From left, regional winners Jonathan Zhang, Mehek Sawhney and Kevin Ma. Photo courtesy Commack CSD
Three Commack students have been selected to present their research as regional semifinalists for the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium taking place on Feb. 11.
The Junior Science and Humanities Symposia Program is a tri-service – U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force – sponsored competition which promotes original research and experimentation in STEM at the high school level and publicly recognizes students for outstanding achievement. Students must apply to present their completed original research at the first level of the fair, held at York College.
The three projects moving forward to compete for scholarships, recognition and a place as a regional finalist are:
Jonathan Zhang
Efficient Differentiation of Sleep-Related Hypermotor Epilepsy and REM-Sleep Behavior Disorder via Neural Aperiodic Components
Jonathan used a mathematical formula to evaluate EEG brain activity to diagnose sleep disorders in two minutes vs. 8 hours of sleep studies.
Kevin Ma
Decreased Immune Activation Drives the Differential Therapeutic Responses to Chemoradiotherapy Between HPV+ Head and Neck Cancers and HPV+ Cervical Cancers
Kevin investigated two forms of cancers to differentiate where the cancer originated and if it tied back to the HPV+ to provide individualized immunotherapy based on the type of cancer and the tumor environment.
Mehek Sawhney
Secretion of Francisella tularensis Protein FTL_1123 from Escherichia coli Containing the HlyBD Operon
Mehek studied the structure of a certain bacteria that can be used in biological Tier 1 warfare. She investigated howthe bacteria secretes these virulent factors, and a way to prevent it from being released as a threat.
Please extend your congratulations to these students for this well-deserved and hard-earned recognition, and also to the Research team of Jeanette Collette, Daniel Kramer, and Andrea Beatty.
Katie Engel submitted a video of her spinning on the ice to demonstrate the work of Emmy Noether.
*This article was updated Feb. 13 to reflect a change in the Jocelyn Bell Burnell lecture from Feb. 13 to Feb. 14 due to the weather.
By Daniel Dunaief
And the winner is … women in science!
While Stony Brook University’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS) announced the winners of its inaugural challenge to celebrate the scientific and engineering achievement of women on Feb. 7, the organizers and participants feel like they’ve already come out ahead.
The inaugural competition, which 195 students kindergarten through 12th grade in schools on Long Island entered by submitting a one-minute video, included prizes for the 13 finalists. The winner received $1,000 prize, the runner up got $750 and the third-place finisher collected $500.
Marivi Fernández-Serra
“The goal of it was to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, while simultaneously promoting the important role that women had in science in the last century,” explained Marivi Fernández-Serra, Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department and at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science.
In their videos, the students selected one of nine scientists that included experiments showcasing the work of these researchers by using computers or household products to demonstrate the search for dark matter, explore the laws of conservation, create homemade telescopes, simulate a volcano with lava and many more.
Fernández-Serra, who had helped with a similar effort at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid, Spain, brought the idea for the competition to Mónica Bugallo, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and affiliated member of the IACSFaculty Director of the Women in Science and Engineering Honors Program, who immediately supported it.
Fernández-Serra thought the competition might attract 10 entrants in its inaugural year while Bugallo, who reached out to Long Island schools to showcase the competition, was confident local students would embrace the opportunity.
“Wait for a tsunami of participants,” Bugallo said she told Fernández-Serra, with whom she’s been a colleague and friend for years. “I was not surprised” by the contributions from the 103 teams, which included entrants from individual students and groups of as many as three students.
Bugallo, who recommended computer scientists Grace Hopper and mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace as important scientists for the competition, was impressed with the student effort.
“It was extremely tough to come up with the finalists,” said Bugallo.
Stony Brook plans to share the videos from the finalists after naming the winners.
Figure skating and conservation
One of the finalists, Katie Engel, a senior at Cold Spring Harbor High School, chose to demonstrate the work of Emmy Noether.
A German mathematician, Noether contributed to theoretical physics and abstract algebra. A theorem named after her, the Noether Theorem, explains that any continuous symmetry in a system has an associated conservation law. That helps explain how the speed of someone spinning in a chair changes depending on how far their arms re-extended.
Mónica Bugallo
An ice skater since she was six who is also interested in studying computer science or engineering, Engel had never heard of Noether but was intrigued with the physics and with the person who helped discover ways to characterize it.
In her entry, Engel explained the mathematical principals on a white board and then recorded a video of herself spinning on ice. When she learned about Noether’s life, Engel discovered that Noether was an important contributor to her field, despite some resistance to her work from men. “Reading about her stories is really inspiring,” said Engel.
Engel is stunned at the conclusions Noether reached with the tools at her disposal.
Currently working as an intern for Peter Koo at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Engel suggested she is committed to pursuing her interest in science, technology, engineering and math fields during and after college.
Engel was also a member of the robotics team at Cold Spring Harbor High School that won the regional conference and went to the World Championships in Houston last year. In robotics, Engel said the number of girls on the team declined from 10th through 12th grades.
She is, however, heartened to learn that 180 boys and 200 girls attended a recent research fair at her school.
