Doin Biology Professor Tony Wilson and International Research Team
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Doing the Math Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Assistant Professor Laurie Rubel Civic Data Design Lab. The team guides high school students A professor keeps her passion for finding new received funding from the National in investigating social ways to teach students about social justice at Science Foundation. themes. Their research the center of her work. “They push the envelope in is used to create digital LAURIE RUBEL, an associate professor in secondary terms of new kinds of learning maps, like this one education, says she became a teacher partly because opportunities for youth and their designed by Sarah Pot-bellied seahorse of a strong need to contribute to society. Her work teachers,” says Rubel, who is Williams, MIT’s Civic (Hippocampus is her social activism, evident in City Digits, a project careful to note that participants Data Design Lab and abdominalis) that she has spearheaded to design technology- are encouraged to notice patterns the City Digits team. infused mathematics curricula that investigates rather than to pass judgment. social justice themes in a local, urban context. “We’re trying to give them ways to it is the result of a separate evolutionary It started with a curriculum she and her team think about the financial institutions in experiment lasting more than 50 million years. designed in 2013 called Local Lotto, in which high our city and how they are distributed.” “We were interested in understanding just how school students discuss games of chance, determine In the fall 2015 semester, Rubel was a seahorse pregnancy takes place,” says Wilson, the probability of winning, and then record CUNY Distinguished Fellow at the Graduate an evolutionary biologist whose research interviews with neighborhood shopkeepers who sell Center’s Research Collaborative, and was focuses on how lottery tickets. They create digital maps based on recently awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and why animals their interviews and other data to analyze lottery to teach and conduct research at Tel Aviv reproduce. spending as a percentage of income, combined University in Israel, where she received her Wilson and neighborhood losses, and state profits. Rubell then master’s degree in mathematics education his colleagues developed a spinoff project, Cash City, a curriculum some 20 years ago. She will be there during Biology tracked gene in which students investigate the use of pawnshops the spring 2017 semester, collaborating with Professor activity in the and the cost of doing business with them as faculty members who, she says, once inspired Tony brood pouch compared to other financial institutions like banks. her, and with Israeli mathematics teachers on of pot-bellied Wilson and The projects, both part of City Digits, are a integrating themes of community and social justice seahorses International collaboration between Brooklyn College and the into their practice. —Jamilah Simmons Research Team Unravel (Hippocampus the Genetic Basis of Male abdominalis) over the duration Pregnancy of pregnancy. ELÈNE AYLON ’60, a visual artist performance artist and ecofeminist. She The study of male pregnancy in seahorses has They identified genetic changes associated with Revolutionary Artist whose career has spanned five has produced art that both reflects and broad implications for understanding pregnancy critical morphological and physiological processes in Helène Aylon ’60 decades, was presented with a challenges the religion she grew up in, as well in all animals. the male brood pouch, including tissue remodeling Honored with Lifetime H 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from as environmental, political, and gender issues. Other members of the and embryo implantation, nutrient and waste Seahorses have a unique mode of reproduction: Achievement Award the Women’s Caucus for Art. She joins Perhaps her best-known work, “The Liberation Syngnathidae family of transport, gas exchange, and immunological male pregnancy, which closely resembles the luminaries like Yoko Ono, Georgia O’Keeffe, of G-d,” is an installation that includes the fish that have the unique protection. Her art has pushed the boundaries of pregnancy of female mammals, including and Judy Chicago in accepting the award that Five Books of Moses covered in vellum with characteristic referred to as Systematic comparisons between the genes religious, environmental, and political “male pregnancy”are the humans. Biology Professor TONY WILSON and an recognizes the contribution of women to the misogynistic passages highlighted in pink. active in the male brood pouch during pregnancy issues. pipefish, and the weedy and international team of researchers have taken a major arts and society. “I got lots of hate letters, most of which leafy seadragon, below. and those responsible for other highly developed step toward answering the question of whether the “It’s nice to know that what I deemed were not signed,” she says. “But I also got lots forms of internal reproduction in mammals, reptiles, structures of complex reproductive systems, like the important over my lifetime was noticed and of love letters from women who wept and and fishes revealed that many of the key genes seahorse’s, reflect a common genetic architecture. appreciated,” she says. said, ‘Thank God you did this.’” are identical across species, a result that suggests The team, which included researchers from City Aylon grew up in Borough Park as the A few years ago, Aylon published a the existence of a common evolutionary tool kit University of New York (CUNY), the University of daughter of an Orthodox Jewish family, memoir, Whatever Is Contained Must Be associated with internal reproduction. Zurich in Switzerland, and the University of Sydney married when she was 18, and had two Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life Wilson and his team are currently studying in Australia, published their findings inMolecular children before she enrolled at Brooklyn as a Feminist Artist (The Feminist Press, 2012). the genetic regulation of reproduction in species Biology and Evolution. College at the age of 26. She was heavily Her art has appeared in the Whitney with more rudimentary forms of male pregnancy. Male seahorses carry offspring in specialized influenced by abstract expressionist painter Museum of American Art, the Museum of “The seahorse system offers an opportunity to brooding organs, providing protection, gas exchange, and professor Ad Reinhardt. Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, the San study ‘evolution in action,’ and to identify specific osmoregulation, and nutrients to offspring during Her husband died the year after she Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the genetic changes associated with the development of their development. While the male brood pouch is graduated, but she charged on, becoming Andy Warhol Museum, among other venues. pregnancy in this group,” says Wilson. functionally equivalent to the mammalian uterus, a renowned conceptual installation —Jamilah Simmons —Ernesto Mora Artist Helène Aylon ’60 22 BROOKLYN COLLEGE MAGAZINE | VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 BROOKLYN COLLEGE MAGAZINE | VOLUME 5 • NUMBER 1 23.