A top source for consumers searching for doctors and hospitals, Healthgrades continued to recognize several departments and clinical efforts within Huntington Hospital, while adding others.
Healthgrades named Huntington Hospital one of the 100 best hospitals for Coronary Intervention for the fourth year in a row.
An affiliate of Northwell Health, Huntington Hospital also was ranked fourth in critical care in the state and, among other recognition, received five star distinction for Cranial Neurosurgery, earned the 2025 Pulmonary Care Excellence Award, and was named among the top 10 percent in the nation for overall pulmonary services.
“Healthgrades is one of the more recognizable accolades that hospitals can achieve,” said Dr. Nick Fitterman, Executive Director of Huntington Hospital.
The hospital has hung two banners and plans to celebrate the distinctions with staff on Nov. 6th.
“People want to play for a winner,” said Fitterman. “It really does make the team members, the doctors, nurses and support staff all feel better, knowing that they’re in health care, they’re compassionate people. To see the recognition makes them feel proud.”
Through ongoing and growing recognition of the expertise and services available to patients, word has spread about the quality of care people receive at Huntington Hospital.
“Our doctors that run the Emergency Room are seeing more people from zip codes outside of our usual primary and secondary catchment area as the reputation of the hospital is spreading,” said Fitterman. “I like to think that it’s because of excellent care” as well as people telling friends and family about their experiences.
Patients outside the normal coverage area mostly live to the east and south on Long Island.
Healthgrades also gave ongoing high rankings to the coronary interventional procedures for four years in a row, provided a five-star rating for treatment of stroke for two years in a row, and named the hospital a five-star provider for treatment of pneumonia for seven years in a year.
Huntington earned five stars for its treatment of sepsis for the third consecutive year.
‘We don’t set out to achieve any recognition,” said Fitterman. “The core ideology that I espouse to all team members is that excellence in clinical care is the best business strategy. Provide the best care possible and all this other stuff will fall into place.”
While Huntington received a top five percent recognition for cardiac interventions, which includes stents for people who have heart attacks and pacemakers for those whose conduction system is not working well, the hospital recently completed a $5 million renovation of its cardiac catheterization lab.
The lab, which will have a ceremonial opening in the next few weeks, will implement “some of the most advanced technology,” said Fitterman.
Amid predictions about extended hospital stays as the population ages, Fitterman suggested that Huntington Hospital was focused on improving the way it treats diseases to get patients out of the hospital and return them to their normal lives in a timely fashion.
In addition to enhancements in cardiac care, Huntington Hospital has added new neurosurgeons to the staff and has invested in a Zeiss microscope that has a three dimensional display.
“You’d think you’re seeing a Star Wars movie,” said Fitterman.
Huntington Hospital taps into the Northwell Health network, helping patients benefit from specialists spread throughout the system.
Hospital staff can consult with tumor boards that include hematologists, oncologists, and radiation oncologists spread throughout the Northwell network.
To help patients manage the stresses and strains that come from giving up control when they spend time in a hospital, Huntington converted several years ago to a dining service that allows people to order their meals according to their own schedule.
Patients can call any time of day to place an order. Food is then delivered to their room within 40 minutes, with no set breakfast, lunch and dinner times.
“Food is health,” said Fitterman. “If they were getting the same tasteless food that hospitals are renowned for serving, they would not be contributing to a healthy, therapeutic environment.”
For meetings, the hospital rarely orders from outside caterers, choosing food from the hospital kitchen.
The hospital has restructured the workflow to prevent any additional costs for the round-the-clock service.
Fitterman calls the chicken quesadillas “outstanding,” while he said some patients have come back to the cafeteria after they are discharged because of the popularity of the salmon.
Fitterman added that he is always looking out for ways to improve the experience for patient and their families.
“When I walk the halls, I’m still looking at things we can do better,” he said.
Shawn Heilbronn. Photos courtesy of Stony Brook Athletics
By Daniel Dunaief
In an exclusive interview the day before the homecoming game, Stony Brook Athletic Director Shawn Heilbron spoke about the department’s commitment to the community, the ongoing climb in grade point average among athletes and productive and expanding collaborations with other parts of the university.
