Stony Brook University

#14 Kailyn Hart during last Saturday's game. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Athletic

Scoring eight of the first 10 goals, the No. 5 Stony Brook women’s lacrosse team flew ahead at No. 11 Florida and withstood a late run to earn a big road victory, 14-13, over the host Gators on March 5.

Tied up heading into the fourth quarter, Ellie Masera put the Seawolves back ahead by one at 12-11 with her third goal of the game. After the Gators came back and knotted it at 12, Kailyn Hart joined Masera as they went back to back with two goals in a 2:11 span to give Stony Brook the winner and some insurance late.

The two squads split the opening goals, the visiting Seawolves scored five unanswered and seven of the next eight to seize control. Jaden Hampel recorded three points during that stretch, while Masera added the other two of her four goals.

Florida came back, however, scoring the final two of the third and totaling seven in the third to knot the proceedings heading into the fourth. Charlie Campbell made two big saves early in the period, one on an eight-meter attempt with 11:45 to play. 31 seconds later, Siobhan Rafferty gave Stony Brook the lead at 12-11 in a big swing of momentum.

Stony Brook answered Florida’s tying goal with a tally of its own one minute later, and after the Seawolves took the lead, Rafferty forced a turnover that would lead to Masera’s game-winner.

“It’s a great road win against a great team. Florida is a tough place to play and I am super proud of our squad! We showed great toughness being able to absord a huge Florida run and respond in a big way! This is the type of win that helps galvanize a team and I’m happy they get to experience it. We have some things we need to clean up but there is only one way to gain bigger game pressure and it’s being in, and thriving in, those situations,” said head coach Joe Spallina.

Up next, Stony Brook’s stretch of ranked opponents continues on March 10 when they head to No. 6 Northwestern in Evanston, Ill., before returning home the following Sunday against No. 20 Johns Hopkins at LaValle Stadium.

Charles K. Vorkas, MD

A Stony Brook University physician-scientist has identified that mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells, an unconventional form of immune cell, exercise several complex roles during healthy and disease states. The findings, published in the Journal of Immunology, the flagship journal of the American Association of Immunologists, may help to serve as a benchmark for future research on MAIT cells as targets for immunotherapies and vaccines.

In recent years, MAIT cells have received increasing attention by researchers because of their abundance in the human body, the fact that they can be rapidly activated by non-peptide vitamin intermediates from microbes, and because of their involvement in both infectious and non-infectious disease processes. Despite emerging interest in MAIT cells, it is not fully understood how they are involved in fighting disease.

“We used single cell RNA sequencing technology and immunologic techniques to reveal that despite being ‘one cell type with a semi-invariant T cell receptor,’ MAIT cells demonstrate marked heterogeneity that recapitulates conventional T cell biology,” explains lead author Charles K. Vorkas, MD, Assistant Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.

Dr. Vorkas and colleagues demonstrated in the laboratory that this marked heterogeneity includes distinct CD4+ and CD8+ lineages, as well as “killer,” “helper,” and “regulatory” cell phenotypes – an indication that MAIT cells exercise complex functions.

He emphasizes that in light of recent studies showing that MAIT cells respond to infectious diseases like COVID-19, as well as during inflammatory events of autoimmune disease such as in lupus, or during tumorigenesis, a better understanding of their roles will help us to develop new therapies.

Dr. Vorkas and colleagues are now trying to identify MAIT cell subpopulations responding to initial infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB disease, as well as to tick-borne infections endemic to Long Island. His lab hopes to harness MAIT cells and other innate lymphocyte populations to develop immunotherapeutic alternatives to antibiotic drugs and to design novel vaccines.

This work was supported by the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy, the Tri-Institutional TB Research Unit, part of the Tuberculosis Research Units Network through National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Grant U19AI111143), National Cancer Institute Grants (P30CA008748 and U54CA209975), a NIAID career development award( K08AI132739), and a Potts Memorial Foundation Award.

 

#34 Dylan Pallonetti during last Saturday's game. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

The Seawolves stood toe-to-toe with No. 4 Rutgers for 60 minutes, but fell just one goal short as the Scarlet Knights pulled away with a 17-16 victory on March 5. Stony Brook put forth a valiant effort, which included cutting a five-goal deficit to one with 4:58 to play in the game.

