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This image combines 678 separate images taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile Photo credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/A. Pizarro D
Rubin Observatory sits prominently atop Cerro Pachón against the backdrop of the full moon in this photo from March 24, 2024. The photo was taken around 7:55pm in the vicinity of Andacollo, Chile (about 25km from Rubin) after months of planning and patience. Photo credit: M.Hernández/H.Stockebrand
Ten areas in the sky were selected as “deep fields” that the Dark Energy Camera imaged several times during the survey, providing a glimpse of distant galaxies and helping determine their 3D distribution in the cosmos. The image is teeming with galaxies — in fact, nearly every single object in this image is a galaxy. Some exceptions include a couple of dozen asteroids as well as a few handfuls of foreground stars in our own Milky Way. Photo credit: Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/DECam/CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

By Daniel Dunaief

Monday, June 23, marked the beginning of a new and exciting frontier. Using the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory shared its first images after a journey from conception to reality that lasted over two decades.

Located in the Cerro Pachón mountaintop in Chile because the area is dry, high and dark, the telescope and camera started its 10-year mission to share images of the sky.

Viewers at over 350 watch parties in the United States and around the world awaited these pictures, including with gatherings at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The state-of-the-art camera did not disappoint.

The Rubin Observatory, which can take images with a field of view of the sky that are the equivalent of 40 moons, discovered 2,400 asteroids that no one has ever seen before. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. By the time the Observatory has collected all the data the public can view, the camera is expected to find over five million asteroids.

“Most of the asteroids are too faint to have been found” with previous technology, said Paul O’Connor, senior physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory who has been working on the camera since 2002.

Simon Birrer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, attended a watch event at the university with some 50 to 60 other excited members of the college community.

“Knowing that the instrument is capable and what it was promised to do and seeing it all coming together, sharing the excitement with so many other people is very exciting,” said Birrer.

By looking at the night sky over the course of just a few days, the observatory was able to offer a time lapse view of the movement of these asteroids.

“You can look and see the trail of thousands of things that are completely new,” said Birrer.

Indeed, in addition to seeing asteroids and other objects both near and far, the Rubin Observatory can study dark matter and dark energy, map the Milky Way, and observe transient events.

“We’re entering a golden age of American science,” Harriet Kung, acting director of the DOE’s Office of Science, said in a statement. “NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory reflects what’s possible when the federal government backs world-class engineers and scientists with the tools to lead.”

The first images generated considerable excitement in the scientific community and on campuses around the world.

“It’s a new frontier for sure,” said O’Connor. “We’ve been working on this project for all these years. It was easy to get students interested.”

Anja von der Linden, Associate Professor in Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook and a member of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration since its inception in 2012, viewed the images from Germany, where she is visiting her parents on vacation with her young daughter.

She works on clusters of galaxies and was delighted to see the Virgo cluster online.

“The image is so large and [viewers] can also see much more distant galaxies,” said von der Linden. Viewers are able to scroll around and zoom in and out to see details in these “beautiful images.”

Von der Linden echoed the sentiment from one of the officials who shared the first images, suggesting that the data and information from the observatory are available for astronomers and scientists, but also for the public, helping them explore the night sky.

“It’s quite remarkable,” she said. “I look forward to seeing how the public engages.”

The Rubin Observatory will see “everything that changes, explodes, and moves,” said von der Linden.

A little bit of pride

In addition to scientists like O’Connor and Anže Slosar, group leader of the Cosmology & Astrophysics Group, BNL recruited close to two dozen interns to help with the work.

“There’s a lot of inherent curiosity about the cosmos,” O’Connor said. “When people hear that they could participate in doing research that could lead to lead to a better understanding of it, we had to turn interns away.”

O’Connor worked with the charge-coupled device modules, which are the digital film of the camera. The Rubin Observatory, with its 3.2 gigapixel focal plane, relies on 189 custom-designed CCD sensors to achieve its resolution.

“I feel a little bit of pride,” said O’Connor, who didn’t expect to be working on astronomical instruments when he came to BNL. “I was a tiny, little part of a giant team that’s worked so long. When you see the final project, it’s a good feeling.”

Seeing the invisible

At the same time that the Rubin Observatory can find asteroids that had previously gone undetected, it can also help detect dark energy and dark matter.

Only five percent of the universe comes from visible matter, with about 70 percent coming from dark energy and 25 percent coming from dark matter.

Dark energy describes why the universe continues to expand after the Big Bang, rather than slowing down, the way a ball thrown into the air does before it falls, von der Linden explained. Researchers study dark matter, meanwhile, by observing the way light from distant galaxies bends when it travels towards Earth, as the gravitational force of the matter affects it on its path.

Von der Linden said she has already started using some of the commissioning data to test Rubin’s capabilities to do weak gravitational lensing. Weak gravitational lensing involves slight shifts in images caused by the gravitational influence of other matter that require many galaxies to detect.

“The work we’re doing now is very much a test case, which we will then take and apply to a much larger data set,” she said.

Inspiring future scientists

The images and the data, which the US, the UK and France will process, has the potential not only to answer scientific questions, but also to encourage and inspire future researchers.

The Rubin Observatory has a “very comprehensive education and public outreach component,” von der Linden said. “From the beginning, it has been built with the intention that the public is suppose to interact with the data and be part of the scientific story.”

If teachers use this in the classroom to show students the beautiful and intriguing night sky, “I would think this will lead some students to consider pursuing” careers in these sciences. “I hope that we’re going to get more junior scientists who will be part of Rubin.”

To see images from the observatory, visit https://rubinobservatory.org.

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Lav Varshney and Nina Kshetry at their family's farm in Urbana, Illinois, which Varshney said has been inspirational for recent research on AI methods for predicting impacts of climate change on agriculture.

By Daniel Dunaief

Lav Varshney has made significant contributions to everything from public policy as a White House Fellow to generating  new recipes through the Chef Watson system he helped build at IBM to working at businesses he helped create.

Lav Varshney. Photo courtesy of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The inaugural director of the Artificial Intelligence Innovation Institute, or AI3, Varshney will arrive at Stony Brook University in August from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has been a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Varshney “has an international profile” and is at the “center of what’s happening at a political and legislative level,” said SBU Provost Carl Lejuez in an interview.

Varshney’s mandate includes building research hubs, supporting mentorships and having an impact on the community as a part of Stony Brook’s downstate flagship status.

“There are a lot of ways where people at Stony Brook and in the community are going to be able to participate” in the use of artificial intelligence, said Lejuez. 

Among numerous other opportunities, Varshney, who will report to Lejuez, will work with Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Amy Cook to build on the ways the university is using AI in the curriculum.

“We’re supporting an infusion” of AI into classrooms, Lejuez continued.

