Libraries and Digital Resources Committee

Vishal Manve (Vishy) recently graduated from the Climate School, with over eight years of experience in journalism, reporting, and policy. Vishy is a 2023 graduate of The Fletcher School at Tufts University and interned with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for COP 27.

Vishy is passionate about the intersectionality of transitioning to decarbonization pathways, climate finance, and issues of equity and justice in the international climate policy and development space, and believes that a just and equitable transition to a clean energy future is essential for the survival of our planet. At Columbia, Vishy is interested in campus-wide integration of sustainability efforts and centering and addressing issues of equity for students from diverse backgrounds, including international, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ students. Vishy believes in advocating for a better world through the power of storytelling and negotiations.

Dr. Samuel Kelton Roberts, Jr., PhD, is Associate Professor of History (Columbia University School of the Arts and Sciences) and Sociomedical Sciences (Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health), and is also a former Director of Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS). Dr. Roberts writes, teaches, and lectures widely on African-American urban history, especially medicine, public health, and science and technology. His widely acclaimed book, Infectious Fear: Politics, Disease, and the Health Effects of Segregation (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), is an exploration of the political economy of race and the modern American public health state between the late nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century, a period which encompasses the overlapping and mutually-informed eras of Jim Crow segregation and modern American public health practice.

Roberts currently is researching and writing a book-length project on the United States’ troubled history of race and recovery, examining the social and political history of heroin addiction treatment from the 1950s to the early 1990s. This project traces urban policy at the beginning of the postwar heroin epidemic, the emergence of therapeutic communities, the politics of state-run addiction rehabilitation facilities, the adoption of methadone maintenance treatment in the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of “radical recovery” movements and harm reduction and syringe exchange in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 2013-14, Dr. Roberts was the Policy Director of Columbia University’s newly inaugurated Justice Initiative (now the Columbia University Center for Justice) and was the editor of the Center’s first research publication Aging in Prison: Reducing Elder Incarceration and Promoting Public Safety (2015). At the Columbia University Center for Science and Society, he leads the Research Cluster for the Historical Study of Race, Inequality, and Health. He also is the co-editor of Columbia University Press’s book series in Race, Inequality, and Health. In 2018, Dr. Roberts launched the podcast series People Doing Interesting Stuff (PDIS) (available on iTunes and other podcasting platforms) in which he speaks with people working in public health and social justice, especially harm reduction, HIV/AIDS work, reproductive justice, and criminal justice reform.

Nancy LoIacono is a Research Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. She is an environmental scientist and epidemiologist and has dedicated her career to understanding the effects of exposure to metals (in particular lead and arsenic) on children’s neurocognitive development and the development of adverse health outcomes (cardiovascular and lung disease and diabetes) in adults. She has worked on studies at both the molecular and population levels. She has been involved in several long-term prospective studies that have focused on identifying the adverse effects of exposure to metals, evaluating the effectiveness and safety of various interventions, and formulating strategies to reduce or eliminate these exposures and/or to mitigate their effects.

Sen. Maria Luisa Gozzi is a senior lecturer and has taught at Columbia University since 1993. She has served in the University Senate previously and was recently elected to the Lecturer Advisory Committee for the second time.

Dr. Gozzi has taught Italian language courses at all levels, and thematic courses on Italian cinema, opera, linguistic and cultural diversity, literature and war, Dante, stylistics, and the senses. She has published articles on Italian cinema, Italian literature and language pedagogy, and has created several websites for Italian language and culture acquisition. Dr. Gozzi came to the United States after graduating from the University of Florence, Italy. She holds a Ph.D. in Italian from Rutgers University and an M.A. in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution from Columbia University. 

Sen. Keith Gessen is a founding editor of n+1 and a contributor to The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and the London Review of Books. He is the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator or co-translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and a work of oral history. He is also the author of two novels, All the Sad Young Literary Men and A Terrible Country, as well as a book of essays, Raising Raffi.

Most of Gessen's journalistic work has focused on the effects of the collapse of communism on the countries of what used to be the Soviet Union. His New Yorker article on the insoluble problem of Moscow traffic -- a legacy of militant Soviet urban design combined with the anti-planning ethos of hypercapitalism — was included in Best American Travel Essays in 2011. His New Yorker story on the opening to shipping of the Northern Sea Route above the Russian Arctic as a result of global warming was included in Best American Science and Nature Writing in 2013. He has written about the wars and revolutions in Ukraine, as well about the experts in the U.S. government who work on the region.

Gessen began his career as a book reviewer for the early online magazine FEED, and subsequently contributed review-essays to Dissent, The Nation, and The New York Review of Books. He started n+1 with Mark Greif, Chad Harbach, Benjamin Kunkel, Allison Lorentzen, and Marco Roth in 2004.

Gessen was born in Moscow and grew up outside of Boston. He graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in History and Literature in 1998, and subsequently received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Syracuse University. In 2014-2015 he was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library.

Sen. Katherine Brooks is a Collection Analysis Librarian in the Columbia University Libraries. In this position, she analyzes electronic resource usage data to support strategic collection development and management in the Libraries while also serving as a science librarian. On the University Senate, Katherine serves on the Campus Planning and Physical Development Committee and on the Libraries and Digital Resources Committee. Before joining the Libraries, Katherine was a Frontiers of Science postdoctoral fellow in the Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Science Department and instructor in the College.