Lacrosse is a game of runs, and today’s contest featured its fair share by each side. The Scarlet Knights were able to grow their advantage to as large as five goals to go ahead 17-12 with 9:54 to play in the game. The Seawolves went on to rattle off four consecutive goals to cut the lead to 17-16 with 4:58 to play.

Despite the strong come-from-behind attempt, Rutgers was able to hang on to seal the game by the final score of 17-16. Graduate midfield Mike McCannell and sophomore attack Dylan Pallonetti led the offense for the Seawolves. Each finished tied with a game-high five goals, while McCannell led the way in points with six (five goals, one assist).

“It was a great lacrosse game. We knew going in it was going to be an up and down battle, with both teams throwing haymakers, and one would be left standing. We were one play short at the end there, but the fight and resiliency of our group was awesome. We just made one too many mistakes at the end of the day. I’ll take our guys in a tightly contested lacrosse game any day,” said head coach Anthony Gilardi.

Next up, the team  travels to Providence, R.I. to face Brown on March 12.

Nav Nidhi Rajput, PhD

A team of researchers led by Nav Nidhi Rajput, PhD, at Stony Brook University, have found a way to computationally predict stable molecular species in liquid solutions. The new method, detailed in a paper in Nature Computational Science, introduces a fully automated high-throughput computational framework to predict stable species by computing their nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) chemical shifts.

Liquid solutions are essential aspects of both materials science applications such as battery development, and biological applications such as drug discovery. However, to optimize the performance of liquid applications, an understanding of the structure and thermodynamic stability and transport of any chemical species in a solution is paramount. Rajput and colleagues used NMR as a powerful technique to develop an atomistic view to predict stable species.

“Elucidating the complex solvation environment in multi-component liquid solutions can be a daunting task, even by using advanced experimental and computational techniques,” explains Rajput, Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “We combined density functional theory with classical molecular dynamics simulations to make our predictions via NMR.”

The researchers developed and tested a computational framework that through simulations robustly and efficiently calculates, analyses, and stores NMR chemical shifts from a variety of molecules in liquid solutions. They also say the framework addresses some of the most challenging aspects of computational NMR by eliminating intuition driven prediction of stable species in liquid solutions.

They add that data collected from this framework should provide fingerprints to guide future experimental investigations of liquid solutions that have optimal properties for material and science applications.

For more details and a further explanation of the research method and the implications of the work, see this research briefing.

The work also involved use of key computational resources at Stony Brook’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS).

Photo: Nav Nidhi Rajput, PhD

Stephanie Baez will be one of the guest speakers at the event. Photo from SBU

Stony Brook University recognizes Women’s History Month with its annual celebration that highlights the achievements of women, raises awareness against bias, and promotes social action for equality. This year’s theme #BreakTheBias was adopted from International Women’s Day which is held annually on the first Tuesday in March.  Events will take place through Monday, March 28.

The university’s “Hybrid Opening Program in Celebration of International Women’s Day” will take place on Monday, March 7 at 1 p.m., ET in the Student Activities Center Ballroom A with limited seating, and will also be accessible on Zoom.  This year’s program will feature a discussion about issues facing women with three accomplished SBU alumni — Maureen Ahmed ’11, Stephanie Baez ’08 and Brooke Ellison ’12.

The program will be hosted by senior Cassandra Skolnick, a student member of the Women’s History Month Committee who is majoring in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. In addition, student moderators will be Amber Lewis, a Junior, Journalism major; Minors in Music and Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sanjana Thahura, a  Senior, Biology major with Interdisciplinary Biology Specialization, Undergraduate College Academy Minor in Health and Wellness.  Attendees can register online to attend the opening ceremony on Zoom.