“Homecoming is always such a fun time,” said Heilbron, who has been Athletic Director at Stony Brook for 10 years. “Our campus is buzzing with events and activities. It’s always a plus when our football team is bringing tremendous momentum, as we are this year.”
Indeed, the Seawolves trounced William & Mary 35-13 during homecoming, bringing the school’s rank in an AFC Coaches Poll to 20th — the highest it’s been since 2018. Ticket sales reached 7,599 for the game.
Heilbron appreciates the role sports plays in forming bonds between the university and the residents in the surrounding Long Island neighborhoods.
“Athletics is a great connector between the school and the community,” said Heilbron.
As the department undergoes an exercise in branding and messaging, the Athletic Director suggested that the core of the program involves transforming young people’s lives through competition, academics and involvement in the community.
When he meets with prospective student-athletes, he tells them he wants them to feel that coming to Stony Brook is “the best decision I ever made in my life. It changes the trajectory of where I’m going.”
Winning helps shine a spotlight on the university, bringing goodwill and local pride to the area.
Heilbron, however, also believes that includes encouraging athletes to get involved with people in the area, whether that’s reading to students in elementary school, showing up at events in Suffolk County or going to the Children’s Hospital.
“Giving back to others is going to help you become a better person,” Heilbron said. “Our student athletes, our coaches, our staff, embrace that relationship with people.”
Teachers, club leaders, or area organizations who would like to tap into the university’s athletic program to provide inspiration or help with local efforts can do so through the school’s website, by connecting with Heilbron or with anyone on his leadership team, including Arnika Edwards, who oversees career and leadership development.
Edwards is a “fantastic leader in our department” who helps “organize so much of our community engagement,” Heilbron said. “We will help you get in touch with the right person.”
Wide range of sports
Heilbron encourages residents to attend any of the wide range of sporting events, where they can see a “group of young people who work so hard, give everything to represent Stony Brook, but also the community.”
Recently, the women’s soccer team played in front of a packed crowd of over 500 people for its final home game against Northeastern University. In a game Northeastern tied 2-2 in the 69th minute, Kerry Pearson scored the game-winner three minutes later, giving Stony Brook a crowd-pleasing 3-2 victory.
Heilbron said he urges fans to attend women’s basketball, which has also had recent success.
“We have a pretty strong fan base for men’s basketball,” Heilbron said. “I always say, ‘Come to a women’s game. Our women’s team has been really good.’ When they come, they are amazed at how much fun it is and how talented our women are.”
Word has also gotten out about the women’s lacrosse team, which is the strongest team at the school. “When you come and see the athleticism and the talent, it’s really remarkable,” Heilbron said.
Cross discipline opportunities
The athletic program has teamed up with several other departments throughout the university, including Health Science Professions, Renaissance School of Medicine and the School of Communication and Journalism. The school of journalism leads a broadcast that does the halftime show, and the athletic department is working on additional partnerships.
The school of health sciences is developing a lab that the university will build within the athletic facility that could help student athletes as well as those studying the field of health sciences.
“There’s so much in terms of technology now that’s being utilized with recovery and with injury prevention,” said Heilbron. “We’re excited to take the next step forward.”
Amid ongoing concerns about the emotional and psychological well-being of students, the athletic department has embedded two full-time mental health counselors in their building.
“The need for mental health services for young people nationally regardless of whether they are athletes or not has increased tremendously,” Heilbron said.
Heilbron is grateful that any stigma around seeking help for mental health challenges has decreased sufficiently that students feel more comfortable asking for help. “Student athletes are saying, ‘I want to utilize this, this is important to me,’” said Heilbron.
In addition to two busy, full-time mental health professionals, the department has a sports psychologist and refers students to other campus assistance, if needed. As of now, Heilbron feels the department is “meeting the student athletes where they are,” he said, “but if the time arises where we have to invest in a third [mental health professional], we’ll make that a priority.”
The athletic department also works to help students prepare for the balance between significant academic and athletic demands. Advisors urge students to build in time to eat, receive therapy for injuries, and work with tutors. “Our students know that if you come to Stony Brook, this is going to be a challenging education,” Heilbron said.
