Northport residents gathered along Main Street, Monday, May 30, to cheer on the veterans, volunteer firefighters, Scouts and more who marched from Laurel Avenue School to Northport Village Park. The parade, organized by the Northport American Legion Post 694, honored those who lost their lives while serving in the U.S. armed forces.
After the parade, a wreath-laying ceremony was held at the park.
Students are scared, and they’re not going to take it anymore.
Students Demand Action, an organization affiliated with Everytown/Moms Demand Action, planned a national school walkout for May 26 in response to the May 24 shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers lost their lives.
More than two dozen Kings Park High School students and over 200 Northport High School students joined in on the national event.
The local walkouts included speeches about the gun violence prevention movement, and the reading of the names of the Texas victims. A moment of silence followed the speeches.
The Kings Park students circulated a petition in 2018 when they were in William T. Rogers Middle School in response to the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, according to a statement from the group of students.
“We were angry that this didn’t end with Parkland,” the statement read. “That this didn’t end with Sandy Hook. That this didn’t end with Columbine. That children still have to fear going to school and that we still need to have national walkout events to protest the epidemic of gun violence in our country.”
Among the Kings Park students was senior Isabella Lenarduzzi. During a phone interview, she said she was angry after hearing about the Texas shooting and felt as if she needed to do something. When she saw the post from Students Demand Action, she reached out to her friend Jesse Gunnell, and they created a group chat with fellow students to come up with ideas about what they could do.
“People are really angry about it,” Lenarduzzi said, “Angry and passionate about it, too.”
She said parents, teachers and administrators were supportive of the students’ decisions, and they weren’t reprimanded by school personnel. She added that the teenagers stayed within the school’s courtyard to remain safe.
Hallie Schorr, a junior at Northport High School, said Northport parents, teachers and administrators were also supportive, and the students were outside for about 20 minutes.
She said she decided to participate because she’s scared for the country, herself and her father who works in a different school.
“It’s just terrifying,” she said. “I just wanted to be able to show my support and to let my school know that there are people in school who are really, really scared and want to make change.”
Schorr said she feels fortunate that she lives in a school district that is able to incorporate several security measures to protect students and staff members.
“I do feel safe in school, but it’s, I don’t know, it’s scary,” she said. “What if this happens?”
Senior Meyer, Freshman Deliberti combine for 7 goals, Lamendola and defense shut down Devils
By Steven Zaitz
The schools are separated by about six miles. Their boys lacrosse teams — by much more.
The top-seeded Northport Tigers showed why they are reigning Long Island champions, as they doubled up and dominated the number four-seeded Huntington Blue Devils 12-6 on Thursday, May 26. Northport advances to the Suffolk County Championship game against the Smithtown East Bulls.
After a sleepy and goal-less first eight minutes, Northport even spotted their arch-rivals to the west a one goal lead, as Huntington’s strategy of locking up Northport’s superstar Senior Attacker Michael Meyer seemed to work — initially. But Meyer would find the key.
He exploded for four goals, all of which came in the first half, including a buzzer-beating rocket with two seconds to go before the halftime buzzer. Meyer also had assists on four other goals — a standout performance in a huge playoff game.
Freshman attacker Jack Deliberti had three goals, Jacob Starcke two goals and roving long-stick Midfielder Andrew Miller scored two in less than a minute in the third quarter that restored a five goal Tiger lead and unofficially broke the Blue Devils’ back.
Northport played their usual brand of ferocious defense, forcing Huntington to the outside and lower percentage shots and Tiger Goalkeeper Luke Lamendola registered an eye-popping 16 saves.
It was a complete team effort if there ever was one, and it enables Northport to re-visit neutral site East Islip Middle School to play Smithtown East — the very field they beat Syosset 12-11 to capture the Long Island Title last summer.
“All week in practice, we went over situations where I, or someone else, is locked off and what we were going to do,” Meyer said, who now has 43 goals on the season. “So, we ran one of the plays we worked on, and I was able to get the ball with a short stick defending me.”