Meet the panelists:

  • Stephanie Baez

    Maureen Ahmed (‘11) is a foreign-affairs officer with the U.S. Department of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), where she provides policy guidance on how to advance human rights, democracy, and governance across South and Central Asia. Ahmed is also an international human rights activist and policy leader with expertise in diplomacy, foreign policy, human rights, gender, global health, HIV epidemiology, and civil society integration. Prior to DRL, she worked at the Department’s Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (O/GAC), where she managed the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) South Africa program, the United States’ largest global health assistance program  Ahmed was named a 2020 National Security Fellow with the Truman National Security Project and a 2019-2020 Penn Kemble Fellow with the National Endowment of Democracy.

  • Maureen Ahmed

    Stephanie Baez (‘08) is vice president for Communications and Public Affairs at Global Strategy Group in New York, a public relations and research firm. She leads strategic communications planning initiatives that incorporate traditional and digital communications channels and platforms, as well as grassroots/grasstops components. Baez served as the communications director for Congressmen Hakeem Jeffries and John Conyers, was senior vice president of public affairs for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and was director of communications and public affairs for the Central Park Conservancy. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with a concentration in Journalism.

  • Brooke Ellison

    Brooke Ellison (‘12) is an associate professor in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences and Behavioral and Community Health in the Stony Brook School of Health Professions. She is also director of the PhD program in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and director of the Center for Community Engagement and Leadership Development. Ellison’s work as a researcher and scholar focuses on the ethics and policy of science and health care, particularly the intersection of disability and bioethics, and strategies to make healthcare and technology accessible to those most in need. Ellison was paralyzed from the neck down after being hit by a car while walking home from her first day of junior high school; 10 years later, she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University. She received her PhD in sociology from Stony Brook in 2012, was chosen to be a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2014, and in 2017, was chosen to serve on the board of directors and executive committee of the New York Civil Liberties Union. In 2018, Brooke was named a Truman National Security Project Political Partner and was appointed to serve as a commissioner on the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission in 2020.

On Monday, March 21 (2pm, ET)  as part of the speaker series is “In Defense of All Women’s Spaces,” at Melville Library, Special Collections Seminar Room, E-2340.

Stony Brook University graduate instructor Stephanie Bonvissuto will host this discussion:

How does accessing social spaces relate to the social construction of gender and sexual identities? How can site-specific signage taken as signifiers offer a view into societal ethics and cultural ethos? What are the institutional investments in policing bodies and enforcing cis-heteronormativity? And what can queering space (and spatiality) offer in terms of the future design of ‘something else’? This talk takes as its point of departure debates around public gendered restrooms to consider the biopolitics of space, the designs of power and knowledge, and the generative connections between spatial equity and social justice.

On Monday, March 28 (between 3-5pm, ET), “Closing Program in Celebration of International Women’s Day” in the Student Activities Center Ballroom A with limited seating.

Former National Public Radio host of “The Takeaway” as well as New York Times/CNN reporter Tanzina Vega (‘96) will host.

Meet the host: 

For more than a decade, Tanzina Vega’s (‘96) journalism career  has centered on inequality in the United States through the lens of race and gender.  She’s been a reporter and producer for the New York Times and CNN where her work spanned text, digital and broadcast television.  She most recently spent three years as the first Latina weekday host of “The Takeaway” on WNYC, New York Public Radio.  Tanzina has covered many of the most consequential news events of the past decade, including multiple presidential elections, the COVID 19 pandemic, the rise of #BlackLivesMatter, Puerto Rico’s political crisis and the January 6 Capitol insurrection. In 2019 she was awarded the Robert G. McGruder Distinguished Lecture and Award from Kent State University.  Prior to that she was a fellow at the Nation Institute and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University.  She is a distinguished graduate of the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at City University of New York where she earned Masters in Digital journalism.  She lives with her son in New York City.

For more information visit https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/womens-history-month/ 

Director of the Heart Rhythm Center at Stony Brook Heart Institute Dr. Eric Rashba is holding the new Watchman FLX device, which provides protection from strokes for people with atrial fibrillation. Photo from Stony Brook Medicine

The butterflies that color backyards are welcome companions for spring and summer. The ones that flutter towards the upper part of people’s chests can be discomforting and disconcerting.

In an effort to spread the word about the most common form of heart arrhythmia amid American Heart Month, the Stony Brook Heart Institute recently held a public discussion of Atrial fibrillation, or A-fib.