Student athlete grades have been improving since Heilbron arrived. A decade ago, the grade point average was 3.06. Last year, the GPA for student athletes climbed to 3.24. “It’s a testament to our student athletes, but also to our academic advisors,” said Heilbron.
Better facilities
As for the facilities, Stony Brook is looking for ways to improve them.
The university is raising money for a baseball/ softball complex and is looking to improve several locker rooms. “Locker rooms are always something we’re trying to enhance,” said Heilbron. “It’s where our student athletes spend most of their time.”
Stony Brook is completing a renovation of the women’s basketball locker room and is hoping to enhance the locker rooms of the football and lacrosse teams.
“We are constantly feeling a sense of urgency, not only for our recruits, but we want our current student athletes to feel that sense of excitement with new spaces,” said Heilbron
Shawn Heilbron’sspeed round answers:
Favorite movie: Bull Durham
Favorite sport to watch: football
Favorite sport to play: baseball
Position in baseball: 1st base
If you had to coach a team,
what would you coach: baseball
Mantra: I don’t have a mantra, but I tell people to “be positive.”
Hero in life: My dad
Hero in sports: Roger Staubach
Favorite sports team: Dallas Cowboys
Favorite moment in sports: “Winning the 2016 America East Championship with our men’s basketball team” which allowed them to go to March Madness for the first time in the school’s history. Fans rushed the court. “That was the coolest moment.”
Most common coaching mistake: Overthinking a situation.
In the nucleus of the cell, researchers often focus on the genetic machinery, as the double-helical DNA sends signals that enable the creation of everything from my fingers that are typing these words to your brain that is processing what you’ve read.
But DNA, which occupies most of the nucleus, is not alone. Scattered through the nucleus are protein and RNA filled structures that have an influence on their important gene-bearing nuclear cohabitants, including speckles.
One of the newest members of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory team, Assistant Professor Kate Alexander, who joined the lab in August, is focused on a range of questions about these speckles, which represent about 10 to 30 percent of the nuclear volume.
Preliminary data from Alexander’s lab support the idea that speckles can signal how a person responds to various types of therapy, although careful extensive follow up studies are needed, Alexander explained. She would like to know how the speckles are affecting the genetic machinery.
While speckles have been known since 1910, the ways they affect healthy cells and diseased cells remains a mystery. In some cases, normal or aberrant speckles can signal how a person responds to various types of therapy.
Normal speckles are in the center of the cell nucleus, while aberrant speckles are more scattered. Aberrant speckles can activate some of the surrounding DNA.
At this point, Alexander and her colleagues have “found that normal or aberrant speckle states correlate with survival of clear cell renal cell carcinoma. This accounts for over 80 percent of all kidney cancers.”
Medical choices
After a patient with clear cell renal cell carcinoma receives a cancer diagnosis, the first line of treatment is usually surgery to remove the tumor in the kidney. In addition, doctors could treat the tumor with a systematic anti-cancer therapy. The treatments themselves can and often do cause difficult side effects, as therapies can harm healthy cells and can disrupt normal biological functioning.
Normal speckles look something like the face of the man on the moon and are more centrally located.
Alexander is hoping speckles will help predict the state of the tumor, offering clues about how it might respond to different types of treatments. She could envision how aberrant speckles could correlate with better responses to one drug, while normal speckles might correlate with better responses to another treatment.
In her research, Alexander is exploring how DNA is organized around speckles, as well as how the speckles affect DNA.
“Speckles can change and impact what’s happening to all the DNA that’s surrounding them,” she said.
Over 20 tumor types show evidence for both normal and aberrant speckles. Aberrant tumors can occur in many types of cancer.
“The consequence of [speckles] becoming normal or aberrant are starting to become more clear,” she said, although there is “still a lot to learn.”
Alexander is trying to figure out how to alter the conformation of these speckles. During cancer, she suspects these speckles may get trapped in a particular state.
In one of the first experiments in her lab, she’s culturing cells in an incubator and is trying to predict what cues may cause speckles in those cells to switch states.
