The Impact of Racism on Urban Belowground Biodiversity

Principal Investigator: Co-Principal Investigator: Healthy soils are a key measure of urban green space quality. In particular, soil microbial diversity is a crucial ecosystem service provided by urban green spaces, providing nutrients to urban plants, sequestering carbon in soil, and suppressing pathogens. Urbanization can reduce soil microbial diversity and increase the abundance of human pathogens, […]

Stress in the City: Examining metabolic consequences of toxicological exposures in resilient urban corals under global change stressors

Principal Investigator: Co-Principal Investigators: Marine organisms located offshore from urban centers face potentially negative interactive effects from pollutants (heavy metals, microplastics, pharmaceuticals, increased nutrients) and global change stressors (increasing sea temperature and acidity). Corals are just one example of a marine urban organism that may be vulnerable to these stressors. One seemingly resilient coral is […]

Reentry, Employment and Persisting Inequality: Understanding the experiences of formerly incarcerated jobseekers with employment reentry programs

Principal Investigator: Co-Principal Investigator: Today in the United States, 50% of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed in the year following their release. Over the past decades, prisoner reentry programs have increasingly provided formerly incarcerated jobseekers with services such as job training, job-placement assistance and other job-search related resources. When examining the dynamics and outcomes of […]

Meet Avi Nguyen, the summer 2021 MORRE Fellow

The Initiative on Cities (IOC) and the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground are proud to announce that Avi Nguyen has been selected as the summer 2021 MORRE Fellow. Avi will spend the summer working with the City of Boston’s Chief Resilience Officer, Ms. Lori Nelson, in the Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Racial Equity (MORRE). As Chief Resilience […]

Meet Kimberly Rhoten, JD, the summer 2021 MONUM Fellow

The Initiative on Cities (IOC) is proud to announce that Kimberly Rhoten (they/them) has been selected as the summer 2021 MONUM Fellow. Kimberly will spend the summer working with the City of Boston, within the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics(MONUM). MONUM is Boston’s civic innovation team, responsible for promoting participatory urbanism, along with smarter city infrastructure and […]

Faculty Friday: Yuhei Miyauchi

Faculty Friday is a series highlighting members of the Initiative on Cities (IOC) Faculty Advisory Board,  by exploring their work on campus and in the city. This week, we are highlighting Yuhei Miyauchi, Assistant Professor of Economics at the College of Arts & Sciences.  By Claudia Chiappa Yuhei Miyauchi has always been interested in how people […]

IOC Associate Director Stacy Fox Inducted into Tri-Alpha National Honor Society for Achievements as a First Generation College Student

The Initiative on Cities (IOC) congratulates Stacy Fox, IOC’s Associate Director, and all 533 BU students, faculty, and staff that were inducted as inaugural members of Boston University’s chapter of the Alpha Alpha Alpha honor society for first-generation students. The induction included a virtual ceremony on April 26 hosted by BU’s Newbury Center, which helps […]