He made the short stick dearly pay.
From sharp angles and small windows at which to shoot, Meyer flung balls past Huntington Goalie SammyMac Arner with deadly accuracy over the course of the first 24 minutes.
“Michael is a special player,” said Head Coach Larry Cerasi. “He does everything a coach could ask for and then some. He’s not the most ‘rah rah’ type of guy, but he leads by example and has shown some of our younger guys the way to success.”
One of those younger guys is the ninth grader Deliberti, who like Meyer, has curly brown locks of hair sticking out of the back of his helmet. He scored the first goal of the second half off of a brilliant feed from Meyer,
“When I first came up to the varsity team, I had a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, being guarded by juniors and seniors,” Deliberti said. “But Mike has really took me under his wing and has showed me how to be a varsity player.”
Meyer was also showing everybody in attendance why he is complete superstar package. After Huntington staged a mini-uprising and cut the Tiger lead to 7-4 midway through the third period, Meyer found Tim Kirchner in the middle of the field, who shoveled it over to Miller on the right. The junior Army-commit beat Arner from 20 yards away. Ten seconds later, Meyer hit Miller on a beautiful diagonal pass right in front of the Devil net. Miller faked high and went low to scoop it past Arner. It made the score 9-4 with the third quarter quickly melting away. The final horn was more than a quarter away, but the game was over.
“That was a big swing right there,” Miller said. “Huntington had just pulled within three and I think it stopped their momentum.”
With a suffocating second half defense and Lamendola snuffing out anything that leaked through, the Tigers ticket to East Islip was punched.
Senior Jacob Starcke scored two in the fourth quarter and Deliberti finished the scoring when he rattled the ball off both posts and behind Arner for Tiger goal number 12. Northport had effectively taken Huntington’s Big Four attackers of Aidan McNulty, Robbie Smith, Liam Lennon and Chris Maichin out of the game with constant defensive pressure. This quartet combined for 183 total point in 2022. Also, part of the winning formula, was Tyler Kuprianchik’s customary dominance at the ‘X’. The future Penn State Nittany Lion won 71% of his faceoffs against Yale commit Anthony Annunziata. Annunziata was second to Kupianchik in faceoff winning percentage in the regular season in Suffolk I.
“Our defense is not only incredibly strong and athletic, but we are also a cerebral bunch,” said Defensive Coach and Northport alum Billy Cordts. “Quinn Reynolds and Andrew Miller are incredibly dynamic. Jack Sandrib and Jack Breckling are experienced and very strong players. Will Flynn is not flashy but does it all, plus Pat Sweeney, who is an incredible athlete. All of these guys made it a very difficult day for their best players (Smith and McNulty).”
Cordts, class of 2003, had to manage some adversity through out the course of the season. But the Tigers have proven to be extraordinarily deep in 2022.
“We lost some starters to injury and didn’t miss a beat. Dan Eagers and Jon Alfiero went down, and they are damn good players. We are all about team and we play for each other and willing to do the dirty work. That’s what enables us to dominate.”
They’ll need to do so for one more game to repeat as Suffolk County Lacrosse League A Champions — against a school that also sits about six miles away, but to the east. Will this one be more competitive? Lacrosse fan across Suffolk County are about to find out.
During his State of the County address, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) presented an ambitious vision for a state-of-the-art north terminal at Long Island MacArthur Airport that would connect to both a newly erected convention center and to the main line of the Long Island Rail Road.
“Every great region must have a great regional airport and no one can deny that Long Island is one of the great regions in the nation,” Bellone said.
While Bellone is correct that Long Island is a great region and that it could benefit from a modernized airport terminal at MacArthur, the staff of TBR News Media would like to remind the county executive that there is still so much work to be done before this dream can ever materialize.
In its present form, Long Island’s prehistoric mass transit network is vastly unprepared to support Bellone’s grand vision. Look no further than the Long Island Expressway to discover the backward state of transportation affairs on the Island.
