Aaron Lener ’27 still remembers the exact moment linguistics stopped being a subject he was curious about and became the work of his life.

As a high school senior sitting in on a historical linguistics class by , associate professor of linguistics in the , Lener heard about the Bantoid languages of West Africa.

By the time classes started that fall, he had a research proposal in hand and a seat on Green’s research team. Three years later, that early spark has grown into a body of work substantial enough to earn him a , one of the most competitive graduate fellowships in the country.

The Beinecke Scholarship provides substantial funding for the graduate education of young people of exceptional promise. It is open to junior-year college students and was created to enable them to be courageous in selecting research or creative-focused courses of graduate study in the arts, humanities or social sciences. Lener was one of 16 Beinecke Scholars selected from a national pool of nominated students in 2026.

Lener’s résumé is wide-ranging. He is a double major in linguistic studies and international relations, a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program and is a 2026-27 Remembrance Scholar. He has engaged in fieldwork on endangered Nigerian languages, a policy internship in Brussels, Belgium, and a courtroom-observation stint in New York’s court system. During a study abroad semester in Strasbourg, France, he also held a position inside the Council of Europe’s Directorate General of Social Rights, where he researched case law affecting more than 700 million people.

A Family Connection

All of Lener’s work around the power of language traces back to his home. Lener grew up in rural Homer, New York, 35 minutes from the Onondaga Nation, with a great-grandmother born to Mohawk Nation parents.

Hearing family stories about language repression left him, in his words, with “an acute understanding of the dangers of language loss,” an awareness that now animates his research on Jhar and Gwak, two severely understudied Jarawan languages spoken in Nigeria.

As the only syntactician on Green’s team, Lener has spent three years building an analysis of how these languages express negation, working from recordings gathered through WhatsApp calls with native speakers thousands of miles away.

It is at times frustrating work—Lener describes trying to parse grammatical structure over calls with motorcycles in the background—but it has already produced a first-author paper under review at Studies in African Linguistics and presentations at conferences from Cornell to the University of Notre Dame to the Annual Conference on African Linguistics in Buffalo.

Scholarship Based on Experience

Much of Lener’s distinctive scholarship draws on experience outside a linguistics department. His Russian minor, initially a personal interest, turned out to connect directly to his fieldwork.

Much of the foundational theory behind modern syntax emerged from the Russian Formalist movement. Lener has researched that history alongside his African-language work, a link made more urgent, he says, by Russia’s growing military presence in West African nations like Burkina Faso and Niger, not far from where his Jhar and Gwak language consultants live.

A summer with Education International in Brussels had him producing a policy toolkit on mother-tongue education for teachers’ federations across Africa. His work in Strasbourg, reviewing European Social Charter compliance and researching labor protections for platform workers, has little to do with Jarawan syntax on its surface. But Lener sees it as one more facet of the same conviction: that language, whether encoded in grammar or in law, is fundamentally about how people are seen and protected.

After noticing members of his own rural community were struggling to connect with the Spanish-speaking migrant workers who had recently moved there, Lener started a series of community Spanish classes in Homer. He later taught English to refugees from Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan through a Syracuse resettlement program. Showing people that unfamiliar languages and cultures “are not scary” is one of the most direct ways to combat the fear that comes from a lack of exposure.

Jolynn Parker, director of Syracuse’s , says Lener has “extraordinary energy, boundless curiosity and a keen analytical mind.”

“Aaron is poised to be a leader in the field of linguistics and to contribute meaningfully to the description and preservation of threatened languages,” she says.

As for the future, Lener is certain he will be using language to make a difference in the world.

“I want to look in the mirror and tell myself, with confidence, that I am doing something good for others,” he says.��

Syracuse Stage has announced current artistic director Robert Hupp’s retirement after a decade of leading the region’s premier professional theatre. He will step down at the completion of the 2026-27 season and will remain in Central New York with his wife, Clea, after programming the 2027-28 season. Over the coming months, Syracuse Stage and Management Consultants for the Arts (MCA) will conduct a national search for the next artistic director.

