We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2020/2021 Cooper Union Grant Program. Due to the constraints imposed by the onset of the pandemic last spring, the timeline for submitting grant proposals for the 2020 funding cycle was extended through the Fall semester. In all, we received 35 competitive proposals, totaling $227,576 in funding requests. Of those, 18 were accepted based on the criteria outlined in the application, awarding a total of $129,681 in funding for these projects. As with the inaugural grant cycle, the selection process gave priority to projects that support The Cooper Union’s organizational goals and strategic priorities.

"Alternative Knowledge: Sustainable Materials in the Arts and Beyond (BioArt Lab)"
Dalila Oliver, Student, Art
Maya Benedetti, Student, Art
Neveen Shlayan, Faculty, Engineering
Brandon Bunt, Student, Engineering
$3,500

"Cooper Union Architecture Lobby Chapter"
Annabella Chen, Student, Architecture
Sanjana Lahiri, Student, Architecture
$4,200

"Cooper Union Fabrication and Prototyping Library"
Austin Wade Smith, Faculty, Architecture
Taesha Aurora, Student, Architecture
Doug Thornhill, Faculty / Staff, Engineering
Harrison Tyler, Staff, IDC AACE Lab
$10,000

"Cooper Union Solar Decathlon"
Ginger Lau, Student, Engineering
Solar Decathlon Team VIP381-B
Melody Baglione, Faculty, Engineering
$10,000

Cooper Union x Climate Week 2021
Alice Petrosova, Student, Art
Sanjana Lahiri, Student, Architecture
Amanda Simson, Faculty, Engineering
$10,000

"CU Center for Art and Religion"
Wayne Adams, Staff, Information Technology
$1,000

"Developing a Multidisciplinary Collaboration between Art and Engineering via Movement and Body Tracking"
Mili Shah, Faculty, Engineering
Jennifer Weiser, Faculty, Engineering
Joao Enxuto, Faculty / Staff, School of Art
Diego Herrera, Student, Art
Amaan Rahman, Student, Engineering
Pia Roels, Student, Engineering
Aaron Schmitz, Student, Engineering
Hannah Wu, Student, Engineering
$9,981

"Domestic Robotics Research Project"
Alexa Jakob, Student, Engineering
Mili Shah, Faculty, Engineering
Lydia Kallipoliti, Faculty, Architecture
Hannah Rajarao, Student, Engineering
Lucia Rhode, Student, Engineering
Denise Cholula, Student, Architecture
Leslie-Fairuz Abad-Neagu, Student, Architecture
Michael Sluchevksy, Student, Architecture
$10,000

"Empirical Reasoning Across Disciplines: Designing a Model for Cooper"
Loujaina Abdelwahed, Faculty, HSS
Lisa Norberg, Staff, Cooper Union Library
$6,500

"For a World Where Many Worlds Fit // Por un Mundo Donde Quepan Muchos Mundos: : Graduate Thesis Project Exhibition in the School of Architecture"
Austin McInnis, Student, Architecture
M.Arch II Students: Sally Chen, Yingxiao Chen, Giedre Darskute, Nienying Lin, Jamie Lindsey, Austin McInnis, Roni Schanin, Doosung Shin, Qicheng Wu
Nora Akawi, Faculty, Architecture
Anthony Vidler, Faculty, Architecture 
Steven Hillyer, Staff, Architecture Archives 
Chris Dierks, Staff, Architecture Archives
$10,000

"Housings: Unauthorized Epistemologies"
Ife Vanable, Faculty, Architecture
Daisy Ames, Faculty, Architecture
$9,000

"HSS Course Development: Global Poverty and New Colonialism"
Ninad Pandit, Faculty, HSS
$3,000

"HSS4-H: Climate, Culture, and Society"
Sanjana Lahiri, Student, Architecture
Alice Petrosova, Student, Art
Christopher Nicholls, Faculty / Staff, HSS
$3,500

"Machine-Learning Ready Dataset for Architectural Design"
Sam Keene, Faculty, Engineering
Ben Aranda, Faculty, Architecture
$10,000

"Mining Our Moment"
Ezekiel Binns, Student, Architecture
David Gersten, Faculty, Architecture 
Elizabeth Waters, Staff, STEM Outreach
Nada Ayad, Associate Dean, HSS
$8,000

"Painting Green"
David Derish, Staff, Art
$1,000

"The Ecology of Empathy: Risograph & a Sustainable Publishing Press in the Digital Age"
Chloe Friend, Student, Art
Christopher Nicholls, Faculty / Staff, HSS
Lisa Norberg, Staff, Cooper Union Library
Scott Nobles, Faculty / Staff, Art
$10,000

"Within the Context of Smart Cities: The Autonomy Lab’s Smart Mobility Testbed-Phase II"
Neveen Shlayan, Faculty, Engineering
Diego Malquori, Faculty, HSS
Mike Giglia, Staff, Engineering
Joao Enxuto, Faculty, Art
Jon Lu, Student, Engineering
Daniel Mezhiborsky, Student, Engineering
Autonomy Lab members (more than 40 students, faculty and staff)
$10,000

The academic deans invited members from their respective faculty to review the proposals. Representatives from the Student Council were also invited to participate in the review process and provide their recommendations to the deans and President Sparks. The reviewers were not given access to the names or budgets of the proposals, but instead, made their decisions based solely on the content of the project. The deans and President Sparks considered the recommendations and made the final decisions with budget in mind.

We are grateful to the Benjamin Menschel Faculty Fellowship Fund and to the donors of the President’s Venture Fund, both of which will help support these projects. 

All grant recipients will be required to report on their progress. Final reports will be shared after the grant period concludes at the end of 2021.