Victor Peterson II is an assistant professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Peterson's work in Black Cultural studies develops articulation theory: how relations of dominance and subordination emerge and evolve through and against the networks of norms and institutions that structure sociocultural and political movements. Currently, Peterson's working on a book project positing a relation between sound and movement that utilizes mosh pits as a model to analyze socio-cultural formations as complex adaptive systems in alignment with Black scholars' theorizing these movements as collective improvisations. 
 
Peterson has published through Routledge's Africa and African Diaspora series, the CLR James Journal, the Journal of Black Studies, Philosophia Africana, the Journal of World Philosophy, and with RACE.ED at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities. He has held fellowships at Institutes for Advanced Study in Johannesburg, Amsterdam, and Edinburgh and was a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice, Rutgers University. 
 
He received his Ph.D. from King's College London and holds a degree in arts politics from New York University.
 
Web 
http://vpii.us
 
Recent Publications 
“Collective Improvisations,” Eidos: A Journal for Philosophy and Culture.
“Future Perfect: Imagination and Ideology,” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 39.
“Pessimism and Assumptive Logics,” Journal of World Philosophies 7 (2).
“Value and Culture,” Philosophia Africana: Analysis of Philosophy and Issues in Africa and the Black Diaspora 21 (2).
“Forms of Life and Cultural Endowments,” The Pluralist: The Journal of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 18 (2).
“Articulation: Individuals to Collectives,” The International Academic Forum: Journal of Cultural Studies 7 (1).
 
For more, see CV.
 
Books/Tracts

Black Thought: A Theory of Articulation, Routledge: Africa and African Diaspora Series, 2022. 



R|D: Articulation and Representational Divergence, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities: Occasional Papers Series, 2022.

Sam Keene is a professor of electrical engineering at The Cooper Union. He received his Ph.D. from Boston University, where his research has focused on cross-layer techniques to resolve collisions in wireless random-access networks. He also received an interdisciplinary certificate in computational science, where he has worked on remote sensing problems for environmental monitoring. Prior to Boston University, he was with The Mathworks, Inc. where he worked for several years as a communications software engineer. His research interests include wireless communication and networks, signal processing, machine learning and data science.

Dr. Abigail Raz earned her B.A. from Wellesley College in 2014 and her Ph.D. in mathematics from Rutgers University in 2019 under the direction of Jeff Kahn. Her research is focused in extremal and probabilistic combinatorics. Much of her work has dealt with analyzing thresholds for various classical properties in two different random graph models. 

In 2019 she became an Edith T. Hitz Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. During this time in addition to research and teaching she also served on the undergraduate activities committee, helping to organize, and run events for the UNL math club as well as the Association for Women in Mathematics chapter. She is also a member of the 2020 class of Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching) fellows. Project NExT is a professional development program run by the Mathematical Association for America focusing on improving the teaching and learning of mathematics. Specifically, she is involved in the mastery based grading cohort and has been implementing this grading style into her courses for the past three semesters. 

“I am thrilled to be joining the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at The Cooper Union. I strongly believe in the commitment to quality education for all and am excited to enact that commitment through the department of mathematics. I am passionate about encouraging a growth mindset in all my students so that they leave my classes not only with greater mathematical knowledge but also an enriched confidence to pursue their goals. I look forward to working with the students to explore not only the use but also the beauty of modern mathematics.”

Dr. Topper is an expert in physical, computational, and theoretical chemistry who is known for his contributions to the theory of nonlinear dynamics and the development of innovative Monte Carlo methods for high-performance computing and analysis. Current research in his laboratory includes the study of acid-base nanoparticles using first-principles quantum mechanics, and the use of machine learning-aided molecular dynamics simulations to characterize and predict large-scale structural transitions in materials and biomolecules.

He received a B.S. in Physics and Chemistry from Florida State University and earned a Ph.D. from Yale University.  He then worked for two years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota and one year at the University of Rhode Island before joining the Cooper Union in 1993. Dr. Topper has also chaired the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Monmouth University.  

To date, Topper ‘s research projects have included mentoring over 115 undergraduate, graduate, and high school students as research colleagues and co-authors. His work is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has been presented at numerous national and international scientific conferences. Prof. Topper’s papers and review articles have been published in some of the most selective journals in the field, including Physical Review Letters, the Journal of Chemical Physics, the Journal of Physical Chemistry A&B, Reviews in Computational Chemistry, and Advances in Chemical Physics. Together with his students and colleagues he has published 62 peer-reviewed manuscripts, learning objects, and conference abstracts; written / co-authored 4 book chapters and 4 book reviews; organized 5 international scientific conferences; and given 23 invited seminars at colleges, universities, conferences, and high schools.

Topper loves teaching a variety of courses, including lecture and laboratory courses at the freshman, junior, senior, and graduate levels in general, physical, theoretical, and inorganic chemistry as well as courses in research and engineering design projects. He is an avid amateur musician and songwriter who enjoys performing for friends and family as well as at fundraisers and community festivals. Other interests include volunteer work at the local community food pantry and the New Jersey State Youth Orchestra, which he serves as a member of its advisory board. He also enjoys graphic novels, animation, games of all kinds, and hiking and traveling with family.