Cynthia Peabody

Associate Director

cmr93@columbia.edu

Cynthia Peabody is Associate Director of The Center for the Study of Science and Religon. She holds a Masters of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary. Before coming to CSSR, she was a reference librarian at Montclair State University, Upsala College, Brooklyn Public Library, and Columbia University. She has spent years researching, writing, and advocating on issues of homelessness and hunger. Her work at CSSR combines her skills as a librarian with her social justice/ministerial leanings.

Miranda Hawkins
Administrative Manager
mh2696@columbia.edu
(212) 854-1673

Miranda is from Mount Vernon, New York and she has earned a J.D. degree in Law from the University of Maryland.  She is an active member of her church choir and publicity ministry.  She finds the CSSR an excellent resource to merge the sciences and religion to affect positive change in the world.

Weiyi Mu
EI Intern; Webmaster
wm2170@columbia.edu

Weiyi Mu is a student at Columbia College, Class of 2010. She is double majoring in biology and music, and plans to delve into both genetics research and modern classical music composition. Weiyi has been a part of the CSSR since 2006 and has been happily occupied in all sorts of interesting ways.

Andrew Kisch
Assistant Webmaster
aik2113@columbia.edu

Andrew Kisch is a computer science major at Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, class of 2012. He was born, raised, and currently resides in New York City. Outside of the CSSR, he is known for being an enthusiast of crossword puzzles, fresh water fish aquariums, as well as a force to be reckoned with on both basketball and volleyball courts. He is a fan of the Yankees, Jets, Knicks and Rangers. He greatly enjoys working at the CSSR and finds the people he works with to be delightful.

Abigail is a junior in Columbia College, majoring in psychology and possibly concentrating in anthropology. She joined the CSSR in the fall of 2008 and has since become entrenched in editing its newsletter and helping out with its events. During the summer of 2009, Abigail worked as one of the two CSSR-TCC interns. Outside of the CSSR, she has held various positions on the Columbia Daily Spectator, served as a coordinator for the Columbia/Barnard Hillel’s 2009 Jewish Life Orientation, and sings with Pizmon, Columbia and Barnard’s co-ed a cappella group. Abigail loves making new friends, talking to everyone over the age of 90, and spreading the word about the cheapest and tastiest iced csoffee in Morningside Heights.

Tiffany Mitchell
Events Coordinator,
CSSR-TCC Intern
tnm2108@columbia.edu

Tiffany Mitchell is a pre-med senior at Columbia College, pursuing a degree in Psychology. Tiffany joined the CSSR during the Spring of 2009 when she was accepted to participate in the CSSR-TCC summer internship program, and has been an active member ever since, assisting in the planning of the 2009 CSSR Seminar Series. She is a resident and member of the Intercultural Resource Center, she volunteers for the Multicultural Recruitment Committee and gives weekly campus tours as a member of the Undergraduate Recruitment Committee. Last year, Tiffany worked in a Psychology lab at Barnard College under the instruction of Professor Patricia Stokes observing the effects of initial conditions of variability in children’s problem solving. However, Tiffany was unable to continue this semester due to class conflicts. She hopes to return in the spring. Tiffany is also president of the Columbia Culinary Society and enjoys spending her free time cooking and planning events.

Erin Lothes, Ph.D.
Earth Institute Fellow
elb2138@columbia.edu

For a theologian concerned about global warming, joining the CSSR as an Earth Institute Fellow is an extraordinary opportunity to explore the religious dimensions of the environmental crisis among scientists at the cutting-edge of knowledge about the earth. My research at the CSSR is directed toward writing a multidisciplinary and theologically grounded critique of contemporary behavior vis-à-vis the environment. I am particularly interested in the existential dynamics of how people come to understand the ecological crisis, recognize the impact of their actions, and decide to make sustainable changes - or not.

As an English major at Princeton University, I explored literature as one way to study the human condition. I later chose to study theology at Boston College, and continued with doctoral studies in contemporary systematic theology at Fordham University. One of my aims was to clarify and articulate responsibility to the environment in religious terms, as I had began to understand climate change as a serious threat to human well-being, global peace, and a tragic desecration of the earth’s beauty. While the mystery of human self-destructiveness is an ancient theological question, it takes a sharp new form in the totality and irrationality of ecological devastation. The persistence of perhaps willful confusion and apathy invites a look beyond the essential scientific information, using religious interpretive frameworks and complementary insights from evolutionary biology, psychology and economics. These perspectives are all part of the diverse intellectual conversations hosted by the CSSR, in which I am very fortunate to share.