Caused by a host of factors, including diabetes, chronic high blood pressure, and advanced age, among others, A-fib can increase the risk of significant long-term health problems, including strokes.

In atrial fibrillation, the heart struggles with mechanical squeezing in the top chamber, or the atrium. Blood doesn’t leave the top part of the heart completely and it can pool and cause clots that break off and cause strokes.

Dr. Eric Rashba, who led the call and is the director of the Heart Rhythm Center at Stony Brook Heart Institute, said in an interview that A-fib is becoming increasingly prevalent.

A-fib “continues to go up rapidly as the population ages,” Rashba said. It occurs in about 10% of the population over 65. “As the population ages, we’ll see more of it.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 12.1 million people in the United States will have A-fib over the next decade.

As with many health-related issues, doctors advised residents to try to catch any signs of A-fib early, which improves the likely success of remedies like drugs and surgery.

“We prefer to intervene as early as possible in the course of A-fib,” Dr. Ibraham Almasry, cardiac electrophysiologist at the Stony Brook Heart Institute, said during a call with three other doctors. “The triggers tend to be more discreet and localized and we can target them more effectively.”

Different patients have different levels of awareness of A-fib as it’s occurring.

“Every single patient is different,” said Dr. Roger Ran, cardiac electrophysiologist at the Stony Brook Heart Institute. Some people feel an extra beat and could be “incredibly symptomatic,” while others have fatigue, shortness of breath, chest discomfort, and dizziness.

Still other patients “don’t know they are in it and could be in A-fib all the time.”

Doctors on the call described several monitoring options to test for A-fib.

Dr. Abhijeet Singh, who is also a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Stony Brook Heart Institute, described how the technology to evaluate arrhythmias has improved over the last 20 years.

“People used to wear big devices around their necks,” Singh said on the call, which included about 150 people. “Now, the technology has advanced” and patients can wear comfortable patches for up to 14 days, which record every single heartbeat and allow people to signal when they have symptoms.

Patients can also use an extended holter monitor, which allows doctors to track their heartbeat for up to 30 days, while some patients receive implantable recorders, which doctors insert under the skin during a five-minute procedure. The battery life for those is 4.5 years.

Additionally, some phones have apps that record heartbeats that patients can send by email, Singh said. “We have come a long way in a few years.”

Dr. Roger Fan, a cardiac electrophysiologist at the Stony Brook Heart Institute, added that all these technologies mean that “we are virtually guaranteed to get to the bottom” of any symptoms.

Drugs vs. surgery

Doctors offer patients with confirmed cases of A-fib two primary treatment options: drugs or surgery.

The surgical procedure is called an ablation and involves entering the body through veins in the groin and freezing or burning small areas that are interfering with the heart’s normal rhythm. The procedure breaks up the electrical signals in irregular heartbeats.

Performed under general anesthetic, the procedure generally takes two to three hours. Patients can return home the same day as the operation, Rashba said.

As with any surgery, an ablation has some risks, such as stroke or heart attack, which Rashba said are “very rare” and occur in fewer than one percent of the cases. Additionally, patients may have groin complications, although that, too, has declined as doctors have used ultrasound to visualize the blood vessels.

In extremely rare occasions, some patients also have damage to the esophagus behind the heart, said Rashba, who is also a professor of medicine.

For patients experiencing symptoms like A-fib, doctors recommended a trip to the emergency room, at least the first time.

“If it’s not going away, one, you can reassure yourself, two, you can get treatment, and three, you can get a diagnosis quickly,” said Almasry.

The Stony Brook doctors said choosing the best treatment option depends on the patient.

“Everybody has different manifestations of their A-fib,” said Fan.

Among other questions, doctors consider how dangerous the A-fib is for the patients, how severe the symptoms are, and how much they affect the quality of life.

Doctors urged residents to make the kind of healthy lifestyle choices that keep other systems functioning effectively. Almasry cited a direct correlation between obesity and A-fib.

Reducing body weight by 10%, while keeping the weight off, can reduce the likelihood of A-fib recurrence, he said.

