Robust Research

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F E A T U R E

By Carina Storrs, Ph.D.

New York Tech’s commitment to research paves the way for important and groundbreaking work. Meet three Ph.D. students whose work may improve disaster response, recovery after muscle and bone injuries, and anticancer therapies.

Over the last 10 years, New York Institute of Technology has made significant strides in developing its research programs, with the goal of becoming one of the top research institutions in the United States. Recent signs of this transformation include the school’s new Ph.D. program in chemistry that launched in the fall of 2025, an anatomy program coming online in the next year, as well as new lab spaces and cutting-edge equipment and facilities.

“At New York Tech, we have always been a teaching school, empowering our students so they can achieve their dream careers. And now, because of our emphasis on research, students can also explore new career paths that they otherwise may not have had,” says Jerry Balentine, D.O., president and chief executive officer of New York Tech.

Balentine has witnessed firsthand the school’s growing emphasis on research. Before stepping into his role as president in July, he was vice president for medical affairs and global health, dean of the College of Osteopathic Medicine, provost, and executive vice president. Balentine credits the presidents who came before him, Edward Guiliano, Ph.D., and Henry C. Foley, Ph.D., with laying the foundation for research excellence.

New York Tech will continue striving to become an even bigger and stronger research institution, Balentine says. It is working toward achieving R2 status (High Research Status and Doctorate Production) as designated by the 2025 Carnegie Classifications—a designation given to institutions based on the amount of research funding they spend annually and the number of research doctorates they graduate.

To Balentine, what positions New York Tech as a top research institution are its exceptional students and faculty, who serve as leaders in their fields and are eager mentors. “One of my favorite things is talking with students from any program. Their energy is incredible,” he says.

New York Institute of Technology Magazine recently caught up with three Ph.D. students in the engineering, osteopathic medicine/medical and biological sciences (D.O./Ph.D.), and chemistry programs to hear about their important and groundbreaking work and how they have benefited from New York Tech’s commitment to research.

From Agriculture to Disaster Response: Improving and Expanding Drone Applications

Yihan Xu worked with faculty and undergraduate and graduate students to build drone sensors to measure water levels and other factors to gather neighborhood data on flood risk. PHOTO: NICK TRIBALDOS

Yihan Xu, a Ph.D. student in engineering, was compelled to apply his research on drones and artificial intelligence (AI) to disaster response after Tropical Storm Ophelia in 2023 dumped more than 8 inches of rain over 12 hours around New York City. The roof of the wooden house in Queens, where Xu was living, had a bad leak. Worse than that, he saw news reports that only about 3 percent of New Yorkers received text alerts and other warnings about the storm’s flash flooding.

Xu has been developing drone hardware for data collection since the beginning of his Ph.D. in 2022 under the supervision of Ziqian (Cecilia) Dong, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering. In that work, Xu and engineering graduate students and professors at New York Tech developed a wireless sensor for unmanned aerial vehicles that measures soil concentrations of nitrogen, a factor that is critical for crop yield yet more difficult to measure remotely than, for example, temperature.

Turning his attention to the threat of severe flooding, Xu worked with computer science and electrical and computer engineering undergraduates, along with Dong and Roberto Rojas-Cessa, Ph.D., professor of electrical and computer engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), to build drone sensors to measure water levels and other factors, with funding from the National Science Foundation. In addition, the team developed an AI model that analyzes data collected from these sensors.

Their goal is to get neighborhood-level data on flood risk into the hands of local officials so they can provide rapid alerts to residents during storms and better understand the risk for longer-term city planning and development. Xu and his colleagues will soon launch a website to share ZIP code-based flood risk. The project, “An AI-Driven Wireless Sensing for Early Flooding Warning and Prevention Systems,” earned him third prize at the IEEE ComSoc Student Competition 2025, a prestigious award that recognizes leading research in the field.

But for Xu, it’s the human connection that he really values about his Ph.D. experience at New York Tech.

“We take a route to develop wireless sensors and AI for one application, and then we can take it in many directions for other applications,” Xu says. The applications are indeed seemingly endless, from finding people and surveilling air quality after a disaster to informing food delivery workers about the best way to navigate urban areas.

Currently, Xu, who expects to complete his doctoral degree in the summer of 2026, is focusing his research largely on improving the basic components—sensors and AI models—necessary for drone applications. He mentors undergraduate and master’s students at New York Tech and NJIT who are building smaller sensors to make drone-based sensing more energy efficient. He also complements their efforts with his own work to develop AI models that control drones and update sensors. Xu notes that he’s striving to create “drone GPT,” which would be a large language model-assisted human-drone interaction system to help operators communicate with the hardware.

But for Xu, it’s the human communication that he really values about his Ph.D. experience at New York Tech. As he says, “All the Ph.D. students here are very high-quality, and it’s very good to talk with those in my field and others like bioengineering. Our offices are close to each other so we can share projects and what we are thinking about. It is a very good environment and very good practice to help us solve problems across disciplines.”

Using Cutting-Edge Technologies to Uncover Proteins Involved in Bone Growth and Healing

As he completes his Ph.D., Christopher Janton is analyzing data sets from samples of injured tissue to determine how levels of Mustn1-encoded protein change during healing.