My research as an Earth Institute Fellow at Columbia is directed towards a book on religious attitudes toward the environment, which will further develop in an ecological context the ideas of ethical choices and sacrifice first explored in my book, The Paradox of Christian Sacrifice: The Loss of Self, the Gift of Self (Crossroad, 2007).

Pilar Jennings
Graduate Teaching Assistant
pjorley@netzero.net

Pilar Jennings is a writer and educational consultant from New York City. She received her Bachelors from Barnard College where she studied ethnographic writing. She went on to earn a Masters in anthropology from Columbia University where she focused on illness narratives, an interest that lead her to explore the conscious spiritual beliefs of psychoanalytically trained clinicians. This pursuit brought her to Union Theological Seminary where she completed a Master of Arts with a focus on psychiatry and religion. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Psychiatry and Religion at Union where she hopes to explore the intersection of Eastern spiritual practice and psychoanalytic theory. Pilar is a psychoanalyst in training and is currently working with children through the Harlem Family Institute. Through her affiliation with CSSR and her studies at Union, Pilar looks forward to finding ways to ground spiritual questions and the extramundane in traditional clinical training and practice.

Eleni Nikitopoulos
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
en2142@columbia.edu

Bio pending...

Ossian Foley
Director of Undergraduate Initiated Programs; Events Coordinator
opf1@columbia.edu

Ossian is a Columbia School of General Studies student in the Writing Department. He came to New York by way of Seattle, WA. For whatever reasons he first showed up at CSSR, he's stayed because everyone is interesting and nice.

Ossian graduated from the Columbia University's School of General Studies in 2009 and is off to the writing program at the University of Iowa to pursue a MFA in writing.

Jay Chudow is a student in Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science, Class of 2009.  He is a pre-med, Civil Engineering major interested in science, religion and how the two come together in medicine.  Jay started with the CSSR in the summer of 2008 as a CSSR-Terence Cardinal Cooke intern researching palliative and end-of-life care.  Outside of the CSSR, Jay has been an active leader in the Columbia/Barnard Hillel community.  

Jay Chudow graduated from Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2009 with a degree in Civil Enginnering and is pursuing medical school in the following year.

Emily Rose Jordan
CSSR Research Intern
erj2104@columbia.edu

Emily Rose Jordan, from Chicago, Illinois, is in the Columbia College Class of 2009. She majored in Anthropology and Psychology, and will use these fields to study post-colonial West Africa. Emily is interested in ethics and cultural change, and especially how these topics relate to the evolving worlds of science and religion. Emily started at CSSR in 2006 and researches assisted reproductive technologies, focusing on the ethics and health effects of ova donation. In addition to her CSSR research, Emily sung with the Columbia/Barnard Women's Chamber Chorus and was the head manager of the Postcrypt Coffeehouse.

Emily Jordan graduated Columbia College in 2009 and has received a Gates Cambridge Fellowship to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience next year.

Bio pending...

Stuart P.D. Gill, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
spg2109@columbia.edu

Stuart P.D. Gill received his Ph.D. from Swinburne University, Australia, in 2005. Currently he is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Astronomy and an instructor in the Frontiers of Science program. Dr. Gill uses computer simulations to study the formation and evolution of galaxies that inhabit the largest objects in the Universe: galaxy clusters. Even though he studies the largest objects in the Universe, he still retains the optimism that there is something even bigger out there-- a perspective that led him to pursue a Masters of Divinity degree as well as closer involvement with the CSSR.

Dr. Gill is currently working for the World Bank.

P. Timon McPhearson, Ph.D.
Research Scientist
ptm2101@columbia.edu

Raised as the son of a minister in rural Indiana, Dr. McPhearson attended Taylor University, an Evangelical Christian school. While earning his B.S. in Environmental Biology he studied the Old and New Testament, including travels to Israel and Greece to study the teachings of Jesus and Paul. Additionally, he worked directly with the National Director for Youth for Christ in Chennai, India to build schools for teaching vocational skills to “ragpickers” the poorest of the inner city poor. After Taylor he earned his Ph.D. in evolutionary biology and ecology at Rutgers University funded by a National Science Foundation Fellowship to study cooperation in ecological interactions. Following three years with the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. McPhearson’s interest in Buddhist ways of knowing led him to the CSSR. Now, as a Columbia Science Fellow in the department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University, he teaches Frontiers of Science to undergraduates and a new course for the CSSR Teaching Science to Clergy program, Cosmology, Ecology, and Faith. In addition, Dr. McPhearson recently represented the CSSR at the 2006 World Knowledge Dialogues in Crans-Montana, Switzerland and a 2007 meeting of the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences in Mexico. His current research with the CSSR looks again at cooperation in biological and religious interactions and the place of science education in religious tradition.

Dr. McPhearson currently serves on the faculty at The New School.

