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Stony Brook University

Dr. Peter Igarashi is the incoming dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine. Photo from University of Minnesota

Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine has named Dr. Peter Igarashi, a nephrologist and physician scientist, as its new dean, effective Sept. 12.

Igarashi comes to Stony Brook from the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he is the Nesbitt Chair, professor and head of the Department of Medicine.

At the University of Minnesota, the new dean oversaw 600 full-time and affiliate faculty, 100 adjunct faculty, and over 240 residents and fellows, all while increasing National Institutes of Health funding by 60%.

At UMN, he also helped to cut gender pay disparities, appointed women to leadership positions, developed new multidisciplinary programs, and created an Office of Faculty Affairs and Diversity.

“Dr. Igarashi is a superb, academically accomplished physician leader with a highly successful track record of clinical program growth and research advancement,” Dr. Hal Paz, executive vice president of Health Sciences at SBU and chief executive officer of Stony Brook University Medicine, said in a statement. 

Igarashi has received over $25 million in funding from the NIH during a career in which he has studied polycystic kidney disease, transcriptional regulation, epigenetics and kidney development.

Polycystic kidney disease, or PKD, is an inherited disorder that involves the development of clusters of cysts, primarily in the kidney. Symptoms of the disease can include high blood pressure, loss of kidney function, chronic pain and the growth of cysts in the liver, among others.

His lab developed unique lines of transgenic mice that he has used to study kidney-specific transgene expression and gene targeting.

In addition to writing nine chapters in textbooks, Dr. Igarashi has also authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Before his seven-year stint at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Igarashi had been Chief of the Division of Nephrology and founding director of the O’Brien Kidney Research Core Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

At the University of Texas, Dr. Igarashi created services to provide regular kidney dialysis to undocumented and other often marginalized patients. He also led an effort to use artificial intelligence to identify and optimize co-management of patients with hypertension, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease in primary care practices.

A recipient of the NIH Merit Award, Dr. Igarashi also won the 2015 Lillian Jean Kaplan International Prize in polycystic kidney disease. The award honored his contribution to the goal of developing treatments and a cure for polycystic kidney disease.

Dr. Igarashi earned his medical degree from the UCLA School of Medicine and completed an internal medicine residency at the University of California Davis Medical Center. He did a nephrology fellowship at Yale University and also taught at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Dr. Igarashi is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is a member of the American Heart Association Kidney Council, the American Physiological Society, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Society of Nephrology and the Association of American Physicians.

Dr. William Wertheim had been the interim dean of the Renaissance School of Medicine since February 2021, following Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky’s retirement after serving as dean and senior vice president of health sciences for 11 years.

Dr. Wertheim will return to his role as vice dean for graduate medical education. He will also have a leadership role at the Stony Brook Medicine Community Medical Group, which is an arm of Stony Brook Medicine and includes over 35 community practices with over 50 locations across Long Island.

The SK 48 cranium of an ancient hominin, Paranthropus robustus, was one of the fossils included in the analysis of some new claims on human evolution. Photo by Carrie S. Mongle

Uncovering the evolution of any set of living creatures is a complex and highly detailed task for scientists, and theories and approaches that may differ over time may indeed change the fossil record. But paleoanthropologist and Stony Brook University Professor Carrie S. Mongle, PhD, and co-authors urge investigators to take caution on their findings. They provide researchers investigating the evolutionary past of ancient hominins (a group including humans and our immediate fossil ancestors) an important and foundational message in a recent paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. That is – conclusions drawn from evolutionary models are only as good as the data upon which they are based.

In “Modelling hominin evolution requires accurate hominin data,” the authors develop a response to a previous research paper that had made some major claims on when the genus Homo emerged based on fossil dates. The team, however, proved that many of the fossil dates from the study were wrong, and they provided data to correct these errors.

“It has become increasingly common in our field for researchers to propose a ‘new and exciting’ synthesis of evolutionary events that a given group of scientists think overturns our understanding of human evolution,” says Mongle, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Turkana Basin Institute. “Our paper is meant to draw attention to the issue that we cannot make major claims based on piecemeal compilations of the fossil record and questionable data from literature. We also offer a carefully constrained geochronological dataset for researchers to use for future studies.”

Mongle and co-authors found that by re-analyzing the original study with corrected fossil dates, the estimated timing of species divergences differed by as much as 300,000 years from the previously reported estimates. This is important because these estimates are often used to correlate evolutionary transitions with ancient environments and climate change. When estimates are off by this much, it can completely change scientists’ interpretations of the evolutionary drivers that made us human.

Mongle and co-authors make the case for evolutionary scientists to develop future total evidence studies when studying human evolution. They conclude that it is “critical to recognize that no algorithm is a replacement for careful comparative anatomy and meticulously constrained geochronology when it comes to interpreting evolutionary trends from the fossil record.”

Markus Seeliger, third from left, with members of his lab, from left, Terrence Jiang. Aziz Rangwala, Ian Outhwaite, Victoria Mingione,YiTing Paung, and Hannah Philipose. Photo from Markus Seeliger

By Daniel Dunaief

When a dart hits the center of a target, the contestant often gets excited and adds points to a score. But what if that well-placed dart slipped off the board before someone could count the points, rendering such an accurate throw ineffective?

With some cases of cancer treatments, that’s what may be happening, particularly when a disease develops a mutation that causes a relapse. Indeed, people who have chronic myeloid leukemia typically receive a treatment called Imatinib, or Gleevac.

The drug works, hitting a target called a kinase, which this white blood cell cancer needs to cause its cells to continue to divide uncontrollably. Patients, however, develop a mutation called N368S, which reduces the effectiveness of the drug.