‘Speckle club’ leader
Alexander previously did postdoctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania in the laboratory of Shelley Berger, where she was also a Research Associate. She led a subgroup in the lab known as the “speckle club.”
Charly Good, who is now Senior Research Investigator in Berger’s lab, worked with Alexander at Penn from 2017 until this summer.
Aberrant speckles are scattered throughout the nucleus.
Alexander “helped recruit me to the postdoc I ended up doing,” said Good who appreciated Alexander’s computational skills in analyzing big data sets. Speckles represent an “up and coming area” for research, which Alexander and Berger are helping lead, Good suggested.
Alexander’s quick thinking meant she would go to a talk and would email the speaker as soon as she got back to her desk. “Her brain is always spinning,” said Good.
Alexander is building her lab at CSHL. Sana Mir is working as a technician and is helping manage the lab. Recently, Hiroe Namba joined the group as a postdoctoral researcher. In the next few years, Alexander would like to add a few graduate students and, within five years, have about eight people.
Originally from Tigard, Oregon, Alexander attended Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. In her freshman year, she tried to get into a physics class that was full and wound up taking a biology class. She was concerned that biology classes were mostly memorization. When she started the course, she appreciated how the science involved searching for missing pieces of information.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory appealed to her because she could go in whatever direction the research took her.
For Alexander, scientific questions are like a layer of cloth with a few threads sticking out.
“You see one sticking out and you start to pull,” Alexander said. “You don’t necessarily know what’s going to come out, but you keep getting the urge to pull at that thread. You realize that it is connected to all these other things and you can look at those, too.”
She is excited to cross numerous disciplines in her work and is eager to think about how her research might “interplay across those fields and boundaries.”
Speckle origins
As for speckles, Alexander observed during her postdoctoral research how one factor seemed to influence a neighborhood of genes.
For that to occur, she realized that something had to affect those genes at the same time in the physical space. She hadn’t known about speckles before. A few of her colleagues, including Good, came across speckles in their analysis. That made Alexander curious about what these speckles might be doing.
She saw an opening to pursue connections between changes in these potential gene activators and illnesses.
Researchers know that viruses can use speckles to help them copy themselves.
If they are used by viruses “they must be important” and they “probably go wrong in a lot of diseases,” Alexander said. There are a series of neurodevelopmental disorders called “speckleopathies” that involve mutations in proteins found inside speckles.
“We have the computational and experimental tools to start investigating them across a wide variety of conditions,” she said.
I recently attended a wonderful 65th birthday celebration for Jeff that included his wife, children and their significant others and his 90-something father.
As I looked across the table at Jeff, who was sitting beneath large helium balloons with the number 65, I thought about how remarkably young he looked and about these kinds of celebrations for him throughout the years.
“What’s your first birthday memory?” I asked through the festive noises around us in a crowded Queens restaurant.
He recalled how his parents bought him a glow-in-the-dark skeleton costume, which he not only got to wear on his birthday with his friends, but also several days later on Halloween.
The costume party-birthday party combination worked so well for him that he had similar such festivities over the years.
In fact, many years later, I attended one of his birthday parties in which he asked people to come dressed as one of his favorite things. Several people dressed as M&M’s, one came as a bottle of ketchup and I dressed as Yoda, reflecting his love for Star Wars.
As with any other day, birthday memories are not only festive and joyful, but can also involve the same kinds of feelings that reside in the brains of the characters in the Pixar movie “Inside Out.”
“I vividly remember steering a ferry, sitting on a fire truck and sounding the horn on a train in the same day!” said Michael, who was four during this momentous event.
Benji, meanwhile, ran around in costume outside for one of his early birthdays. Born in the spring, he wondered whether he, like Jeff, should have been born closer to Halloween.
Every year since she was three, Heidi enjoyed her mom’s home cooked noodles and meatballs with string beans, followed by a Friendly’s Jubilee Roll. She always wished for a Palomino horse and was happy to live later in life on a farm that boarded horses in Nissequogue.
Speaking of horses, Mandi, who is a twin, recalls having ponies come to her house during an early birthday. Her pony stopped to drink and her mother said, “You can lead a horse to water…” At the time, Mandi didn’t know what that meant.Amid the pleasant parts of her birthday, she also recalled hating that she was born in July, which meant she couldn’t bring cupcakes to school.