Kelly Treder
CSSR Intern
kmt2106@columbia.edu

Kelly Treder is a senior in Columbia College, who is pre-med with a major in Psychology. Born and raised in Seattle, WA, she loves her hometown but is enchanted with New York City. She hopes to attend medical school and enroll in an M.D./M.P.H dual degree program. Her ideal career aspiration would be the establishment of womens and childrens clinics throughout Africa.

Her relationship with the CSSR began through Columbia University's SURF Program, through which she and fellow intern, Alex Port conducted research in pain management at the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation. Kelly graduated in 2008 and is pursuing a career in medicine.

Tom Rosenberg
Events Coordinator
tsr2102@columbia.edu

Tom is a junior at Columbia College from New Jersey majoring in Religion. His main interest is in contemplative practices as received in modern culture and their intersection with psychology, neuroscience and western philosophy. He hopes this dialogue will lead to a positive understanding of how and if these practices can adress problems like addiction, depression and mental illness.

Iman Ahmed
Former Financial Manager
iea2102@columbia.edu

Iman worked at the CSSR for two years before graduating from Columbia College as a part of the Class of 2007. A Brooklyn native, she majored in Science and Religion. She has a particular interest in ethics, public policy and international economic development and globalization. Although departing from the CSSR, she looks forward to attending many CSSR events in the future.

Andrew Sinanoglou
Former Web Master, Video Editor
ajs2103@columbia.edu

Andrew Sinanoglou worked at the CSSR for two years. He graduated in 2007 from Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in Mechanical Engineering, concentrating in Microelectrical Mechanical Systems and Mechatronics, and minoring in Political Science. In the following year, as a member of the 4-1 Program, he graduated from Columbia College (2008), majoring in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. In his political science and MELAC minor/major, he is focusing on politics and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa.

At the CSSR he focused on streamlining the video to dvd process, and maintained, upgraded, and overhaled the website.

In the past, Andrew has worked on a water project in Ghana with Columbia University’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders. He continues to sing in the a cappella group Nonsequitur and plays for CU Rugby.

Andrew is leaving for the American University in Cairo's Desert Development Center. He is sad to go, but knows he'll be back or working with the CSSR some day in some capacity.

Laura Bothwell
Former Program Director

Laura has an M.A. from Union Theological Seminary, where she focused on Science and Religion and a B.A. in History from the College of Saint Scholastica.

Her worked at the center is multifaceted, but areas of focus included science and religion educational programs for religious leaders; a seminar series on Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Reproductive Health, and Religion; a research project on the science and social policy of ending poverty; and a science and religion discussion group. She joined the CSSR staff in 2004 and has served as a T.A. several times for the course, “DNA, Evolution, and the Soul.” She also worked with Kate Wittenberg and Ann Miller of the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) to develop a website with a bibliography on the science relevant to the topics of the class, namely consciousness, genetics, and how Darwinian evolution and theories of the origins of the universe can exist alongside the cosmology of Abrahamic faiths. In her last semester, she taught a Topics in Biology course, “Assisted Reproductive Technologies: History and Ethics of Harvesting Human Eggs.”

Katie Gerbner

Katie graduated from Columbia College in May of 2006 with a major in Religion with a concentration in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. Katie has studied Buddhism and Hinduism in Vietnam and Northern India, respectively, and did her thesis research on William James and the attempt to create a science of religions. Next, she is on her way to Germany as the recipient of a prestigious fellowship.

Alisa Frohman
Former Events Director
agf2007@columbia.edu

Ali graduated from Columbia in 2006 with a major in Political Science focusing on the international relations of East Asia. Ali grew up in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and studied Mandarin Chinese in Taichung, Taiwan. Her experiences at the CSSR reinforced her interest in public health, particularly maternal and child health; she joined The Earth Institute's Academic and Research Programs team in 2008 and is excited to continue to take part in the CSSR's events and projects.

Tom Bernardin

Tom received an M.A. with a concentration in ethics from Union Theological Seminary in May 2005. He graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2002 with a B.S. in Finance and hopes to begin pursuing a Ph.D. in economics in the near future. The CSSR’s emphasis on the practical and ethical implications of a closer relationship between science and religion interested him most. Tom also has an unexplainable interest in the financial management of large nonprofit institutions such as Columbia University. He is now working toward a Ph.D. in Economics at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Saideep Bose

Saideep graduated from Columbia College in 2006 with a double major in Biochemistry and Political Science/Economics. He was born in Bombay but spent most of his life in Manila and Singapore. Saideep has a life-long interest in using science and technology to improve the quality of life of people living in impoverished conditions. In the future he plans to pursue an MPH as well as a medical degree.