At this point, AI3 is funded with $10 million over the first five years, with some additional financial support to build out his own research interests.

“Our funding is meant to be a seed over these five years,” said Lejuez. AI3 has a “real capacity to grow and bring in significant funding on its own.”

Stony Brook will also continue to benefit from its role in Empire AI, which is a combination of schools supported by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), with financial backing from the Simons Foundation. Empire AI involves a consortium of public and private institutions, including the University of Buffalo, Binghampton University and the University at Albany, among others. 

SBU appeal

Varshney believes Stony Brook’s growth and commitment to AI are on a “very upward trajectory,” he said. “There are a lot of interesting initiatives and the new institute will hopefully bring them together.”

He hopes to collaborate with members of the campus from medicine, the arts and sciences, engineering, business, and atmospheric sciences to develop AI-driven solutions that have a positive impact on society.

Lab Varshney with Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger in 2023.

Varshney explained that it’s clear AI is a general-purpose technology.

“We need to work to make sure it quickly diffuses to nearly all society/ industrial/ scholarly sectors to have appropriate impact,” he explained.

From his position on Long Island, where he will also continue to work with Brookhaven National Laboratory on projects including in quantum information science, Varshney plans to continue to work on AI policy and how to make it safe, secure, accessible and adaptable to people’s needs.

The new inaugural head of AI3 encourages members of the community to work with Stony Brook, engaging with the institute and faculty.

“One of the main goals of AI3 is to get AI out into the world where appropriate, so [I] would very much welcome the community and local industry to engage with AI3 so we can learn what could be helpful,” Varshney said.

He plans to listen to faculty, students and community members to learn what could be helpful.

Borrowing from ‘Ironman’

Varshney recognizes that most people struggle to wade through information overload.

“Rather than a scarcity of information, [people have] too much,” he said. “One of the things I’m hoping we can make progress on” is the use of an AI filter to find and share what’s relevant.

Generative AI, in which a computer system “learns” from patterns and combinations of information, can help. Borrowing from the computer helper in Marvel’s Ironman franchise, Varshney suggested a “Jarvis-like assistant that can give you the right information when you need it.”

Varshney recognizes that governments might use information filters to create surveillance or information manipulation.

Varied backgrounds

As an AI expert, Varshney has worked to support government efforts and initiatives, in a corporate setting and for academic institutions.

He contributed to the executive order on AI that President Joe Biden signed at the end of October 2023.

He also co-founded Kocree with former graduate student Haizi Yu. The company uses artificial intelligence to allow users to cut melodies, rhythms and arrangements from music to create novel pieces.

He used the platform to create music for his sister-in-law’s wedding that combined the backgrounds and interests of the two families.

Born in Syracuse, New York, Varshney traces his roots to India. His great, great grandfather on his mother’s side, Ishwar Varshnei left India in 1904 and studied for a year as a special student in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Varshnei took a boat from Japan, a train from San Francisco, traveled through St. Louis where he saw the World’s Fair, and ended up in Boston, where he was the second Indian to attend MIT. 

After Varshnei returned to India, he became involved in early efforts in glassmaking, applying the science he learned to society.

Also eager to contribute science to society, Varshney is moving from Illinois with his wife Nina Kshetry, whom he describes as “professionally more accomplished than I am.” Kshetry is the founder and president of Ensaras Inc., which specializes in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence solutions for optimizing wastewater plant operations. She is also the co-founder and VP of Circle H20, which is a company that builds waste-to-value and wastewater treatment plants.

Kshetry plans to engage with Stony Brook through the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem as well as with the Department of Civil Engineering/ School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

Impressed with all the ways Varshney has deployed AI, Lejuez hopes to provide ongoing support for the new director’s many interests.

“When someone has proven that they can juggle a lot of things at once, I’m going to help continue to make sure they have what they need,” Lejuez said.

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Barbara Palazzo taking the CatchU test.

By Daniel Dunaief

A significant concern for the elderly, falls create health problems that affect the quality of life and generate significant expense.

Stony Brook University’s Jeannette Mahoney, Professor of Neurology and Chief of the Division of Cognitive and Sensorimotor Aging in the Renaissance School of Medicine, has developed a smartphone app called CatchU that is designed to alert patients and their doctors to the potential likelihood of falls.

Jeannette Mahoney with her grandmother Jean Sisinni, who died from a fall and for whom she’s dedicated the work on CatchU.

The National Institute of Aging (NIA) recently named CatchU as one of 21 finalists out of 275 entrants around the country for its Start-Up Challenge. As a finalist, Mahoney received $10,000, recently participated in entrepreneurial training sessions, and is receiving one on one mentorship.

“Falls are a leading cause of injury and death for older adults, including persons living with Alzheimer’s Disease,” Joy Toliver, Program Analyst at the National Institute of Aging explained. CatchU is a “novel approach” that has the potential to “expand access to high-quality, comprehensive fall risk assessments and to improve the health and quality of life of older adults.”

If CatchU is chosen as one of seven winners in the next stage of the challenge, Mahoney, through her company JET Worldwide Enterprises, is also eligible to receive $65,000.

Previous participants in a challenge that is now in its third year have gone on to raise significant equity funding, secure multiple grants and form partnerships with health systems to expand the impact of their solutions, Toliver added.

An ‘honor’

“I’m super stoked — it’s really such an honor to be selected by members of the NIA that believe in you, your science and your product,” Mahoney said.

A photo of the CatchU app courtesy of JET Worldwide Enterprises Inc.

She plans to use the prize money she’s received so far to help with app enhancements, legal fees for review of new service agreements, and exclusive license obligations.

The app links impaired multisensory integration, in which people combine information from visual and other cues, with poor motor outcomes. Mahoney has been working in this field for about a decade. Through a 10-minute health app that monitors reaction time as a person is asked to respond as quickly as possible to targets they can see, feel or see and feel at the same time, CatchU provides a quantitative risk for falls.

Across the country, about three million older Americans require an Emergency Room visit each year as a result of fall-related injuries.

Closer to home, Suffolk County residents from 65 to 74 are hospitalized at the rate of 106 per 10,000, while those number increase with each decade. From 75 to 84, residents require hospitalization at a rate of 311 per 10,000. People in the county who are over 85 visit hospitals after falls at the rate of 821 per 10,000, according to the Suffolk County Community Health Assessment and Improvement Plan.

For seniors over 75 years old in Suffolk County the hospitalization rate from falls exceeded that for the state exclusive of the city by more than 30 percent.

According to research Mahoney has done, older adults with poor multisensory integration are 24 percent more likely to fall than those with intact multisensory integration.