If one is lucky enough to be on the road at an hour when the expressway is not crammed with cars and trucks, there still remains the herculean task of dodging potholes. Out-of-state residents are horrified by the medieval conditions of this roadway — and the carnage inflicted upon their tires and front axles.
The LIRR offers little alternative. While railways around the nation and globe have modernized and expedited their services, Suffolk County residents ride home at a sluggish pace aboard rickety train cars. Riding the LIRR today is uncomfortable, exhausting and, frankly, not worth the price of the ticket.
Our airways do require a modern renovation, but so do our railways and roadways. Policymakers and regional planners need to consider these projects in tandem. Airports and train stations are not standalone facilities but part of a broader, integrated transportation ecosystem. It is that ecosystem that needs an overhaul.
It makes little sense for Suffolk County residents to dodge potholes en route to their state-of-the-art regional airport. It is equally nonsensical to bring 20th-century train cars into a modernized transportation hub.
In Suffolk County, leaders offer us bold visions for change without a roadmap to get us there. Our various public transit systems are remnants of a bygone way of life, artifacts of a time when the county had far fewer residents.
The challenges of immobility are real, likely a result of failed planning some decades ago. Our residents require relief right now as their freedom of movement and quality of life are both dangerously impeded.
TBR News Media sees the benefits of a modernized terminal at MacArthur, and believes Bellone’s idea is a good one. But there is a whole lot of work to be done before we can get there.
The following incidents have been reported by Suffolk County Police:
Commack
■ A man and a woman entered HomeGoods on Henry Street in Commack on May 20 and allegedly stole assorted bedding valued at $320.
■ Bunty’s Jewelry on Commack Road in Commack was burglarized on May 16 and over $3,000 worth of jewelry was stolen. Entry was gained by breaking in the rear door.
■ Target located on Veterans Memorial Highway in Commack reported a shoplifter on May 15. A man allegedly stole five printers valued at $1265.
■ A 2010 Dodge Ram 3500 Mega Cab was stolen from the parking lot of Walmart on Crooked Hill Road in Commack on May 15. The vehicle was valued at $15,000.
■ HomeSense on Henry Street in Commack reported a petit larceny on May 15. Two women allegedly stole nine sets of window curtains valued at $450.
■ ShopRite on Garet Place in Commack reported that two men loaded up three shopping carts with assorted food items and allegedly left the store without paying. The items were valued at $1500.
Dix Hills
■ A 2019 Mercedes Benz valued at $30,000 was stolen from a driveway of a residence on Grey Birch Court in Dix Hills on May 20. The car had been left unlocked with the keys inside.
East Setauket
■ Walmart on Nesconset Highway reported a petit larceny on May 20. Two women allegedly filled a shopping cart with miscellaneous items valued at approximately $500 and walked out of the store without paying.
Fort Salonga
■ A 2020 BMW X7 valued at $90,000 was stolen from the driveway of a residence on Milemore Drive on May 17. The key fob had been left inside the vehicle.
Huntington Station
■ Staples on West Jericho Turnpike in Huntington Station called the police on May 20 to report that a man and a woman allegedly stole an Epson EcoTank printer worth $550 and a HP Smart Tank printer worth $460.
■ Louis Vuitton on Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station reported a shoplifter on May 20. A woman allegedly stole a handbag valued at $2370.
Kings Park
■ Flynn-Aire Heating and Air Conditioning on Indian Head Road in Kings Park called the police to report that four work vehicles were broken into on May 17. The rear windows were smashed to gain entry and tools valued at $20,000 were stolen.
Lake Grove
■ Dick’s Sporting Goods at the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove reported that two women and a man allegedly stole assorted Nike clothing valued at $880.
■ A woman shopping at Trader Joe’s on Nesconset Highway in Lake Grove on May 19 reported that an unknown person stole her purse containing credit cards and cash from her shopping cart.
■ DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse on Middle Country Road in Lake Grove called the police on May to 18 to report that a man and a woman allegedly stole miscellaneous sneakers and footwear valued at approximately $250.
■ Macy’s at the Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove reported a petit larceny on May 17. Two women and a man allegedly stole 15 miscellaneous clothing items valued at $985.
Mount Sinai
■ A resident on Apricot Lane in Mount Sinai reported that someone entered their unlocked vehicle on May 17 and stole sunglasses and various items valued at $250.
■ A woman visiting Heritage Park on Mount Sinai-Coram Road in Mount Sinai on May 18 reported that her purse containing credit cards and cash was stolen from her car. Someone attempted to use the credit cards at a local Walmart a short time later.
Port Jefferson Station
■ Family Dollar on Route 112 in Port Jefferson Station reported a petit larceny on May 21. Three men and a woman allegedly stole assorted items valued at $50.
■ A resident on Kelsey Avenue in Port Jefferson Station reported that someone cut a lock on their backyard shed and stole power tools valued at approximately $600 on May 21.
■ Verizon Wireless on Nesconset Highway in Port Jefferson Station reported that a man allegedly stole an iPhone 13 Pro valued at approximately $1000 by cutting the security cable on May 19.
■ A resident on Homestead Avenue in Port Jefferson Station called the police to report that someone entered their unlocked vehicle on May 19 and stole property worth $120.
■ T.J. Maxx on Nesconset Highway in Port Jefferson Station reported a petit larceny on May 20. A man and a woman allegedly stole assorted bedding and men’s clothing valued at $400.
Rocky Point
■ Kohl’s on Route 25A in Rocky Point reported a shoplifter on May 14. A woman allegedly stole assorted clothing valued at approximately $430.
Selden
■ A resident on Elmwood Avenue in Selden called the police on May 21 to report that someone stole a Ring Home Security Camera from his front porch.
■ A lawnmower and tools valued at approximately $200 were stolen from the backyard of a residence on Mooney Pond Road in Selden on May 16.
South Setauket
■ Target on Pond Path in South Setauket reported a shoplifter on May 19. A man allegedly stole a Keurig coffee maker valued at $110 and eight assorted toys valued at $210.
■ Stop & Shop on Pond Path in South Setauket called the police on May 18 to report a shoplifter. A man allegedly placed 30 miscellaneous food items in his shopping cart and walked out of the store without paying. The merchandise was valued at $325.
■ A man allegedly stole copper wire worth $765 from Home Depot on Pond Path in South Setauket on May 16.
Suffolk County Crime Stoppers offers a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about these incidents can contact Suffolk County Crime Stoppers to submit an anonymous tip by calling 1-800-220-TIPS.
— COMPILED BY HEIDI SUTTON
Today, state Sen. James Gaughran (D-Northport) announced that he will not seek re-election following the decennial redistricting process, according to a press release.
Gaughran released a statement about his decision.
“When I first ran for the State Senate in 2016, I ran to break the logjam in Albany, to pass critical legislation that languished for decades under the Republican majority,” he said in the statement. “Since taking office in 2018, we’ve done just that. In the last four sessions, we’ve: codified a woman’s right to seek an abortion; secured justice long overdue for survivors of child abuse; passed groundbreaking gun safety measures including a Red Flag Law, a Safe Storage Law and a ban on Ghost Guns; set nation-leading environmental standards and water protections; strengthened union protections, guaranteed a prevailing wage for public projects, and approved the Farmworkers Fair Labor Practices Act; took on bias in the workplace, the housing market and public safety; and we’ve begun the process to finally get rid of PSEG’s mismanagement and bring Public Power back to Long Island. I’ve also personally chaptered over 70 bills into law and my office has helped thousands of constituents with every issue imaginable amidst an unprecedented pandemic.
“I’m proud of everything the Democratic Conference has accomplished under Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins’ [D-Yonkers] leadership in just two terms, and I am confident that they will hold that majority moving forward. But the electoral realities of my home district as drawn by the Special Master cannot be ignored. After speaking with my family, friends, and colleagues, I look forward to serving my district, my constituents, and my state for the rest of my term.