Sen. Joseph A. Howley holds a Ph.D. in Classics (2011) and an M.Litt. in Ancient History (2007) from the University of St Andrews, in Scotland, and a BA (2006) in Ancient Studies from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).  He teaches Latin, the history of the book, and Literature Humanities in Columbia’s Core Curriculum.  He is Secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School in Charlottesville, VA.

Prof. Howley has published the Noctes Atticaeof Aulus Gellius and its intersections with Roman intellectual and reading cultures, including Roman study abroad and juristic writing.  His first book, Aulus Gellius, and Roman Reading Culture: Text, Presence and Imperial Knowledge in the Noctes Atticae, was published in 2018 by Cambridge University Press.

Prof. Howley’s current projects focus on the history of the book, including the early modern printing of Classical literature and the fate of Classical paratext in medieval and early modern transmission and remediation; early phonographic recordings of Greek and Latin literature; imperial-era retellings of classical myths about books and writing; and the poetics of textual materiality in Roman imperial literature.

His current book project, Slavery and the Roman Book is a history of the Roman book seen through the lens of the enslaved labor on which it depended: for the composition of literature, the reading of books, and the production of new copies.  He is also the co-organizer of the workshop series MATERIA: New Approaches to Material Text in the Roman World (http://www.materiaconference.net/) and founding co-chair of the Columbia University Seminar on Material Texts (http://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/material-texts/).

John Donaldson is the Mario J. Gabelli Professor of Finance at Columbia Business School, where he teaches courses in basic finance and options. Dr. Donaldson focuses on business cycles and asset pricing, with a particular emphasis on the real side of the economy’s impact on equilibrium pricing of financial assets. Dr. Donaldson received his M.S in economics and M.S. in mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, and his Ph.D. in economics also from Carnegie Mellon University. On the University Senate, he co-chairs the Campus Planning and Physical Development Committee.

Sen. Jeffrey Wayno is a historian of the European Middle Ages who works as a librarian and curator in the Columbia University Libraries. As the Collection Services Librarian at The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, he is responsible for both Burke’s general and rare collections, as well as the ancient, medieval, and religious studies collections at Butler Library. An alumnus of Columbia’s doctoral program in medieval history, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the University Libraries before taking up his current position in 2018. He also regularly teaches Literature Humanities in Columbia College’s Core Curriculum.

Sen. Charles Zukowski is Professor of Engineering and former Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Professor Zukowski received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was awarded the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award for his work on bounding integrated circuit behavior.

Professor Zukowski holds a patent for a time-division multiplexed data transmission system. He is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and has served on the editorial boards of several journals published by IEEE. In addition to his involvement in IEEE, Professor Zukowski is a current or former member of engineering honor societies including Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, and Sigma Xi. 

Ayaan Ali is a student in Columbia College majoring in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies (MESAAS) and pursuing minors in Computer Science and Ethnic Studies. His current academic interests include modern South Asian history, postcolonial societies, technology policy, and the history of violence. Ayaan currently interns with the International Trade Administration under the US Department of Commerce and previously interned as a summer associate at McLaughlin & Stern, a Manhattan-based corporate law firm. At Columbia, he is a 2024 Humanities Research Scholar, a library assistant at Columbia Law School, a deputy editor at Columbia Daily Spectator, and the president of the Pakistani Students Association.

Sen. Ann Thornton is Vice Provost and University Librarian for Columbia University in the City of New York, where she is responsible for one of the top five academic research library systems in North America with world-class physical and digital collections and expert staff in support of research, teaching, and learning. On the University Senate, Vice Provost Thornton serves on the Libraries and Digital Resources Committee, and the Elections Commission.

She came to Columbia in June 2015 after serving for nearly two decades at the New York Public Library, where she was most recently the Andrew W. Mellon Director, a position she held since 2012, with responsibility for research and reference services, collection development, preservation, fellowships, and exhibitions. Vice Provost Thornton’s previous roles at the New York Public Library included Director of Reference and Research Services, Associate Director for the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, and Assistant Director of Electronic Resources for the Science, Industry and Business Library.

Early in her career, Vice Provost Thornton served as a systems librarian at the University of Houston Libraries. She was a Leadership Fellow in a program sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries and subsequently served on the board of that organization. Additionally, Vice Provost Thornton has chaired the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation and has served on the New York State Education Department’s Board of Regents Advisory Council on Libraries and on the Council of Experts for the National Academic Library and Information Systems Foundation of Bulgaria. She currently serves as chair of the board of governors for the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium.

Sen. Abosede George is the Tow Associate Professor of History at Barnard College. She teaches courses on African migrations, urban history, childhood and youth, and women, gender, and sexuality in African History. A native of Lagos, Nigeria, and a self-identified life-long migrant, she has lived in Zaire, Mali, the United States, and The Netherlands, and she has traveled as an African woman through five of the seven continents. Her articles have appeared in the American Historical Review, the Journal of Social History, Meridians, and The Washington Post among other publications. Her prize-winning book, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development, was published in 2014 by Ohio University Press. She is currently working on a history of free Black migration from various parts of the African diaspora to Lagos, West Africa across the nineteenth century. Follow The Ekopolitan Project on FB, IG, or Twitter to learn more.