11, 2022
Read about José Molina, GSAS MS’17, and his journey from being a latecomer in computational linguistics to working at Google.
April 6, 2022
On Thursday, April 7, twelve GSAS students will compete in the final round of Brandeis University’s first ever Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. 3MT is a speaking competition designed to showcase graduate student research in three-minute talks to a general audience.
January 25, 2022
Anish Ghosh, PhD’06, received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Mathematical Sciences in November. We spoke with him about the award, his research, and his advice for students.
2021
November 19, 2021
Eric J. Harvey MA’11, PhD’20 only became interested in studying the Hebrew Bible and ancient Near East after finishing his undergraduate studies.
August 3, 2021
Natalie Cornett is advancing her academic and career goals with a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship hosted at McGill University.
July 14, 2021
Houman Oliaei’s interest in anthropology did not start in the classroom but in a Zoroastrian fire temple in Tehran.
June 24, 2021
Julia Bandini discusses her interest in health, aging, death, and bereavement that culminated in her dissertation project: an ethnographic study focusing on the the experience of dying patients and their family members at the hospital.
April 27, 2021
With the rapid growth of the Biotechnology sector, Billy Chau MS’20 is excited to explore the myriad possibilities available in this dynamic industry.
March 19, 2021
For Zoila Coc-Chang, her art has always felt like an extension of herself, allowing her to experience a versatility that she has not found anywhere else.
March 12, 2021
When Yassel Hernandez was offered an opportunity through the DEIS program, her decision to attend Brandeis became a no-brainer.