“The unspeakable loss our state and our nation have shared in just the last two weeks demand action from our representatives in Washington. I also intend to spend the next five months working to elect [Suffolk County Legislator] Bridget Fleming [D-Noyac] and Jackie Gordon to Congress and helping any candidate — anywhere — that can bring the United States Senate to its senses.
“We’ve seen what inaction from Washington gets us. We’ve seen where the Supreme Court plans to take us. We all need to fight like hell for a better future. Our children deserve nothing less.”
The first in a two-part series, this article highlights the ways COVID-19 exacerbated an already difficult mental health landscape on Long Island, particularly for adolescents. Amid isolation and uncertainty, residents had an increase in anxiety-related and mental health crises. Additionally, residents in acute distress who arrived at the emergency room sometimes had to wait hours or days for an inpatient psychiatric bed. In the second feature, which will appear in a future edition, mental health workers describe the challenges of their work during the pandemic.
COVID-19 has taken its toll on mental health throughout Suffolk County, as people in a range of ages confront challenges related to isolation, depression, anxiety and grief.
Area hospitals report that inpatient psychiatric beds are rarely empty. Indeed, patients have had to receive treatment in the emergency room at times for a day or more as they wait for an available inpatient psychiatric bed.
“Our emergency room has two behavioral health beds, but often, we have more patients waiting for admission to [the] inpatient psychiatry unit,” said Dr. Adnan Sarcevic, chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Huntington Hospital.
While patients receive the same treatment in the emergency room that they would in an inpatient unit, some types of intervention, like group psychotherapy “cannot be provided in an emergency room setting,” Sarcevic said.
COVID also exacerbated the shortage of beds when some units had to close after an outbreak of the virus.
“We had periods when some psychiatric inpatient units were closed for a variety of different reasons including COVID outbreaks” which created a shortage of beds, Sarcevic added.
At St. Catherine of Siena in Smithtown, beds filled up as soon as one opened, said Dr. Michel Khlat, chief medical officer.
Adolescent strains
The pandemic exacerbated trends that already reflected the mental health strain among youth and adolescents.
For the previous decade, youth presentations for mental health crises in the emergency room had been increasing.
During the pandemic, those numbers climbed nationally and on Long Island. Estimates of anxiety among youth increased to 20%, which is dramatically higher than the 12% prior to the pandemic, said Dr. Vera Feuer, associate vice president in the School Mental Health program at Northwell Health. Depression has also reached about 20%, which was previously below 10%.
Additionally, the pandemic caused a three-fold increase in children with eating disorders, which is consistent with new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, Feuer added.
“There’s a real big increase in presentation to the emergency room” with youth who are considering suicide, particularly for girls who are 10 to 13 years old.
Additionally, adolescents are showing an increase in tic disorders, which are involuntary movements of the neck, eye or facial movements, Feuer said. While some studies suggest a link between depression and these movements, other research has linked them to the increasing use of social media.
As for the availability of mental health services, adolescents are continuing to find it difficult to become outpatients for an overburdened mental health care system, which increases the need for emergency services.
Community services are often “saturated,” Feuer said. “There are not enough child psychiatrists” which means that children go without care for longer, she said.
On Long Island, the wait for inpatient beds is not as long as it reportedly has been in other areas of the country.
“We do have kids waiting at least a day or over the weekend,” said Feuer. She suggested that access to beds and to crisis programs in school have mitigated some of the adolescent demand.
Dr. Stacy Eagle, director of Psychiatry at St. Charles Hospital, cautioned that the potential for addiction and substance abuse is “concerning. Even marijuana is dangerous, because you don’t know what it’s laced with and it can become incredibly addicting.”
Broader challenges
The shortage of inpatient beds predated the arrival of COVID, with mask mandates, social distancing, remote learning and at-home work altering routines and creating stressors that often increased anxiety and triggered the kind of self-medication that led to substance abuse.
