Andrew Iadevaia, ’23 (BS Computer Science) loves working with computer systems. When he first arrived at Pace University’s Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems, he only knew one programming language: Java. Knowing that, to succeed, he needed to expand his knowledge and experience, he started joining student teams.

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In his first semester Andrew joined the student-run BergCyberSec’s National Cyber League (NCL) and National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) teams, as well as the Blue Colab’s water monitoring team. By the end of the semester, he was an indispensable member of them all.

Andrew learns a great deal working with clubs and teams. He has picked up experience in programming, cybersecurity, networking, operating systems, communication, competition, and of course, teamwork. He has learned cyber defense, Python, SQL, Java, C, C++, C#, FastAPI and more.

Teams and Clubs

The Pace Northeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) team competes against teams across the Northeastern US in Cybersecurity competitions. They defend (Blue Team) or attack (Red Team) the resources of a hypothetical company or organization. In his first year on the CCDC team, Andrew competed with the Blue Team, documenting injects. This meant he was responsible for keeping a record of every action the team took in their efforts to defend their system against attack. Andrew explains: “So I would write to [a hypothetical director or CEO] explaining what we did, why we did it, and how we did it and I put it into words that they could understand, not super technical.” To do this well, he had to understand “the overall picture, every part of the system: networking, hardware, and software” as well as the current security landscape and communicate that in an easy to understand way to a non-technical actor.

Pace CCDC has qualified to compete at regionals the two years Andrew has been part of the team. Why are they doing so well? Andrew thinks it’s because of the people. Everyone on the team is ambitious and eager to learn. In competition, “it’s a team effort; you have a duty you need to do and so does everyone else. Everyone does their part.” He says the competitions can be stressful, but “competition makes you want to be the best, that's what encourages you to learn things.”

Andrew also competes with the National Cyber League (NCL) team in Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions. It wasn’t until he joined the Seidenberg community at Pace that he participated in his first CTF . Being part of these competitions has taught him about “red teaming, privilege escalation, security auditing, and overall cybersecurity.” When asked how he does in competition he says “I've qualified for the gold bracket every season I participated, which is pretty good. Last season [as a sophomore] I ranked 42 out of 6,072 [in the US].”

Andrew is the Backend Software Engineer and Data Manager for the Blue Colab team on Pace University’s Pleasantville Campus. The Blue Colab is Seidenberg’s collaborative STEM laboratory that advances innovation in real-time water monitoring for the protection of human and environmental health. Andrew says that working with this team has taught him a lot about how combined systems work. In his role with the Blue Colab, he regularly works with databases, APIs, and web servers. Before he started, he didn’t know how any of those systems worked. He says, “I find it mind-blowing sometimes because I went from not knowing how to write a SQL statement to literally running the database and API.”

Learn By Doing

Andrew believes the best way to learn something is by doing hands-on projects. “You can't just go and read documentation like you would read a textbook for history class. You have to use the code, make a connection to the database, play around with it. That’s where projects come in.” When working on projects, chances are that you’ll slip up every now and then. But mistakes are another opportunity to learn. “There's always going to be errors, especially when developing your project, and that's when you actually learn.” To sum it all up, he says “Until you've done it, you haven't fully learned it. That's my belief.”

The project Andrew is most proud of is a database converter program written for the Blue Colab team. The goal of the program is to take data from text files, parse it using an Artificial Intelligence Engine, and insert it in a database based on certain conditions. Andrew wrote the program in Java. He says, “I'm proud of the database converter because it was something I’d never worked on before.” Putting together database operations, SQL, and Java was a new experience for him. “It was a big learning curve for me, but once I figured it out, I was able to actually take what I learned from the database converter and use it in other projects. Now, I'm able to comfortably read and write to databases.”

Looking Forward

What advice would Andrew like to give Seidenberg students? “To get the most out of Seidenberg, a key thing is to join extracurricular activities. Clubs and teams are just a swimming pool of knowledge that's not given to you in a classroom setting.” Your teammates will “get you out of your comfortable zone and [help you] learn other things.” For students interested in programming he adds, “There's no programmer in the world who can remember perfect syntax and stuff like that. You're always going to have to look something up.” And the most important thing to remember while programming? “KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.”

Andrew would like to spend the rest of his time at Seidenberg taking on more leadership roles in the clubs and teams he works with. He has big plans for his teams. As data manager for the Blue Colab, he wants to find a solution for some of the issues the team is facing. He wants “more flexibility in the way that we're able to input data and save it and use it.” Andrew hopes his experience with these projects will help him find internships with technology companies. He looks forward to working in DevOps (Development Operations) where he can use his knowledge of IT systems and software development together to work with all the pieces of a system. “And just have a good time,” he adds. That’s important!

When you think of a scientist conducting research, your mind might immediately visualize a bustling lab, full of test tubes and beakers. For Dyson’s Melissa Grigione, that lab is oftentimes mother nature. Over the course of her career, Grigione has traveled literally all over the world—from Cameroon, to Patagonia to countless destinations in between—to better understand the complex relationships between animals and surrounding ecosystems.