While mutations typically make it more difficult for a drug to bind to its target, that’s not what’s happening with this specific mutation. Like the dart hitting the center of a board, the drug continues to reach its target.

Instead, in a model of drug resistance several scientists have developed, the mutation causes the drug to decouple.

Pratyush Tiwary with this year’s US top 20 students who are going to the international chemistry olympiad. Photo from Toward

A team of experimental and computational researchers including Markus Seeliger, Associate Professor of Pharmacological Sciences at Stony Brook University, and Pratyush Tiwary, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, published two research papers explaining a process that may also affect the way mutations enable resistance to other drugs.

Seeliger described how different disease-associated mutations bind to Gleevac in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Working with scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, Seeliger used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or NMR. The researchers showed how the drug bound to its target and then released.

Understanding the way diseases like cancer develop such resistance could affect drug discovery, giving pharmaceutical companies another way to prepare for changes diseases make that reduce the effectiveness of treatments.

A ‘hot paper’

Tiwary published research in which Seeliger was a coauthor in late April in the journal Angewandte Chemie that the publication labeled a “hot paper” for its implications in the field. Tiwary developed a way to simulate the kinetic processes that enable the mutated kinases to release the drug.

Tiwary created an artificial intelligence model that extended the time he analyzed the drug-protein interaction from milliseconds all the way out to thousands of seconds.

“Even within the simulation world, if you can quantitatively predict a binding affinity, that’s amazing,” Seeliger said. “It’s extremely hard to calculate kinetics, and he got that right.”

Tiwary, who started talking with Seeliger about five years ago and has been actively collaborating for about three years, uses experimental data to inform the dynamics that affect his simulations.

Seeliger “had done the experiments of the dissociation rates beforehand, but did not have a way to explain why they were what they were,” Tiwary explained in an email. “Our simulations gave him insights into why this was the case and … insight into how to think about drugs that might dissociate further.”

Drug discovery

Tiwary hopes the work enables researchers to look at structural and kinetic intermediates in reactions, which could provide clues about drug design and delivery. While he worked with a single mutation, he said he could conduct such an analysis on alterations that affect drug interactions in other diseases.

He wrote that the computations, while expensive, were not prohibitive. He used the equivalent of 16 independent 64 CPUs for one to two weeks. He suggested that computing advances could cut this down by a factor of 10, which would enable the exploration of different mutations.

“The methods are now so easy to automate that we could run many, many simulations in parallel,” Tiwary explained. Machine learning makes the automation possible.

Given what he’s learned, Tiwary hopes to contribute to future drug begin that addresses mutation or resistance to treatment in other cancers. He also plans to continue to work with Seeliger to address other questions.

Next steps

Seeliger said he plans to extend this work beyond the realm of this specific type of cancer.

He will explore “how common these kinetic mutations are in other systems, other diseases and other kinases,” Seeliger said.

He would also like to understand whether other proteins in the cell help with the release of drugs or, alternatively, prevent the release of drugs from their target. The cell could have “other accessory proteins that help kick out the drug from the receptor,” Seeliger said.

The concept of drug resistance time comes from infectious disease, where microbes develop numerous mutations.

Seeliger, who is originally from Hanover, Germany, said he enjoys seeing details in any scene, even outside work, that others might not notice. 

He described how he was driving with postdoctoral fellows in Colorado when he spotted a moose. While the group stopped to take a picture, he noticed that the moose had an ear tag, which is something others didn’t immediately notice.

As for the research collaboration, Seeliger is pleased with the findings and the potential of the ongoing collaboration between experimental and computational biologists.

“The computational paper, aside from using interesting new methodology, describes why things are happening the way they are on a molecular level,” he said.

Study authors Liwei Yang, left, and Jun Wang, in the Wang laboratory by the microscope that incorporates the single-cell cyclic multiplex in situ tagging (CycMIST) technology to analyze proteins on single cells. Photo provided by Jun Wang

A new biomedical research tool that enables scientists to measure hundreds of functional proteins in a single cell could offer new insights into cell machinery. Led by Jun Wang, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Stony Brook University, this microchip assay — called the single-cell cyclic multiplex in situ tagging (CycMIST) technology – may help to advance fields such as molecular diagnostics and drug discovery. Details about the cyclic microchip assay method are published in  Nature Communications.

While newer technologies of single-cell omics (ie, genomics, transcriptomics, etc.) are revolutionizing the study of complex biological and cellular systems and scientists can analyze genome-wide sequences of individual cells, these technologies do not apply to proteins because they are not amplifiable like DNAs. Thus, protein analysis in single cells has not reached large-scale experimentation. Because proteins represent cell functions and biomarkers for cell types and disease diagnosis, further analysis on a single-cell basis is needed.

“The CycMIST assay enables comprehensive evaluation of cellular functions and physiological status by examining 100 times more protein types than conventional immunofluorescence staining, which is a distinctive feature not achievable by any other similar technology,” explains Liwei Yang, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar within the Wang research team and Multiplex Biotechnology Laboratory.

Wang, who is affiliated with the Renaissance School of Medicine and Stony Brook Cancer Center, and colleagues demonstrated CycMIST by detecting 182 proteins that include surface markers, neuron function proteins, neurodegeneration markers, signaling pathway proteins and transcription factors. They used a model of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in mice to validate the technology and method.

By analyzing the 182 proteins with CycMIST, they were able to perform a functional protein analysis that revealed the deep heterogeneity of brain cells, distinguished AD markers, and identified AD pathogenesis mechanisms.

With this detailed way to unravel proteins in the AD model, the team suggests that such functional protein analysis could be promising for new drug targets for AD, for which there is not yet an effective treatment. And they provide a landscape of potential drug targets at the cellular level from the CycMIST protein analysis.

The authors believe that CycMIST could also have enormous potential for commercialization.