“I’ve seen it step up on a daily, weekly, monthly basis” in terms of generalized anxiety disorders and panic attacks, said Dr. Jeffrey Wheeler, director of the Emergency Department at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson.
Eagle said she has seen more anxiety, mood disorders and substance abuse, with more acute patients coming in from schools.
Doctors suggested that COVID itself can contribute to the worsening of a person’s emotional well-being.
“COVID certainly plays a role in mental health, both as a psychosocial stressor and due to the neurotropic nature” of the virus, said Sarcevic.
The types of treatment varies according to the severity of the symptoms, the underlying conditions, and any ongoing treatment plans.
“Some people come in who are in need of medication to be stabilized for depression,” said Khlat.
To accommodate the increasing need for non-acute psychiatric services, health care professionals have been offering telepsychiatry help.
In the last three months, St. Catherine of Siena expanded their telepsychiatry services, which had been offered primarily on the weekends, to seven days a week.
“Due to the influx of patients we’re having, with COVID depression we had to [expand that] to the rest of the week,” Khlat said. These services “helped us out a lot.”
Silver lining
Feuer suggested a few silver linings amidst the health care crisis.
“The attention to something we know has been a problem for a long time” will help the community, she said. “I’m hoping the right resources and interventions will come.”
Additionally, the increased vigilance of mental health challenges has enabled people to feel that asking for mental health resources is something they can, and should, do.
“It has normalized these conversations,” Dr. Feuer said.
Available resources
Dr. Gregson Pigott, commissioner of the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, urged people who think they need help to get it right away.
Those people seeking help for substance abuse or mental health can visit www.SuffolkStopAddiction.org to find a network of providers in the 2022 Suffolk County Directory of Behavioral Health Services guide.
The following are resources available to those in crisis:
— Family Services League’s Diagnostic, Assessment and Stability Hub (DASH) program. This is a 24-hour stabilization response program for children and adults in crisis due to substance abuse, mental illness and other life stressors. They are located at 90 Adams Avenue in Hauppauge. Their phone number is 631-952-3333.
— A free 24-hour hotline: 631-751-7500, or www.responsehotline.org.
— A Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP) at Stony Brook Hospital at 101 Nicolls Rd in Stony Brook is available at 631-444-6050. CPEP has voluntary and involuntary emergency psychiatric services for children and adults every day.
“It is important for individuals to engage in self-care,” Pigott wrote in an email. “Listening to each other and recognizing the signs of mental illness and substance use can help mitigate a developing crisis.”
By Daniel Dunaief
What if scientists could train the immune system to recognize something specific on the outside of unwanted cells?
That’s what new Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory fellow Corina Amor is doing, as she found an antigen on the surface of senescent cells. She hopes to train a patient’s T-cells to search for these cells, much like providing a police dog with the scent of a missing person or escaped convict.
Amor, who joined Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in January after earning her medical degree in at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain and her PhD in the lab of CSHL Adjunct Professor Scott Lowe, recently found a surface molecule called uPAR that is upregulated on senescent, or aging, cells.
If senescent cells excessively accumulate, it can lead to tissue decline and disease like lung and liver fibrosis, Lowe, who is the Cancer Biology Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, explained in an email. Senescent cells also contribute to tissue decline as people age.
Studies suggest eliminating these senescent cells could provide therapeutic benefit, she added.
Using artificial T-cells, called CAR-T, for Chimeric Antigen Receptor, Amor looks to use specific antigens to find these senescent cells and eliminate them.
“It was sort of a crazy idea, but it worked and, while much more preclinical and clinical work needs to be done, the concept could lead to better treatments for lung and liver fibrosis, and other diseases that increase as we age,” Lowe wrote.
The combination of an inflamed environment and an ineffective immune system can create conditions that favor the growth and development of cancer.
Amor, who currently has one technician and is planning to add a graduate student this summer at her lab at CSHL, is building on her PhD research.