Grigione specializes in what’s called mammalian spatial ecology, which can be defined as how ecological and man-made elements impact the development and propagation of animal species. She uses sophisticated technological techniques such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing technology to better understand populations, and how they are impacted by what’s happening around them. She is highly focused on conservation biology, as she’s dedicated much of her life to understanding species whose way of life have been altered by man-made and environmental changes to existing ecosystems.

Take, for example, the bison—an iconic American species that Grigione and her husband have been researching for nearly a dozen years. Through studying the effects of human hunting norms, she has found that the species’ ability to propagate effectively has been reduced.

“We were looking at the effects of hunting on mating behavior,” said Grigione. "The large males that are hunted may be showing signs of reduced and/or altered vocalization during mating. These changes in vocalization may have profound effects on the populations, its reproductive biology, and genetic structure."

This particular project began quite modestly, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Now, it’s growing rapidly—Grigione has been conducting similar research in Canada, as well as a lot of private land in the western United States to better understand larger trends amongst diverse populations of this species.

“I’ve been all around the world studying animals in my life, but the thing I really love most about being at Pace and my career right now is enriching the minds of our students,” said Grigione.

Grigione is also focusing her attention to a species called the pika—a small, rabbit-like species that can be found in high-elevation areas around the globe. By studying pika populations in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho, Grigione is breaking new ground.

“They’ve never been studied in Idaho, and I’d like to study the effects of a changing climate on these animals,” said Grigione. “They live at very high elevations and there’s nowhere else for them to go if temperatures continue to increase. If they are affected, their populations can just start blinking out.”

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In addition to a few other ongoing projects—including, but not limited to, studying burrowing owls in the grasslands of Florida and repopulating jaguar populations in Arizona—Grigione is focused on the classroom. As a faculty member at Pace, Grigione has taken great pride in training the next generation of scientists. Over the course of her career, she’s seen students evolve from learning the ropes during graduate assistantships to holding major roles and making significant impacts in the professional world. She credits the larger educational philosophy at Pace to helping prepare scientists; as oftentimes today, it’s not just enough to solely focus on the hard science.

“The reason why I love Pace, we’re training our students not only to do science, but how to understand policy and how to communicate.”

While Grigione has accomplished quite a lot over the course of her career, she views it as her mission to ensure the student-to-scientist pipeline remains robust. With all the advents of 21st century technology, basic understanding of the natural world can often take a backseat. Yet, as Grigione notes, training competent and dedicated conservation biologists for the future—many of whom will be faced with ever-complex challenges due to a changing climate, human population alterations, and much more—is arguably more important than ever.

“I’ve been all around the world studying animals in my life, but the thing I really love most about being at Pace and my career right now is enriching the minds of our students,” said Grigione. “Students don’t always have a sense of the natural world—if I can spark a little of light, bring some stories into my classroom and really turn on that switch to appreciate and understand the importance of nature, I've done my job. This is what I love doing.”

Originally published October 15, 2021

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Professor Craig Hart, Executive Director of the Pace Energy and Climate Center at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, was named to the “2021 Energy & Environment Power 100” list published by City & State New York magazine. Professor Hart was ranked #65 on the prestigious list which includes public officials, energy executives, environmentalists, activists, academics and others who are driving the debate on climate change and reinventing how New Yorkers get their power.

Distinguished Haub Law alumnus Basil Seggos ’01, Commissioner, State Department of Environmental Conservation, received the #1 ranking for his leadership in New York State’s climate change law. Additionally, former Haub Law Visiting Professor Judith Enck, Founder and President of Beyond Plastics and former EPA Region 2 Administrator, ranked #40 along with Fred Zalcman at #16, who served as Pace Energy & Climate Center’s Executive Director from 2001 – 2007. Haub Law also acknowledges litigation partners Kim Fraczek, Director of SANE Energy, who ranked #83 and Bob Howarth, Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology at Cornell University, who ranked #64.

“We are so proud of the important work that both Craig and Basil are doing to address the growing threat of climate change in New York and beyond and congratulate them on this recognition,” said Dean Horace E. Anderson Jr., Dean of the Law School. “As the #1 ranked environmental law program, Haub Law remains committed to advancing climate change law and policies that enact a global response and salutes our past and present faculty, alumni and colleagues for their bold leadership.”

#65 Craig Hart
Executive Director, Pace Energy and Climate Center

Pace Law School brought Craig Hart on to run the school’s energy and climate center two years ago. Hart, who has advised governments on policies regarding renewables, grid modernization and financing infrastructure, has supported clean energy initiatives in the American Jobs Plan and urged private-sector employers to reorient toward sustainability. He also led Pace’s partnership with the Westchester County Association to launch a clean energy portal to help businesses find government initiatives allowing them to lower their carbon emissions.

#1 Basil Seggos
Commissioner, State Department of Environmental Conservation

Not only did Basil Seggos stay on as commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation during the transition from the Cuomo regime to the Hochul administration, he turned heads in October with his agency’s decision to block permits for proposed repowering projects in Queens and upstate New York. This was done on the grounds that investing in natural gas infrastructure is contrary to the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Seggos, who has led DEC since 2015, also co-chairs the New York State Climate Action Council, which is tasked with implementing New York’s ambitious climate change law.

View the full City & State 2021 Energy & Environment Power 100 list