“We believe that results of the CatchU test will likely change over time for better or worse depending on levels of remediation,” she explained. “Our goal is to uncover what type of remediation (whether it is sensory, cognitive, or motor focused or some combination), and what duration/ frequency is most beneficial in subsequent clinical trials.”

Mahoney envisions using CatchU as a new standard of care for predicting fall propensity in adults 65 and over. Depending on performance, people could receive remote testing every six to 12 months.

Possible remediation

While people could download the app today, they wouldn’t be able to take the test without a provider code. Doctors would receive the results of their tests directly and could offer a range of recommended actions. This could include tai chi, physical therapy, core balance, strength training or other exercises.

Mahoney and her colleagues are running a clinical trial in Westchester County. The study attempts to determine whether integration measured on CatchU is comparable to integration measured on the lab apparatus. They submitted this research for publication.

The clinical trial also seeks to determine whether older adults with poor multisensory integration that receive feedback about their CatchU performance would go on to fall less often or have a longer time to fall compared to older adults with poor multisensory integration who did not receive any such specific feedback.

Alzheimer’s assessment

CatchU could provide beneficial information for people who might develop Alzheimer’s Disease.

From what Mahoney and her colleagues can tell, the same simple reaction time test taps into inter-related sensory, motor and cognitive neural circuits that are all affected by aging and/or disease.

Mahoney has shown that an ability to integrate sensory information is associated with higher amyloid burden, which is a known biomarker for Alzheimer’s Disease.

“Our current R01 project work will help us uncover the exact structural and functional neural correlates of impaired multisensory integration, which may shed light on the specific outcome measures that are adversely affected by poor integration,” Mahoney explained.

A returning Seawolf

Mahoney rejoined Stony Brook University in October, over 22 years after she graduated from the downstate flagship SUNY school with a bachelor of arts degree in Psychology and Social Science. She described coming back to campus as a “surreal” experience and appreciates how her colleagues have been“super helpful and supportive.”

Mahoney lives in upstate Stony Point with her husband Timmy, their 14 year-old daughter Kayleigh and 10-year old son Peter.

Mahoney formed the company JET Worldwide Enterprises almost exactly five years ago. It is based in Stony Point and has two employees. The company name, JET, comes from a nickname for Mahoney’s first name. If she is able to secure future funding, she hopes to move JET to incubator space at Stony Brook.

The family enjoys playing board games, including Mahjong. Mahoney learned the tile game from her mother, who learned it from Mahoney’s grandmother Jean Sissini.

Mahoney has dedicated CatchU to her grandmother, who passed away in 2021 after suffering a fall. 

While Sissini is no longer with them, the family knows she is “always with us in spirit,” Mahoney said.

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Ellen Pikitch as a delegate for Monaco at the United Nations in April.

By Daniel Dunaief

To borrow from the show Hamilton, Ellen Pikitch was in the room where it happens.

The Endowed Professor of Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, Pikitch traveled to the United Nations on the east side of Manhattan last month to serve as a delegate for Monaco during the Preparatory Commission for the High Seas Treaty, which is also known as Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction.

The meeting, the first of several gatherings scheduled after the passage of the historic High Seas Treaty that is designed to protect 30 percent of the oceans by 2030, started to create a framework of rules and procedures.

Pikitch, who has advanced, developed and implemented Marine Protected Areas globally, was pleased with the early progress.

“I came away feeling optimistic that we are going to have a functional High Seas Treaty within a couple of years,” said Pikitch. “These details are being hashed out before the treaty comes into force.”

Indeed, 60 nations need to ratify the treaty for it to come into force.

At this point, 20 of the 194 countries that are member state of the United Nations have ratified the treaty. Each country has its own procedures for providing national support for an effort designed to protect biodiversity and natural resources.

Numerous representatives and members of environmental organizations are encouraging leaders of countries to ratify the treaty before the United Nations Oceans conference in Nice from June 9th to June 13th.

Award winning actress and activist Jane Fonda gave a speech at the meeting, urging countries to take the next steps.

“This isn’t just about protecting the oceans. It’s about protecting ourselves,” said Fonda. “Please, please, when you go back to your capitals in the next few days, remind your ministers of what we’re working toward. Remind them that we have a chance this year to change the future.”

Getting 60 ratifications this year is going to be “another monumental achievement,” Fonda continued. “We know it isn’t easy, but we also know that without the level of urgency… the target of protecting 30 percent of the world’s oceans will slip out of our grasp.”

Pikitch expects that the first 60 countries will be the hardest and that, once those agree, others will likely want to join to make sure they are part of the decision making. The treaty will form a framework or benefit sharing from biodiversity discovered as well as the resource use and extraction at these high seas sites.

“New discoveries from the high seas are too important for countries to ignore,” Pikitch said.

The members who ratify the treaty will work on a framework for designating protected areas on the high seas.

Pikitch shared Fonda’s sense of urgency in advancing the treaty and protecting the oceans.

“There is no time to waste,” Pikitch said. In the Stony Brook Professor’s opinion, the hardest part of the work has already occurred, with the long-awaited signing of the treaty. Still, she said it “can’t take another 20 years for the High Seas Treaty to come into effect.”

Monaco connection

Pikitch has had a connection with the small nation of Monaco, which borders on the southeastern coast of France and borders on the Mediterranean Sea, for over a decade.

Isabelle Picco, the Permanent Representative to the United Nations for Monaco, asked Pikitch to serve as one of the two delegates at the preparatory commission last month.

Pikitch is “thrilled” to be working with Monaco and hopes to contribute in a meaningful way to the discussion and planning for the nuts and bolts of the treaty.

Other meetings are scheduled for August and for early next year.

Most provisions at the United Nations require unanimous agreement, which, in part, is why the treaty itself took over 20 years. Any country could have held up the process of agreeing to the treaty.

To approve of a marine protected area, the group would only need a 2/3 vote, not a complete consensus. That, Pikitch hopes, would make it more likely to create a greater number of these protected places.

Scientific committee

The meeting involved discussions over how the treaty would work. Once the treaty has come into force, a scientific committee will advise the secretariat. The group addressed numerous issues related to this committee, such as the number of its members, a general framework for how members would be selected, the composition of the committee in terms of geographic representation, how often the committee would meet and whether the committee could set up working groups for topics that might arise.

Representatives of many countries expressed support for the notion that the scientific committee would make decisions based on their expertise, rather than as representatives of their government. This approach could make science the driving force behind the recommendations, rather than politics, enabling participants to use their judgement rather than echo a political party line for the party in power from their country.

Several participants also endorsed the idea that at least one indigenous scientist should be on this committee.

Pikitch, who has also served at the UN as a representative for the country of Palau, was pleased that the meeting had considerable agreement.

