Waste Governance Beyond the State: Informal Recycling Systems in Urban Vietnam

by Pravir Oudit

By Ezra Undag, a graduate student in sustainability at CUNY-The City College of New York whose work focuses on waste systems and environmental justice. It was hot, dry, and sunny in Ho Chi Minh City, with temperatures reaching 90°F. Determined to see an informal recycling hub, I wandered through District 10 and found Nhat Tao Market, a well-known center for vintage and secondhand goods. Lining the streets were repair shops alongside stalls packed with salvaged computers, discarded home appliances, used electronic devices, and refurbished motor parts. Men and women squatted on the ground, dismantling and prying open broken items. The …

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Turning Waste into Worth: CCNY’s Biodigester Project Blossoms with Community Support

by Pravir Oudit

At The City College of New York (CCNY), the Sustainability Lab has become more than a research hub, it’s a place where passion, innovation, and community come together to rethink how we treat organic waste. At the heart of that effort is our biodigester project, a hands-on initiative turning food scraps and other organic materials into nutrient-rich compost while reducing environmental impact right here on campus. This biodigester isn’t just a machine. It’s a learning space, a source of inspiration, and a symbol of what’s possible when curiosity meets purpose. Led by Jason Ochs, the biodigester project reflects a hands-on …

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SUS Students Complete Independent Study with The New York Climate Exchange

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

Three students in Sustainability partnered with The New York Climate Exchange for the Fall, 2025 semester on preparing case studies for the Playbook for Green Transition. The goal of this program is to develop a playbook for the green transitions of Disadvantaged Communities in NYC based on the successful transitions of cities abroad. Each student team is focusing their research on a selected case study by conducting literature reviews and case analyses to identify effective and ineffective practices in line with a disciplinary framework. Student teams are from the following colleges Baruch , City College, Stony Brook, and Hunter College. Student …

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SUS Alum Hussain Bokhari Presents at AGU, 2025

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

SUS Alum Hussain Bokhari has since gone on to become a PhD Student at the CUNY Graduate Center in Earth and Environmental Sciences and a Researcher at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. In 2025, Hussain and his research colleagues closed out the Annual Conference of the American Geophysical Union AGU25 with a poster on energy-water stress in U.S. data centers. Hussain’s description: In a preliminary analysis, we present (1) a scenario-based approach to the massive parameter uncertainties in data center analyses, (2) a database of 1500+ data centers, and (3) a county-level water stress analysis of data center locations …

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Final Capstone Presentations, Fall 2025

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

Final capstone presentations from CCNY Sustainability Graduate Students in the Fall 2025 semester are now available on our YouTube Channel. Presentations in order: “Precision Remote Sensing of Urban Heat in NYC” at minute 0; “From Flood to Flow: Designing SUDs for Urban Resilience in Lokoja, Nigeria” beginning at 21:11; “Mapping Climate Justice in Hunts Point, The Bronx” at 55:50; “Rooftop Resilience: Green Roofs at Nature-Based Solutions for Enhancing Urban Sustainability in NYC” at 1:36:33; “Optimal Structural Design for Low-Carbon Structures” at hour 2; and “The Role of Batteries in Community Energy System” at 2:26:05. You can see the initial project …

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CCNY SUS Launches Accelerated 4+1 Master’s with the CUNY BA Program

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

The Sustainability in the Urban Environment (SUS) Master’s Program at The City College of New York has formally launched its first accelerated 4+1 combined degree Program with the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies. This new 4+1 will allow undergraduate students across the CUNY system who are forming their own majors related to urban sustainability and climate adaptation to complete one semester of SUS while still in the CUNY BA Program and then finish the M.S. in Urban Sustainability in just one additional year. At CUNY BA, (housed at the CUNY Graduate Center) students can design their own degree …

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SUS alumni panel

CCNY SUS at ClimateWeekNYC 2025

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

This Fall, CCNY Sustainability spent a lot of time hosting, attending, and presenting at events for ClimateWeekNYC. Monday of Climate Week, September 22nd, CCNY SUS commemorated 15 years of the Master of Science Program with an Alumni Panel at the CUNY @ Amazon space in Midtown, Manhattan. The recording below begins with Program Director Kyle McDonald. The panel is moderated by Alex Diaz-Casos, a recent graduate of the Sustainability Program. Panelists (left to right) include Program Alumni Marian Shirley Chen, Michael Fera, Chelsea Encababian, and Varsha Halarnkar. On Thursday of Climate Week, CCNY Sustainability participated in two events. The first, …

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Artist concept of NISAR in action

ISRO-NASA joint satellite, NISAR, will launch on July 30, 2025

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

ISRO’s GSLV-F16 will launch ISRO-NASA joint satellite, NISAR, on July 30, 2025 For years, students have had the opportunity to work on a number of NASA projects through capstone projects, remote sensing coursework, and independent research with Program Director Professor Kyle McDonald, who is also part-time faculty at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Research efforts have also been supported by Professor Nick Steiner of CCNY. The framing of much of recent research has been the joint ISRO-NASA NISAR Mission, which now has a set launch date for July 30th 2025. Sustainability Students will be uniquely positioned to mobilize this …

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From City to the World’s Sustainability Spotlight

by Katherine Gloede Silverman

At CCNY, research and scholarship advance every day on issues of crucial importance to people throughout New York City and across the world. In this series hosted by City College President Vincent Boudreau, meet faculty, hear firsthand about their research and, in conversation with outside experts, discover how that research is forging new solutions to real-world issues like poverty, homelessness, mental health challenges, affordable housing and disparities in health care. -Description via From City to the World’s Website. Recent episodes have featured just some of the exciting sustainability work and research happening on our CCNY campus. See details and embedded podcast …

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