They say that before this study model with CycMIST, researchers could only measure and know a tip of protein types in a cell. But this new approach enables scientists to identify and know the actions of each aspect of a cell, and therefore they can potentially identify if a cell is in a disease status or not – the first step in a possible way to diagnose disease by analyzing a single protein cell. And compared with standard approaches like flow cytometry, their approach with CycMIST can analyze 10 times the amount of proteins and on a single-cell level.

The researchers also suggest that the cyclic microchip assay is portable, inexpensive, and could be adapted to any existing fluorescence microscope, which are additional reasons for its marketability if it proves to be effective with subsequent experimentation.

Much of the research for this study was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Aging (grant # R21AG072076), other NIH grants, and a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Support Grant.

Catherine Deneuve and Benoît Magimel in a scene from Peaceful. Photo courtesy of Staller Center

Stony Brook University’s Staller Center  for the Arts turns into a movie lover’s mecca when new independent films screen at the Stony Brook Film Festival on evenings and weekends from Thursday, July 21 to Saturday, July 30. The popular festival, now in its 27th year, pairs memorable short films with an array of features you won’t see anywhere else, making it a favorite of moviegoers and filmmakers alike.

Presented by Island Federal, the 2022 Festival lineup offers 38 films from over 28 countries. The Festival kicks off with the North American premiere of Peaceful, starring Catherine Deneuve, Benoît Magimel, and Gabriel A. Sara. A life-affirming drama about acceptance and resilience, Peaceful follows Benjamin, an acting teacher with a terminal illness as he navigates his final months and days. The beating heart of the film comes from Gabriel Sara — a cancer specialist from Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan in real-life — who portrays Benjamin’s very humane specialist Dr. Eddé. Catherine Deneuve’s powerful performance as Benjamin’s mother is unforgettable.

“This year’s Festival is somewhat of a family affair, with several real-life family members making films, and members of our Stony Brook family returning,” says Festival co-programmer Kent Marks. “Our Sunday night independent feature, the very touching This is a Film About My Mother, which was shot in Ithaca, New York, stars real-life siblings Tess and Will Harrison and was written and directed by Tess.”

The theme of family continues with the mesmerizing Korean independent film, Seokkarae. Written and directed by Mike Beech, and starring his wife, Jiwon Lee, the character-driven film depicts a quiet twenty-something attempting to keep the family business going despite tough odds. Jungle is another such collaboration, written by real life partners Claudia Verena Hruschka and Kieran Wheeler, with Wheeler directing and Hruschka giving a gut-wrenching performance in this hard-hitting short from Australia. 

From Australia to Stony Brook, The Switcheroo is co-directed by Stony Brook brothers Ryan and Anthony Famulari. Made for next to nothing during COVID, this hilarious comedy has the brothers serving as the entire crew, with Anthony cast in the very funny role of a man and his clone. Two more co-directors are sisters Austin and Westin Ray with their UK-based quiet thriller Before Seven. The Ray’s, Festival alums from 2014, served as directors, writer (Westin) and composer and cinematographer (Austin). Another SBFF festival alum is John Gray, who won the audience choice award for his 2020 film Extra Innings, and is back this year with the intriguing family drama The Little Drummer Boy.

Women will take center stage at this year’s SBFF, both in front of and behind the camera. SBFF’s opening and closing night features and shorts were all helmed by female directors. In all, 17 of the Festival’s 38 films were directed by women. Two films, Kitchen Tales and Before Seven, were made with nearly all-female crews. 

The Jackie Stiles Story and Nasima are two completely different documentaries about female athletes from the middle of nowhere — a small Kansas town and a small seaside village in Bangladesh — who both beat the odds and made a huge impact in their respective sports of basketball and surfing. 

There are heroines from all walks of life, whether in the New Zealand drama The Justice of Bunny King, the Israeli epic Image of Victory, the Albanian thriller Vera Dream of the Sea, or the American indie Peace in the Valley, all of which feature knock-out performances by their lead actresses.

Reflecting on current issues, two films in the Festival, Olga and Berenshtein both take place in and around Ukraine, and both are from times when the Ukrainian people faced down an oppressive regime — whether it be from the Nazis or their own government.

Mila, a must-see short film on SBFF’s closing night, is a debut effort by writer/director Cinzia Angelini and made by 350 animators from 35 countries, who volunteered their services to help Angelini get her story made after all major studios turned it down. Inspired by events of the 1943 Trento bombing in Italy, this heart-warming story depicts a young girl who has lost everything but still clings to hope. 

The closing night feature, Lost Transport, is a powerful and deeply moving film set during the final days of World War II, uniquely told from a female perspective. When German soldiers abandon a deportation train, leaving the fate of its occupants in the hands of advancing Russian troops, three women from vastly different backgrounds, set aside their differences, working together to survive.

“The diversity of filmmakers is a hallmark of Stony Brook Film Festival, with student filmmakers, seasoned pros, and nine first-time directors represented this year,” says Festival Director Alan Inkles. “We are very excited to have filmmakers from all over the world join us in-person this year for their premiere screenings. Our audience can gather in a huge theater with Long Island’s largest screen, to see movies the way they were meant to be seen. Not only are these films not available on any streaming format, but you also get to hear directly from the filmmakers themselves, ask them a question at our live Q&A, and even vote for your favorite.”

For 27 years, the Stony Brook Film Festival has hosted 549 filmmakers from 78 different countries, featured nearly 55 World Premieres and over 75 U.S. premieres. In total, the Festival has screened almost 1100 independent films from all over the world. The Festival kicks-off with an Opening Night Party and closes with an Awards Ceremony and Closing Night Party.

FILM SCHEDULE

OPENING NIGHT

Thursday, July 21 at 8 p.m.