“Bob is not only a remarkable theatremaker, but a tireless champion of the arts with the kind of leadership and wisdom that only comes from having worked with the best and the brightest in his field, and he leaves Syracuse Stage with a strong artistic foundation that will carry us into our next chapter,” says Syracuse Stage Board of Trustees Chair Dick Driscoll. “On behalf of the entire board, I extend eternal gratitude for everything Bob has helped us accomplish as we begin our search for a new artistic director.”

Appointed in 2016 after tenures at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and the Jean Cocteau Repertory in New York City, Hupp directed many acclaimed productions at Syracuse Stage, including “The Three Musketeers,” “Next to Normal,” “Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express” and “Our Town.” He oversaw artistic programming leading to multiple years of operating surpluses, a financial foundation which helped the company maintain full employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hupp’s production of “Amadeus” (March 2020) was an early streaming success that reached audiences in 49 states and was lauded by the late Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout as a standout virtual offering directed with “exhilarating clarity.”

“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve this past decade as Syracuse Stage’s artistic director,” says Hupp. “I’m proud of the diverse theatrical stories our resident and guest artists have created, and of the new work, community engagement and educational programming that define Syracuse Stage for Central New York.�� I’m also grateful for the tremendous support the community and Syracuse University have afforded our theatre. I look forward in the coming season to supporting our fantastic staff as they work with our dedicated board of trustees to chart the exciting future of Syracuse Stage.”

Under Hupp’s leadership, and in collaboration with the theatre’s resident staff, Syracuse Stage increased its reputation as a leading regional theatre. The company produced two world premieres which later transferred to Broadway (“Thoughts of a Colored Man” and “How to Dance in Ohio”); strengthened its relationship with other regional theatres and producers through co- and enhanced-productions (“The Hello Girls,” “Relentless” and the upcoming world premiere of “Dust and Shadow: The Unraveling of Sherlock Holmes”); and developed commissioned work from nationally recognized artists and playwrights, all while expanding its community engagement and educational programming serving local patrons, students and families.

As part of the company’s 50th anniversary season, Hupp facilitated the largest single donation in Syracuse Stage history, establishing the Julie Lutz New Play Development Fund to be used for the creation of new work with a particular focus on sharing stories from underrepresented voices. The fund helped produce the world premiere production of Rogelio Martinez ‘s “The National Pastime” and will support the upcoming world premiere of Resident Playwright Kyle Bass’ “The Black Nationals” in 2027.

“Bob’s steadfast leadership, artistic vision and dedication to the transformative power of theatre have shaped Syracuse Stage and the cultural life of our region for the past decade,” says Carly DiFulvio Allen, managing director. “His impact extends far beyond the productions on our stage, leaving an enduring artistic legacy and building tremendous momentum for the future. I am profoundly grateful for his partnership and guidance during my first year on staff, and I am honored to work together as we gear up for another season of unparalleled storytelling for the Central New York community.”

Hupp was instrumental in fostering work like award-winning artist Ty Defoe’s “Our Words Are Seeds” which continued the company’s commitment to uplifting Native performers and Indigenous storytelling and led to the Dramatist Guild Foundation recognizing Syracuse Stage as the 2025 recipient of the prestigious Lucille Lortel Foundation Indigenous Theatermaker Award. The theatre is located on the ancestral and unceded lands of the Onondaga Nation, the “Keepers of the Fire” of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

“Being a decent artistic director means knowing when to step up and when to step back. It also means knowing when to step aside,” Hupp says. It’s been a remarkable 10 years, and I am confident Stage is well positioned for even better things to come in the next 10 years.”

For his final show as artistic director, Hupp will direct “Les Misérables,” a personal favorite, as the company’s annual co-production with the Syracuse University Department of Drama.

The recently announced the of as chair of the Department of Finance. Weinbaum, who is professor of finance and Harris Fellow at Whitman, has served as department chair since 2023 and will continue in the role for an additional term.

