Drew Carter ’19, Jonah Karp ’20, sport management professor Dennis Deninger and Jackson Ajello ’19 rep Syracuse on Radio Row during Super Bowl LIII Media Week in Atlanta. (Photo courtesy of Jonah Karp)

For three Newhouse broadcast and digital journalism students, the opportunity to cover Super Bowl LIII Media Week in Atlanta was a big score. The sportscasting trio of Jackson Ajello ’19, Drew Carter ’19 and Jonah Karp ’20 logged endless hours, producing an array of entertaining and insightful content for student-run stations Z89 radio and as well as for Syracuse University NPR affiliate .

“It was a wonderful learning experience for three aspiring broadcasters,” says Dennis Deninger, a professor of practice in the program at Falk College who organized the trip. “They have now covered the largest sporting event held each year in the United States, and they’re still undergraduates.”

Last year, in his popular course, The Super Bowl and Society, Deninger, a former longtime ESPN production executive, floated the idea of a Syracuse student team covering the Super Bowl’s Media Week in Atlanta. Karp was a student in the class, and when Deninger shared a slide of St. Bonaventure students covering the event in 2018, Karp spotted a high school friend and former broadcasting partner in the picture. It inspired him to approach Deninger and start working on a plan to attend the 2019 gathering.

Karp recruited Ajello and Carter, who had previously taken Deninger’s course, and all three had experience working together at the campus media outlets. With Deninger’s help, they secured media credentials from the NFL and created a game plan for the trip. “It’s cool to have your brainchild come to life,” Karp says. “At the same time, I wouldn’t have been able to do this myself.”

Sports Talk on Radio Row

They arrived in Atlanta on Sunday, Jan. 27—a week before the Big Game—and set up shop on Radio Row, headquarters for all the sports talk radio shows, in the Georgia World Congress Center (GWCC). “Right between NBC Sports Radio and CBS Sports Radio,” Deninger says.

During the week, they did three hours of live sports talk daily for Z89 in the noon-to-1 p.m. and 10 p.m.-to-midnight slots. They also produced live broadcasts for CitrusTV and packages for WAER. All told, they rolled through 32 interviews, featuring numerous luminaries from the world of sports talk radio; producers and executives from CBS, the NFL Network, ESPN and Westwood One; NFL executives and players, including former Orange standout and Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Cameron Lynch ’14; and even the host of “American Ninja Warrior.”

Most prominently, they tapped into the legendary Syracuse sportscasting network, landing interviews with the likes of Damon Amendolara ’01, Scott Hanson ’93, Sarina Morales ’08, Adam Schein ’99, Andrew Siciliano ’96 and Adam Zucker ’98. For the three Newhouse students, the interviews with Orange alumni were fun and rewarding. Karp, for instance, quizzed Schein, one of his favorite talk show hosts, about his notable slicked-back hair look. “People always talk about athletes playing through pain,” said Schein, who hosts shows on SiriusXM and the CBS Sports Network. “I’ve got to deal with my hair issues every day.”

Tales of Opening Night

Drew Carter ’19 does a live shot for CitrusTV at Super Bowl Opening Night in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta. Behind the camera are Jonah Karp ’20 (center) and Jackson Ajello ’19. (Photo by Dennis Deninger)

Media Week’s main attraction was undoubtedly Super Bowl Opening Night, a Monday evening extravaganza staged in the State Farm Arena that drew 2,000 media members and 10,000 fans. “That was our first pinch-me moment,” Karp says. While select players from the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams fielded questions at separate press conferences, other teammates roamed the floor.

For CitrusTV, Ajello caught up with Rams punter Johnny Hekker for a segment titled, “Punters are people, too,” and Carter hunted down Patriots special teams player Matthew Slater, who always calls “heads” for the Patriots on the coin toss. “I’ve got a quarter here. Can we do a little coin toss?” Carter asked, with Slater responding: “You know what I’m calling.”

Karp, looking to mine personal insights from players, posed humorous questions about such things as their preferred condiments on a hot dog and favorite karaoke song. “You have to have a little bit of confidence and a little bit of shoulder and get in there and ask people questions,” Deninger says. “That was a really good experience for them.”

