All posts by Michael Parascandola

Virtual Celebration

Samah Islam

Samah Islam created her own major through CUNY BA in Narrative Medicine and Health Sciences. She was elected to the Macaulay Scholars Council as the CCNY class of 2020’s freshmen representative and went onto becoming VP of IT/Communications her sophomore year, then President for two years in a row–the first time in MSC history.

She was an athlete on CCNY’s Fencing team and two-year President of City College’s Illustrious Mentorship Program (CHiMP), a Macaulay Peer Mentor and Macaulay Ambassador. She’s worked with 596 Acres on removing nonprofit organizations from the tax lien sale list and this year the organization successfully passed a bill protecting those places.

She interned in International Sales and Marketing at Penguin Random House and with Career Development at Macaulay, working on the Healthcare Career Fair.

She is a Laura Schor Scholar and Thomas W. Smith Fellow. And all of this is still probably not enough for her South Asian mother.

In the Fall, she will be studying Occupational Therapy at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Virtual Celebration

Ashley Mei Torrenti

Ashley-Mei Torrenti is an International Marketing major, with a Law Minor and an Interdisciplinary Minor with Honors in NYC Studies. She plans on extending her graduation to pursue a Pre-Veterinarian track and continues to volunteer at Peace River Wildlife Center.

Since joining the Macaulay family, Ashley-Mei has served in several leadership positions, including the executive board for Macaulay Business Club and the Macaulay Marauders Quidditch Team. For the past three years, Ashley-Mei has served as the President of the Marauders and will be continuing her time as the newly elected coach! In 2018 she served as an Honors Ambassador for Baruch College and became a Peer Mentor in the Fall of 2019. She is known for her passion for spearheading several fundraising events for Macaulay and her clubs. While an undergraduate student, she has studied abroad twice, studying antiquities in Florence, Italy (Winter 2019) and brushing up on her Spanish in Santander, Spain (Summer 2019). This winter, she worked as an intern for Clean All, LLC for which she was awarded the Gala Scholars Award.

Virtual Celebration

Florence Adeosun

Florence Adeosun is a Journalism and Creative Writing Major and a Theatre Minor. She is a director for the non-profit organization, Relume Foundation. She helps run their social media, is a volunteer SAT tutor for the organization, writes press releases for Relume, and she has helped in medical charity trips to villages in Nigeria. In 2019, she received the Arnold Picker Award of Excellence in Journalism. She also participated in the production of Godspell by the Macaulay Theatre Club. Florence plans on being an editor for a news organization and continuing her philanthropy in the future.

Virtual Celebration

Jadyn Marshall

Jadyn Marshall is a Creative Writing major at Hunter College and holds a Certificate in Publishing from City College. She is one of Hunter’s Spring 2020 valedictorians. She studied abroad in London, England in Summer 2019, as a Meyer Scholar, and in Florence, Italy in her final semester.

In Spring 2018 she interned at Penguin Random House, where she reported on manuscripts, copyedited Mad Libs for inclusivity, and worked on gift book plans for children’s book franchises. Previously she interned at Story Pirates, where she helped manage the influx of 15,000 stories submitted annually by elementary school children, and at Jill Grinberg Literary Management. She volunteers for Scan the World, where she learned how to photograph statues for the organization’s democratized 3D cultural heritage archive. She taught other Macaulay students to do the same as a project leader during Macaulay Community Service Day 2019. She has received a Fulbright grant to teach English in Athens, Greece next year, and will later pursue graduate work in literature and secondary education.

Virtual Celebration

Neeru Bhagirath

Neeru Bhagirath is a biology major at the City College of New York who is interested in pursuing a career in medicine. She has pursued her interests through service, traveling, and interning. Neeru has worked with several volunteer organizations including Peer Health Exchange in which she served in all leadership positions with the most rewarding being Co-Coordinator, Habitat for Humanity in which she served as the Building Coordinator, and NYU Langone Health as an Emergency Medicine Research Associate. With her dedication to service, she was awarded the title of being a Kenan Scholar, allowing her to travel to Ecuador and the Galapagos this past summer to volunteer with children in a marketplace and schools. In addition to her dedication to service, Neeru has interned with Weill Cornell Englander Institute of Precision Medicine as an AR/VR Software Engineer, with Macaulay as a Student Life Intern, and with Pfizer Pharmaceuticals as a Winter Intern. She would like to thank her parents, siblings, advisor, and the incredibly supportive staff for always believing in her success.

