Did you know that the invention of the microwave was the result of a piece of chocolate melting in a scientist’s pocket during an experiment with radar? Did you know that the existence of black holes can be proven through mathematics?

These are the stories that sparked Clinical Assistant Professor of Mathematics Analee Miranda’s (PhD) passion for math as an undergraduate. She recalled transferring to UC Riverside to be closer to her family and being completely enthralled when a teaching assistant explained the correlation between black holes and math.

From there, she declared a major in mathematics with a specialization in quantum mechanics, a course of study she noted raised a few eyebrows. “People always assume you’re really smart if you’re a math major,” she laughed.

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But there’s no doubt that Miranda is, in fact, “really smart.” She even has a patented invention. Working in an Air Force research lab, Miranda and an engineering colleague determined that radar can be used to detect biometric information, helping differentiate and identify humans. The now-patented process, which passes radar waves over a person standing on a metal block, uses the information provided by the phase of the radar wave (the distance between wave peaks) to discern information such as torso and neck height.

“My colleague and I are exactly the same height, but with very different proportions,” Miranda explained, “and you could clearly tell from the radar which one of us was which, because we could see from the wave scattering that her legs and neck were longer.”

Where mathematics, radar, and students converge

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Since entering academia at Pace, Miranda has aimed to instill not only the importance but also the excitement of applied mathematics in her students. She noted that math is not often believed to be a “hands-on” discipline—but she knows differently. Students in her classes often engage with radar equipment and educational electrical circuits, putting their coursework into practice in real-life situations.

Miranda even involves students in a self-funded research project each summer, typically surrounding radar. Unfortunately, however, parts and equipment that were once inexpensive now cost hundreds of dollars each. Miranda’s father, who is an electrician by trade and electrical engineering enthusiast, has helped her find discounted parts. And this summer, Miranda reached out to Mini Circuits, a company that manufactures radio frequency and microwave components. When she mentioned that she was hoping to use the parts for educational purposes, Mini Circuits provided them for free.

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The project, which included two Pace students and three high school students, is based on an MIT-created project, in which students construct a small radar system that can sense range, Doppler, and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which is a form of radar that can create two- or three-dimensional reconstructions of images.

Put simply, Miranda and the students used the parts from Mini Circuits to test whether radar waves could identify the shape of different objects, a notion the group started testing using simple objects such as water bottles. The goal of the project is to pass radar waves through human body parts, a technology currently being explored by companies such as Google, to create devices that can detect the movement of a user’s hand without the user needing to touch the device.

“We are creating a sensing mechanism and using it to see through people’s bodies,” said Jayda-Lee Baez ’26, Mathematics, noting that the project combines trigonometric functions and calculus concepts, such as transformations, to study the physics of electricity. “I compare our radar to something like a human brain and eyes, because they behave in similar ways in that they can detect and analyze everything we see.”

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Baez and Kevin Dooley ’25, Business Economics, the other Pace student working on the project, both knew the opportunity to work on the radar project with Miranda was one they could not pass up.

“I thought to myself, ‘I don’t know anyone that’s built a radar before,’” said Dooley. “These are the things that make college so great. I knew I had to do it as a learning experience.”

While using different parts than suggested in the MIT model proved challenging, Miranda and the students were determined to see their project through to completion. Miranda, drawing on her experience and pedigree in the field, suggested shifting to radar designs that hobbyists often use. As a result, the students were able to see their radar come to life. Miranda plans to write up and publish this new design in the spring.

As evidenced by her involvement of students in her research, Miranda is truly passionate about immersing students in meaningful learning experiences, in and out of the classroom. Her background allows her to provide students with a unique perspective of how math is used in the real world, to deliver insight on careers in mathematics, and to connect students to competitive opportunities in the field.

Above all, Miranda hopes to convey to her students that math isn’t just calculus functions on a page. It’s—quite literally—all around us. And she believes experiencing and understanding math in the real world is not only important but can, in fact, even be fun.