Feature: Peaceful, France

Short: Lentini, United States

 

Friday, July 22 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Olga, Switzerland, Ukraine,  France

Short: Kitchen Tales, United Kingdom

 

Friday, July 22 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: Glob Lessons, United States

Short: Before Seven, United States

 

Saturday, July 23 at 4:30 p.m.

Doc Feature: The Jackie Stiles Story, U.S.

 

Saturday, July 23 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Contra, Germany

Short: The Little Drummer Boy, U.S.

 

Saturday, July 23 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: Peace in the Valley, U.S.

Short: Elevate, United States

 

Sunday, July 24 at 4:30 p.m.

Documentary Feature: Nasima, U.S.

 

Sunday, July 24 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Berenshtein, Israel & Ukraine

Short: The Switcheroo, United States

 

Sunday, July 24 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: This is a Film About My Mother, U.S.

Short: North Star, United States

 

Monday, July 25 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Hit the Road, Iran

Short: Summer of Bees, Finland

 

Monday, July 25 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: Seokkarae, Korea

Short: Saving Elodie, United Kingdom

 

Tuesday, July 26 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Hard Shell, Soft Shell, France

Short: Almost Winter, United States

 

Tuesday, July 26 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: The Justice of Bunny King, NZ

Short: The Dress, United States

 

Wednesday, July 27 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Image of Victory, Israel

Short: Milk, United Kingdom

 

Wednesday, July 27 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: The Test, France

Short: Free Fall, France

 

Thursday, July 28 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Haute Couture, France

Short: Jungle, Australia

 

Thursday, July 28 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: Sons of the Sea, South Africa

Short: Ousmane, Canada

 

Friday, July 29 at 7 p.m.

Feature: Vera Dream of the Sea, Kosovo & Albania & Republic of Macedonia

Short: All that Glitters, United Kingdom

 

Friday, July 29 at 9:30 p.m.

Feature: Black Box, France & Belgium

Short: Aysha, Germany

 

CLOSING NIGHT

Saturday, July 30 at 8 p.m.

Feature: Lost Transport, Netherlands & Luxemborg & Germany

Short: Mila, United States

 

CLOSING NIGHT AWARDS

10:30 p.m.

Ticket information

All screenings are held at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook in the 1,000-seat Main Stage theater. Festival goers can choose from a Gold Pass, Festival Pass, or Individual Pass. Passes start at $20. All passholders will hear from filmmakers throughout the Festival and have the opportunity to rate and vote on favorite films to help choose the winners of this year’s Festival. 

Gold Passholders receive entry to all films, VIP reserved seating, a Stony Brook Film Festival swag bag, discounts at local restaurants and businesses, access to Opening and Closing Night After Parties, filmmaker Q&A’s, and the Closing Night Awards Ceremony. Festival Passholders receive entry to all films and guaranteed seating for sold-out films, filmmaker Q&A’s, access to the Closing Night Awards Ceremony, discounts at local restaurants and businesses, voting for Audience Choice Award, and a Stony Brook Film Festival Passholder gift. For more information or to order, call 631-632-2787 or visit stonybrookfilmfestival.com.

*This article originally appeared in TBR News Media’s Summer Times supplement on June 24.

How changing political boundaries can have real consequences for voters and their representatives

An early political cartoon criticizing former Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry’s practice of drawing bizarrely shaped state senate districts for partisan gain. Stock photo by Pixy

Redistricting is shaking up this election season.

Redistricting is the process by which new political boundaries are drawn to reflect the changes in populations across regions and states. New congressional districts, as well as state Senate and Assembly districts, are redrawn by state Legislatures every 10 years to accord with the most recent U.S. Census results.

‘Government at its worst.’

— Mario Mattera

This year, a cloud of uncertainty was placed over the electoral process when the state Court of Appeals blocked the New York State Legislature’s plans for redrawn district maps. The majority 4-3 decision sent the responsibility for redrawing the lines to an out-of-state independent commission.

State Sen. Mario Mattera (R-St. James), whose District 2 was altered significantly under the new lines, accused the majority in the state Legislature of attempting to gerrymander his district.

“What happened was — and I’m going to say this — the Democrats went in and gerrymandered the lines in the Senate and the congressional lines,” he said.

Unlike the district lines for the state Assembly, which Mattera suggested were worked out through a series of compromises between party leaders, the state Senate could not find a working agreement for new lines. The state senator also said that the lines could have been revised before they went to court, but the majority objected, hoping to win a favorable opinion for its unfair district maps.

“The judges ruled it gerrymandering, so it went to an outside commission called Special Masters, out of Pennsylvania, and it cost the taxpayers money to do this,” he said. 

Mattera expressed frustration at the process, which he said wasted time and taxpayer dollars unnecessarily. He called the recent redistricting process “government at its worst.”

‘I’m never disappointed when the process is done fairly and when it’s done by a bipartisan group that is drawing the lines.’ — Jodi Giglio

New boundaries, altered communities

Under the new district maps, people in communities throughout Long Island will see major changes this year in their political representation. Mattera, whose district currently includes Setauket, Stony Brook and Old Field, will no longer represent those areas after this year. 

“Even though, as a Republican, I wasn’t getting the best results out of Setauket and Stony Brook, I still loved my district,” he said. “I did very well in knowing the people and getting to know everybody, and now I’ve lost all of the Township of Brookhaven.”

Mattera is not alone in losing a significant portion of his current constituency. State leaders all across the Island have had their district lines redrawn as well.

“Southold in its entirety has been taken away from Assembly District 2 and has been placed in Assembly District 1,” said state Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio (R-Riverhead), who represents the 2nd District. 

Despite losing Southold, Giglio is not disappointed by the changes in her district. She considered the redrawing of the Assembly lines a product of bipartisan negotiations and was glad to pick up new constituencies elsewhere. 