The following night they attended the official media party put on by the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee at the Georgia Aquarium. One highlight was celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck serving up some extraordinary dishes, including Peking duck. “I liked everything,” Karp says. “Oh, my goodness.”

Later in the week, the trio explored the Super Bowl Experience, the NFL’s interactive theme park at GWCC, where they tested—and videoed—their skills in NFL Combine drills. “I’m not very athletic, at least compared to the other two,” Karp says.

Behind the Scenes

Deninger turned to his network of connections to help arrange a visit to the CBS broadcast compound in the depths of Mercedes-Benz Stadium (they were chauffeured there in an eight-seat golf cart). Thanks to Brian Seeling ’03, an associate director of CBS Sports, they took in the preparation and action behind the scenes. They checked out the ESPN broadcast set and interviewed ESPN senior coordinating producer Seth Markman ’93. Deninger also connected them with his friend and former ESPN colleague Onnie Bose, now vice president of events for the NFL, and Mark Quenzel, NFL senior vice president in charge of all programming.

“They saw much more than if they were just sitting on Radio Row. They got to see so much of the effort and the planning—the sheer scope of coverage that goes into every year’s Super Bowl,” Deninger says. “Mark gave us insight into the machinations of halftimes and how the NFL integrates entertainment into the sports package.”

Orange Connections

They were also thankful for all the Orange connections. Don ’89 and Rachel Vassel ’91, Syracuse University assistant vice president of multicultural advancement, hosted them throughout the week at their Alpharetta home. Howard Deneroff ’89, executive producer for Westwood One—which broadcast the Super Bowl on radio—reached out when they arrived on Radio Row and provided them with a free ethernet connection for their live broadcasts.

Deneroff also helped arrange an interview with Kevin Harlan, Westwood One’s play-by-play announcer. Karp considers Harlan the best in the business and appreciated the advice he offered: “Don’t care about the job you get right out of school. The more you do, it adds up. Do whatever you can to get in front of a microphone. Always be your own advocate. Listen to your tapes. Be honest with yourself.”

Solid advice. And since the experience counted as a one-credit independent study for Ajello, Carter and Karp, they will share their tales and insights in a presentation to Deninger’s Super Bowl class later in the semester. “The Super Bowl is so much more than a game,” Deninger says.

Image courtesy of Michael Pelken and Vasilena Vassilev

When College of Engineering and Computer Science Professor Jianshun “Jensen” Zhang set out to develop a software platform that would integrate and optimize the design of green buildings, little did he know it would lead to an international collaborative project and the creation of a demonstration building for indoor air quality (IAQ) and energy conservation in China.

“It’s quite an interesting project that is still evolving,” says Zhang, an IAQ, and material emissions expert. “Now we are getting into the building performance with measurements and feedback.”

Known as the P+ Demonstration Building, it is located in the Wujin Green Building Industry Demonstration Zone in Changzhou, a city situated in the Yangtze delta between Nanjing and Shanghai. Among its features, the 6,500-square-foot building is equipped with environmental smart-control sensors, hybrid ventilation (natural and mechanical), a solar chimney that creates natural ventilation, solar panels, photovoltaic glass and an outdoor air purification system provided by project collaborator HealthWay, a Central New York-based company and Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems (SyracuseCoE) partner.

The three-story building has space designated for classroom training, offices and a demonstration apartment. Outside the entrance, a buffer layer introduces clean air into the building. The building, funded by the local government and completed in 2016, is one of many in the demonstration park, which introduces the green building technologies of international companies to the Chinese market.

The country’s booming construction trade and pollution concerns create ideal opportunities to implement such technologies, Zhang says. “If you make some improvement in air quality, the impacts are huge, and the potential for improvement is huge.”

According to Zhang, who heads SU’s Building Energy and Environmental Systems Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the project began as academic research more than a decade ago and has expanded through several international collaborations. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and SyracuseCoE, Zhang and then School of Architecture professor P. Michael Pelken went to work developing the Virtual Design Studio (VDS), a software platform for integrated, performance-based building system design.