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Exhibit Features Mural Made in Collaboration with Pace Students

New York, NY – Pace University Art Gallery is pleased to present Mother Octopus, a solo exhibition by painter Mie Yim. The exhibit opens with a reception on Tuesday, November 14 from 5:00 p.m.–7:00 p.m.

Via anthropomorphic abstraction, Yim says she is looking “under the hood” of the characters she depicts in her new paintings. In earlier work, she adroitly scrutinized the cuteness often associated with her female Asian identity using charming subjects, pastel colors, and soft focus. In contrast, Yim’s recent pieces have more amorphous figures, darker undercurrents, and a vibrating mass of marks. Yim says, “My approach to painting is highly intuitive and, over time, I have developed a visual language that combines contradictory elements: the sweet and the sour, the playful and the emotionally dark.” By breaking apart her cute characters with abstraction, Yim invites the viewer to deeply feel her subjects’ dynamic inner states rather than to gloss over their sweet facades.

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In addition to the artist’s oil paintings and pastel drawings, the exhibit will feature a new mural Yim created in collaboration with students enrolled in Pace’s Introduction to Museum and Curatorial Studies course taught by Sarah Cunningham, the gallery director. The mural, from which the exhibit gets its name, references deep sea cephalopods that protectively brood over their clutch of eggs for up to 53 months—longer than any other known species—to ensure their offspring’s resiliency in a challenging environment. Yim draws inspiration for her lengthy painting practice and also for her work as a mentor to younger artists from the underwater creatures’ extended gestation. Cunningham, who also curated the show, says, “Working with an artist like Mie Yim is an incredible hands-on learning opportunity for our students. We are so grateful for Mie’s generosity, care, and enthusiasm for sharing her creative process.”

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This exhibit, which remains on view through Saturday, January 20, 2024, is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The artist will also give a talk about her work on Tuesday, November 28 at 2:15 p.m. The gallery is located in Lower Manhattan at 41 Park Row. All of the gallery’s exhibits and events are free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday from 12:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m. and by appointment. Please check gallery Instagram for university holiday closures.

About the Artist

Mie Yim (b. 1963, S. Korea) is a New York City based painter. Solo exhibitions include Villa Magdalena, San Sebastian, Spain, Olympia Gallery, New York, NY, the Durst foundation in New York, NY, Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Lehmann Maupin, NY, Michael Steinberg, NY, Gallery in Arco, Turin, Italy. She had a solo exhibition at Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro, Vermont in 2022. Numerous group exhibitions include Canada Gallery, the Drawing Center, Feature, Ise Cultural Foundation, Mitchell Algus Gallery, BRIC, Mark Borghi Gallery, all in New York. Other places such as Johnson County Community College, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Marcia Wood Gallery, Atlanta, The Arts Center at Western Conn. University. She represented a solo booth at NADA 2021 with Olympia and 3-person presentation at Untitled 2021 with Monica King Projects. She is a recipient of Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2020, The Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Grant 2018, The New York Foundation of the Arts Painting Fellowship in 2021 and 2015 and Artist in the Market Place, Bronx Museum. She has a BFA in Painting from Philadelphia College of Art as well as a year abroad at Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy. She will have solo exhibition at Olympia Gallery, Simone Subal Gallery in New York, Inna Art Space in Hangzhou, China in 2023.

About the Pace University Art Gallery

Founded with the conviction that art is integral to society, the Pace University Art Gallery is a creative laboratory and exhibition space that supports innovation and exploration for both artists and viewers. Open to students, staff, and faculty from across the Pace campuses and, equally, to the Lower Manhattan community and visitors from around the world, the Art Gallery encourages personal investigation and critical dialogue via thought-provoking contemporary art exhibits and public programming. Enhancing the Art Department's Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Fine Arts programs, the Art Gallery offers students real-world opportunities to exhibit their own art and to work directly with professional artists to install and promote exhibitions. All exhibits and events are free and open to the public.

About Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

Pace University’s liberal arts college, Dyson College, offers more than 50 programs, spanning the arts and humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and pre-professional programs (including pre-medicine, pre-veterinary, and pre-law), as well as many courses that fulfill core curriculum requirements. The College offers access to numerous opportunities for internships, cooperative education and other hands-on learning experiences that complement in-class learning in preparing graduates for career and graduate/professional education choices.