“There was a spirit of cooperation and a willingness to move forward with something important,” she said. By participating in a timely and meaningful way in this process, [the countries involved] are behaving as though they are convinced a high seas treaty will come into force” before too long.

Ultimately, Pikitch expects that the agreement will be a living, breathing treaty, which will give it the flexibility to respond to fluid situations.

As Fonda suggested, the treaty is about “recognizing that the fate of humanity is inextricably linked to the health of the natural world.” She thanked the group for “giving me hope.”

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Angelika Drees at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Drees is pointing to the pipe that runs clockwise, while, on the other side of that pipe, is another one (marked in yellow tape) that runs counterclockwise. Photo by Daniel Dunaief

By Daniel Dunaief

Finely tuned accelerators, constructed underground in rings that are over 1.5 miles long, can reveal secrets about the smallest parts of matter. At the same time, the work researchers do, which involves accelerating electrons, ions and other sub atomic particles, operates at a level considerably smaller than a human hair, using sensitive equipment under tightly controlled, high energy conditions.

Indeed, at this scale, researchers need to account for energies and changes that wouldn’t affect most human activities, but that can have significant impacts on the work they are doing and the conclusions they draw.

Over the years, accelerator physicists have encountered a wide range of challenges and, for a time, unexplained phenomena.

Accelerator physicist Angelika Drees has worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory since 1997 and has experience and expertise with several accelerators. She is currently working on the Electron Ion Collider (EIC), a unique instrument that will explore quarks and gluons — particles inside the atomic nucleus — that will have applications in medicine, materials science, and energy.

Drees does luminosity calculations. She tries to ensure more collisions. At the same time, she seeks to protect the equipment while keeping the backgrounds as low as achievable.

Drees works with a loss monitor and is responsible for that system, which includes over 400 monitors. The majority of these are installed between two beam pipes.

Lost signal

Drees has worked since 1997 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), which is in its last experimental runs before it provides some of the materials for the new EIC.

As an accelerator, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has beam position monitors that are comprised of two opposing striplines inside the beam pipe that measure the position of the beam. These striplines, which are on either side of the beam, look at the difference in induced signal amplitude. Equal amplitude, with a difference of zero, implies that the beam is in the center.

While the engineers knew that the material for the cables, which transmit signals from the beam position monitor to the system that sees its location, would shrink when exposed to temperatures of 4 degrees Kelvin, they hadn’t adjusted the design to prepare for the change.

When the electronics shrunk after being exposed to temperatures close to absolute zero, which help make the magnets superconducting, they pulled themselves out of their power source.

“We could not see the position of the beam,” Drees explained. “This was during the so-called sextant test, and the beam was not (yet) circling.”

The magnets operated independent of the beam position monitors.

For about a year they could see the beamline 20 meters downstream. Before Drees arrived, the team updated the cables, putting kinks that allowed them to shrink without interfering with their operation of pulling themselves out of the power source.

“It was repaired and, ever since, there has been no further issue,” she said.

‘Weird variation’

Before she arrived at BNL, Drees conducted her PhD work at the Large Electron-Positron Collider, or LEP, which has now become the site of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

The LEP was 27 kilometers long and was between 30 meters and 160 meters underground. It stretched below France and Switzerland. Some part of it was in soil that is affected by Lake Geneva. Half of the LEP was embedded below the Jura bedrock and the other half was embedded in softer sedimentary deposits close to the lake.

Scientists saw regular variation in their results, with a peak to peak beam energy of about 250 parts per million. By studying the timing of these peaks to a regular 28-day and daily cycle, they connected it to the moon.

“The moon not only affects Earth’s oceans, but the actual crust and thus the LEP ring inside it,” Drees explained.

The moon wasn’t the only outside influence on the LEP. Rainwater penetrated the tunnel.

The magnet yokes had concrete between metal laminations. The concrete absorbed the humidity and expanded, increasing pressure on the metal laminations.

That changed the magnetic permeability and the transfer function, which indicates how much bending magnetic field researchers get out of a magnet with a specific electric current.

Rain took about two weeks to show up in the data, as the water took that long to reach and alter the concrete.

During her PhD on the LEP beam energy measurement and calibration, Drees searched for environment effects as a part of her thesis.

While others discovered the moon tides before she arrived, she and other researchers couldn’t account for a ground current that was penetrating into the equipment.

Acting like an extra and inexplicable power source, this current changed the magnetic field.

The extra energy invalidated earlier results. The error bar was four times larger than they originally thought, causing the LEP working group to withdraw a paper and commit to redoing the analysis.

The energy disappeared from midnight to 4 am. Back then, researchers at the LEP were so eager for an explanation that they posted a message on a TV screen, offering an award, like a bottle of champagne, to anyone who could explain what was happening.

Suspecting planes might be contributing, Drees sent a student to the airport to monitor flights. The police, however, weren’t too pleased with this data gathering, initially questioning, then sending the student away.

Drees met with the power authority, who had measured ground currents in the area for years that stopped during those same post midnight hours.

That provided the necessary clue, as the trains — and, in particular the French ones — had contributed this unexplained energy.

Unlike the Swiss trains, which operate with alternating current, the French trains use direct current, which had affected their experiments.

Looking forward

Angelika Drees on her horse Pino.

Originally from Wuppertal, Germany, Drees balances the mentally demanding and inspirational challenges of working at these colliders with manual labor.

She earned money during her undergraduate and graduate school days by shoeing horses.

Drees currently owns a horse and works regularly on a horse farm, throwing hay bales and repairing fences.

“I like physical labor,” she said.

Several years ago, she traveled to Portugal, where she stopped at a farm with a Lusitano stallion. The horse had a loose shoe. While she couldn’t speak Portuguese with the person leading the stallion, who, as it turned out, was the national riding coach, she let him know that she could help.

After she repaired the shoe, he asked if she wanted to ride. She found riding this stallion in the back woods of Portugal “amazing.”

“Very brainy work and very physical work balances each other well,’ she said.

As for the colliders, Drees is looking forward to the construction of the EIC, even as she has bittersweet sentiments about RHIC closing down.

Ultimately, building the EIC presents challenges that she is eager to face.

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Paul O'Connor. Photo by Roger Stoutenburgh/ BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

The Earth is way too noisy.

The far side of the moon, however, can act like enormous noise cancellation headphones, serving as a barrier to the kinds of signals from sources including Earth’s ionosphere, which carries electromagnetic noises from lightning, solar flares, radio signals, among others to look or, perhaps more appropriately, listen deep into the past.

On Wednesday, May 7, at Napper Tandy’s in Smithtown, three Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists will speak with the public about an unnamed mission expected to take off next year. The free event is part of BNL’s PubSci science café series (www.bnl.gov/pubsci/).