“I’m never disappointed when the process is done fairly and when it’s done by a bipartisan group that is drawing the lines,” she said, adding, “I was pleased to pick up many people in the 2nd Assembly District and will continue to work for the people of Southold as I have grown very close to them.” 

‘It’s a fact of life.’

— Helmut Norpoth

Redistricting, past and future

Helmut Norpoth, professor in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University, detailed the long history of partisan squabbles over district lines. He said gerrymandering has existed since at least the early 19th century. 

The word “gerrymander” was created after the infamous Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry, a Founding Father and later vice president who first employed the tactic to create bizarrely shaped state senate districts. Norpoth said gerrymandering has been around “forever” and that “it’s a fact of life” whenever district maps are redrawn.

Norpoth and two of his students recently submitted a proposal to the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission. Their work is centered around making district maps fairer and elections more competitive. 

“One of the requirements that we followed in our proposal is to keep communities intact and minimize any splitting of a natural community into different districts,” Norpoth said. Districts “have to be contiguous, they have to be compact. They have to be as competitive as possible, so that the balance can give both parties a chance.” He added, “There are so many different angles that you have to abide by. It’s sort of a magic act to put it all together.”

‘It’s becoming clear that it’s easier to draw unfair districts.’ — Robert Kelly

While there are so many variables considered while drawing district lines, supercomputing may help to speed up and simplify the process. Robert Kelly, professor in the Department of Computer Science at SBU, focuses on automated redistricting, which uses a mathematical formulation to generate district lines based on a wide range of constraints.

“That allows us to look at, for a given state, what the constraints are in redistricting, whether they be constraints by the state constitution, state laws or constraints given by federal court rulings,” he said. “With that, we can formulate a way to evaluate the quality of the given redistricting plan and then we can try to optimize that result.” 

While advancements in computer programming and supercomputing are helping researchers improve redistricting models, Kelly acknowledged that they can also be used for nefarious purposes.

“It’s becoming clear that it’s easier to draw unfair districts,” he said. “The conclusion would be that with the availability of so much digital data that allows you to predict the voting patterns of individual voters and allows you to manipulate these district boundaries, it is creating a situation where more and more states are creating district boundaries that favor the political party that happens to be in power in the given state.”

With so much controversy today surrounding redistricting, it is questionable whether the problems of partisan gerrymandering will ever go away. Despite considerable effort by researchers like Norpoth and Kelly, conflict over district boundaries may be a feature inherent to any system that requires those lines to be redrawn.

When asked whether the redistricting process could ever become fairer, Kelly said, “Yes, I believe it could be more fair. … But would I predict that would ever happen? I would not bet on it.”

Courtney Trzckinski, above, is an EMT in Port Jefferson and St. James and is a rising senior at Stony Brook University who recently took Medical Spanish. Photo by Stephanie Merrill

By Daniel Dunaief

[email protected]

As medicine becomes increasingly personalized, Stony Brook University Hospital is planning to provide the kind of personal services and connections that they hope will benefit the Hispanic population.

With people identifying as Hispanic in Suffolk County representing 19.6% of the total population, SBUH is building a Hispanic Heart Institute, which the hospital anticipates will open in the fall.

At the same time, undergraduates at SBU have had an opportunity to take two new courses in Spanish Medicine that focus on the language and culture of health care for a population whose background, experience and expectations often differs from that of a New York system.

“A patient who is addressed in their own language, even though a speaker is not necessarily fluent or proficient, enhances the experience greatly,” said Elena Davidiak, lecturer at the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. Davidiak teaches two Spanish Medicine classes at Stony Brook that she created for the university.

At the same time, Dr. Jorge Balaguer, associate professor of Surgery at the Renaissance School of Medicine, plans to create a Hispanic Heart Program that fills an unmet need to help cardiac patients of Hispanic descent learn about insurance, understand their medical options, and increase their connection with their health care providers.

The incidence of some forms of cardiovascular disease, which is the leading cause of death among the overall population, is even higher among Hispanics, according to a website created by Stony Brook that describes heart disease among Hispanics and Latinos.

For many people whose first language is Spanish or who come from a family with a strong Hispanic cultural identity, the connection to the health care system may be tenuous, making it difficult to navigate through the system, find the best care or advocate for their needs.

“There is a lack of follow up,” Balaguer said. “The whole health care maintenance is compromised. When you combine a [different] education, with a vulnerable situation, the Hispanic population doesn’t have the same medical safety net.”

Balaguer would like to add a full-time employee in the cardiology department who could answer questions in Spanish, help with insurance and various forms and field questions throughout the process of receiving heart-related care.

Cultural differences

Beyond the language barrier that could impede communication with Spanish-speaking patients, Balaguer and Davidiak suggested cultural differences could also affect the outcome of a medical interaction.

As an example, Balaguer suggested a general cultural phenomenon in Argentina where people don’t speak directly about the patient.

Rather, he said, the process of communicating is similar to the Billy Crystal, Robert DeNiro movie “Analyze This,” in which DeNiro’s character talks about a “friend” when he’s describing himself.

“You talk about someone else rather than the patient with the problem,” Balagauer said.

Hispanic patients sometimes have their own views on health care and their destiny, Davidiak said. Using the Spanish word “fatalismo” for fatalism, Davidiak described how some patients may believe their destiny is “somewhat predetermined.”

Health care providers need to take into account a patient’s beliefs, which affect the partnership between patient and doctor in developing an effective treatment plan.

In most American medical interactions, the culture is “businesslike and to the point,” Davidiak said. Many Hispanic cultures, however, expect a “warmup period,” which involves a more personal interaction.

