ON C AMPUS
Bethlehem University Students Join Summer Research Program
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N ITS FOURTH YEAR, the College’s Summer Research Program is not only filled with ambitious Manhattan students investigating a variety of topics, such as how to build a better robot, but also, this year, the program included two students from Bethlehem University, a Lasallian university on the West Bank of Palestine. Brother Jack Curran ’80, FSC, Ph.D., Manhattan College’s vice president of mission, was the vice president of development at Bethlehem University prior to returning to Riverdale in 2013. Since his return, Br. Jack has been exploring ways to establish an ongoing partnership between the two Lasallian institutions.
From Bethlehem to the Bronx Enter Sari Masri and Nasri Yatim, two Bethlehem University students who came to Riverdale this summer to join Manhattan’s Summer Research Program. “Here at Manhattan, we want to work within the global Lasallian network,” says Cory Blad, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, who co-directs the research program with Rani Roy, Ph.D. “This partnership has the potential to be a great thing for the Lasallian community.” Eager to learn and explore their new surroundings, Masri and Yatim quickly acclimated to their summer home in New York. Within a week, the pair had browsed the aisles at a nearby Target, sampled the finest pizza in Riverdale, and enjoyed the annual Fourth of July fireworks. A computer information systems major at Bethlehem University, Masri worked with Zahra Shabazi, Ph.D., assistant professor of
mechanical engineering, on using a 3-D printer to build plastic parts that resemble a two-foot-tall robot that can move, scoop and perform basic motor functions. Masri used a 3-D printer for the first time to build the robot, and then created a user interface on his personal computer to program the robot and direct it on how to move on a table top, scoop items, and then drop those items into jars or other storage containers. “The idea is to use motors to create the motion, then 3-D print all the parts and connect them to each other,” Shahbazi explains. “3-D printing is fascinating. It’s easy to do, yet Sari can design complicated parts. He can do all sorts of different applications with the program he built.” Making Sense of the Twitterverse Also a computer information systems major, Yatim collaborated with Musa Jafar, Ph.D., associate professor of accounting, CIS and law in the School of Business, on an analytics project studying trends and interactions on Twitter to gain a better grasp of the conversations happening on the highly popular social network. Having coded at Bethlehem University for three years, Yatim built a digital platform that can incorporate Twitter users’ locations, uses of hashtags and keywords to build a database that studies what is trending daily, weekly and even annually. “After I finish building infrastructure to hold the data, I can go the extra step forward for doing the data analysis for understanding people’s behavior on social media, understanding how they think,” Yatim says. “After that, I can start building user networks — who follows who, who’s friends with who. I can try to predict some behavior and try to compare what certain high-profile users were thinking a year ago and what’s changed.” While Masri and Yatim will not present their research projects with their new friends from Manhattan College, they will give presentations to their colleagues and faculty at Bethlehem University. Meanwhile, Jafar will continue Yatim’s work in building the database to see how additional computer applications can continue to analyze and monitor the Twitterverse for interesting trends and discussions. “This has been not only a great experience for Sari and Nasri but also for all of our students this summer,” Blad says. “It highlights the diversity of all of the schools within the College and how we go about doing it, from independent undergraduate projects to student-faculty partnerships. The program is something that has grown a lot faster than we ever thought it would.” Two students from Bethlehem University joined the Jasper Summer Research Scholars at the College this year. One of the international students, Nasri Yatim, collaborated with Musa Jafar, Ph.D., from the College’s School of Business, on an analytics project studying trends and interactions on Twitter to gain a better grasp of the conversations happening on the popular social network.
4 N fall 2016