Christopher Janton, a D.O./Ph.D. student, started exploring genes that play a role in bone growth during his postbaccalaureate (post-bacc) research at Massachusetts General Hospital. He and his advisor took advantage of a new technology, called single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), to investigate the genes that are expressed (converted into proteins) in individual cells within bone, muscle, and other tissue types, trying to glean the molecular events involved in growth and regeneration.

Janton put those endeavors aside when he started the D.O./Ph.D. program at New York Tech and worked to complete his preclinical coursework for the D.O. component. But in 2023, when Janton was preparing to embark on the Ph.D. component in medical and biological sciences, his curiosity in the post-bacc research returned. New York Tech faculty were presenting their research to help Janton and his classmates decide which labs they wanted to join for their Ph.D. research. Michael Hadjiargyrou, Ph.D., professor of biological and chemical sciences, talked about Mustn1, a gene that is expressed at specific times in musculoskeletal tissue development. Hadjiargyrou discovered Mustn1 and, as he explained, is now working to understand its role in bone regeneration.

Janton immediately wondered about the expression pattern of Mustn1 in the cells he studied in his post-bacc research. He looked back through the scRNA-seq data set, which he had constructed from scores of publicly available scRNA-seq data from human and mouse samples. Janton realized that Mustn1 appeared to be expressed in cell types he had not investigated before—smooth muscle cells of blood vessels within muscle, bone, tendon, brain, and a range of other tissue types.

Over the last three years, Janton, under the supervision of Hadjiargyrou, has analyzed and confirmed the computational findings, which they published recently in the academic journal JBMR Plus.

“Every person I’d go to with a question is willing to help. There are opportunities and collaborations and resources all around.”

– Christopher Janton

“The vascular specificity is exciting, and knowing how important vascularization is for wound healing suggests that it may be possible to develop therapies that modulate levels of Mustn1 to improve vascularization and help recovery after injury of muscle, bone, and other tissues,” says Janton, who plans to complete his Ph.D. this spring and then head into the last two years of his D.O. degree.

Also exciting to Janton are their findings—from scRNA-seq analysis as well as immunostaining experiments to visualize proteins in mouse tissue samples—that the Mustn1-encoded protein is located in the same areas within blood vessel cells as alpha smooth muscle actin, a protein that is fundamental for the movement, shape, and organization of cells. As he wraps up his Ph.D., Janton is analyzing data sets from samples of injured tissue to determine how levels of Mustn1-encoded protein change during healing.

“It is really cool that Dr. Hadjiargyrou let me pursue my own interests,” Janton says, adding that it was serendipitous to observe data crossover between his post-bacc and Ph.D. research. Janton notes that tackling the tricky immunostaining work would not have been possible without support from the cutting-edge New York Tech Imaging Center and its faculty, as well as other biomedical sciences faculty. “Every person I’d go to with a question is willing to help,” Janton notes. “There are opportunities and collaborations and resources all around.”

Synthesizing Potential Anticancer Therapies While Fulfilling Ph.D. Dreams

Zakir Hossain is researching therapeutic targets for cancer, diabetes, and possibly other diseases.

Zakir Hossain, a Ph.D. student in chemistry, has been interested in learning how medicines exert their effect on the body for as long as he can remember. But he needed to save up money before entering a Ph.D. program to pursue his research interests. Instead, he started working as a senior chemistry lab technician at New York Tech, where he manages undergraduate chemistry lab courses. The job led Hossain to meet Subhabrata Chaudhury, Ph.D., assistant professor of biological and chemical sciences, who agreed to let Hossain work in his lab on the side, and Hossain squeezed in as much time as he could.

A year ago, when Hossain found out that New York Tech was planning to launch a Ph.D. program in chemistry—and on top of that, school leadership and faculty were eager to support his endeavors as both a technician and doctoral student—he jumped at the opportunity.

For the Ph.D. project, Hossain and Chaudhury have set their sights on an enzyme linked to various cancers. The enzyme, pyruvate carboxylase (PC), supercharges cancer cell growth under nutrient-poor conditions. It is an attractive therapeutic target for not only cancer but also type 2 diabetes and possibly other diseases. “It’s been so interesting to focus on such an essential molecule in the cell that controls so many biosynthetic pathways,” Hossain says.

“At the end of the day, New York Tech just wants us to be successful and happy.”

– Zakir Hossain

However, the goal of developing molecules that bind to and modulate PC has proven difficult. Chaudhury and his colleagues have tried to create such molecules, but none have been potent enough or specific enough to move along the drug development pipeline. A molecule called IZT, discovered a few years ago, has good specificity but inadequate potency. Even if it met all the other benchmarks to become a medicine, patients would need to take so much of it for a therapeutic effect, for example, as a cancer or diabetes drug, that it would not be practical.

But Hossain and Chaudhury still see a lot of potential for IZT. Hossain has delved into synthesizing analogs of IZT and developing new synthetic pathways in an attempt to create versions of the molecule with enhanced potency. Collaborators at New York Tech and other universities will test how any promising analogs behave in enzymatic tests and cell-based studies.

For now, Hossain is enjoying being in a Ph.D. program, years earlier than he thought would be possible. “To be honest, it’s surreal,” Hossain says. “I also feel a lot of pressure because I want to be a great chemist. But at the end of the day, New York Tech just wants us to be successful and happy.”