New teaching tools
Fernández-Serra and Bugallo are hoping that teachers at all levels can use the videos to inspire students and help them connect with scientists whose contributions continue to resonate with current researchers. The purpose of activities like the competition is to “spark interest, so students want to investigate more,” said Bugallo.
Stony Brook plans to build on this experience in future years through either similar efforts or ongoing programs or initiatives. “Our intent was to have these challenges year after year if this was successful, and it obviously was,” said Bugallo.
In the immediate future, Fernández-Serra encourages students in the area to attend the upcoming talks given by University of Oxford astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered the pulsar, as a part of the Della Pietra lecture series at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics on Stony Brook University’s West Campus from February 13 through Feb. 15.
Bell Burnell is giving a general public lecture on Feb. 14 at 5 p.m., with a reception at 4:15 p.m. in the Simons Center Lobby. The lecture will also be livestreamed at scgp.stonybrook.edu/live.
Bell Burnell will also offer a special talk for high school students titled You Are Made of Star Stuff! on Feb. 15 at 11 a.m. that examines how and where elements in the human body were created in the cosmos. Both lectures will be held in the Della Pietra Family Auditorium (room 103).
A curiosity outside the classroom
For scientists, what they learn and study often stays with them long after they finish an assignment or submit or publish a paper.
Fernández-Serra, who studies the fundamental properties of liquid water using quantum mechanical simulations, thinks about how amazing water atoms are that are holding her when she swims.
As for Engel, thoughts of Noether will stay with her when she figure skates. “I probably can’t do a spin without thinking about her,” she said.
Heroes with staying power
For Fernández-Serra, Mildred Dresselhaus, one of the celebrated scientists of the past who was a part of the contest, was a “number one hero” in condensed matter physics.
Called the “Queen of Carbon,” Dresselhaus earned numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science and Engineering.
“She was a positive and brilliant scientist who never lost her enthusiasm and curiosity,” Fernández-Serra explained.
Stony Brook’s IACS team hopes this competition, the Bell Burnell lecture, and other efforts ignite such enthusiasm in the next generation of STEM students.
These images from the PET scans reveal the side view of a pigeon’s brain at rest and in flight and highlights cerebellum brain activity. The redder colors indicate higher brain activity, and sub-regions of the cerebellum are outlined. Credit: Paul Vaska
Study Involving Advanced Brain Imaging Reveals Expansion of the Cerebellum was Key
An international team of researchers led by Amy Balanoff, PhD, at Johns Hopkins Medical Institute and Paul Vaska, PhD, at StonyBrook University combined the use of positron emission topography, or PET scans, of modern pigeon brains and studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an ongoing question in evolutionary biology: How did the brains of birds evolve to enable them to fly? The answer, detailed in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B., appears to be an adaptive increase in the size of the cerebellum in some fossil vertebrates.
The evolution of flight is a rare event in vertebrae history, and one that demands functional integration across multiple anatomical/physiological systems. This new research combined modern PET scan imaging data of ordinary pigeons with the fossil record, examining brain regions of birds during flight and braincases of ancient dinosaurs.
The PET imaging and analysis for the study was conducted at StonyBrook University by a team of graduate and undergraduate students led by Vaska, a senior author on the paper, and Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering in the Renaissance School of Medicine at StonyBrook University. Lemise Saleh, a graduate student in the PhD program in BME at StonyBrook, was one of the three lead authors.
The researchers performed PET imaging scans to compare activity in 26 regions of the brain when the bird was at rest and immediately after it flew for 10 minutes from one perch to another. PET scans show the location and amount a tracer compound similar to glucose, indicating increased use of energy and thus brain activity (the tracer rapidly degrades and is excreted from the body).
Vaska collaborated closely with Amy Balanoff, lead author of the study, along with the rest of the research team, in order to compare the brain activity of modern pigeons before and after flight.
Of the 26 regions, one area — the cerebellum — had statistically significant increases in activity levels between resting and flying. Overall, the level of activity increases in the cerebellum differed by more than two standard statistical deviations, compared with other areas of the brain. This makes sense because the cerebellum is a brain region responsible for movement and motor control.
The researchers also detected increased brain activity in the so-called optic flow pathways, a network of brain cells that connect the retina in the eye to the cerebellum. These pathways process movement across the visual field.
Their novel research links the cerebellum findings of flight-enabled brains in modern birds to the fossil record, which showed how the brains of bird-like dinosaurs began to develop brain conditions for powered flight. The team’s overall data is an important step toward establishing how the brain of modern birds supports their unique behaviors and provides insights into the neurobiology of the bird-like dinosaurs that first achieved powered flight.
“PET imaging is really the only way to directly assess brain function across the whole brain during animal behavior,” says Vaska. “Because of our expertise and resources in PET technology, we were able to design a study that used PET to effectively capture the brain activity during flight, and then discovered the primary role of the cerebellum. This lays the groundwork for future studies to better understand brain evolution across species.”