About Pace University

Since 1906, Pace University has been transforming the lives of its diverse students—academically, professionally, and socioeconomically. With campuses in New York City and Westchester County, Pace offers bachelor, master, and doctoral degree programs to 13,600 students in its College of Health Professions, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, Elisabeth Haub School of Law, Lubin School of Business, Sands College of Performing Arts, School of Education, and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems.

This past summer 2023, Clinical Assistant Professor of Art Derek Stroup, MFA, and Katie Romanyshyn ‘25, Film and Screen Studies, engaged in a faculty-student collaboration that expanded both of their creative boundaries and artistic possibilities in the most unexpected of ways.

Their work together was made possible by the Amelia A. Gould Undergraduate Research Assistantship, offered through the Provost Office’s Center for Undergraduate Research Experiences Summer Undergraduate Research (CURE) program. This exciting new funding opportunity at Pace supports projects in the creative arts, pairing faculty who are working professionals in their fields with an undergraduate student.

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Stroup, an artist who also coordinates a partnership Pace has with the International Center for Photography, where students take innovative, professional studio courses that complement the curriculum offered on the New York City campus, joined forces with Romanyshyn, a student in his digital photography class. Together, they created a series of large-scale photographic screen prints on canvas, a continuation of Stroup’s Radiant Fields series.

The faculty-student team began their work together with a necessary two-person endeavor, the crucial first step of stretching the canvas in Stroup’s studio in Brooklyn. The intricate process that followed included coating large pieces of canvas with a light sensitive photo emulsion, covering them, once dry, with a large negative, and then exposing them to light. After a final water rinse, the resulting images were something between a painting, screen-printed textile, and photography.

Said Romanyshyn, “One of the main things I learned was how to work for and with a fellow artist since artwork has always been a solitary endeavor for me. Professor Stroup has so much knowledge he’s willing to share and made me feel comfortable and excited to try new things.”

Over the next couple of weeks, active steps interchanged with the art of waiting, until the piece was complete, requiring the kind of discipline, skill, and patience artists know well.

To elevate the mundane

Unlike the vast, monumental spaces captured by American landscape photographer Ansel Adams, Stroup’s images in his Radiant Fields series are that of weedy environments—that is, places where nature runs wild, such as overgrown fields and cracked sidewalks—and in which plants such as dandelions inherently recognize how to use the sun’s rays to thrive. With the format of canvas print, as opposed to something digital, Stroup is thus making solar radiation tangible, tactile, and physical with his art.

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In showcasing these “radiation landscapes,” Stroup is also highlighting an aspect of nature that is not traditionally regarded as existing for humanity’s benefit, but rather pursuing life in its own inconspicuous way, while also being part of an ecosystem that adapts and changes with a beautiful complexity that is often beyond human awareness.

And it is this “ordinariness” that really interests Stroup.

He said, “I am much more in this category of artists who try to work in the ordinary world and, much more, the kind who is trying to reawaken myself, and to re-sensitize myself, and hopefully viewers, to the possibilities of regular things.”

Experiential learning

Back on campus in the Art department, Romanyshyn also worked with Stroup to rebuild his professional website, involving the very detailed task of documenting his prolific works, which go beyond photography and include posters, books, and other publications. Romanyshyn mastered WordPress—the industry standard for web content management—in the process.

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As a faculty mentor, Stroup also understands the importance of getting out of the studio and into the world, echoing the theme of experiential learning at Dyson that goes beyond the classroom. With this in mind, they embarked on an early morning on-location photo session at Jacob Riis Beach.

Earlier, Romanyshyn had read the unpublished manuscript for a new book of fiction by Stroup, and she encouraged him to finish it. Together, they decided to create a series of photographs for the text. Romanyshyn found a model, researched visual ideas for the photographs, and worked on all aspects of this on-location production at Jacob Riis.

On the importance of funding artists

For too long, and as exemplified in its extreme form by the phrase “starving artists,” artists have often sacrificed material well-being to bring their creative talents to the world.