Paul O’Connor. Photo by Roger Stoutenburgh/ BNL

Senior Scientist Paul O’Connor, Mechanical Engineer Connie-Rose Deane and Physicist Anže Slosar will discuss a project called LuSEE-Night, which, like so many other efforts at BNL, is an acronym. LuSEE stands for Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment-Night.

The Department of Energy project manager is Sven Hermann at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Slosar is the science lead, while O’Connor coordinated technical and systems aspects of the instrument development.

The scientists collaborated with researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy and included scientists at the University of Minnesota and at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Space Science Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley is leading the project. BNL is a collaborating member responsible for delivering hardware components of the payload.

LuSEE-Night, which is a radio telescope, is designed to gather information about the Dark Ages of the universe. This time period, from about 380,000 to 400 million years ago after the Big Bang, occurred before the first luminous stars and galaxies. 

Connie-Rose Deane. Photo by David Rahner/ BNL

As the only signals measurable from the Dark Ages, radio waves, recorded through LuSEE-Night provide a chance to learn how the first non-luminous matter evolved into stars and galaxies.

Over the last several years, scientists at the Department of Energy and NASA have shared their excitement about seeing something they had never seen before.

David Rapetti, Senior Researcher with Universities Space Research Association (USRA) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, suggested the instrument was a “trailblazer for subsequent potential single telescope experiments for the global signal, also including the Cosmic Down signal at a somewhat higher frequency range.”

Rapetti, who has been with the project since its inception, suggested that this instrument could help with plenty of other science.

“In addition to studies of the sun, planets and exoplanets, the roadmap ahead for low frequency observations from the lunar surface represents a crucial resource to further our understanding of the evolution, content and first luminous objects of the early Universe,” Rapetti explained.

A potential measurement of the global Dark Ages signal could in principle reveal “undiscovered new physics or indeed further validate the current standard model of cosmology,” Rapetti added.

Challenging conditions

When looking for a landing site, the team searched for a flat, level surface that was free of large rocks and craters and that had an unobstructed view of the sky in all directions.

Anže Slosar. Photo by Roger Stoutenburgh/ BNL

They chose the Schrodinger Basin, which is about 250 miles south of the lunar equator at a point “almost exactly opposite the Earth-facing direction,” O’Connor explained. This will keep the telescope as “free as possible from electromagnetic interference from Earth,” he added.

Sending the telescope to the far side of the moon created particular challenges. For starters, the telescope had to endure the forces experienced during launch and landing. Once it was on the moon, it had to tolerate the harsh temperature that could drop as low as minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit, and radiation environment, while staying within the mass and power budgets. The instrument mass is less than 282 pounds.

While the landing site is ideal for minimizing electromagnetic noise, it’s difficult to send the information back to Earth with the moon blocking the communication.

Indeed, the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, which was led by Commander James Lovell and that orbited the moon without landing, was out of communication for about 25 minutes while it was on the far side of the moon.

To gather data from the telescope, the group is sending a satellite that will orbit the moon, enabling communication that has a 1.3 second time delay in each direction as the signal travels to the moon.

The signal processing chain required a state-of-the-art digital chip that could crunch the data as it comes through small antennas and produces a reduced data set small enough to send back to Earth, explained O’Connor, who worked with a core BNL team of six senior scientists and engineers and about a dozen other engineers, technicians and project staff on a final design that took about 16 months to complete

Additionally, the telescope will only generate solar energy during 14 Earth days a month. During another 14 days, the instrument needs to run without recharging its battery.

To protect the telescope against the harsh, cold environment of the moon, the scientists are wrapping the instrument in many layers of an insulating blanket. The heat from its operation should provide enough energy to prevent damage from the cold.

When the radio telescope launches, the four antennas are coiled into a compact spool the size of a soda can. After landing, the latch is released, allowing the antenna to deploy into self-supporting booms three meters long using their own spring force. At this point, several research and development missions are underway to learn more about the moon in preparation for the Artemis 3 manned mission currently planned for the middle of 2027.

LSST/ Rubin Observatory

O’Connor has also been involved for over two decades with the development of a project called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope that is now called the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Cerro Pachón, Chile.

Rubin was an astronomer who provided the first evidence of the existence of dark matter.

The much anticipated activation of this observatory, which will allow researchers to look into billions of galaxies, asteroids and even dark matter, will start producing data in July.

O’Connor, who helped with the film part of the observatory’s camera, suggested that the BNL science team is “most interested in what LSST/ Rubin will tell us about the nature of dark energy and dark matter. This will come from analyzing the camera’s images which, paradoxically, reveal the location of dark matter as it ‘bends’ the light traveling towards us from distant regions in the universe.”

More information about the event on May 7 can be found here.

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Nobel Laureate Mario Capecchi being interviewed by Ludmila Pollock.

By Daniel Dunaief

Ludmila “Mila” Pollock isn’t a scientist, but she has made significant contributions to the field over more than a quarter of a century. In fact, the Executive Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Library & Archives has contributed so meaningfully to sharing scientific information and celebrating scientists and their history that she was recently elected a fellow of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“It’s just a privilege to be among all the other fellows,” said Pollock, who calls herself a “keeper and promoter of knowledge and scientific legacies related to molecular biology and genetics.”

Pollock, who has been at CSHL since 1999, founded the lab’s History of Science Meetings in 2008 and created an oral history project in 2000 in which she has interviewed over 170 pioneers in molecular biology, genetics and technology.

People who have worked with Pollock praised her work, passion and dedication, suggesting that her energy and focus inspired them and will likely encourage future generations of scientists.

“The resources [Pollock] has brought to life offer a trove of educational material that can help inspire young students to explore and hopefully pursue an education and eventually a career in biomedical research,” said Kevin Davies, Editorial Director of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News and author of Cracking the Genome and Editing Humanity. “She is a treasure!”

Davies and Pollock helped compile the Annotated Scholarly Guide to the Human Genome Project.

Davies suggested that Pollock “conceived and drove” the guide to completion and that it “simply would not exist without her energy and commitment.”

While Pollock appreciated the recognition, she suggested that the work she has done at CSHL has been a product of numerous collaborations.

At the History of Science meetings, most of the speakers are prominent researchers. One or two speakers can include a historian. Attendees are typically researchers, students, historians, journalists and others.

Pollock is delighted to share the historical scientific narrative and, in some cases, to have these gatherings become a part of the ongoing story.

Indeed, when Katalin Karikó won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2023 for work that laid the foundation for effective mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, she told the Nobel Prize committee she had just returned from a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which celebrated 50 years of recombinant DNA technology.

“That was a very good promotion for us,” said Pollock.