Photo courtesy of SBU Athletics

Defend the Island is a motto that the Stony Brook University men’s lacrosse team preaches, and the Seawolves lived up to that mantra last weekend as they successfully captured the first-ever Long Island Cup with a 10-6 victory over LIU. Stony Brook used a gritty defensive effort to limit the Sharks to just six goals en route to picking up its fourth-straight win on Feb. 27.

The Seawolves improved to 4-0 on the young season and are off to their best start since they began the 2017 season with the same 4-0 record. The six goals allowed are the fewest in a game since they held Hartford to six goals on April 3, 2021.

Stony Brook took a commanding 4-0 lead in the first quarter and was fueled by early goals from senior midfielder Matt Anderson, sophomore attack Dylan Pallonetti, and sophomore attack Noah Armitage. Pallonetti scored a pair of goals in the opening frame as the Seawolves took the four-goal advantage into the second quarter. 

The teams traded goals in the third quarter and Stony Brook took a 5-1 lead into the halftime break. The Seawolves’ early advantage was too much for the Sharks to overcome as Stony Brook held on to win by the final score of 10-6.

 Stony Brook’s defense held the Sharks’ top two goal scorers in check. LIU’s leading scorer Blake Behlen was limited to two goals and its second-leading scorer entering the game Jake Gillis was held scoreless. Seawolves’ senior goalie Anthony Palma stood on his head as he made 11 saves and only allowed the six goals.

 The Seawolves’ offense was led by Pallonetti who recorded a game-high five points (two goals, three assists). Armitage recorded his second hat trick of the season, while Anderson and graduate midfield Mike McCannell each scored a pair of goals.

“It’s exciting. The guys came out and competed in a great event against a good team. I am really excited about our effort – that’s the best defense that we played in probably three years that we have been here at Stony Brook. I couldn’t be prouder of those guys flying around out there,” said head coach Anthony Gilardi.

Next up, the team returns to LaValle Stadium to host Rutgers on March 5 at noon.

Photo courtesy of SBU Athletics

Starting the day with the first six goals, the Stony Brook women’s lacrosse team quickly made its presence felt on Feb. 27 against Ivy League foe Dartmouth.

Siobhan Rafferty had a first-quarter hat trick as part of her five-goal day, and the No. 4 Seawolves were off and running en route to their 20-3 victory in front of 1,040 fans at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium.

Rafferty and Kailyn Hart went back to back inside of 20 seconds to get the offense up and running, and then three goals in a 90 second span, two from Rafferty, made it 6-0 in the first quarter. After Dartmouth got one back a woman up, the Seawolves rattled off five in a row, three of which coming from Hart, to go up 11-1 at the 10:48 mark of the second quarter. Hart also finished the day with a five-spot in the goal column.

Stony Brook pitched a second-half shutout, scoring all eight in the final 30 minutes of action. Molly LaForge and Alexandra Fusco each recorded their first collegiate tallies, with Fusco scoring both in the final frame for the Seawolves. With the win, the Seawolves find a groove ahead of a pair of Top 10 matchups ahead in the next two weeks.

An overhead view of flooding at the Ranomafana area in Madagascar, above. Photo by Dina Andrianoely

Stony Brook University distinguished professor and award-winning scientist Patricia Wright has been traveling back and forth to Madagascar for over 34 years to study the charismatic lemurs on the island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa.

A damage to a road in Madagascar. Photo by Dina Andrianoely

Recently, Wright was in Madagascar when Tropical Cyclone Emnati struck the nation, tearing roofs from homes, destroying crops and polluting drinking water.

“The actual howling of the wind was very eerie,” said Wright in an interview a few days after returning from Madagascar. “The river is right beneath the station and it was scary to watch it go from white water rapids, into roiling coffee-colored water. Every 15 minutes, you could notice a difference” in the flooded waters.

Wright, her daughter Amanda Wright Poston, who is a project manager with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, and PhD candidate Amanda Rowe are seeking donations through WISE Tropics.

Created in 2020, WISE Tropics, which stands for Wright’s Institute for Science & Environment, has numerous goals, including saving lemurs, planting new rainforests and helping people in Madagascar and other tropical countries that have high biodiversity and high poverty.