Connecting the findings to avian dinosaurs
The researchers used a digitized database of endocasts, or molds of the internal space of dinosaur skulls, which when filled, resemble the brain’s outer shape. They identified and traced a sizable increase in cerebellum volume to some of the earliest species of maniraptoran dinosaurs, which preceded the first appearances of powered flight among ancient bird relatives, including the well-known Archaeopteryx, a winged dinosaur.
They also found evidence in the endocasts of an increase in tissue folding in the cerebellum of early maniraptorans, an indication of increasing brain complexity. They noted that their tests involved straightforward flying, without obstacles and with an easy flightpath, and that other brain regions may also be active during more complex flight maneuvers.
Their next step in the ongoing research is to pinpoint precise areas in the cerebellum that enable a flight-ready brain and the neural connections between these structures.
The research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
The new species named, Booralana nickorum, may play a crucial role in maintaining the health of the ecosystem. Photo courtesy of OceanX
By Daniel Dunaief
Oliver Shipley recently shared one of the mysteries of the heavily photographed but lightly explored deep sea areas near the Bahamas’ Exuma Sound.
Oliver Shipley
A Research Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University, Shipley and his colleagues published a paper in the journal Zootaxa describing a new species of isopod they named Booralana nickorum.
A few inches long, this isopod, which was found at a depth of about 1,600 feet, sheds light on some of the mysteries in these waters, offering a glimpse into areas mostly too deep for sunlight to penetrate.
“The level of knowledge on deep sea biodiversity anywhere in the Caribbean is very poor,” said Shipley. The scientists were specifically studying the biomass housed areas around The Exuma Sound.
In the Bahamas, the researchers are interested in preserving species biodiversity and identifying links between the shallow and deep-sea ecosystems, which can inform management of marine resources and help conserve biodiversity.
Shipley suggested it was “exciting” and, perhaps, promising that this area has already produced two isopods that are new species, both of which he described with low-cost technologies deployed off small boats.
“We haven’t even genetically sequenced 95 percent of the creatures that we’ve captured” which includes fish and sharks, Shipley said.
Brendan Talwar, a co-author on the paper describing the isopod and a Postdoctoral Scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, added that “this discovery is representative of the lack of knowledge” in this area. “You can swim from one environment, where almost every species is known or has been studied, to a place where almost nothing is known and almost nothing is studied.”
Finding new species could have numerous benefits, including in the world of drug discovery. To be sure, such findings require “many years of work and analysis” he said.
Still, such a possibility for future benefits exist, particularly as researchers catalog and study these creatures.
In the meantime, understanding individual species and the ecosystems in which they live can reveal information about how, depending on the biomass of various species, different places affect the cycling of gases such as carbon dioxide.
“When you find high biomass of a new species, it could have potentially huge implications for mitigating climate change,” said Shipley. “We have a primitive understanding of the Caribbean deep sea ecosystem. We don’t know the full effects or benefits and services of organisms that live in the deep ocean environment.”
In addition to finding organisms that might provide various benefits, scientists are also hoping to understand the “food web dynamics of the eastern Bahamas,” said Talwar.
Long road to identification
Shipley first saw an individual of this isopod species in 2013. Over time, he has since identified numerous other individuals.
Dorsal views of the newly described Booralana nickorum on left and previously known Booralana tricarinata highlight distinguishing characteristics between the two species. Image courtesy of Oliver Shipley
The region in which Shipley identified this isopod has several potential food or energy sources. The deep sea area is in close proximity to shallower sea grass beds, which are closer to the surface and use light to generate food and energy through photosynthesis.
The tides and currents wash that sea grass into the deeper territory, sending food towards the deeper, darker ocean.
Energy also likely comes from coral reef productivity as reefs line the edge of the drop off.
Additionally, animals that traverse the shallower and deeper areas, whose poop and bodies sink, can provide food sources to the ecosystem below.
“There may be multiple sources of productivity which combines to promote a high level of biodiversity” in the ecosystem below, said Shipley.
The isopod Shipley and his collaborators identified lives in a pressure that is about 52 times the usual atmospheric pressure, which would be extremely problematic for organisms like humans. Isopods, however, have managed to live in most major ecosystems around the planet, including on mountains, in caves and in the deep sea.
“There’s something about that lineage that has supported their ability to adapt to a variety of environments,” said Shipley.
To bring the creatures back to the surface for study, researchers have used deep sea traps, including crustacean and eel traps, that are attached to a line. People working on boats then retrieve those traps, which can take one to two hours to pull to the surface.
When they are brought to the surface, many animals suffer high mortality, which is a known sensitivity of deep-sea fisheries.
“We must gain as much knowledge as possible from each specimen,” Shipley explained
Scratching the surface,at depth
Talwar and Shipley have each ventured deep into the depths of The Exuma aboard a submersible.
The journey, which Talwar described as remarkably peaceful and calm and akin to an immersive aquarium experience, is “like a scavenger hunt,” he said.
When scientists or the sub pilot see a new species of sea cucumber, the pilot can move the sub closer to the organism and deploy the manipulator arm to store it in a collection box. Shipley and others hope to explore deep sea creatures under conditions akin to the ones in which they live in high pressure tanks on land.