Some people weren’t sure whether they remembered particular events around their birthdays or whether they had turned the pictures they have seen over the years and the stories they heard into a virtual, story-driven memory.
Rebecca recalled her fourth and fifth birthday confabs at a gymnastics studio, where she raced around over and through various gymnastics apparatuses.
Greg recalled having extensive birthday plans outdoors. Rain, however, prevented him from bringing everyone outside. He recalled pressing his nose against the screen door, looking out at the raindrops that altered his plans.
Larry recalled a first or second grade party when he had a cake shaped and decorated as a train engine. Before the group sang happy birthday, he plucked off the Lifesaver wheels. “Mom scolded me and I was upset during the whole party,” he remembered.
Julia shared how her brother tortured her at every birthday celebration, diminishing the enjoyment of the gathering.
Some people struggled to recall any of their earlier birthday parties.
Jill’s earliest birthday party memory was of her fifth grade celebration, when her mom made a pink and green alligator cake, reflecting the IZOD phase of life, and she went roller skating.
Sue, who works in a supermarket, remembered a part when she turned 12. Her parents invited her girlfriends over and they made soup for dinner and cake for dessert. The girls stayed up late, playing and chatting long into the evening.
Megan sat around the dining room table after dinner and had cake with her immediate family, who sang to her. At around seven, she got a host of presents and remembered receiving pens, which she really wanted, among the gifts.
Rachel, meanwhile, enjoyed two backyard barbecues each year: one with her friends and one with family and family friends.
Adam enjoyed a sports birthday party that his considerably older cousin and his cousin’s close friend ran at a local gym, where he wore a sports jersey and played basketball and deck hockey.
TBR News Media’s reporter Daniel Dunaief spoke with Shawn Heilbron, athletic director at Stony Brook University the day before the 2024 Homecoming Game. In a wide ranging statement interview, Heilbronn discussed how student athlete GPA has improved to 3.24 from 3.06 a decade ago.
Stony Brook University researchers Fusheng Wang and Dr. Richard Rosenthal
By Daniel Dunaief
Health care providers can use all the help they can get amid an ongoing opioid epidemic that claims the lives of 130 Americans each day.
In a cross-disciplinary effort that combines the computer science skills of Fusheng Wang and the clinical knowledge and experience of doctors including Dr. Richard Rosenthal, Stony Brook University is developing an artificial intelligence model that the collaborators hope will predict risk related to opioid use disorder and opioid overdose.
Fusheng Wang
Wang, a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Computer Science at Stony Brook and Rosenthal, a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health in the Renaissance School of Medicine, received a $1.05 million, three-year contract from the independent funding organization Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI).
“We have patients, clinical stakeholders, clinician scientists and community-based people within the system of care that have an interest at the table in the development cycle of this AI mechanism from day one,” Rosenthal said. The PCORI required that the scientists identify these stakeholders as a part of the research strategy.
The Stony Brook researchers are combining data from Cerner, a major electronic health record vendor under an institutional data usage agreement, with an awareness of the need to create a program that doctors can use and patients can understand.
Traditional public health studies rely on analyzing incidents that occurred. This approach, however, can be applied to population health management through early interventions, Wang explained.
With artificial intelligence, computer scientists typically plug enormous amounts of data into a model that searches through individual or combined factors and comes up with a prediction through a deep learning process.
The factors, which may be in the hundreds or even more, that contributed to the conclusion about a risk level aren’t always clear, which makes them difficult for doctors to explain and for patients to understand. Many of the factors may not be clinically intuitive.
Deep learning models can provide certain types of information about the prediction, such as a ranking of top factors. These factors, however, may not necessarily be clinically relevant, Wang explained.
To balance the need for data-driven analysis with the desire to create a product that people feel confident using, the scientists plan to become a part of the process.
“We are all going to educate each other,” said Rosenthal. “Patients will tell you what it means to be a patient, to be at the receiving end of some doctors telling them something they don’t know” while each group will share their lived experience.
