February 2026
Malachai Komanoff Bandy, assistant professor of music, presented the talk “Musical Passion Theology in Dieterich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri (1680)” on the public Colloquium series at the Newberry Library, held February 18 in Chicago. In addition to chairing a panel on musical craft and expression, Bandy presented a paper titled “‘What are these wounds?’ Fauxbourdon as ‘Sweet’ Mutilation in Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri (1680)” at the annual meeting of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, held February 26–28 at Trinity Christian College (Palos Heights, Illinois).
On February 6, 7 and 8 in San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto (California), Bandy played Baroque double bass with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (dir. Music Director Emeritus Nicholas McGegan) in three performances of the program Baroque Garlands, featuring soprano Nola Richardson, tenor Aaron Sheehan and the Philharmonia Chorale (dir. Valérie Sainte-Agathe) in George Frideric Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s La Guirlande.
Graydon Beeks, professor emeritus of music, joined his Cornucopia Baroque Ensemble colleagues violinist Alfred Cramer, associate professor of music; flutist Sherrill Herring, general manager, music facilities & Bridges Hall of Music; bassoonist Carolyn Beck, lecturer in music; and cellist Roger Lebow in a Friday Noon Concert of music by Boismortier, Handel and Telemann on February 27 in Lyman Hall.
Alexa Block, associate director of news and strategic content, presented at the AVID Conference 2026, a college-readiness program for high-school students hosted at Pomona College. Through her session titled “Your Digital Footprint, Your Future,” participants learned how to recognize the long-term impact of their social media choices, build a positive and authentic digital identity and navigate common pitfalls.
Amelia Bransky, visiting assistant professor of theatre, served as lead production designer for the premiere event of DTF St. Louis, an HBO Original limited series starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini. Working with her frequent collaborators at Freehold Group, a Los Angeles-based production company, Bransky led a cross-disciplinary team of designers, producers and fabricators through all phases of the event—from concept development and design of the red-carpet experience and post-screening party through final installation and execution.
Tom Flaherty, emeritus professor of music, composed “Choreomania” and premiered it with Ania Vu, assistant professor of music, at the annual Ussachevsky Festival on February 6. Flaherty also composed “Semiquincentennial Spangles” for a Music for Brass and Organ concert.
Roberto A. Garza-López, professor of chemistry, and his students had their research featured in Natural Sciences, highlighting a collaboration with Harry Gray (Caltech), with co-authors Liam Kwak ’26, Andrew Chung ’28 and Gabriel Ancajas ’28 and a winning cover design by Ian Tam ’27. This was followed by a feature in the Biophysical Journal, representing a significant collaboration with Malkiat S. Johal, professor of chemistry, and his research group. The publication also features a cover designed by Kwak. The group secured four accepted abstracts for the ACS Conference in Atlanta. These include an oral presentation by Kwak on “The mechanistic insights of µ- opioid receptor allosteric modulation” and three poster presentations: “An in-silico characterization of T. thermophilus Polysulfide reductase” by Tam and Chung; “An investigation of inhibitors for resistant P. Falciparum” by Noah Baoerjin ’29, Tam and Chung; and “A study on novel treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy” by Benjamin Roh ’29, Andrew Zheng ’29, Jonathan Cong ’28, Tam and Chung. Notably, the final two poster studies were initiated by Garza-López’s Pomona College for Youth Success (PAYS) students.
Elizabeth Glater, associate professor of neuroscience, presented a research talk, “Do C. elegans choose their gut-microbiome?” as part of the University of Southern California Neuroscience Seminar Series. In the seminar, she presented research conducted by Pomona undergraduates in her lab.
Kara Godwin, assistant vice president and chief global officer, played a leading role at the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) annual conference in Washington, D.C. She co-chaired the strategic services task force and served on the public policy committee. Godwin delivered three presentations: “Building Institutional Agility Through Comprehensive Assessment and Action Frameworks” with Andrew Gordon, CEO of DA Global; “After the Election: Navigating the New U.S. Policy Landscape for Global Higher Education” with vice presidents from ACE and APLU; and “Real Talk about the State of International Education” with Karin Fischer, senior writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
George L. Gorse, Viola Horton Professor of Art History, presented an opening paper on “An ‘Augustan’ Republic: Genoa and the ‘Golden Age’,” in a session on Genoa during the 16th and 17th centuries at the Renaissance Society of America conference in San Francisco on February 20.
