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WHAT: John O’Keefe , 2014 Nobel Laureate and CCNY Class of 1963; Ursula Burns, Xerox Corporation chair and CEO; and Michael Pope, ’44BEE, a pioneering engineer, will be the keynote speakers at The City College of New York’s 169th Commencement Exercises . In addition, City College will confer honorary degrees on the three speakers. WHERE: CCNY’s new South Campus Great Lawn, 135th Street at Convent Avenue, Manhattan. WHEN: 9 a.m., Friday, May 29. Commencement week at CCNY begins Wednesday, May 27, with the Division of Humanities and the Arts graduation ceremony 9:30 a.m. at the South Campus

The alma mater of 10 Nobel Laureates and numerous other distinguished alumni, The City College of New York bids farewell to the Class of 2015 at its 169th Commencement Exercises Friday, May 29, at 9 a.m. on CCNY’s new South Campus Great Lawn. The Class of 2015 comprises approximately 3,504 students. Of these 2,514 are receiving undergraduate degrees and 990 graduate degrees. The standouts include: Mexican-born Violeta Contreras Ramirez, 23, this year’s Valedictorian. The Westchester resident completed a combined BS/MS program in biology and a BS in psychology with a 3.99 GPA. Egyptian native

The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture has made the top ten in the number of bachelor’s degrees granted to Hispanics, according to the most recent rankings issued by Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine. The publication’s “ Top 100” issue found that 37 percent of the Spitzer School’s bachelor’s degrees were granted to Hispanics. The magazine also included CCNY in its Top 100 for bachelor’s degrees granted to Hispanics (51st) and for Hispanic graduate student enrollment (64th). The rankings are based on information from the U.S. Department of Education. About The City

City College of New York senior Ivana Lazaroska has a particular interest in the comparative study of religious ideology in southeastern Europe and Turkey from the late 19th century to the present. Thanks to the CCNY-Stanford Summer Research Program , the history/political science double major is about to take her research to another level. From June 22, Lazaroska and nine other City College students will spend eight weeks at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., as the third cohort of the program established in 2013. She and the other CCNY students will conduct research in their

In his first return to his alma mater since receiving a Nobel Prize last fall, John O’Keefe presents the inaugural Professor Sharon Cosloy-Edward Blank Family Distinguished Scientist Lecture, Thursday, May 28 at The City College of New York. His talk, 4 p.m. in NAC room 0/201, will be entitled “The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map: How we got here and where we are going.” It is free and open to the public but a reservation is required. Click here. O’Keefe’s lecture will explain the latest cutting-edge research on the hippocampus, a small but crucial part of the brain that plays an important role

City College of New York anthropology major Chayanne Marcano will spend her summer researching the relationship public spaces have with local communities. The Bronx resident is one of six City College students awarded two-year Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowships (MMUF) by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The MMUF program is designed to encourage the most talented students from groups traditionally underrepresented in graduate education to enter PhD programs and pursue careers in research and college teaching. “As a Mellon Mays Fellow, I want to analyze and critique the relationship public

Two-time Grammy Award winner Arturo O’Farrill was among the honorees at the City College Center for the Arts Inaugural Awards Benefit at the Aaron Davis Hall on the CCNY campus on Monday. Themed “Celebrating the Arts and Artists,” the gala also honored actress, dancer and choreographer Carmen de Lavallade ; director and screen writer Gina Prince-Bythewood and singer-songwriter Alexa Ray Joel. Musical highlights of the evening included a celebration concert by O’Farrill, the 2009 and 2015 Grammy Award winner for Best Latin Jazz album, who performed with his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. There were

“ WALLACE,” a biodiversity web application created by a team led by City College of New York biologists Robert P. Andersonand Jamie M. Kass, is one of six finalists selected worldwide by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in the inaugural Ebbe Nielsen Challenge. The first and second-place winners will be announced at the GBIF Governing Board meeting in Madagascar this October. “The creativity and ambition displayed by the finalists is inspiring,” said Roderic Page, chair of the Challenge jury and the GBIF Science Committee. “My biggest hope for the Challenge was that the

Four high achieving undergraduates at The City College of New York have been awarded 2015 Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships for study abroad this summer. The students and their destinations this June are: Troy Blackwell, Jr. (junior, political science/public relations) is headed to Universidad De La Rioja, Spain, to study the Spanish language and Spanish art movements; Dalvin Delia (sophomore, international studies) will study the Italian language, culture and grammar at Senigallia in Italy; Stefanos Ugbit (junior, economics) is going to the University of Jordan to study Arabic

Student startups with concepts ranging from a chip that can determine drug treatment options for cancer patients to reusable bamboo cloth baby diapers were the big winners in The City College of New York’s Zahn Innovation Center Entrepreneurship Final Pitch Wednesday night. A total of $144,000 in prize money to fund the winning ventures was given out by sponsors including the Moxie Foundation, City College alumnus Harvey Kaylie, ’60 and Standard Chartered Bank, at CCNY. College teams competed in four categories. “Vivoz Biolabs” won the $50,000 Kaylie Prize for hardware and physical products