In response to Tropical Cyclone Emnati, which is the fourth cyclone to hit Madagascar this year, WISE Tropics is trying to raise $20,000 from donors to provide food for people whose crops were destroyed by
the storm.

“People are displaced from their homes and they are really hungry,” Wright said. “The crops are gone: they are washed away.”

Wright said she hoped to buy as many as 100 bags of 50 kilograms of rice, plus beans, sugar and salt that could support communities around Ranomofana National Park, which provides the nearby setting for research through Stony Brook’s Centre ValBio.

She hopes to raise enough money that she can provide additional food every two weeks for the next two months.

A week after Emnati, residents of Madagascar were also struggling with contaminated drinking water, which was causing diarrhea. 

Wright said she hasn’t seen this level of devastation to Madagascar in about a decade.

An overhead view of flooding at the Ranomafana area in Madagascar, above. Photo by Dina Andrianoely

She hopes Long Islanders support those struggling after a spate of storms disrupted their lives and threatened their futures.

“Long Islanders are very generous when it comes to donating for disasters,” Wright said. “We had Sandy ourselves. We can make this island to island connection.”

Wildlife on Madagascar, like endangered lemurs, are often able to survive during natural disasters.

Lemurs move close to the center of trees and lower down to avoid the strong winds, Wright described. While she has seen lemurs who died amid storms, many survive by finding natural protection.

Wright recognizes that the number of crisis points in the world has grown, with refugees and survivors leaving their homes in Ukraine amid Russia’s armed attack and amid flooding in parts of Australia.

One of the lessons she’s learned from working with people in Madagascar amid past disasters is that donations sometimes meet the immediate need but don’t always provide enough sustained support.

Origins of WISE

Amanda Poston said they established WISE Tropics to give donors who wanted to give 100% of their gifts directly to specific efforts.

“We created this so we could really have them participate in these on-the-ground projects,” Poston said.

Before the cyclones hit, donors had contributed to reforestation efforts and lemur research, which is at the heart of what Patricia Wright studies.

“People who are interested in Ranomofana and have a connection to Madagascar are able to help” through these donations, Poston said.

WISE Tropics has almost no overhead, which means that donations go directly to the intended recipients.

At this point, the need to help the Malagasy people get food and shelter is high, as the island nation recovers from storms that have closed off roads and demolished bridges.

Poston, who spent a good part of her childhood in Madagascar, said the Malagasy “respect [her mother] and are amazed at her continuous contributions to their country.”

Esther Takeuchi

Esther S. Takeuchi, PhD, Distinguished Professor and the William and Jane Knapp Chair at Stony Brook University is being honored by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and will receive the Award in Chemical Sciences. This award is in recognition of her breakthrough contributions in the understanding of electrochemical energy storage.  

Takeuchi, who holds a joint appointment at Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, is an internationally recognized inventor, researcher, and educator in the fields of materials science, chemistry and renewable energy. She will be honored in a ceremony during the NAS 159th annual meeting on May 1 and will receive a medal and prize of $15,000 sponsored by the Merck Company Foundation.

The award cites Takeuchi’s contributions “to the materials and mechanistic understanding relevant to electrochemical energy storage, using chemical insight to address issues of critical importance.”

“I am sincerely honored to receive the National Academy of Science Award for Chemical Sciences,” said Takeuchi, also the Knapp Chair Professor of Energy and the Environment in the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering “The fundamental chemistry of electrochemical energy storage is complex and the subsequent development of viable energy storage devices is made even more challenging by the unique demands of each application.”

Takeuchi’s research has been instrumental in energy storage improvements that meet societal needs and can be applied to electric vehicles, medical devices, and batteries that back up the power grid. Among her numerous and notable inventions is a compact lithium/silver vanadium oxide battery that increased the lifespan of implantable cardiac defibrillators, a solution that reduced the number of surgeries patients needed to undergo to replace the devices that detect and correct irregular, potentially fatal, heart rhythms.

Takeuchi was recently elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has also been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering and selected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was selected as the 2013 recipient of the E.V. Murphree Award in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry from the American Chemical Society. She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2011. In 2009, President Obama presented Takeuchi with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor possible for technological achievement in the United States.