Malkiat S. Johal, professor of chemistry, published the paper “An LSPR-Based Kinetic Framework for Polyelectrolyte Molecular Weight Determination: A Proof-of-Concept Study” in Analytical Chemistry. The paper was co-authored by Ryan Mooney ’27 and Charles Brainin ’27. Johal and Roberto A. Garza-López, professor of chemistry, published the paper “Multivalent binding mechanism of LRP1-fibrinogen interactions revealed by QCM-D and molecular dynamics” in Biophysical Journal. The paper was co-authored by Liam Kwak ’26, Ananya Vinay ’27, Gabby Lewis ’26, Alyssa Yao ’26 and Daniel Gao ’25.
Genevieve Lee, Everett S. Olive Professor of Music, was invited to perform in a concert at Cal State University Northridge, honoring the Cuban-American composer Aurelio de la Vega. She played two pieces from his early career, one with violinist Lorenz Gamma and the other with cellist Kyle Champion.
Jingyi Li, assistant professor of computer science, was invited to Japan to speak at the first Animare Seminar on Creativity Support Tools and to interview artists and directors in the animé industry. They also presented a talk titled “Power, Norms, and Radical Humility: Towards Artistic Support Tools” at the Adobe Human-Computer Interaction seminar.
Christy McCarthy, assistant director, messaging and storytelling, and Katie Kramer, proposal writer, led sessions at the AVID Conference 2026, a college-readiness program for middle- and high-school students. Kramer facilitated a session aimed at helping students understand and build empathy. McCarthy led a session titled “Write Your Story,” which focused on helping students reflect on and better understand their personal narratives for college essays, scholarships and other applications.
Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters, a distinguished honor society established in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement.
Benjamin Rosenberg, visiting assistant professor of neuroscience, published a paper with colleagues from UCLA titled “Does mental health coaching improve efficacy of transcranial magnetic stimulation for major depression? A pilot randomized controlled trial and benchmarking study” in Journal of Affective Disorders. This work provides preliminary evidence that scalable mental health coaching programs may be feasibly integrated into psychiatric clinics and potentially enhance depression treatment outcomes.
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, professor and chair of English, appeared in the new PBS documentary “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History.” Sherrard-Johnson discussed Black women’s domestic labor in the Bronx slave market in episode 2.
Patricia A. Smiley, professor emerita of psychological science, collaborated on a research paper published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology. This study of a diverse sample of preschoolers showed that mothers’ capitalization on their children’s positive experience in a series of games was significantly related to their children’s adaptive physiological regulation. The effect of capitalizing on positive experience was independent of mothers’ supportive responses to children’s negative emotion, suggesting that these two aspects of parenting behavior play different roles in the development of children’s self-regulation.
Samuel Thomas, assistant professor of computer science, and his students presented work at the Southern California Workshop on Systems and Programming Languages at USC. Titles included “CXip List: A CXL-Aware Skip List,” which was co-authored with Steven Kim ’26 (research talk), “The Microservice-ization of gem5” with Connor Wang ’27 (poster) and “Scr Mmy: A Co-Designed Secure and Compressed Memory” with Henry Cannon ’28 (poster).
Feng Xiao, associate professor of Chinese, served as a reviewer for AI-related proposals for the UK Metascience Unit and the Education Research Funding Programme at the Ministry of Education, Singapore.
Yanshuo Zhang, assistant professor of Asian languages and literatures, gave three public lectures on her new monograph, Creative Belonging: The Qiang and Multiethnic Imagination in Modern China. She gave one lecture at the University of Michigan’s Center for Chinese Studies as part of its noon lecture series. She also held a graduate student workshop with the University of Michigan’s Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. She was also invited to give a public lecture on her book at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Finally, Zhang gave a Blue Room Talk at Frank Dining Hall at Pomona College.