In developing an interview project called “Understanding the Hispanic Patient” funded by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at SBU, Davidiak heard numerous anecdotes in which people of Hispanic origin felt that their doctors didn’t see or hear them.

In one such interview, a pediatrician said a son’s eye color, which was blue, would change because “all Latino people have dark eyes.”

The mother, who was sitting in the room, has blue eyes.

“She felt she was not being seen at all,” Davidiak recalled. She wondered if the doctor was “going to do the same thing when taking care” of her son.

Class lessons

Courtney Trzcinski, a junior majoring in health science, was a student in Davidiak’s Medical Spanish class.

An emergency medical technician in Port Jefferson and St. James with plans to be a physician assistant, she has had patients as an EMT with whom she struggled to communicate.

Trzcinski, who studied Spanish from 8th to 11th grade at Mattituck High School, recounted an incident in which she was responding to a woman who was having medical complications after she had her tonsils removed.

“I was trying to tell her to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth,” Trzinski said. Her Spanish didn’t match the need.

“Now that I’ve taken Medical Spanish, I know how to say ‘inhale,’ ‘exhale,’ ‘medications’” and other relevant terms, Trzcinski said.

A direct translation, she discovered, also doesn’t work, as the people she interacts with translated what she said literally.

Trzcinski, who has been an EMT for two years, said she feels more confident in interacting on the job in Spanish.

Volunteers welcome

As for the heart program, Balaguer is thrilled to have the support of Leshya Bokka, a rising second-year medical school student who is also earning her master’s in public health.

Bokka sees the Hispanic Heart Program as a “great way to bridge my interest in working with minority populations and trying to get involved in doing some things for the community.”

Coming from a family that immigrated from India, Bokka understands the language and cultural barriers that might prevent people from getting quality health care.

“We are also trying to set up health screenings to connect patients to our program,” she said. She urged residents to reach out by email to receive directional guidance at [email protected].

The program is trying to recruit medical students and anyone “willing to come help,” she said.

Balaguer said he is working with recruiting bilingual volunteers and Hispanic Language and Literature students with advanced command of the language for internships in the program. These volunteers could serve as Hispanic patient concierges, among other roles. 

Bokka recognized that this kind of service could be valuable to other underserved populations as well.

“The health care system is incredibly complex and cryptic and confusing,” Bokka said. “Everyone could benefit from having a service like this to guide them.”

She said she hopes this becomes a framework for other departments and that other communities can also forge a language and cultural connection.

The goal is to “make patients more comfortable when they’re in a hospital,” Bokka said, which can be scary, expensive and confusing. The program wants to make sure people can “voice their concerns and walk away with care that works.”

Measuring success

The Hispanic Heart Program will measure its success in a host of ways. The hospital can compare the number of Hispanic patient visits to the hospital and in outpatient clinical settings during the first trimester after launching the program compared with earlier periods, Balaguer said.

It will also compare the number of procedures done on patients.

Through surveys, the hospital can determine patient satisfaction with the Hispanic Patient Concierge program.

The hospital can also determine the number of patients who obtain insurance.

On a financial level, the hospital can determine if the patients in the program provide profits and losses, while also factoring in donations and grants.

As for students, the program can consider the academic production of students who contribute to this effort as a part of their education.

Balaguer believes that these efforts will “help mitigate disparities” in health care.

A view of Shinnecock Bay. Photo by Christopher Paparo/Fish Guy Photos

By Daniel Dunaief

The Galapagos Islands, the Great Barrier Reef, Little Cayman and … Shinnecock Bay? Yes, that’s correct, the 40 square kilometer bay located on the southern end of Long Island recently joined a distinguished list of celebrated marine locations identified by Mission Blue, a non-profit international organization led by famed marine biologist Sylvia Earle.

Mission Blue named Shinnecock Bay a Hope Spot, one of 132 such locations in the world that it considers critical to the health of the ocean.

Shinnecock Bay has the distinction of being the only Hope Spot in New York State, the only one near a major city and one of three on the Eastern Seaboard.

“The idea that you could have a Hope Spot so close to a major metropolitan area is pretty significant,” said Ellen Pikitch, Endowed Professor of Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and Director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science.

The designation by Mission Blue not only puts Shinnecock Bay in elite environmental company, but it also completes a comeback story driven by scientists, their students, numerous volunteers, and other supportive groups.

“The point of Mission Blue designating this place a Hope Spot isn’t only to bring more people and attention to Shinnecock Bay,” said Pikitch, but is also to “send the message of hope that we can turn things around.”

Pikitch, Christopher Gobler, Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and Bradley Peterson, Associate Professor at Somas, led the efforts at the bay.

The scientists created clam sanctuaries in the Western Shinnecock Bay with strict no take rules for people, which helped jump start the restoration. The clams helped meet natural filtration goals.

The researchers also helped restore eelgrass, also called seagrass, which is a more effective natural way to sequester carbon per square inch than the rainforest.

Between 1930 and the start of the project in 2012, New York State had lost about 90 percent of its eelgrass. A task force projected that eelgrass would be extinct in the Empire State by 2030. The bay now has about 100 more acres of eelgrass than it had in 2012.

These efforts have created a “huge leap in the number of forage fish” including bay anchovies and menhaden, said Pikitch, who studies forage fish. “The bay is in a much healthier place now that it was when we started,” she added.

Tough beginnings

Indeed, in 2012, parts or all of the bay had to close because of brown or red tides. The tides sometimes “looked like coffee spilled across the entire bay,” Pikitch said.

The steps the researchers took to improve water quality took some time. “Harmful algal blooms didn’t disappear right away,” Pikitch said. “As the study progressed, the amount of time brown tides occurred got shorter and shorter. Ultimately we stopped seeing brown tides several years ago.”

