Medgar Evers Professor Receives Six-Figure Grant

Dr. Michelle Vittadello scores four-year research award from U.S. Department of Defense

Dr. Michele Vittadello recently received a four-year research award of $834,550 from the U.S. Department of Defenses-Air Force Research Laboratories for his research on “Instant Evolution: Testing the Endosymbiont Hypothesis using MitoPunch Technology.” Dr. Vittadello is part of a team that submitted this application and is rounded out by Michael Teitell, M.D., Ph.D. (director of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center) and Dr. Shelley D. Minteer (founding director of the Kummer Institute Center for Resource Sustainability at Missouri S&T)

Dr. Vittadello received his Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences in 2003 from the University of Padua in Italy with Dr. Vitto Di Noto. His work appeared in several articles published in a number of international journals including Solid State Ionics, Electrochim, and Acta. Throughout his research career, he has held teaching positions at CUNY-Borough of Manhattan Community College, The College of New Jersey and at Rutgers University. He has been a member of the CUNY-Medgar Evers College faculty since fall 2008 as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry with a joint appointment as visiting faculty at the Rutgers Energy Institute. Dr. Vittadello is also the director of the M.S. Program in Nanoscience at the CUNY Graduate Center.

As someone who has mentored his share of undergraduate and graduate students, Dr. Vittadello strives to have his pupils “…be critical thinkers. I don’t want them to drink the Kool-Aid. Chemistry is essentially a language not unlike Chinese. If you’re in China and don’t know the language, you may be able to survive, but not necessarily thrive.”

Dr. Vittadello’s long tenure at Medgar Evers College is no accident and is a result of the latitude the school gives him.

“I like the academic freedom at Medgar Evers,” he said. “This project I’m working on here is really far-out and cutting-edge research. People from Harvard reviewed this grant. If I was at some other institutions, I probably wouldn’t be able to do this kind of research.”