Under Weinbaum’s leadership, the finance department has seen significant growth and momentum. During his tenure, the department launched 12 new courses, including a financial literacy course available to students across the University. Three new faculty members have joined the department, the master of science in finance and master of science in real estate programs have been revised and strengthened and the department’s doctoral program has grown to seven students in residence.

“David’s leadership of the finance department has been transformative,” says Whitman Interim Dean Alex McKelvie. “The growth and innovation we have seen in our faculty, our educational programming and our Ph.D. program reflect his vision and his commitment to excellence. He has done an outstanding job in this role and in collaborating with the faculty. We are fortunate to have David continue as department chair.”

Weinbaum’s research focuses on empirical asset pricing and derivatives, with work published in leading academic journals in finance, economics and accounting. His research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and U.S. News and World Report. He teaches investments at the undergraduate level and has taught managerial finance and valuation in the online MBA program. He also teaches a finance course at the Ph.D. level.

Before joining Whitman, Weinbaum was a member of the faculty at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, where he received the Globe Award for excellence in teaching. He previously worked as a swap trader at BNP Paribas and earned his Ph.D. at New York University’s Stern School of Business. In 2016, he received the Whitman School faculty teaching award.

A stereotype in the global education sector is that��it’s��especially difficult for students in STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—to study abroad. Syracuse Abroad combats this thinking through special partnerships��allowing��STEM students��to��explore their fields in a range of countries, with access to��cutting-edge��laboratories and transformative experiential learning activities.

The University’s international STEM opportunities range from a special program for aerospace, bio, civil, computer, electrical, environmental and mechanical����to internships at the Istituto di��Neuroscienze��of Italy’s National Research Council through the��.

Coding With Scottish Schoolchildren

In February, computer engineering major Hassatou Bah ’28 traveled with a delegation from the London Center to visit Lockerbie, Scotland, the site of the Pan Am Flight 103 Air Disaster in 1988. With support from the��Kim and Michael Venutolo ’77 Fund for Experiential Learning, students studying abroad in London are invited to��participate��in a special Remembrance Exchange weekend each semester.

Remembrance resonates with Bah because of her family’s experience and sacrifice. “My family crossed��an��ocean to give me opportunities they never had. The students who were lost were crossing an ocean for��an education. Like me, they held hopes for what Syracuse could help them become,” she says.

While in Scotland, Bah “paid it forward” with younger students. Lockerbie Academy hosted more than 100 P7 pupils (the Scottish equivalent of sixth graders) for a special transition day designed to give them a sense of what studying in secondary school would be like. Syracuse London students were asked to lead workshops for the transitioning pupils, with a special request for a session about computer coding.

During an hour-long workshop (which they delivered four times in a row for��different groups), Bah and a classmate highlighted women who have contributed to the development of computers, such as Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson. They taught the basics of HTML and guided pupils in a hands-on activity to develop their own code to display and graphically transform their names on a website.

“As an engineer,��I’m��drawn to��building. But what Syracuse and Lockerbie have built together is far greater than any system: it is a bridge of memory, compassion and human resilience,”��Bah says.

Understanding Holistic Healthcare

In summer 2024,��teaching��professor Lisa Olson-Gugerty from the Maxwell School’s public health department��travelled to the UK for a special section of “Understanding Health Systems: Macro and Micro Perspectives” (PHP 306), which examined differences between the U.S., UK and Europe in how public health is managed, how health science is funded and how healthcare is delivered.

Syracuse Abroad Global Ambassador Tommy��DaSilva ’26, a student in the course,��was blown away by��the UK’s centralized health system, and credits Olson-Gugerty for providing��“more global insight that I can take with me into a future of federal policymaking.”

That summer, DaSilva also took the “Green Britain: Science, Devolution and Climate Controversies in the UK” traveling class, through which he had the opportunity to visit the Welsh Parliament (Senedd). The Senedd has been a leading political body for investment in climate justice and science-led environmental management, as well as inclusive healthcare. The course’s field studies in Cornwall highlighted the interactions between marine conservation projects like the UK’s����and��planetary health.