Red tides, which can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning that could be fatal to people, had also been a problem in Shinnecock Bay. Nearly half the bay was closed to shellfishing in 2011, 2014, and 2015. In 2017 and 2028, about 1/4 of the bay was closed due to red tides. Since 2019, however, red tides haven’t threatened the bay.

On the water

Throughout the restoration process, scientists in training and volunteers contributed to various efforts. Konstantine Rountos, Associate Professor of Biology at St. Joseph’s University in New York, earned his Master’s and PhD and conducted his post doctoral research at Stony Brook University. He also served as the lead research scientist for the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program trawl survey from 2012 to 2016. 

Rountos called the designation “remarkable and extremely exciting.” When he started working on the bay in 2005 as a Master’s candidate, he saw stressors such as eelgrass declines.

“Not only was the ecosystem showing signs of collapse (decreased seagrass, decreased hard clams, increased harmful algal blooms), but the Bay was supporting fewer and fewer baymen,” he said. The Long Island “cultural identity of ‘living off the bay’ was in serious danger.”

Rountos believes people often overlook the significant ecological importance of this area, driving past these environmental and ecological treasures without appreciating their importance. 

Amid his many Bay memories, he recalls catching a seven-foot long roughtail stingray. “It was very surprising to pull that up by hand in our trawl net,” he said.

A veteran of the bay since 2016, Maria Grima spent time on Shinnecok as an undergraduate at Stony Brook and more recently for her Master’s training, which she hopes to complete this August.

Grima has been studying the invasive European green crab that shreds eelgrass and consumes shellfish such as clams, oysters and mussels. In a preliminary analysis, the population of this crab has declined. Grima noted that it’s difficult to prove cause and effect for the reduction in the number of these crabs.

Rather than pursue a potential career in medicine, which was her initial focus when she arrived at Stony Brook, Grima decided to focus on “fixing the environmental issues that cause human health problems.”

She is “really proud that Shinnecock Bay” achieved the Hope Spot designation. 

One of her favorite Bay memories involves seeing an ocean sunfish, which is a distinctive and large fish that propels itself through water with its dorsal and ventral fins and is the world’s largest bony fish. Seeing the biodiversity on a bay that has had historically poor water quality “gives you hope when you’re on the boat,” Grima said.

When friends and volunteers have joined her on the Bay, she has delighted in watching them interact with seahorses, which “wrap their little tail around your finger.”

Looking toward the future

While Pikitch is pleased with the designation, she said the work of maintaining it continues.

“We can’t rest on our laurels,” she said. “Continued construction on Long Island’s East End and the growing threat of climate change may require additional restoration work. We need to keep a close eye on what is happening in Shinnecock Bay and be ready to take action if necessary.”

Dr. Jennifer Englebright, center, with her father Steve Englebright, left, and her husband, Charles Regulinski.

Working toward an English degree, most students would never expect to become a dentist.

Jennifer Englebright was the honored speaker during Stony Brook University’s English Department Convocation Ceremony in May. Photo from Stony Brook University

However, that’s exactly what happened to Dr. Jennifer Englebright, the speaker at the 2022 English Department Convocation at Stony Brook University. A dentist at Port Jefferson Dental Group, Englebright, who graduated from SBU in 2005, told attendees that she considered her “English degree to be of utmost importance in my career.”

“It prepared me in ways I could never have imagined, and its value has become an inherent part of my work,” she said.

The Setauket resident continued in her speech that her English degree helped with the human side of dentistry by giving her “the power and expression of language.”

“Communication is vital in helping to alleviate the stress and anxiety so many patients feel,” she said. “Uncertainty often drives fear, but by methodically explaining exactly what the procedure is, in such a way that the patient can really understand it, helps temper that fear.”

Andrew Newman, professor and chair of the English Department at Stony Brook University, said it was the first in-person convocation since 2019, and Englebright was well received by students and faculty.

“While some of our outstanding graduates go on to careers in education, law or business, Dr. Englebright demonstrates that English is also great preparation for health care providers,” Newman said. “I think she would agree that she’s a better dentist for having studied Virginia Woolf with Professor Celia Marshik.”

Englebright said in a phone interview that many people don’t realize how versatile an English degree is.

“I found my English classes to be more inspiring for my career in medicine than science classes,” she said.

She agreed that reading the works of Woolf was a major influence in her life. Her senior honors thesis was about the author.

“She was all for women’s rights and women in higher education, trying to push and drive women forward to make their own money in their own careers,” Englebright said.

She also has been inspired by the poet William Carlos Williams who was also a doctor.

“I found writers like that to be actually more inspiring to go into medicine than just pure science,” Englebright said.

In addition to majoring in English at SBU, Englebright took several science courses. She was considering different career paths while attending college and ultimately was drawn to health care, especially dentistry. She volunteered at the college’s dental school and then worked with a local dentist.

After Stony Brook, she attended The University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and graduated in 2009. She went on to do her residency at St. Charles Hospital. For the last 10 years, she has practiced at Port Jefferson Dental Group.

Englebright said science runs in her blood. Her father is state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket), a geologist by profession who still works at SBU occasionally. Her mother June is a retired earth science teacher.

Jennifer Englebright said both her parents encouraged her to follow her passions in life and never steered her toward any one career.

“I had complete autonomy to explore whatever I wanted to do in life, and both of my parents gave me that platform to be able to do that,” she said.

When in third grade, she, her mother and sister moved to Wading River after her parents divorced, she said. After returning from Pennsylvania and living out east and in Melville, she decided to move back to Setauket. In 2020, Englebright married Charles Regulinski, Setauket Fire Department assistant chief. 

“I really wanted to come back to my roots,” she said. “I wanted to be in the Three Village area. I just love this area.”

Recently, Englebright, like many health care professionals, had to navigate her career through the pandemic.