As for the oral histories, Pollock spoke with four Nobel Prize-winning female scientists last year, including Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who won the prize for creating the gene-editing tool CRISPR.

Scientists appreciate the opportunity to hear directly from the scientists through the oral history project. By cross referencing replies from researchers, viewers can compare what scientists said in response to the same question.

“The result is a much richer source of history than any one interview could provide,” Bruce Alberts, a biochemist who was president of the National Academy of Sciences from 1993 to 2005, explained in an interview.

A girl in a library

Pollock grew up in Vitebsk, Russia, a geographic origin now in Belarus that she shares with artist Marc Chagall.

When she was four and went to an adult library with her father, she was disappointed that only librarians could go behind the desk to browse through all the books. She told her parents she would become a librarian so she could browse through the books at any library.

As a librarian and archivist, she has been an advocate for open access. She sees many similarities between the hard work Nobel Prize winners and other scientists who haven’t received some of the top honors in their fields yet do.

Pollock appreciates the connections she has made with scientists. “Everyone I have spoken with is truly remarkable,” she said.

The scientists feel the same way about her.

Alberts recalled attending a tribute to the scientist Sydney Brenner in 2022, where Alberts was a speaker. Alberts had left his walking stick in a taxi on the way to the meeting. Pollock gave him a cane that he took back to San Francisco.

Pollock has “an outgoing, warm personality that makes every encounter with her a memorable event for me,” Alberts said.

Nancy Hopkins, the Amgen, Inc., Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, suggested the oral history project represents a “huge amount of work” from the archives.

“Imagine the excitement of a student who falls in love with the field and then discovers that they can listen to — almost talk with — key figures who shaped the science that is their passion!” Hopkins said. “I think this is a gift that will grow in value beyond what we can imagine today.”

Pollock has enjoyed many of the conversations she’s had with scientists over the years. The scientists have revealed a great deal about themselves and their lives. In particular, she found an interaction with former director John Cairns, who was discussing Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, enlightening.

While many scientists shared their admiration for McClintock’s work on jumping genes and appreciation for her work, Cairns shared a different side of her.

“She was [an] immensely difficult person who specialized in being difficult,” Cairns recalled in the oral history. She specialized in being difficult with the director of the lab.

“She would always tell me how marvelous [Millislav] Demerec [the namesake of a building on campus today] was, and how awful I was, and one day, I got very fed up with this so I went to [the director of the Department of Genetics] Al Hershey.”

Hershey told Cairns that McClintock “hated him” and that he did not want to talk to her because he thought speaking with her would give him a stroke. 

‘Force of nature’

Collaborators and supporters inside and outside of CSHL recognized and appreciated Pollock’s contribution and the energy and passion she brings to her work.

Davies and CSHL CEO Bruce Stillman both described Pollock as a “force of nature.” Stillman nominated Pollock as an AAAS fellow.

“She absolutely deserves this recognition,” Stillman said. Pollock has advanced the CSHL archives to become one of the most valuable archives in genetics and molecular biology,” which includes archives of numerous Nobel Laureates. Stillman and former CEO James Watson hired her as a librarian in 1999.

The current CSHL CEO described the meetings Pollock coordinates and runs as “some of the most important discoveries in the history of the life and medical sciences.”

As far as the oral histories, Stillman suggested the scientists share their views on people and ideas in a way they would not if they had to write answers.

Indeed, the meetings and oral histories not only serve as valuable parts of the public record, but also provide material for college educators.

Dr. Stephen Buratowski, Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, emailed Pollock to let her know that one of the video links on the website wasn’t working.

He indicated that he often used these videos for teaching PhD students “as the stories told breathe life into the papers we are reading,” he wrote. “These talks are a treasured historical resource.”

Sir Richard Roberts, a Nobel Prize winner and Chief Scientific Officer at New England Biolabs, believed the history of science meetings provide a “very good view of how science evolves from a small starting point into a major field. This can give ideas of both how to do things and sometimes how not to do things to young people just getting started.”

These meetings can also inspire would-be authors to write books and ensure a permanent record with expert comment, Roberts added.

“Best of all, they are great fun to attend,” Roberts wrote.

 

History of Science Meetings
https://www.cshl.edu/education/center-for-humanities/history-of-science-meetings/

Oral History
https://library.cshl.edu/oralhistory/

 

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James Wishart at the Laser Electron Accelerator Facility. Photo by Roger Stoutenburgh/Brookhaven National Laboratory

By Daniel Dunaief

Leave a bicycle out in the rain for a few weeks and the metal gears and chain will develop rust that reduces the value and usefulness of that once shiny vehicle.

Now, imagine what the inside of a nuclear reactor looks like after high temperatures and ionizing radiation collide with everything they hit.

Chemists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, working with their partners at Idaho National Laboratory, recently showed how reactors cooled by molten salts had less corrosion in the reactor metals.

Molten salt cooled reactors are “intrinsically safe,” said James Wishart, Distinguished Chemist at BNL and director of the Molten Salts in Extreme Environments Energy Frontier Research Center. “They are already molten so they can’t melt down.”

The advantages of molten salt reactors are evident in their safety and their economics. These reactors are also better for the environment and for non proliferation of nuclear material. 

That is in contrast to what happened in 2011 after a tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, which had a meltdown at three of the plant’s reactors.

Fukushima lost the ability to cool the reactors because the tsunami knocked out the generators. A water reactor type meltdown can’t occur with a molten salt reactor because the fuel is already liquid and the reactor materials contain it in that state.

Chromium studies

In recent research published in the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, Wishart and his collaborators described the radiation-induced reactors of two ions of chromium, chromium 2+ and chromium 3+.

“Chromium is frequently the easiest metal to corrode from an alloy,” Wishart explained.

When chromium has a positive charge of three, it could be particularly problematic for the structural integrity and performance of the reactor. Chromium with a positive charge of two, on the other hand, may not be as problematic or corrosive to the nuclear reactor materials. Molten salts, which have negative ions of chlorine, can reduce chromium to the less reactive version.

By using the Laser Electron Accelerator Facility (LEAF) and the two-million electron volt Van de Graaff accelerator, Wishart tested the rate and temperature dependencies of reactions of the two chromium ions with reactive species generated by radiation in molten salt.

The solvated electrons and dichloride radicals, both of which have a negative charge, change the oxidation state of chromium to the less corrosive Cr 2+.

Commercial applications

Molten salt reactor research started in the late 1940’s.

In 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission expressed reservations about some technology issues and suggested that the engineering development of large components, a better understanding of the behavior of fission products and adequate remote inspection and maintenance techniques would be needed before molten salt reactors would be suitable for development.

The molten salt reactors were also not high enough on the development priority ranking of the government to have assurance of the required sustained resource allocation, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency Report on the Status of Molten Salt Reactor Technology.