Originally envisioned as a teaching tool, VDS sparks collaboration between architects and engineers through simulation exercises, analysis of energy and environmental systems, and design modifications. Zhang also collaborated with Professor Menghao Qin, then director of the Center for Sustainable Building Research at Nanjing University (NJU), and now a faculty member at the Danish Technical University. Qin, Zhang, and Pelken launched a VDS summer course through Syracuse Abroad at the NJU School of Architecture and Urban Planning to train and educate SU and NJU engineering and architecture students in integrative design.

The partnerships continued to build as well. In 2015, SU and NJU established the International Center for Green Buildings and the Urban Environment, which focuses on sustainable building technology research. When the opportunity arose to employ VDS in creating the demonstration building, the P+ Design Group was formed with Pelken and Vasilena Vassilev (cofounders of P+ Studio in London), Zhang, Qin, and Charlie Cheng, a Changzhou businessman who became project construction manager. The five met via Skype every Saturday for six months to discuss the design.

Along with showcasing new green building technologies and serving as a case-study building for the VDS course, the P+ Demonstration Building is used as a research testbed for the ongoing International Energy Agency Project Annex-68 Indoor Air Quality for Low-Energy Residential Buildings, a collaboration with participants from Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, and the United States. Designated by the U.S. DOE and supported by SyracuseCoE, Zhang serves as the U.S. representative.

While Zhang’s work on VDS continues with ECS doctoral students, he sees the P+ Demonstration Building and ongoing collaborations with Chinese colleagues as a small piece in the complex puzzle of improving energy conservation, controlling pollution, and reducing carbon emissions. “Ultimately,” he says, “the goal is to improve the health and well-being of the people.”

Professor Wenliang “Kevin” Du

When computer science Professor Wenliang “Kevin” Du discusses the importance of cybersecurity, he likens it to building a beautiful house and forgetting to put a lock on the door.

“The people who write codes and develop systems often don’t know the potential risks,” Du says.

“The developer is creating a system in a benign environment—and never thinks to put a lock on it, a filter that will block potential attacks. That’s a common problem. We want our students to learn about all these potential attacks, so they can identify existing attacks and also have the skills to see other security vulnerabilities.”

Since arriving at the in 2002, Du has been on a mission to teach others how to prevent cyberattacks. As a complement to the computer security and Internet security courses Du teaches to a mix of undergraduates and graduate students, he has developed a free series of 30 hands-on designed to help students master the intricacies of cybersecurity and apply their skills to solve real-world problems.

With the support of National Science Foundation (NSF) awards in 2002 and 2014, Du has expanded his reach, sharing the open-source SEED labs with more than 250 educators in more than 26 countries. As part of his 2014 NSF award, Du, an expert on Android system security, is also developing SEED labs for mobile platforms and will host a workshop on campus this summer.

The instructional labs are done in a contained environment, using virtualization software that students download onto their personal computers, basically creating a computer within their computers that allows them to do such things as form networks, launch attacks on one another and learn how to defend against them. “We want to teach the students to be good defenders, but part of that is knowing how to attack,” Du says.

Computer science doctoral student Xiao Zhang, a teaching assistant for Du, says the labs’ practical training reinforces the classroom concepts. “In transferring the theory into practice, sometimes there are unexpected difficulties,” Zhang says. “You want to achieve one thing, but in that process you may make some mistakes, which lead to other security vulnerabilities.”

The labs present an array of different security situations that students would not encounter elsewhere, according to Carter Yagemann ’15, a computer science major who took Du’s Internet Security course and worked on his research team. “You learn about specific attacks and really build up practical skills,” Yagemann says. “If you’re not very systematic and don’t approach the scenario with the right mindset, you’ll leave holes, and then you have problems.”

Electrical and computer engineering doctoral candidate Paul Ratazzi credits the labs for expanding the depth of his knowledge and enhancing his interactions with colleagues when he learns about their projects at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., where he is a computer security expert. “I can keep up with the technical details,” Ratazzi says. “There’s no way to get through those courses and labs without really understanding every aspect of not only the labs, but also the actual details of the implementation.”

Whether hack attacks are known ones, such as Heartbleed or Shellshock (which was used against SONY Pictures), or new ones, Du is poised to ensure others are well versed in knowing how to counter them. “When you’re dealing with real hackers,” he says, “they don’t care about the difficulties, they will take it on.”

This story originally appeared in .