Meet Our Team

 

Founders

Kendra Krueger has run the ASRC’s IlluminationSpace and  Outreach program since 2018. She has a background in electrical engineering, science education,  transdisciplinary arts and community organizing. She was born and raised in New York’s Lower East Side  and obtained her bachelor’s degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her Masters of Science from  the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ricardo Toledo-Crow is the Director of Next Generation Environmental Sensor Lab (NGENS), a Research Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences  Initiative. He has a background in optics and physics and has worked on numerous academic and industry settings, collaborating with Cornell Medical and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City in his Research Engineering Lab. He lives in Hudson Heights with his wife and two young boys and is an avid musicophile with broad-spectrum tastes.

2021 Interns

Hannah Grunfeld is a junior in Macaulay Honors College at City College of New York. She is majoring in Anthropology, on the pre-nursing track and minoring in Human Rights and Asians studies. In her free time, Hannah volunteers with homeless communities in Harlem and a preventative healthcare program for elementary school children. Developing a love for science in high school through her science research class and Science Olympiad, she hopes to aid others in understanding the importance and power of science for all communities.

Amalia Torres is a sophomore, studying computer science at CUNY Queens College. As a Latina living in Queens, New York, she loves meeting new people, learning new things, and helping others in any way that she can. This past summer she worked for the United States Census Bureau, making sure that people in her community were being counted. In her spare time, she likes to code and attend hackathons.

Mikaela Charalambous is a Cypriot-American born and raised in Queens and an Environmental Science major at CUNY Queens College. She loves reading, hiking, gardening/houseplant care, and anything to do with nature. She is interested in soil science, particularly for bioremediation of depleted or eroded agricultural soils. More especially, she is interested in how we can remediate urban soils to cultivate more green spaces to connect the city with nature and help people grow their own food safely and accessibly. She hopes to connect science, politics, and activism so that people everywhere can advocate for environmental health and food sovereignty.

Jason Clarke is from Queens, NY. He is studying Biology at Queens
College. His hobbies include fishing, travel, video games and watching anime. “One of
my favorite trips was a few years ago when me and my family went on a cruise ship to the
Bahamas, definitely an amazing experience”.  Jason Clarke has obtained proficiency in Microsoft Excel, proper practices when sending email correspondence, scheduling events on web-based email services, and giving presentations to various age groups. 

Jaquawn Miller was born in Atlanta, Georgia but raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is a Mechanical Engineering student at CUNY New York City College of Technology studying Manufacturing/Robotics. Interests outside his field of study include photography, film, fashion, graphic design, and animation. His dream is to design an apparatus that makes water potable  in areas that receive little rainfall, along with designing robots that police litter/trash in the inner-city. 

Luisanny Marinez is a Mechanical Engineering student minoring in Computer Science  at the City College of New York (CCNY). She is a first-generation college student with a desire to expand her understanding of engineering, specifically,  energy and atmospheric concepts. Through research, she wants to find ways to make use of earth energy interactions and our natural resources in a more efficient manner. In her spare time she enjoys reading, traveling and interacting with others. Her ultimate goal is to inspire and help younger generations to join STEM and make a difference.

Sophia Jao is a senior at Barnard College from Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. She is studying environmental science and sustainability, as well as English literature and creative writing. Her research interests lay in the areas of urban pollution, climate change, and green infrastructure. Previously, she has interned with the Earth Institute at Columbia, where she assisted in developing the new Climate School. In her free time, Sophia enjoys surfing, going to botanical gardens, and bullet journaling.

Eden Chan is a sophomore at the Macaulay Honors College at CCNY majoring in Chemical
Engineering. Specifically, she’s hoping to pursue a career in Chemical Engineering that focuses
of environmental sustainability. For 4 years, she had worked with the Rockaway Initiative for
Sustainability and Equity (RISE), an organization that provides civic engagement and youth
development programs that advance social equity, and was most recently the project manager for the Environmentor program. She hopes to meld the knowledge she’s attained at RISE with her chemical engineering degree to solve the issue of environmental sustainability at the technical level by developing new products that are more environmentally friendly or even developing processes that overall reduce carbon footprint.