Talwar described Shipley as “an extremely productive scientist” who works “incredibly hard.” Talwar also appreciates how Shipley will put collaborative projects at the top of his list, which is “fairly unique in a field where people are so busy with their own stuff.”
Shipley, who lives in Austin, Texas with his girlfriend Alyssa Ebinger, explained that researchers are pushing to support scientific leadership by Bahamians to conserve marine resources threatened by climate change.
Looking under rocks
As a child, Shipley, who grew up in York, England, spent about three years in Scotland, where they spent time at a beach called Trune.
“I remember looking in rock pools, picking up stuff and inspecting it,” he said. He was naturally inquisitive as a child.
While Shipley enjoys scuba diving and is a committed soccer fan — his favorite team is Leeds United — he appreciates the opportunity to build on his childhood enthusiasm to catalog the unknowns of the sea. He’s so inspired by the work and exploration that it “doesn’t feel like a job,” he said. He’s thrilled that he gets paid “to do all this exciting stuff.”
Stony Brook, NY; Stony Brook University: Miguel Garcia-Diaz, Interim Vice President for Research talks with the recipient of an OVPR Seed Grant Department of Geosciences Assistant Professor Marine Frouin in her Luminescence Dating Research Laboratory. Photo by John Griffin/SBU
Proposals for preliminary work may lead to wider national funding for unique research from many academic disciplines
The Office of the Vice President of Research (OVPR) at Stony Brook University has awarded seed grants for 21 projects encompassing research from a wide range of disciplines such as biomedical engineering, pharmacology, computer science, microbiology, astronomy, and linguistics. This funding cycle from fall 2023 totals $1 million to faculty leading these projects. This is only the second time the OVPR has awarded $1 million in a single funding cycle. The first time occurred in summer 2022.
All cycles of the OVPR Seed Grant Program, including special initiative cycles, are managed by staff in the Office of Proposal Development (OPD) in OVPR. Since 2018, the OVPR has invested approximately $6.4 million in promising research by Stony Brook faculty.
The OVPR Seed Grant Program gives Stony Brook University faculty a competitive edge in securing external research funds by offering support for preliminary work that will lead to larger and more impactful research projects. A team of faculty reviewers assess project proposals from faculty to determine a proposals’ likelihood of success in acquiring extramural funding. Typical proposals include projects as proof of concept, feasibility studies, or the development of interdisciplinary collaborative research.
“Research is at the core of Stony Brook University’s identity, and the seed grant program represents an investment in our University’s future,” says Miguel Garcia-Diaz, PhD, Interim VP for Research. “It is a key engine to fuel the progress of our research enterprise and has historically resulted in a return of upwards of seven dollars in external awards for each dollar invested by the University.”
These seed grants provide faculty with the resources they need to transform their ideas into groundbreaking research. Selected by their peers, the awardees must demonstrate exceptional talent, dedication and excellence in their fields. For this cycle, 21 of 66 proposals were selected for funding, resulting in the second highest acceptance rate for proposals for a single cycle (32 percent).
The diverse set of recipients for this seed funding cycle include a chemist developing a new molecular catalyst platform to lessen the environmental impact of both commodity and specialty chemicals, a psychologist exploring how government policies are impacting the health of individuals in the sexual and gender minority, and a paleontology team assessing early dinosaurs and their kin at a Late Triassic Site in Northern New Mexico.
“The OVPR seed grant will represent a crucial milestone in my career, making a substantial contribution to the advancement of luminescence dating methods for application across various disciplines such as geoscience, archeology, paleoanthropology, and evolutionary biology, where chronological accuracy is paramount,” says Marine Frouin, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geosciences, and one of the new recipients.
She reflects other recipients’ thoughts by adding that the “internal seed program not only provides a competitive advantage but also cultivates an environment conducive to innovative scientific research.”
For a list of all 21 funded proposals, the projects, and faculty involved, see this link.
Evan Musterman with lead SRX beamline scientist Andrew Kiss at the SRX beamline. Photo by Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory
By Daniel Dunaief
When he took over to lead the sub micron resolution X-ray spectroscopy, or SRX, beamline at Brookhaven National Laboratory on January 1, 2020, Andrew Kiss expected to balance between improving the machinery and helping visiting scientists use it. The pandemic, however, altered that balance.
BNL received components for the beamline in December 2019, when the researchers were going to try to take a fraction of the available x-ray time to install and commission it, all while still running experiments. The pandemic, however, kept scientists from visiting the site. That meant Kiss and his colleagues could dedicate more time to technical enhancements.
“Since the pandemic shut down the user program, this gave us an opportunity to focus all of our time on the new equipment” that visiting researchers could tap into when they returned, he explained in an email.
The beamline, which postdoctoral researcher Evan Musterman is enhancing further with diffraction techniques to reveal information about strain (see related story here), is in high demand. During the current cycle, 324 researchers applied for beamline time, while 99 time slots were allocated.