Each participant will be a student and a teacher. Rosenthal believes this stakeholder in the loop approach will create a tool that is clinically relevant.
“There’s an opportunity to produce a highly accurate predictive mechanism that is highly acceptable based on transparency,” he said.
To be sure, people involved in this process could deemphasize a factor that doesn’t make sense to them, but that might otherwise increase the predictive accuracy of the developing model.
“This might come at the expense of the performance metric,” Rosenthal said.
Still, he doesn’t think any human correction or rebalancing of various factors will reduce the value of the program. At the same time, he believes the process will likely increase the chances that doctors and patients will react to its prognosis.
A program with a personal touch
Wang created the model the scientists are using and enhancing. He reached out to several physicians, including Director of the Primary Care Track in Internal Medicine Rachel Wong and later, Rosenthal, for his addiction research expertise.
Dr. Richard Rosenthal
Rosenthal started collaborating on grant proposals focused on big data and the opioid epidemic and attending Wang’s graduate student workgroup in 2018.
Wang recognized the value of the clinician’s experience when communicating about these tools.
“Studies show that patients have lots of skepticism about AI,” he explained. Designing a tool that will generate enough information and evidence that a patient can easily use is critical.
The kind of predictions and risk profiles these models forecast could help doctors as they seek the best way to prevent the development of an addiction that could destroy the quality and quantity of their patients’ lives.
“If we can identify early risk before the patient begins to get addicted, that will be extremely helpful,” Wang added.
If opioid use disorder has already started for a patient, the tool also could predict whether a patient has a high chance of ending treatment, which could create worse outcomes.
Refinements to the model will likely include local factors that residents might experience in one area that would be different for populations living in other regions.
Depending on what they learn, this could allow “us to frame our machine learning questions in a more context-dependent population, population-dependent domain,” Rosenthal said.
Opioid-related health problems in the northeast, in places like Long Island, is often tied to the use of cocaine. In the Southwest, the threat from opioids comes from mixing it with stimulants such as methamphetamines, Rosenthal added.
“Localization increases the accuracy and precision” in these models, he said.
Eventually, the model could include a risk dashboard that indicates what kind of preventive measures someone might need to take to protect themselves.
The scientists envision doctors and patients examining the dashboard together. A doctor can explain, using the model and the variable that it includes, how he or she is concerned about a patient, without declaring that the person will have a problem.
“Given these factors, that puts you at greater risk,” said Rosenthal. “We are not saying you’re going to have a problem” but that the potential for an opioid-related health crisis has increased.
Unless someone already has a certain diagnosis, doctors can only discuss probabilities and give sensible recommendations, Rosenthal explained.
They hope the tool they are developing will offer guidance through an understandable process.
“At the end of the day, the machine is never going to make the decision,” said Rosenthal. With the help of the patient, the clinician can and should develop a plan that protects the health of the patient.
“We’re aiming to improve the quality of care for patients,” he said.
My wife and I have been voting early for several years. We like the convenience of early voting and find that we don’t tend to have to wait too long through the potential long lines of Election Day.
This election day, in particular, seemed problematic to us, as talk of unofficial and party-trained monitors, some of whom are watching over the elections themselves while others are observing the actions of other monitors, are poised to pollute the process.
We drove to the early site, looking carefully from the road at the number of cars in the parking lot and the length of the line out of the building.
If the line exceeded a certain visual marker, we would have returned at another day and time. When we were sure the queue was shorter than our maximum, we pulled into the parking lot, where we immediately found a spot.
Standing outside in an organized, relaxed and respectful crowd, we opened our phones to take a last look at the backgrounds of some of the down ballot candidates and at the experiences of would-be officials who were unaffiliated with either major party.
An elderly black woman appeared behind us, holding a tiny bijou cream-colored dog inside her coat.
“I hope that dog has an official ID,” I offered, as she smiled at me. “Which way is she leaning this year?”
The woman shared a broad and welcoming grin and said her dog’s papers were up to date.
As other voters joined the line or exited the polling place, several people came over and chatted with her about her dog.
“I miss my dog so much,” a man said, as he asked if he could pet her puppy.
She said he was welcome to visit.