Stroup, however, stresses the importance of not accepting this as the norm, and contends that artwork qualifies as real work. He notes that he could not have completed his recent projects if it were not for Romanyshyn and the financial support of the Amelia A. Gould Foundation, which provided a generous stipend for Romanyshyn over the course of the summer.

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He said, “I hadn't done anything like this before in my career, and it was a really, really positive experience for everybody. And I could not have done that without the grant.”

An exhibition of equity

The mission of the assistantship, which is to both provide faculty with research support while enhancing opportunities for student-faculty collaboration in the creative arts, had also been wonderfully fulfilled in the case of Stroup and Romanyshyn.

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Stroup is grateful to Romanyshyn for making his studio practice more visible to the world and in a better way, and Romanyshyn, a Film and Screen Studies major whose interest lies in digital storytelling, received professional training in various documentary practices while also working in an actual artist studio.

In addition to the artistic skills she developed as part of this work, Romanyshyn, who stepped out of her comfort zone with a move from a small New Jersey town to New York City to attend Pace, learned something less tangible but equally important: to put herself out there and to not fear rejection, which she contends resulted in her personal growth.

This did not go unnoticed by Stroup.

He commended her for her drive and bravery when she first asked him to be mentored as part of this assistantship, which in turn motivated his desire to make this collaboration come to fruition. And so, both faculty member and student worked to complete the application process together, and the rest is artistic history.

Said Romanyshyn, “This whole experience was very, very meaningful for me. Professor Stroup’s belief in me as a student and artist is probably the most meaningful part of it and his admiration for my commitment and work ethic was the cherry on top.”

Stroup’s prints on canvas completed with Romanyshyn will be featured in his solo exhibition, “Radiant Fields” at KPNZ gallery in Walton, New York in 2024.

All photos accompanying this article by Katie Romanyshyn.

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When asked about his Haub Law experience so far, the first words Daniel Reyes mentions are "support system." Daniel grew up with a close-knit family who looked to one another for support, so seeking out the same environment for his educational pursuits was paramount. “I am a first-generation college graduate and law student; my parents always preached the importance of education to my brother and me and the importance of having people you can depend on. My brother recently became the first engineer in the family, and I am now working towards becoming the first lawyer in the family. Haub Law showed immense faith in my potential and had a very family-oriented feel to its campus.”

For Daniel, his involvement with the Latin American Law Students Association (LALSA) has been where he found his support system. “The members of LALSA have been mentors for me and have truly guided me throughout my first two years at Haub Law. I am truly grateful for each and every one of them and it was so rewarding to serve as a mentor for the incoming 1L class in return.” Daniel is also a member of the First Generation Law Students Society, which he notes has connected him with so many others who share a similar background and upbringing as him.

As a 2L, Daniel participated in Haub Law’s competitive Federal Judicial Honors Program (FJHP), where he worked in the federal courts for the Southern District of New York for twelve hours a week. “The experience was both challenging and rewarding. Having the opportunity to have your writing and research skills put to the test at a judge’s standard is intimidating, but a very valuable learning experience. The practical and hands on knowledge I gained is amazing.”

While law school wasn’t always at the forefront of Daniel’s mind, today, he can’t imagine another educational pursuit. “For most of my life, I wanted to become a police officer. However, I began studying accounting during undergrad and discovered a new passion. After graduating from Rutgers in 2020, I decided that going to law school would be the best way to merge my two interests in criminal justice and accounting. I try to keep an open mind and think outside of the box. Attending Haub Law has solidified for me that I made the right choice.”

Although Daniel still has another year left of law school, he hopes to work in private practice one day. “Right now, I am interested in corporate, banking, securities, and tax law. However, each new experience I have at Haub Law makes me realize how vast the profession of law is and that there truly is no limit to what you can do with your degree.”

When Daniel isn’t studying, he enjoys playing chess, soccer, and snowboarding. He is also a huge New York Jets fan. His advice for a successful law school experience: “The first step to success is believing in yourself! Once you truly have faith in your capabilities, the only person that can stop you is YOU.”