Full-Time Faculty
David J. Kim, Ph.D., researches the development and application of novel water treatment technologies to strengthen resilience of existing water infrastructure and networks. In particular, he has focused on electrochemical devices that utilize electricity to destroy persistent pollutants and recover valuable resources from various streams, including ocean water and industrial waste effluents. From here, he continues to investigate their performance under these real sources and what kind of impacts they directly have on our communities. He has published his findings in numerous journals, including Environmental Science & Technology. He was the recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and has actively served as a teaching fellow and mentor in various outreach programs. He received his Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Yale University and his B.S. in earth and environmental engineering from Columbia University.
Atina Grossman is Professor of History in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Cooper Union in New York City. She received a Ph.D from Rutgers University and a B.A. from The City University of New York. Her current research focuses on “Trauma: Privilege, Adventure in Transit: Jewish Refugees from National Socialism in Iran, India, and Central Asia in Transnational Context.” She has been recently appointed to the Editorial Board of the American Historical Review (journal of the American Historical Association, HA) and to the Editorial Advisory Board of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (journal of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) and Member of the Scholars Advisory Board of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Battery Park, NYC.
Recent Publications include Unser Mut/Our Courage: Juden in Europa/Jews in Europe 1945-1948 (2021) Catalogue for Exhibit at Jewish Museum Frankfurt August 31, 2021-January 15 2022. Co-editor and historical consultant for the exhibit which has traveled to Berlin and will continue to other European cities. “Trauma, Privilege, and Adventure in Transit: Jewish Refugees in Iran and India,” in, Jews and Colonialism, ed. Stefan Vogt (Bloomsbury 2022). “Holocaust Studies in Our Age of Catastrophe,” Journal of Holocaust Studies 35:2 (April 2021), Special Issue on “Confronting Hatred: Neo-Nazism, Antisemitism and Holocaust Studies Today.” “Hide and Seek,” in Her Story, My Story? Writing About Women and the Holocaust, ed. Judith Baumel Schwartz and Dalia Ofer (Peter Lang, 2021). “I Thought She was Old but She was my Really My Age: Tracing Desperation and Resilience in my Grandmothers’ Letters from Berlin,” in On Being Adjacent to Historical Violence, ed. Irene Kacandes (De Gruyter, 2021.
Books and Edited Volumes: Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (Princeton University Press, 2007, German 2012), Wege in der Fremde: Deutsch-jüdische Begegnungsgeschichte zwischen New York, Berlin und Teheran (Jena, 2012), and Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (Oxford University Press 1995); co-edited volumes on Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (with Omer Bartov and Mary Nolan, New Press 2002) and After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (with Rita Chin, Heidi Fehrenbach, Geoff Eley, University of Michigan Press 2009), as well as Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union, (with Mark Edele and Sheila Fitzpatrick, Wayne State University Press 2017) and The JDC at 100: Essays on the 100th Anniversary of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, with Avinoam Patt, Linda Levi, Maud Mandel Mandel, (Wayne State, 2018), and (with Tamar Lewinsky) the chapter on 1945-1949 in Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland Von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart (ed. Michael Brenner, 2012, in English, A History of Jews in Germany: Politics, Culture, and Society, 2018,Indiana University Press, 2017).
Her book Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (2007, German, Wallstein 2012) was awarded the George L. Mosse Prize of the American Historical Association and the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History from the Wiener Library, London. Fellowships include NEH, German Marshall Fund, Institute for Advanced Study, American Academy in Berlin, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, and the Davis Center at Princeton University; she has also held Guest Professorships at the University of Haifa, Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and Humboldt University in BerlinHer current research focuses on “Remapping Survival: Jewish Refugees and Lost Memories of Displacement, Trauma, and Rescue in the Soviet Union, Iran, and India,” as well as the entanglements of family memoir and historical scholarship. She is on research and writing leave for the academic year 2022-23 as the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
Unser Mut/Our Courage: Juden in Europa/Jews in Europe 1945-1948 (2021) Catalogue for Exhibit at Jewish Museum Frankfurt August 31, 2021-January 15 2022. Co-editor and historical consultant for the exhibit which will travel on to Berlin and other European cities.
Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union, eds. Mark Edele, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Atina Grossmann (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017).
The JDC at 100: Essays on the 100th Anniversary of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, eds. Avinoam Patt , Atina Grossmann, Maud Mandel, Linda Levi, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2018).
After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe (2009).
Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany (2007) was awarded the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History from the Wiener Library in London; the George L. Mosse Prize of the American Historical Association (2007), and selected as one of the best books of the year (2008) by the HSKult ListServ in German social and cultural history.
Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century (co-edited; 2002)
Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (1995)
When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany, eds. Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman and Marion Kaplan(1984)
Abhishek Kumar Sharma is an Assistant Professor at the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He leads the interdisciplinary scholarship at the META lab. He is in the process of developing a modern take on the classic chemical engineering transport sequence. He is also developing original electives on phase transitions, molecular simulations, and various interdisciplinary themes spanning science, art, and humanities.
Abhishek received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from IIT Delhi in 2016 followed by a PhD in the same subject from Cornell University in 2021. For his graduate work, he received the 2020 Austin Hooey Award for Graduate Research Excellence. Before Cooper, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar at The University of Chicago's molecular engineering department.
Abhishek's research interests have varied over the years, having published peer-reviewed articles in the fields of biopharmaceuticals, molecular simulations, and metamaterials.
Abhishek has also devoted efforts to public and artistic expositions of science, having developed original science demonstrations, science podcasts, and theater at the intersection of science and art. In recent years he has found himself inclined to make art using technology as a medium, creating simulation renderings, photography, and video. His work won the 2022 FOMMS Movie Award,
In his free time, Abhishek enjoys hyperfixating on song lyrics, writing poetry, meditating over slow-cooking, collecting all sorts of patterns in clothing, and taking long aimless walks.
Stanislav Mintchev is a mathematician working in the area of applied dynamical systems, where he uses a combination of numerical methods and rigorous analytical techniques to study models inspired by biological and physical systems. He studied Mathematics at New York University's Courant Institute, where he completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree with specialization in dynamical systems. Prior to his graduate training, he completed bachelor of science degrees with honors in Physics and Mathematics at The George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Dr. Mintchev's research focuses on the study of organization phenomena in spatially extended dynamical systems. Among such phenomena, traveling wave solutions are of particular interest because they constitute signals that are transmitted perfectly across a medium, and thus have an important signal-processing interpretation in the physical and life sciences. To date, Dr. Mintchev has been interested in studying existence and stability properties of traveling wave solutions in several models of pulse-coupled phase oscillators. These models are derived from mathematical neuroscience and stand among the many paradigms for the behavior of networks of neurons. Dr. Mintchev is also interested applying dynamical systems ideas to statistical data mining, pattern recognition, and machine learning.
An avid teacher, Dr. Mintchev is passionate about the communication of mathematical thought to his students. He strives to introduce students to the rigorous presentation of fudamental ideas in mathematics, with the perspective that these ideas - no matter how abstract - find immediate applications in science and engineering. To date, he has taught Introduction to Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Probability, and the three introductory Calculus courses, as well as independent study courses in point-set and algebraic topology. He looks forward to teaching the required upper-level courses for the Minor in Mathematics; among these are theoretical Linear Algebra, Advanced Calculus, and Modern Algebra. In the near future, he will be offering elective courses in Numerical Methods, Boundary Value Problems, and Dynamical Systems. Dr. Mintchev also assists Dr. Smyth (Dept. of Mathematics) in preparing Cooper Union undergraduates to take the Putnam Examination.
In his spare time, Dr. Mintchev enjoys independent film and music. He is a long-distance runner and has (unofficially) represented Cooper Union at the Cooper River Bridge Run (no relation to the institution) in Charleston, South Carolina.