Currently, however, at least a dozen companies are working on generators cooled by molten salts, with some involving chloride and others using fluoride.

Texas Abilene Christian University is building one such reactor, which would be the first university-based molten salt research reactor. The interest in these types of reactors has been growing around the world.

“We are providing information to help [people working in applied areas] understand the chemical transformations that molten salt fuel will undergo due to radiation inside the reactor,” said Wishart.

Several companies, including Thorcon Power and Seaborg Technologies, are also working on designs that can be built into modular forms and shipped by barge wherever power is needed.

In addition to reducing the threat from a melt down, these molten salt reactors also operate at relatively low vapor pressures, which is a “huge benefit in safety and in engineering,” Wishart added.

Molten salts have much lower vapor pressures than water because they are held together by very strong Coulombic forces, which come from the attraction of oppositely-charged ions.

Next studies

While the molten salt reactors favor the creation of a less problematic ionization state of chromium, they also produce other side reactions.

“With time and the large amount of radiation within the reactor, side reactions can lead to permanent products,” Wishart explained.

Studies of molten salt corrosion show a correlation between the presence and quantity of air and water and the rate of corrosion. Salts with low water and air contamination show little corrosion.

Wishart is now looking at more complex salt mixtures than the first series of experiments. Different cations, or positively charged ions, affect the reactivity of solvated electrons. He is investigating how that might divert the electron into side reactions that lead to the accumulation of permanent products.

Ground floor

Wishart was responsible for the construction of LEAF and for its operation for most of its 26-year history. When he and his colleagues were building the facility, he was eager to test out the facility’s ability to follow reactions on fast time scales, at about 10 picoseconds. A picosecond is such a small unit of time that an eye blink, which lasts about 0.1 seconds, is about 100 million picoseconds, so it records reactions rapid reactions.

Wishart was pleasantly surprised by all the scientific questions LEAF could address.

“I only started working on ionic liquids three years after LEAF was completed, so we could not anticipate how LEAF would enable that science to grow and then see it translate into molten salts,” he explained.

Wishart has published 76 papers on the radiation chemistry and/or physical chemistry since he started working on them in 2001.

Originally from the Detroit area, he returns periodically to spend time with family.

Wishart’s interest in chemistry began when he was a photographer for the high school yearbook, which, at the time, was printed in black and white. He made prints using traditional silver-based emulsions and was interested in the chemistry that caused the images to form under development.

When he was a PhD student at Stanford, Wishart mainly studied the chemistry of ruthenium, which is a second-row transition metal in the same family as iron. He found ruthenium satisfying to work with because scientists can watch the colors change to indicate when a reaction is done.

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Jeremy Borniger with Cecilia Pazzi, a student from the cancer neuroscience course. Photo courtesy of CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

People battling cancer can sometimes live long after they and their doctors first start treating the disease. Even if and when their types of cancer don’t continue to threaten their lives in the same way, they can struggle with symptoms such as chronic fatigue, pain, and difficulty sleeping.

These ongoing symptoms, however, could be a remnant of the way the nervous system and cancer interact, as well as a byproduct of the treatment.

Cancer neuroscience uses “tools from both neuroscience and cancer to fundamentally understand how cancer influences the functioning on the nervous system” and how the nervous system can be used to affect cancer, explained Jeremy Borniger, Assistant Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Indeed, the field of cancer neuroscience, which extends beyond the study and treatment of brain cancer, has been growing over the last six years, after researchers made important discoveries that suggest the possible role and target for treatment of neurons.

A group of student during one of the lab sessions. Photo courtesy of CSHL

To encourage cancer scientists to learn more about the principles and techniques of neuroscience and to bring neuroscientists up to speed with cancer research, Borniger and three other scientists coordinated the first two-week Methods in Cancer Neuroscience course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory last month.

Attended by 14 researchers from domestic and international institutions, the days often started early in the morning and lasted past 10 p.m. The course included lectures about the basic science as well as considerable lab work.

Course attendees, most of whom had a background in cancer biology but little background in neuroscience, appreciated the opportunity to learn from the lecturers and to build their networks.

“We were introduced to a wide variety of techniques from the leading experts in the field and got to listen to insightful lectures from the invited speakers,” said Irem Uppman, a graduate student at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Uppman was grateful for the opportunity to meet her fellow students and hopes to stay in touch throughout their careers.

“It was also very exciting to meet all the instructors and lecturers,” Uppman said. “The small size of the course allowed us to interact more intimately which is something we often can’t do in the setting of big conferences.”

Uppman, who has been a PhD candidate for three years and hopes to graduate in the next two years, is a tumor biologist by background and hopes to incorporate more cancer neuroscience in her future work.

Course origins

During another conference, Borniger recalled how a group of cancer neuroscientists were discussing the field. One of the speakers suggested the need for a workshop where students could learn techniques from both of these disciplines.

“I raised my hand and said, “Cold Spring Harbor does this all the time,” Borniger said.

The leadership at the lab, including CEO Bruce Stillman, were excited about the possibility and encouraged Borniger to help coordinate the course. After the lab publicized the conference, 67 prospective students submitted applications. The organizers had several marathon zoom sessions to review the applicants.

“We wanted a good spread of earlier career and later career students,” said Borniger.

It would have been possible to fill the course with students conducting research on brain cancer exclusively, but the organizers wanted a broader scientific representation.

Neurons and cancer

As electrically active tissue, neurons play important roles in healthy biology as well as with cancer.

“It’s not just another cell type in the tumor environment,” Borniger explained, adding that nerve cells connect tumors with the central nervous system, which governs all conscious and unconscious systems.

Historically, cancer neuroscience has had two major moments that helped push the field into the mainstream of scientific research.

In a couple of papers between 2010 to 2013, before anyone started using the term “cancer neuroscience,” scientists showed that getting rid of localized sympathetic nerves, which include the kinds of nerves that control the heart rate and blood pressure, can cause breast cancer and prostate cancers to stop growing. 

“Everyone assumed the nerves don’t really do anything,” Borniger said. They are “little tiny projections in the tumor. A lot of cancer biologists ignored it” in part because of a paper in the 1960’s that suggested tumor cells were not electrically coupled together. Scientists believed, prematurely and inaccurately, that electrochemical signaling didn’t play a role in cancer. 

Then, in 2019, three papers came out around the same time that demonstrated that tumors in the brain can form connections with neurons like normal neurons do. These cancerous cells can integrate with circuits and communicate with each other.

“The level of integration that these cancer cells have with your brain dictates how bad the cancer is,” Borniger said. “If you disconnect the cancer cells from the neurons in your brain, you can make cancer much easier to treat.”

