CUNY Laureates

On this episode of CUNY Laureates, we profile another three Guggenheim Fellows who graduated from the The City University of New York.

Brooklyn College alum, Leonard Herzenberg was an immunologist and geneticist at Stanford University who helped revolutionize the field of medicine with the invention of the fluorescence activated cell sorter. Working off an earlier cell sorter created at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Leonard and his team of Stanford engineers adapted the machine to separate cells by fluorescent tags. He later improved the machine by incorporating monoclonal antibodies, which could tag cells more accurately. Leonard spent his entire career working alongside his wife and fellow scientist Leonore Herzenberg, who was instrumental in much of his work, including the development of the cell sorter. Fluorescence activated cell sorters have been instrumental in the study of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and stem cell research, and are present in nearly every major medical laboratory today. Leonard was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in both 1976 and 1986.

Maggie Nelson’s genre-bending books were shaped by her early years in New York City and at The Graduate Center, CUNY. When she first arrived in the city, she was influenced by the “New York School” of artists and took the movement in a new direction with her writings and her studies. Now a professor at the University of Southern California, she continues to publish new and challenging life writing, including her latest from 2025, “Pathemata, Or, The Story of My Mouth”. Nelson won a Guggenheim fellowship in 2010.

The City College of New York graduate, Jeff Talman has been creating art installations based on found sound for over 25 years. But what brought him to this unique field? In his early years, Talman explored the cathedrals of Europe and captured the sound inside these large spaces, and what he heard turned into his lifelong project. In 2006 he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship to continue his work and later, he expanded out of cathedrals to explore the sound of the outside world, including that of the cosmic background radiation, which some have called the sound of creation.

CUNY TV Leonard Herzenberg, Maggie Nelson, and Jeff Talman | CUNY Laureates

On this episode of CUNY Laureates, we profile another three Guggenheim Fellows who graduated from the The City University of New York.

Ira Eduardovna (MFA, Hunter College, 2011) is a New York–based video installation artist and filmmaker, born in Uzbekistan. Her work draws deeply from her childhood experiences of migration, tracing her family’s relocation from Uzbekistan to Israel following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Through non-linear storytelling, Eduardovna reconstructs autobiographical narratives that explore migration, displacement, and the complexities of identity. She is known for creating immersive, multichannel video installations, including notable works such as The Iron Road (2021) and On Foreign Made Soles (2018). As a filmmaker, she directed the narrative short Tongue Behind Teeth (2025) and is currently developing a feature film exploring themes of migration and belonging. In recognition of her contributions to film and video, she was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2025.

Edward Grant (The City College of New York, 1951) became a renowned historian of science over the course of his multi-decade career as a professor at Indiana University. Focusing on the history of science in Medieval Europe, Edward argued that the era’s reputation as a “dark age” was undeserved, and that key events in the Middle Ages laid the groundwork for the scientific revolution that would follow. He wrote over a dozen books on the subject, and, in addition to a Guggenheim Fellowship, was also awarded the George Sarton Medal, generally recognized as the highest honor in the field.

Leonard Kleinrock (The City College of New York, 1957) studied computer engineering at both City College and later, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then moved to California to work at UCLA, where his lifework began to take shape: birthing the Internet. His research and experiments eventually led, in late 1969, to the first digital message being sent through a router (at the time, called a ‘packet switcher’) from UCLA’s node to one at Stanford. After this, the Internet - the digital world - began to take shape. In his later years, Kleinrock bemoaned the commercialization of the Internet, as it was once a space for researchers to share their findings. But the cat was out of the bag, and almost 70 years after his first message, the Internet has evolved into Web 2.0, and now, the AI-era. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship for computer science in 1970.

Ira Eduardovna, Edward Grant, and Leonard Kleinrock | CUNY Laureates On this episode of CUNY Laureates, we profile another three Guggenheim Fellows who graduated from the City University of New York.Ira Eduardovna (MFA, Hunter...