Our Project Team

Tamera Schneider is Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the City University of New York, overseeing the Offices of Central Programs, Research Administration and Compliance, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The Office of Research team promotes and supports the research, scholarly, and creative pursuits of the CUNY community, provides assurance to funding agencies and to the public that research at the university is conducted in accordance with the highest ethical standards and enhances technology commercialization, entrepreneurship, and economic development activities.

Before joining CUNY, Dr. Schneider was Deputy Division Director for Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences at the National Science Foundation and Professor of Psychology at Wright State University. Her research is often conducted across academic disciplines, such as combining her stress and emotion psychophysiological expertise with remote sensing to assess the human state, applying her biobehavioral model of persuasion to promote cancer screening or extreme weather-related behaviors in municipalities, and applying persuasion and affect research to develop effective implicit bias training and develop emotional competency curricula for STEM teams to foster innovation. She has been a PI/Co-PI on projects representing more than $5 million in extramural funding, has received numerous teaching and research awards (including Wright State University’s Presidential Award for Faculty Excellence in Early Career Achievement, in 2004), and has over produced 53 publications and 150 presentations. Her PhD is from Stony Brook University and her postdoctoral fellowship was completed at Yale University.

 

Lauren Andersen is the University Associate Provost for Careers & Industry Partnerships at the City University of New York. In this role, she leads the University’s efforts to ensure postgraduate career success of CUNY students and support the recovery and growth of New York’s inclusive economy. Prior to assuming this role in July 2021, Lauren was the Executive Director of the NYC Tech Talent Pipeline (TTP), Mayor Bill de Blasio's signature initiative to support the growth of the tech ecosystem by delivering quality talent for the city's businesses and quality jobs for New Yorkers. As head of the City’s tech industry partnership, she worked with the city's leading tech employers, academic institutions, and training providers to support new and expanded education solutions and to ensure long-term alignment of workforce needs and educational opportunities through policy and partnerships. These efforts included the launch of a $24M initiative—CUNY 2x Tech—which successfully doubled the number of tech bachelor’s awarded across CUNY and improved the rate of employment among computer science graduates at seven senior colleges. As a part of these efforts, CUNY also launched the Tech-in-Residence Corps (TIRC), a group of industry professionals (from 60+ companies including Google, LinkedIn, Salesforce) who commit to teaching for-credit electives on in-demand technologies across 10 colleges. To date, TIRC has enrolled over 3,000 students across CUNY. Prior to working for the City of New York, Lauren served as a Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she worked on initiatives to broaden participation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields and served as liaison to the White House Council on Women and Girls. Her previous work experience also includes positions on the Youth Economic Opportunity team at Citi Foundation, the Obama for America campaign in Florida, and a variety of digital and broadcast media outlets. Lauren received her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University, and an MPA from Columbia University.

 

Dr. Mohamed Attalla, is the Vice Chancellor for Facilities Planning, Construction and Management at the City University on New York. Dr. Attalla Posseses over 33 years in construction and facilities, Attalla has helped shape the physical complexion of prominent educational settings in the United States and Canada. In addition to CUNY, he has worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, McMaster University in Canada and the Toronto District School Board.  

Attalla was the recipient of the prestigious 2018 Walter Shanly Award from the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering for his notable contributions that included the country’s first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold-certified public high school, and the award-winning David Braley Health Sciences Centre in downtown Hamilton.

Throughout his career, Attalla has also lent his expertise to advance the research and academic missions of his university. He served as an adjunct faculty member at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment at the University of Illinois and taught at McMaster University, Ryerson University and the University of Waterloo, all in Canada, and Suez Canal University in Egypt. Attalla has published his research in 16 peer-reviewed journals and presented his findings at 25 refereed conference proceedings.

He earned a Master of Applied Science and a PhD in Construction Engineering and Management from the University of Waterloo and obtained an Executive Master of Business Administration from McMaster University in Canada.

 

Tria Case is the City University of New York’s Executive Director of Sustainability and Energy Conservation and she launched Sustainable CUNY to support the adoption of renewable energy, energy efficiency practices, innovations in clean technology, and behavioral changes on CUNY’s campuses and in NYC. Case coordinated the development of college and university sustainability plans and initiated a program to establish sustainability councils for each CUNY campus to support sustainability goals while sourcing external resources for CUNY’s 25 institutions to reduce CUNY’s energy consumption and fight climate change. Case developed and is managing the implementation and expansion of Sustainable CUNY’s CUNY Conserves Energy Efficiency Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Program and secures and manages multimillions of dollars in funding for O&M projects, including a revolving loan fund—the Sustainability Investment Fund—which supports energy savings projects on CUNY campuses. Before joining CUNY in 2006, Case served as the Director of the Office of Environmental Business Services for Empire State Development. 

Case formed the NYC Solar Partnership in 2006, working collaboratively with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and the NYC Economic Development Corporation in developing and implementing comprehensive plans for large-scale solar integration and associated economic development in New York City. In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Case formed the Smart Distributed Generation (DG) Hub, with city, state, and federal participation, in an effort to integrate storage and distributed renewable energy resources into emergency power and resiliency deployment. As a result of these efforts, her office is responsible for the NYC Solar and Storage Ombudsman program established in partnership with NYC.

Case received her undergraduate degree from Union College and earned her JD from Brooklyn Law School.

 

Brett Branco is a marine scientist at CUNY’s Brooklyn College and is the Executive Director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay. His research interests range broadly from water quality in urban estuaries and lakes to coastal climate adaptation. Since arriving at Brooklyn College in 2009, he has successfully built partnerships between communities, researchers, and government to develop a deeper understanding of the issues facing coastal communities and ecosystems in New York City and the range of options available to address them. These issues include coastal flooding and sea level rise, the impacts of urbanization and climate change on water quality, and the conservation and restoration of critical habitats such as the salt marshes of Jamaica Bay. Branco earned his PhD in Oceanography at the University of Connecticut, where he developed new methods for studying the interactions between physical and biogeochemical processes in shallow marine and fresh waters. Upon graduation he completed a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Western Australia before arriving at Brooklyn College. In addition to holding a position as Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, Branco has served as co-chair of the Water Quality Work Group for the NYNJ Harbor and Estuary Program and is the current President of the New England Estuarine Research Society (NEERS).