Scientists have a range of ways of discovering which beamline might best suit their research needs, including word of mouth. Kiss has had conversations with researchers who describe how they read something in a research paper and have similar goals.
Scientists “usually have a good idea of what instrument/ facility to use and why it is good for their research so informal conversations at conferences and seminars can be very useful,” Kiss said.
Most of Kiss’s time is dedicated to ensuring the stability and reliability of the beamline, as well as extending its capabilities to scan larger regions with less overhead, he explained.
“All of this is to help the researchers that come to the beamline, but my hope is that with this baseline of reliable and fast data acquisition, I can focus more on scientific topics such as metal additive manufacturing,” Kiss wrote.
With the SRX, Kiss can explore applied questions related to corrosion effects or how a material is modified by exposure to different gases, liquids or other parameters.
Working at the beamline has given Kiss an unusual perspective outside the lab. A few years ago, he received a notification about a recall on baby food he purchased that could have elevated levels of something unhealthy in it. His second thought, after making sure he didn’t give any to the child, was to wonder how much was in the food and if he could measure it. Before he could bring it to the lab, the contaminated food was already taken away with the garbage.
Kiss enjoys his work and suggested that the field attracts a “certain type of person and, once you are there, it is tough to pull yourself away from the instrument and the community of researchers around you,” he explained.
In addition to making basic discoveries in fields such as materials science, Earth science and biological sciences, the SRX beamline has played an important role in studies that have affected public policy.
Indeed, a study in 2022 showed that veterans who worked in Iraq and Afghanistan near burn pits had oxidized particles of iron and titanium in their lungs. “This is not direct evidence it came from a burn pit, but these were not seen in healthy lungs,” Kiss said. Only a few places in the world had the kind of machinery with a bright enough source and high enough resolution to discover these particles.
Kiss and collaborators from other laboratories, universities and medical institutions appreciated the opportunity to have a “positive impact on these soldiers’ lives by providing the measurements to get them help,” he said. The discovery of these elements in the lungs of veterans who lived near burn pits and suffered health consequences, which the study at SRX and other facilities helped demonstrate, led to the Pact Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 and which provides $280 billion in federal funding for the health effects veterans suffer after exposure to such toxins.
SRX has high spatial resolution and is highly sensitive to trace concentrations for elemental mapping and chemical composition. SRX is an x-ray fluorescence microscope with “high spatial resolution and highly sensitive to trace concentrations for elemental mapping and chemical composition,” Kiss said. “If that can be used to help people’s lives, that is a wonderful thing.”
Evan Musterman at the SRX beamline. Photo by Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory
By Daniel Dunaief
It’s everywhere, from holding the water we drink to providing a cover over the Norman Rockwell painting of “The Three Umpires” to offering a translucent barrier between our frigid winter backyards and the warm living room.
While we can hold it in our hands and readily see through it, glass and its manufacture, which has been ongoing for about 4,000 years, has numerous mysteries.
Indeed, given enough temperature and time, glass crystallizes. Controlling the process has been used to increase strength and chemical durability, tailor thermal properties and more over the last several decades.
Evan Musterman, who studied the way lasers served as a localized heat source to induce single crystal formation in glass when he was a graduate student at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based Lehigh University, joined Brookhaven National Laboratory in September as a postdoctoral researcher.
Musterman, who received funding for nine months at the end of his PhD program through the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research program when he was at Lehigh that enabled him to work at BNL, is adding scanning x-ray diffraction mapping as a more user-ready technique at the Submicron Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy beamline (or SRX) that he used as a graduate student.
The beamline looks at x-ray fluorescence measurements, which provide information about the elemental distribution and chemical information, such as oxidation state and bond distances, in an experimental sample. The next component scientists are looking for is using diffraction to inform the crystal structure of the material and to gather information about strain, explained Andrew Kiss, the lead beamline scientist for the SRX.
Musterman hopes to build on the electron diffraction mapping he did during his PhD work when he studied the crystals he laser-fabricated in glass. X-rays, he explained, are more sensitive to atomic arrangements than electrons and are better at mapping strain.
Musterman’s “background in materials science and crystal structures made him an excellent candidate for a post-doc position,” Kiss said.
The SRX has applications in material science, geological science and biological imaging, among other disciplines.
Glass questions
For his PhD research, Musterman worked to understand how glass is crystallizing, particularly as he applied a laser during the process. He explored how crystal growth in glass is unique compared with other methods, leading to new structures where the crystal lattice can rotate as it grows.
Musterman finds the crystallization of glass ‘fascinating.” Using diffraction, he was able to watch the dynamics of the earliest stages after a crystal has formed. In his PhD work, he used a spectroscopy method to understand the dynamics of glass structure before the crystal had formed.
Musterman started working at the SRX beamline in June of 2022. He was already familiar with the beamline operation, data collection and types of data he could acquire, which has given him a head start in terms of understanding the possibilities and limitations.
In his postdoctoral research, he is developing diffraction mapping and is also finishing up the experiments he conducted during his PhD.