After a summer abroad,��DaSilva��returned to campus as a 2024-26��Lender Student Fellow, which��provided��the opportunity to see how lessons from their experiences abroad could improve the social determinants of health for vulnerable groups, especially in relation to housing.

Engineering Sustainable Communities��

In��spring 2019, Anna Feldman ’21 spent a semester in Florence with Syracuse��Abroad’s��Engineering program. A year later, she was named a Udall Scholar for her dedication to pursuing environmental work.

Feldman’s community engagement included teaching young��teenagers about water chemistry in Onondaga Lake, sharing her love for physics with local Syracuse pupils and helping��kids at the Museum of Natural History��learn to work with microscopes. She also contributed to a project on micropollutants in Kampala, Uganda, co-authoring a paper published in��.��Today,��she��works on stormwater resiliency and green infrastructure projects as a water resources engineer in New York City.

“I build hydrologic and hydraulic models to visualize the impacts of extreme storms on our natural and built environment,”��says Feldman. She credits much of her interest in water resources��to��, professor of practice in civil and environmental engineering and an expert in urban stormwater management and smart sensing “whose notes on closed pipe flow I still use on the daily,” Feldman says.

Allyson Greenberg ’22, another alumna of the Syracuse Florence

Engineering program, was part of the spring 2020 class whose time in Italy was cut short by COVID-19. Despite her hasty departure, Greenberg has some great memories from her time abroad, including time spent in the Arctic Circle while on a traveling seminar about sustainability in Northern Europe. She went on to graduate with a BS in environmental engineering and an��.

After graduating, Greenberg began working as a sustainable energy consultant. The role gave her insight into the Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program, measuring and mitigating agricultural emissions, and the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings initiative, among others. The wide range of projects that��she’d��been exposed to allowed her to��focus��her interests, and this year she began a new job managing a program reducing residential greenhouse gases in Maryland.

Story by Becca Farnum

A recent major investment in Syracuse University research infrastructure has resulted in the installation of a field emission scanning electron microscope in the University’s (MRC) facility. The instrument has introduced dramatic new imaging capabilities to researchers at the University and at partner institutions in the region.

The new instrument demonstrates the University’s commitment to supporting and enabling cutting-edge research in important fields like biomedical engineering, materials science and quantum computing, says , director of research operations in the .

The Zeiss will serve researchers across disciplines and career stages, from advanced undergraduates and graduate students to postdoctoral scholars and faculty. The Zeiss also supports the campus research group and Central New York’s rapidly expanding semiconductor and quantum technology ecosystem. The instrument was funded by a $335,000 investment by the Office of Research, the and individual faculty contributors.

On Campus and Beyond

The microscope is part of the Office of Research’s efforts to build shared, core facilities available to users across the University and the greater Syracuse region, says , vice president for research. “Strong core facilities are a force multiplier for our outstanding faculty and student researchers, providing access to state-of-the-art scientific instruments without the burden of having to purchase and maintain them individually.”

“For researchers who once drove an hour to use a scanning electron microscope, that capability is now right here, benefiting researchers on our campus, in our community and throughout the region,” Steinbacher says. It also serves as a recruiting tool because it demonstrates to prospective graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and faculty that state-of-the-art instrumentation is readily accessible at Syracuse, he says.

A Billionth of a Meter

Its resolution of 1.6 nanometers means the Zeiss can zoom down to the nanoscale, revealing details as small as a billionth of a meter, sharp enough to capture images of computer chip components, nanoparticles, bacteria and living cells, Steinbacher says.

It captures the shape and texture of an object’s surface in detailed, three-dimensional images versus thin cross-sections of materials. Because its electron beam works at lower energy levels, the microscope also offers highly detailed viewing of soft or non-metallic materials that typically are difficult or impossible to examine with older equipment, Steinbacher says.

Conventional electron microscopes require samples to be stripped of all moisture and placed under high vacuum, but some materials fall apart or change when dried out. Zeiss permits variable pressure imaging, so air pressure inside the imaging chamber can be adjusted to view samples that aren’t bone-dry. That lets researchers examine hydrogels, drug-delivery particles and biological samples in a more natural state. That capacity did not previously exist at Syracuse University or other area institutions, according to Steinbacher.