“My doctoral work was the development of the first CAR-T cells that are able to target senescent cells,” she said. “We were the first in the world to do this.”
Amor, who was recently named to the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list, describes this approach as a new frontier for treating senescent cells and one in which researchers would need to clear numerous hurdles before developing clinical therapies.
She is searching for other antigens on the surface of cancerous and fibrous cells that would increase the specificity of these synthetic immune cells.
Combining antigens could be the key to avoiding off target effects that might cause the immune system to attack healthy cells.
Amor plans to tap into CSHL’s affiliation with Northwell Health to analyze clinical samples that might provide a better understanding of various potential markers.
Fellowship route
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is one of several programs in the country that provides talented researchers with the opportunity to go directly from finishing their PhD to leading their own lab.
Amor is following in the footsteps of her MSKCC mentor Lowe, who also had been an independent fellow at CSHL.
Lowe saw some similarities in their career paths, as they both made “unexpected discoveries during our Ph.D. research that were not only important, but clearly set a path for future research,” he explained in an email.
Lowe describes Amor as an “intense and driven scientist” who has an “extraordinary bandwidth to get things done, and a mental organization that allows her to execute science efficiently.” He believes her work is game changing at many levels and opens up numerous new directions for scientific study.
Lowe is “extraordinarily proud of [Amor] for becoming a CSHL fellow – and I hope she both contributes and benefits from the lab as I did,” he wrote in an email.
Amor said CSHL provided an ideal balance between finding collaborators who worked in similar areas, without competing for the same resources and conducting similar research.
“The last thing you want is to go somewhere and be completely isolated,” she said. “You also don’t want to be at a place where there’s three other people doing the same thing and you’re not adding anything.”
She feels like she had a “nice synergy” with CSHL, which is trying to expand its immunology research.
As the first person to bring cellular therapy to CSHL, she has already started collaborating with several groups.
Amor recognizes the challenges ahead in training scientists who often have their own ideas about the questions they’d like to ask.
“The science is the easy part” and it comes naturally, but there is a “learning curve in how to manage people,” she said.
She appreciates the opportunity to talk with senior researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and plans to attend courses and seminars for principal investigators who are starting out.
When she was in graduate school, Amor said she rotated through different labs. When everything didn’t work as she might have hoped during those rotations, she said she had the opportunity to learn from those experiences.
“When training people in the lab, I try to be really specific about what I want to do” while also ensuring that the researchers understand and appreciate the bigger picture and context for individual experiments, she said.
Originally from Madrid, Amor felt comfortable during her five years in Manhattan and is enjoying the open space and fresh air of Long Island in her role at CSHL. She also appreciates the chance to kayak in the waters around Long Island.
When she was around seven years old, Amor said her mother Esperanza Vegas was diagnosed with breast cancer. By participating in a clinical trial for a new drug, her mother fought off the disease.
“That made me realize how important science and research is,” Amor said.
During her educational training, Amor went directly from high school into a six-year program in which she earned a bachelor’s degree and a medical degree.
By the time she finished her PhD, she was hooked on research.
She appreciates the advice she received from Lowe, who encouraged her to conduct experiments despite the risks.
“Don’t get paralyzed at the beginning by fear,” she said. “Do the experiment and see what happens.”
It came down to the final possession in the Suffolk girl’s lacrosse Class A title game where the Northport Tigers clung to a one goal lead and was able to hold off a late game surge by the Patriots of Ward Melville for the 8-7 win at Newfield High School May 25.
Northport seniors Isabella Germani led the Tigers with four goals, and Ella Cabrera scored twice with two assists. Teammates Kaylie Mackiewicz and Shannon Smith both scored while Meghan Morris had a quiet day in net with four saves.
Grace Balocca topped the scoring chart for the Patriots with three goals and goalie Ava Carrillo stopped seven.
The win sends Northport to the Long Island Championship round where they’ll face either Massapequa or Syosset at Lavalle Stadium in Stony Brook June 5. Game time is at high noon.
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