Himanshu Jain, Musterman’s PhD advisor at Lehigh who is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, was pleased with the work Musterman did during his five years in his lab. Jain sees potential future extensions and applications of those efforts.
Musterman’s research “forms a foundation for integrated photonics, which is expected to revolutionize communications, sensors, computation and other technologies the way integrated circuits and microelectronics did 50-60 years ago,” Jain explained in an email. The goal is to “construct optical circuits of single crystal waveguides in a glass platform.”
Musterman’s work “showed details of these optical elements made in glass by a laser,” he added.
Jain, who is an alumnus of BNL, indicated that his lab is continuing to pursue the research Musterman started, with his former graduate student as a collaborator and guide.
Musterman appreciates the opportunity to work with other scientists from different academic and geographic backgrounds. In addition to working with other scientists and helping to refine the functionality of the SRX beamline, he plans to continue glass and glass crystallization research and their interactions with lasers. As he refines techniques, he hopes to answer questions such as measuring strain.
As glass is heated, atoms form an ordered crystalline arrangement that begins to grow. The nucleation event and crystal growth occurs at the atomic scale, which makes it difficult to observe experimentally. Nucleation is also rare enough to make it difficult to simulate.
Most theories describe crystal nucleation and growth in aggregate, leaving several questions unanswered about these processes on single crystals, Musterman explained.
As they are for most material processing, temperature and time are the most important factors for glass formation and glass crystallization.
Historically, studies of glass structure started shortly after the discovery of x-ray diffraction in 1913. In the 1950’s, S. Donald Stookey at Corning discovered he could crystallize glass materials to improve properties such as fracture resistance, which led to a new field of studies. Laser induced single crystal formation is one of the more recent developments.
Musterman and his colleagues found that laser crystallization does not always produce the same phase as bulk crystallization, although this is an active area of research.
Musterman created videos of the earliest stages of crystal growth under laser irradiation by direct imaging and with electron and x-ray diffraction.
Kiss anticipates that Musterman, who is reporting to him, will build infrastructure and understanding of the detection system in the first year, which includes building scanning routines to ensure that they know how to collect and interpret the data.
Once Musterman demonstrates this proficiency, the beamline scientists believe this expanded technical ability will interest scientists in several fields, such as materials science, energy science, Earth and environmental science and art conservation.
Pitching in with former colleagues
While Musterman is not required to work with other beamline users, he has helped some of his former colleagues at Lehigh as they “try to get their best data,” he said. He has also spoken with a scientist at Stony Brook University who has been collecting diffraction data.
A native of Troy, Missouri, Musterman lives in an apartment in Coram. When he was younger, he said science appealed to him because he was “always curious about how things worked.” He said he frequently pestered his parents with questions.
His father John, who owns a metal fabrication and machining business, would take various ingredients from the kitchen and encourage his son to mix them to see what happened.
As for the future, Musterman would like to work longer term in a lab like Brookhaven National Laboratory or in industrial research.
Jin Koda and Amanda Lee at the recent 243rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans. Photo by Jenny Zhang
By Daniel Dunaief
Hollywood is not the only place fascinated with the birth of stars. Indeed, researchers at Stony Brook University, among many other academic institutions, have focused considerable time, energy and effort into understanding the processes that lead to the creation of stars.
Astronomers had tried, unsuccessfully, to detect molecular clouds in the galaxy outskirts, which is how stars form in the inner part of galaxies.
About 18 years ago, a NASA satellite called GALEX discovered numerous newly formed stars at the edges of a spiral galaxy M83, which is 15 million light years from Earth.
Leading an international team of scientists, Jin Koda, Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Stony Brook University, together with his former undergraduate student Amanda Lee, put together data and information from a host of sources to describe how these stars on the outer edge of the galaxy formed.
Their work demonstrated star-forming molecular clouds in this outer area for the first time.
“These molecular clouds at the galaxy edge are forming stars as much as the molecular clouds in normal parts of galaxies” such as molecular clouds around the sun, Koda explained.
Before their discovery, Koda said astronomers had considered that new-born stars at galaxy edges could have formed without molecular clouds.
Koda recently presented this work at the 243rd annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans.
Indeed, partnering with scientists from the United States, Japan, France and Chile, Koda, who is the Principal Investigator on the study, and Lee found evidence of 23 of these molecular clouds on the outskirts of the M83 galaxy.
Combining data from a host of telescopes for this research, Koda and Lee found “higher resolution than before,” Lee said. “We could see a peak of atomic hydrogen in that region, which we didn’t know before.”
While helium also exists in the molecular clouds in the galaxy edges as well as in the atomic gas and in stars, it does not emit light when it’s cold, which makes its signature harder to detect.
Scientists are interested in “why we weren’t able to detect these molecular clouds for such a long time,” Lee said. “We ended up using a different tracer than what is normally used.”
The group came up with a hypothesis for why the molecular clouds were difficult to find. Carbon monoxide, which typically helps in the search for such clouds, is dissociated in the large envelopes at the galaxy edges. Only the cores maintain and emit this gas.