Who Will Use It

Biomedical and chemical engineering researchers can use the microscope to examine polymer film morphology. Environmental scientists can image rocks and fossils. Others will use it for battery technology research and catalyst design. The group and scientists in electrical engineering, computer science and physics can conduct device characterization—testing device effectiveness and checking for flaws.

, technical director of the , says the Zeiss enables exciting new levels of research. “It lets researchers image the surface appearance of synthetic materials, such as polymers or other engineered materials, and biological samples, such as cells, tissues and organisms, at higher resolution and better definition compared to existing instruments in the area.”

The instrument “is a critical addition to Syracuse’s growing suite of fabrication and characterization tools for next-generation quantum technologies,” says , assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. “We’ll use it to image our superconducting devices at the nanometer scale, hunting down the surface defects and contaminants that limit their performance.”

, assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, says the Zeiss will assist in prescreening superconducting qubit devices—the tiny, ultra-cold circuits that are the building blocks of quantum computers—from device batches fabricated elsewhere. “That will help us focus on the most promising devices��and let students make the connection between the abstract shapes they draw on computer screens and��the actual footprints of the tiny electrical circuits their designs imprint��on the chips.”

For more information about of University instruments and facilities, visit the Core Facilities webpage.

Shivam Kumar, a first-year Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Assistant Professor research group, recently��identified��a��security vulnerability in the Linux kernel,��a key��component��of countless computing systems and the largest open-source project in existence.

For many people, the Linux kernel operates invisibly in the background. But its reach is enormous: servers, supercomputers, Android devices, embedded systems and cloud infrastructure all run some variant of it. “From the servers to the cloud, Linux is the silent engine powering virtually the whole internet,” says Hoque.

Working to Reduce Security Vulnerabilities

Kumar is a member of the (SecuritY��of Networked��systEms), led by Hoque. The SYNE Lab works to reduce security vulnerabilities in computer software, developing tools that can automatically detect and repair potential vulnerabilities.

Kumar’s research focuses on a specific component of the Linux kernel: Non-Volatile Memory Express over TCP (NVMe/TCP), a communication protocol that enables data transfer between computing servers and remote storage systems over standard Ethernet networks. Widely adopted in modern data centers, the technology helps boost application performance, particularly in artificial intelligence training workloads and shared storage environments.

“In a desktop or laptop, the disk where data is stored is physically inside the machine,” Kumar says. “In contrast, computing servers often rely on storage located elsewhere—for example, in a remote storage server that houses a large pool of high-performance NVMe solid-state drives. NVMe/TCP is one of the protocols that allows computing servers to access these remote storage pools over a network while delivering performance that is close to having the drives locally attached.”

The SYNE Lab team is working on building an��automated tool that will systematically find vulnerabilities in operating systems. In their preliminary testing, Kumar found a vulnerability that��bad actors could easily exploit.��By sending malicious input from a client machine, an attacker could��crash��a remote storage server, posing��a serious threat to data centers and the infrastructure they support.��Kumar discovered a��missing input validation: the kernel code was not properly checking��incoming data before processing it.

After discovering the vulnerability, Kumar and Hoque contacted the Linux developer team and spent several weeks working back and forth to reproduce the issue and create a fix. The SYNE Lab developed both a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the vulnerability and the patch itself.

Kumar originally came to Syracuse University as a master’s student, but after taking one of Hoque’s courses, his interest in operating systems grew. In 2025, he was accepted into the computer science Ph.D. program and is now a teaching assistant for CSE 486: Design of Operating Systems—the same topic that sparked his interest in pursuing his Ph.D.

“A student from ECS contributing to the security of the Linux kernel is a landmark achievement for the department,”��says Hoque. Kumar’s��patch has now been merged into the main Linux kernel��codebase,��where it will be pushed to all developers building on the platform going forward.