Faculty/Staff Achievements Roundup: Lazzara named NYSBDC Entrepreneur of the Year

This is part of a monthly series highlighting the honors and achievements of Buffalo State University faculty and staff. The roundup is compiled from the previous months' submissions to the Daily Bulletin and department newsletters.

Robin Lazzara, '18, program manager of Buffalo State's Post Production Diversity Initiative (PPDI), was honored with the New York State Small Business Development Center's Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, one of just 14 entrepreneurs recognized statewide from a pool of more than 30,000.

Lazzara was recognized for her business, Glow Video LLC, which specializes in producing media for a diverse client base. A graduate of Buffalo State's Television and Film Arts program, Lazzara launched her business with support from the Buffalo State Small Business Development Center.

"My time at Buffalo State connected me with so many talented and hardworking creatives," Lazzara said. "It really opened the door for me to start my career in the video production field and connected me with many local film professionals that I still work with to this day."

Lazzara shared that PPDI was recently approved for another year of funding and is now accepting applicants for its 2025-26 cohort.

"Under Robin Lazzara's leadership, PPDI has been phenomenally successful," said Dorothea Braemer, associate professor of media production and PPDI's chief investigator.

In addition to Lazzara's award, here are some other recent outstanding achievements by Buffalo State faculty members:

Lyubov Burlakova, senior research scientist, and Alexander Karatayev, director of the Great Lakes Center, were awarded the prestigious Chandler-Misener Award alongside their co-authors Richard Barbiero (primary author), James Watkins, and Barry Lesht, at the International Association for Great Lakes Research Conference in June, for their paper, "The benthic nepheloid layer in the offshore waters of the Great Lakes and its post-dreissenid dissapearance." The Chandler-Misener Award is presented annually to authors of a peer-reviewed paper in a current volume of the Journal of Great Lakes Research judged to be "most notable."

Kim Chinquee, associate professor of English, completed the IRONMAN 70.3 Tours Metropole in Loire Valley, France, in June, which involved a 1.2-mile swim in the Chez River, a 56-mile bike along medieval and Renaissance castle estates, and a 13.1-mile run through the valley's parks and riverside paths. In July, Chinquee completed her second IRONMAN 70.3 competition of the summer in Geneva, New York. This event involved a 1.2-mile swim in Seneca Lake, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run in the Finger Lakes. In addition, she was in Prague from June 22 to July 5 doing research (and participating in a creativity workshop) for her forthcoming book that involves travel, research, and her experiences as an athlete.

Frances Gage, associate professor of art and design (and core faculty of the Global Studies Institute), delivered the lecture "Picturing 'La Vecchia:' Time, Gender, and Aging in the Early Modern Imagination," at the Huizinga Institute of the University of Groningen (Groningen, Netherlands), where she also contributed to the masterclass "Imagination in Medicine and the Arts," inspired by her book Painting as Medicine in Early Modern Rome: Giulio Mancini and the Efficacy of Art (2016).

Maria C. Garrity, senior systems programmer, and Andrew T. Garrity, associate database administrator, were speakers for a professional development session on artificial intelligence and accessibility at the SUNY Technology Conference (STC) in Lake Placid, New York in June. The session, titled "A 'EYE' (AI) Enhancing Accessibility and Ethical Fairness," welcomed representatives from SUNY universities and community colleges. The presentation explored how emerging AI tools can be leveraged to improve accessibility in higher education while ensuring ethical fairness and inclusivity.

Ilya Grinberg, chair and SUNY distinguished teaching professor of engineering technology, is featured in "The German-Soviet War: Combat, Occupation and Legacies" on WW2TV's YouTube channel. Grinberg provides hard data and statistics to emphasize just how important U.S. and U.K. aircraft were to the Soviet Air Force from 1941 to the end of the war.

Angela Thering, lecturer of higher education administration and adult education, facilitated a professional development workshop on artificial intelligence at the Embassy of Costa Rica in Washington, D.C. in May. Hosted by Ambassador Catalina Crespo, the session-"Unlock the Power of Artificial Intelligence: A Workshop for Diplomats"-welcomed representatives from Costa Rica, Mexico, Uruguay, Honduras, Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Spain. Thering also participated in two events at the 2025 SUNY Conference on Instruction and Technology (CIT), held at SUNY Oneonta. She co-presented a session titled "Reflections" on SUNY-CMU Partnership Opportunities and Realities of Adapting to a Changing Educational Landscape alongside Karen Caldwell (SUNY Potsdam) and Erin Czerwinski (OLI, Carnegie Mellon University). Thering also presented a poster titled "The Brightspace Organization Page: A Hub for Graduate Student Engagement and Success," which she co-authored with Andrea Nikischer, associate professor of social and psychological foundations at Buffalo State. This student-centered Brightspace organization page was awarded first place in the 2025 SUNY Online Effective Practice Awards.

Photo by Jesse Steffan-Colucci, Buffalo State photographer.