A collaboration begins
When Lee, who grew up in Queens, started at Stony Brook University, she intended to major in physics. In her sophomore year, she took an astronomy class that Koda taught.
“I was very interested in studying galaxies and the evolution of galaxies,” Lee said.
After the course ended, she started working in Koda’s lab.
“Her tireless efforts made her stand out,” Koda explained in an email. Koda appreciates how speaking with students like Lee helps him think about his research results.
Lee is “particularly good at identifying and asking very fundamental questions,” he added.
At one point about two years before she graduated in 2022, Lee recalled how Koda shared a picture of M83 and described the mystery of star formation at the outskirts of galaxies.
Two years later, by delving into the data under Koda’s supervision, she helped solve that mystery.
“I didn’t know my work would end up contributing to this project,” Lee said. “It’s really exciting that I was able to contribute to the big picture of star formation” in distant galaxies.
Since graduating from Stony Brook, Lee has been a PhD student for the last year and a half at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
At this point, Lee is still working towards publishing a paper on some of the work she did in Koda’s lab that explores the formation of stars in the inner disk of M83.
“Broadly,” she said, the two research efforts are “all related to the same picture.”
For her part, Lee was pleased with the opportunity to work with such a geographically diverse team who are all contributing to the goal of understanding star formation.
Future focus
The area they observed is relatively small and they would like to see more regions in M83 and other galaxies, Koda explained.
Finding so many molecular clouds at once in the small region “encourages us to hypothesize that the process is universal,” although scientists need to verify this, Koda said.
The researchers also discovered more atomic gas than they would expect for the amount of molecular clouds. A compelling discovery, this observation raised questions about why this abundant atomic gas wasn’t becoming molecular clouds efficiently.
“We need to solve this mystery in future research,” Koda explained. He is pleased with the level of collaboration among the scientists. “It’s very interesting and stimulating to collaborate with the excellent people of the world,” he said.
A resident of Huntington, Koda grew up in Tokyo, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees. When he moved to the United States, Koda conducted post doctoral studies for six years at Cal Tech.
About 15 years ago, he moved to Stony Brook, where he replaced Professor Phil Solomon, who was one of the pioneers of molecular cloud studies in the Milky Way galaxy.
Science appeals to Koda because he is “interested in how things work, especially how nature works,” he said.
In this work, Koda suggested that the molecular clouds have the same mass distribution as molecular clouds in the Milky Way, indicating that star formation is the same, or at least similar, between the Milky Way and galaxy edges.
Koda made the discovery of the molecular clouds and the hypothesis about the carbon monoxide deficient cloud envelope in 2022. Since then, he and his team have obtained new observations that confirmed that what they found were the “hearts of molecular clouds,” he said.
Most of the time, the fungus Candida albicans, which is ubiquitous on the skin, inside people’s mouths, throat, and guts, among other places, doesn’t cause problems. It can, however, be an opportunistic infection, particularly in people who are immunocompromised, leading to serious illness and even death.
Antifungal infections work best during the early stage of an infection. Once a severe infection becomes established, it responds less well to drugs, as resistance can become a problem.
James “Jamie” Konopka, Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, is working to find the mechanism that enables C. albicans to resist attack by the immune system. His long term goal is to identify ways to make the fungus more vulnerable to immune defenses.
In a paper published recently in the journal mBio, which is published by the American Society of Microbiology, Konopka identified the mechanism by which hypochlorous acid, which is produced by cells in the immune system, attacks C. albicans.
He expanded this by testing forms of the fungus that lack specific genes. These mutants can be more vulnerable to attack by hypochlorous acid, which is produced by neutrophils and is also called “human bleach.” Longer term, Konopka hopes to find ways to sensitize the fungus to this acid, which would bolster the ability of the immune system to respond to an infection.
His study showed that hypochlorous acid disrupts the plasma membrane, which is a layer of lipids that surround the cell. Once this is breached, parts of the cell leak out, while more bleach can damage the fungus.
Hypochlorous acid reacts with proteins, lipids and DNA.
The activated immune system produces several chemicals known as “reactive oxygen species.” In some cells, particularly neutrophils, hydrogen peroxide is converted into hypochlorous acid to strengthen and diversify the attack.
To be sure, the discovery of the mechanism of action of hypochlorous acid won’t lead to an immediate alternative therapeutic option, as researchers need to build on this study.
Future studies will examine how some genes promote resistance, and which are likely to be the most promising targets for drug development, Konopka explained.
Increase sensitivity
These are C. albicans cells growing invasively into tissue in a mouse model of an oral infection. The candida hyphae are stained black, and the tissue is stained a blue/green. Image from James Konopka
Konopka suggested that increasing the sensitivity of the fungus to hypochlorous acid would likely prove more effective and less potentially toxic than increasing the amount of the acid, which could also damage surrounding tissue.
“Our idea is to sensitize fungal pathogens” to hypochlorous acid “rather than upping the dose of bleach, which could lead to negative consequences,” Konopka said. Ideally, he’d like to “take the normal level and make it more effective” in eradicating the fungus.