Researchers and pharmaceutical companies are looking for ways to use drugs to slow or stop the cancers.

Some research efforts are trying to block the gap junctions which dramatically reduces the number of cancer cells that receive input.

In breast to brain cancer, scientists are looking to target NMDA receptors, while in brain cancer, they’re targeting AMPA receptors.

Researchers are hoping to repurpose drugs approved for other conditions, such as bipolar disorder or epilepsy.

Origin story

When Borniger was in graduate school at Ohio State University, he was interested in sleep and how sleep works. He had the opportunity to attend several lectures and talks to gather information and pursue research that interested him.

In one meeting, which he said he might have attended to get free food, oncology nurses were talking about the subjective experience of cancer patients. At the end of the talk, they shared a summary slide of the top complaints, which included fatigue, pain, sleep disruption, cognitive impairment and changes in appetite.

Borniger thought these were all neuroscience problems.

He immediately looked online to see if anyone had seen how a tumor influences these neurological processes.

When he tested to see if breast cancer could influence brain activity and lead to sleep disruption, what he found convinced him it was a research field worth pursuing.

“The signal that comes from the tumor can reprogram your brain,” he said. “How does that work? That got me into the field.”

When he got the job at CSHL in 2019, Borniger attended a Banbury conference where the top people in the developing field gathered. He’s also interested in the opportunity to contribute to a new field.

“There’s not 30 years of dogma that we’re going to have to break down,” Borniger said. “We’re inventing the foundation as we go.”

Borniger is hoping to continue to expand the field to newer people, including those who work in neurodevelopment, bioinformatics and behavioral science. 

The tide is turning towards cancer neuroscience, Borniger believes. Years ago, cancer biologists would say, “Who cares about sleep? We’re driving to cure the cancer!” Now, with help from patient advocates, Borniger explained, clinicians are starting to realize the subjective health of the patient can have “immense impact” on their prognosis.

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

In the typical process of developing cures for medical problems or diseases, researchers explore the processes and causes and then spend years searching for remedies.

Ke Jian Liu. Photo by Jeanne Neville, Stony Brook Medicine

Sometimes, however, the time frame for finding a solution is cut much shorter, particularly when the Food and Drug Administration has already approved a drug treatment for another problem.

This could be the case for hemorrhagic stroke. Caused by a burst blood vessel that leads to bleeding in the brain, hemorrhagic stroke represents 13 percent of stroke cases, but accounts for 50 percent of stroke fatalities.

That’s because no current treatment exists to stop a process that can lead to cognitive dysfunction or death.

A researcher with a background in cancer and stroke, Ke Jian “Jim” Liu, Professor of Pathology and Associate Director or Basic Science at the Stony Brook Cancer Center who joined Stony Brook University in 2022, has found a mechanism that could make a hemorrhagic stroke so damaging.

When a blood vessel in the brain bursts, protoporphyrin, a compound that attaches to iron to form the oxygen carrying heme in the blood, partners up with zinc, a similar metal that’s in the brain and is released from neurons during a stroke. This combination, appropriately called zinc protoporphyrin, or ZnPP, doesn’t do much under normal conditions, but could be “highly toxic” in hypoxic, or low-oxygen conditions.

“We have done some preliminary studies using cellular and animal stroke models,” said Liu. “We have demonstrated on a small scale” that their hypothesis about the impact of ZnPP and the potential use of an inhibitor for the enzyme that creates it ‘is true.’”

These scientists recently received a $2.6 million grant over five years from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which is a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

Focusing on a key enzyme

After Liu and his colleagues hypothesized that the ZnPP was toxic in a low-oxygen environment, they honed in on ways to reduce its production. Specifically, they targeted ferrochelatase, the enzyme that typically brings iron and protoporphyrin together.

Iron isn’t as available in this compromised condition because it has a positive charge of three, instead of the usual plus two.

Liu discovered the role of zinc in research he published several years ago.

When a hemorrhagic stroke occurs, it creates a “perfect storm,” as the enzyme favors creating a toxic chemical instead of its usual oxygen carrying heme, Liu said. He is still exploring what makes ZnPP toxic.

The group, which includes former colleagues of Liu’s from the University of New Mexico, will continue to explore whether ZnPP and the enzyme ferrochelatase becomes an effective treatment target.

Liu was particularly pleased that currently approved treatments for cancer could be repurposed to protect brain cells during a hemorrhagic stroke. Indeed, with over 80 approved protein kinase inhibitors, which could work to stop the formation of ZnPP during a stroke, Liu and his colleagues have plenty of potential treatment options.

“We’re in a unique position that a clinically available drug that’s FDA approved for cancer treatment” could become a therapeutic solution for a potentially fatal stroke, Liu said.

To be sure, Liu and his colleagues plan to continue to conduct research to confirm that this process works as they suggest and that this possible therapy is also effective.

As with other scientific studies of medical conditions, promising results with animal models or in a lab require further studies and validation before a doctor can offer it to patients.

“This is an animal model, based on a few observations,” said Liu. “Everything needs to be done statistically.”

At this point, Liu is encouraged by these preliminary studies as the subjects that received an inhibitor are “running around,” he said. “You can see the difference with your own eyes. We’re excited to see that.”

Earlier hypotheses for what caused damage during hemorrhagic stroke focused on the release of iron. In research studies, however, using a chelator to bind to iron ions has produced some benefits, but they are small compared to the damage from the stroke. The chelator is “not really making any major difference,” said Liu.

The Stony Brook researcher did an experiment where he compared ZnPP with the damage from other metabolic products.

“ZnPP is several times more toxic than all the other things combined,” which is what makes them believe that ZnPP might be responsible for the damage, he said.

Proof of principle

For the purpose of the grant, Liu said the scientists were focusing on gathering more concrete evidence to support their theory. The researchers are also testing a few of the protein kinase inhibitors to demonstrate that they work.

In their preliminary studies, they chose several inhibitors based on whether the drug penetrates the blood brain barrier and that have a relatively high affinity for ferrochelatase.

“This opens the door for a new phase of the study,” Liu said. “Can we find the best drug that provides the best outcomes? We are not there yet.”

Removing zinc is not an option, as it is a part of 2 percent of the proteome, Liu said. Taking it out would “screw up the entire biological, physiological system,” he added.

Liu speculates that any future drug treatment would involve a relatively small dose at a specific time, although he recognized that any drug could have side effects.

In an uncertain funding climate in which the government is freezing some grants, Liu hopes that the financial support will continue through the duration of the grant.

“Our hope is that at the end of this grant, we can demonstrate” the mechanism of action for ZnPP and can find a reliable inhibitor, he said. “The next step would be to go to a clinical trial with an FDA-approved drug, and that would be fantastic.”

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