Virtual Celebration

Roshan Chudhry

Roshan Chudhry is a clinical psychology major and a biology minor who has aimed to emphasize the importance of mental health throughout her college career. Working as a peer health educator, she taught ninth grade students about mental health issues and provided resources they could utilize throughout the city. She also sought to expand mental health education in the CUNY community by facilitating mental health first aid trainings as president of the Macaulay Psychology Club. Furthermore, Roshan has worked as a peer mentor to help alleviate anxiety that incoming students held in transitioning to college.

Roshan currently works as a researcher at the Emotion Regulation Lab, investigating the relationship between ethnicity and anxiety. In the future, Roshan will be applying to medical school after taking two gap years in which she will continue with her research. Recently accepted as an American Pakistani Foundation fellow, Roshan will also be traveling to Pakistan during her gap years to provide much needed healthcare and educational resources to underserved communities.

Virtual Celebration

Anthony Astarita

Anthony Astarita is a computer science major and innovator​. Anthony is constantly looking for ways technology can solve communication problems. Whether it is his work via Stevens Institute of Technology’s competition where he created software with “Alexa” attributes designed to assist cancer patients with questions, or his research projects at Weill Cornell Medical Center, or the creation of a language translator that converts any language to English. Anthony is always finding new use to use technology to do good works in the daily lives of people. Perhaps most impressively he worked with a team of CSI honors students to create a cloud based AI solution targeted at reducing veteran suicide. Anthony was a Macaulay Junior mentor and he was always available to help out at an open house or an admitted student event. Anthony is currently working at BPL Energy Lab, but is looking into opportunities in Backend developing or Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Virtual Celebration

Julia Muallem

Julia Muallem is a double major in Psychology and ABC (Anthropology, Biology, Chemistry), graduating with honors on the pre-med track. She is an active member of the Macaulay student body. Julia served as her campus’ representative on the Scholars Council on the Community Service Committee for two years. Besides co-launching the Macaulay Green Initiative, Julia served as co-president of Macaulay Splash! and the Macaulay Feminist Society. From 2017 to 2018, Julia was a research associate at NYU Langone, conducting clinical research in the Emergency Department. Similarly, Julia participated in the Summer Undergraduate Mentorship Program at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2018. Last summer, she conducted research in the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the Neutrino and Nuclear Chemistry lab of Dr. Yeh. Recently, Julia has been nominated to Sigma Xi for her research investigating the correlation between depression and cognitive impairment in the elderly, as part of Dr. Guerrero-Berroa’s lab at Lehman College. Following a gap year, Julia intends to apply to medical school.

Virtual Celebration

Kiriaki Giannoulas

Kiriaki Giannoulas majored in Accounting and minored in Honors Interdisciplinary NYC Studies. Currently, she works as a part-time tax staff at Presti & Naegele, where she started in 2016 as an intern. Kiriaki joined the Macaulay Business Club (MBC) as freshman in 2016. She led the club as President of the Baruch Chapter in 2017 and the Executive President in 2018.

She was also a First Year Seminar Leader of the MHC Baruch Honors Class of 2022, where she had the privilege of guiding first year students through their first semester of college. During her last semester of undergraduate studies, she joined the MHC Career Development Advisory Council, where she has the opportunity to provide MHC with a student’s perspective on the resources business students need when preparing for their careers.

Post graduation, she will continue her education in accountancy at the Baruch Masters in Accountancy program and plans on taking the CPA exam. Kiriaki looks forward to attending future MBC events and remaining an active member of the MHC Career Development Advisory Council.

Virtual Celebration

Melissa Chan

Melissa Chan is a Computer Science and Information Security graduate, who will be a Security Analyst at Accenture in Fall 2020. During her four years, she interned at Verizon, Cisco, Two Sigma, and the Department of Homeland Security to understand today’s security landscape. In Fall 2019, she studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland, where she was given the opportunity to intern at two companies to learn about GDPR and Europe’s cybersecurity practices.

In 2018, she co-founded a Women in Technology club on campus to create a supportive and diverse computer science community. She worked closely with professors and professionals to bring various events and opportunities to all students. She was also a recipient of the Women in Technology and Entrepreneurship of New York Scholarship, as well as Rewriting the Code Fellowship. In Spring 2020, her paper on using machine learning to detect malicious websites was published in her college’s journal, John Jay’s Finest, and she continued that research for her honors capstone. In the future, Melissa plans to pursue her master’s degree in cybersecurity.