Other scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health created a set of about 1,000 different strains of the fungus, which provides a valuable resource for Konopka and others in the scientific community.
In a preliminary screen of plasma membrane proteins, Konopka and his team found that most of the mutants had at least a small increase in sensitivity. Some, however, had stronger effects, which will guide future experiments.
One of the challenges in working with a fungus over pathogens like bacteria or viruses is that fungi are more closely related biologically to humans. That means that an approach that might weaken a fungus could have unintended and problematic consequences for a patient.
“Although they may look very different on the outside, the inner workings of fungi and humans are remarkably similar,” Konopka explained in an email. This has made it difficult to find antifungal drugs that are not toxic to humans.
An ‘overlooked’ ally
Konopka suggested that scientists have been studying hydrogen peroxide, which is also made by immune system combatants like macrophages and neutrophils.
“It seemed to us that somehow bleach had been overlooked,” Konopka said. “It hadn’t been studied in the fungal world, so we launched” their research.
Konopka also believes the plasma membrane represents an effective place to focus his efforts on developing new drugs or for making current drugs more effective.
Hydrochlorous acid “fell into our wheel house,” he said. In initial tests, Konopka discovered that human bleach caused damage to the membrane within minutes if not sooner, allowing outside molecules to enter freely, which could kill the potentially dangerous infection.
Considering the ubiquitous presence of the fungus, immunocompromised people who might conquer an infection at any given time could still be vulnerable to a future attack, even after an effective treatment. Even people with a healthy immune system could be reinfected amid a large enough fungal load from a biofilm on a medical device or catheter.
Providing vulnerable people with a prophylactic treatment could lower the risk of infection. When and if those patients develop an ongoing and health-threatening infection, doctors could use another set of drugs, although such options don’t currently exist.
In other work, Konopka has identified proteins in C. albicans that help CoQ, or ubiquinone, protect the plasma membrane from oxidation by agents such as hydrogen peroxide and hypochlorous acid.
People can purchase ubiquinone at local stores, although Konopka urges residents to check with their doctors before taking any supplement.
Fish and beer
An organizer of a department wide Oktoberfest, Konopka was pleased that faculty, post doctoral researchers and students were able to decompress and enjoy the fall festival together for the first time since 2019.
In addition to a range of beer, attendees at the event, which occurred half way between the start of the semester and final exams, were able to partake in German food from Schnitzels in Stony Brook Village, which was a big hit.
An avid fly fisherman who catches and releases fish, Konopka said he caught some bigger striped bass this year than in previous years.
When he’s fishing, Konopka appreciates the way the natural world is interconnected. He pays attention to variables like the weather, water temperature, bait fish and the phases of the moon.
He particularly enjoys the wind and fresh air. This year, Konopka marveled at the sight of a bald eagle.
As for his work, Konopka said basic research may have an immediate effect or may contribute longer term to helping others in the scientific community build on his results, which could lead to the next breakthrough.
Maggie Sullivan (Kevin Coughlin/Brookhaven National Laboratory)
Maggie Sullivan, an experienced leader and manager of the Talent Management group at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, was recently named Chief Human Resources Officer and Assistant Laboratory Director for Human Resources. Sullivan took over the position from Bob Lincoln, who transitioned to an advisory role after serving more than 12 years in the position.
Since joining the Lab in 2011, Sullivan has progressively assumed more responsibility, most recently leading a multidisciplinary team of HR professionals and administrators in training, recruitment, leadership development, and HR systems.
“Throughout her 12 years at Brookhaven, Maggie has demonstrated a strong ability to work with constituents across the Laboratory and to appreciate the role that each member of the Lab community plays in achieving our mission,” said Laboratory Director JoAnne Hewett. “She has also worked closely with senior leadership on major Lab initiatives and institutional-level processes, giving her insight into how the Lab and its senior leadership team operate.”
Sullivan has implemented best-in-class leadership development programs, including mentoring, the Lab’s Science and Engineering Development Program, and LEADER program for supervisory development. Most recently, she co-led the multi-year effort to modernize the Lab’s human capital management system. Sullivan has also served as the co-leader of the Lab’s recent engagement survey and continues to support that effort. Sullivan has also played a lead role in the design and delivery of supervisory and leadership training programs across the Battelle laboratory complex.
Sullivan partners closely with Brookhaven’s Chief Diversity Officer to promote a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work culture and is a key contributor to the Lab’s annual diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plan. She is also a member of the Lab’s Executive DEI Council and the DEI Management Council, and she serves on the Human Resources Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council.
“I’m excited and looking forward to working closely with Lab leadership and staff as we continue to build our future workforce, advance DEI efforts, and review and modernize our HR processes and functions to best serve the Laboratory and our current and future staff,” said Sullivan. “We have a very talented HR team in place, and together we will create positive change for the Lab.”
Prior to her current role, the Hampton Bays resident was the Lab’s learning and development manager from 2011 to 2017. From 1989 to 2011, she worked for the Applied Research Corporation in Metuchen, NJ, first as a consultant, then senior consultant, then executive vice president.
Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.
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