At the beginning, dentist offices could function only during emergencies. Once doors opened to all patients, she said it was tough because there was no vaccine or any treatment for COVID-19. However, she said they didn’t have to change procedures majorly because they are always prepared to fight infections.

“We’re a very strict discipline, medicine, especially dentistry,” she said. “We’re very strict with infection control.”

She said, at first, people were hesitant to go back to the dentist, but ultimately the office rebounded as many were overdue for routine care or bad situations worsened as some people didn’t immediately attend to dental problems such as a broken tooth.

During her speech at the convocation ceremony, Englebright said she hoped she inspired the graduates to feel that they didn’t need to be “typecast to a role,” because they have an English degree.

“You don’t have to go into this expected role as a teacher or a lawyer, this traditional route,” she said. “You can really go into whatever you want, because you have the foundation to succeed in any field.”

By Daniel Dunaief

Kelp, and other seaweed, may prove to be an oyster’s best friend. And, no, this isn’t a script for a new episode of SpongeBob SquarePants.

A thick, heavy leafy seaweed, kelp provides an environmentally friendly solution to several problems. Amid higher levels of carbon dioxide, the air has become warmer and oceans, including coastal regions, are more acidic. That’s because carbon dioxide mixes with water, producing negative hydrogen ions that lower the pH of the water.

Enter kelp.

A rapidly growing seaweed, kelp, which is endemic to the area, uses that carbon dioxide in the same way trees do, as a part of photosynthesis. By removing carbon dioxide, kelp raises the pH, which is helpful for the area’s shellfish.

The above graph shows pH scale measurements with and without kelp. The graph shows continuous pH (NBS scale) bubbling, and the addition of 4 x 104 cells mL-1 Isochrysis galbana added daily to simulate daily feedings of bivalves.  Image provided by Chris Gobler

That’s the conclusion of a recent study published in Frontiers in Marine Science by Stony Brook University Professor Christopher Gobler, Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, and Mike Doall, Associate Director of Shellfish Restoration and Aquaculture at Stony Brook University.

In a series of five laboratory experiments and a field study, Gobler and Doall showed that kelp lowered acidification, enabling better growth for shellfish like oysters. “There was better oyster growth inside the kelp than 50 meters away” Doall said, in what he and Gobler describe as the “halo” effect.

Gobler was especially pleased with the implications of the field experiment.“While showing that  [result] in the lab was exciting, being able to improve the growth of oysters on an oyster farm experiencing coastal acidification proves this approach can have very broad implications,” Gobler said in a statement.

Doall estimates that kelp farmers can grow 72,000 pounds per acre of kelp in just six months, during the prime growing season from December through May.

Doall, whose primary role in the study was to grow the kelp and set up the field experiment, said he grew kelp at the Great Gun oyster farm in Moriches Bay that were up to 12 feet long. Over the last four years, he has grown kelp in 16 locations around Long Island, from the East River to Fishers Island.

This year, the team conducted kelp studies in nine locations. The best growth occurred in the East River and in Moriches Bay, Doall said. He harvested about 2,000 pounds each from those two sites this year and is primarily using the kelp in a host of fertilizer studies.

Gobler explained that using seaweed like kelp could enhance aquaculture.

“The intensification of ocean acidification now threatens bivalve aquaculture and has necessitated a solution,” Gobler said in a statement. “We believe our work is foundational to a solution.”

Above, Mike Doall during a recent kelp harvest in Moriches Bay. Photo by Cameron Provost

One of the challenges of using kelp to improve the local conditions for shellfish is that it grows during the winter through May, while the growing season for shellfish occurs during the summer.

“That is why we are now working on summer seaweeds,” Gobler explained in an email.

Gobler and Doall are looking for similar potential localized benefits from Ulva, a green sea lettuce, and Gracilaria, which is a red, branchy seaweed.

“Most water quality issues occur during summer, so it’s important to grow seaweed year round,” Doall said.

The Stony Brook scientists, who have worked together since the early 1990s when they were graduate students, are also exploring varieties of kelp that might be more heat tolerant and will try to use some of those on Long Island.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is leading a project to hybridize these heartier strains of kelp, Doall said. GreenWave, which supports regenerative ocean farming, is also participating in that effort.

Gobler explained that they also plan to start earlier, which will extend the growing season.

While the different growing seasons for kelp and oysters may make kelp only part of the solution for reducing ocean acidification for shellfish, the different growing seasons makes the seaweed a complementary companion crop for commercial shellfish diggers.

Summer laborers who work on oysters can transition to kelp harvesting in the fall and winter.

A resident of Rocky Point, Doall lives with his wife Nancy, who teaches at North Coleman Road Elementary School in the Middle Country School District.

The Doall’s 23-year old daughter Deanna, who is a graduate of the University of Tampa, is currently traveling in Guatemala, while their 20-year old daughter Annie is attending Florida Gulf Coast University.

Doall grew up in Massapequa Park. As a 12-year old, he pooled his lawn mowing money with a friend’s paper route funds to buy a small boat with a 1967 10-horsepower Evinrude engine. The pair went out on bays to fish and, periodically, to clam.

Doall, who loves gardening and being in the ocean, described the two of them as being “notorious” for needing tows back to the shore regularly when their engine died.

The former owner of an oyster farm, Doall also enjoys eating them. He particularly enjoys eating oysters in the winter and early spring, when they are plump. His favorite way to eat them is raw on the half shell, but he also appreciates his wife’s “killer Oysters Rockefeller,” as he described it.

As for kelp, the current supply in the area exceeds the demand. The excess kelp, which farmers harvest to prevent the release of carbon dioxide and nitrogen that the seaweed removed from the water, can be composted or used for fertilizer, explained Gobler.