“I lost my dog a few months after I lost my wife,” the man said, barely holding back tears.
The rest of us offered sympathetic glances at the man, who, despite sharing a palpable and visible grief, had come out to vote.
The line continued to build, with a 30-something man in scrubs standing next to the woman with the dog.
As others waited for their turn behind us, almost everyone grinned at the dog whose calm demeanor and charm could easily have won him votes if he were running for office.
Once inside the building, the election official with a name tag that read Sarah asked a woman to dispose of an almost empty drink container in the nearby restroom. Sarah promised to hold the woman’s spot, while the voter deposited her trash.
When my wife and I got to the front, Sarah asked the woman behind us if her dog was a service dog. The woman hesitated and then said she had a bad ankle and would have to carry the dog all the way back to the car.
Sarah apologized and also planned to hold her spot. I walked to the open check in desk, handed over my driver’s license and was asked to pronounce my last name. I was directed to another line, where I waited until another official took me to a voting machine.
The woman who returned her dog to her car was standing at a desk. She said she had considered describing her dog as a service animal, but thought better of lying.
Once at a voting machine, I started making my choices.
“Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris, Kamala Harris,” a Black girl who was about 10 years old shouted in a loud crescendo as her mother stood in the machine next to mine.
“So sorry,” her mother sighed, smiling at me, as she tried to contain her daughter’s excitement.
This young girl clearly didn’t share any of the fear, name calling, or anger of this election. She read a name she knew and was overflowing with unbridled enthusiasm.
As a parent, I wished I had told that woman to videotape her daughter’s delight, not only for the historic nature of the moment, but also to capture the sound of an enthralled, youthful voice.
It’s back, bigger than ever, with an added Peter-and-the-Wolf style musical debut.
This year’s version of Science on Stage at Stony Brook University, which brings together the research and life experiences of three scientists with the artistic interpretation and creative talents of three playwrights, focuses on the theme of climate change.
Before the reading of the plays at the free October 28th event at the Staller Center’s Recital Hall, a group of eight high school students and two graduate students will perform an original piece of music composed by Professor Margaret Schedel called “Carnival of the Endangered Animals” (see accompanying story below).
Christine Gilbert with graduate student Emily Gelardi. Photo by Conor Harrigan
The event, which has a seating capacity of 379, which is almost triple the potential audience size from last year, and requires advance registration, is sponsored by the Collaborative for the Earth (C4E).
The organizers of Science on Stage “want people to be thinking about [climate change] from new ways or with new perspectives,” said Heather Lynch, inaugural director of the C4E and Endowed Chair for Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science and Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution.
In these performances, professional actors, directed by Logan Vaughn, share a dramatic reading of the scripts, titled “Ghost Forest,” “Counterfactual,” and “Resplendence.” After the performance, the scientists and playwrights will participate in a question and answer session led by Lecturer J.D. Allen, who is managing editor of NPR affiliate WSHU.
Provost Carl Lejuez, whose office provides funding for the C4E, celebrated the ongoing collaboration between the humanities and the sciences.
“Science on Stage is one of our true interdisciplinary gems,” Lejuez explained. “In a time of such misinformation, the arts provide such a powerful vehicle to communicate science in accessible and inspiring ways.”
Indeed, in addition to hearing an original piece of music and listening to a reading of the plays, audience members will have the opportunity to share their perspectives on climate science before and after the performance.
Christine Gilbert, who holds a joint appointment at the School of Communication and Journalism and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and is one of the participating scientists, is conducting a study of the effect of the experience with audience members.
Attendees can participate in a short mobile-based survey before the plays and immediately afterwards. A social scientist, Gilbert will follow up with those members who are willing to engage in individual interviews in the weeks after the performance.
Event organizers wanted to know “what is it that’s so magical in the intersection between science, humanity and art” that drew a crowd so large last year that the fire marshal had to turn people away, said Gilbert.
By polling the audience, Gilbert, who was one of the people who couldn’t watch the show last year, hopes to explore the effect of teaching complex science in this forum.
She also hopes to assess how audience members feel after hearing more about climate change and plans to share what she learns with Stony Brook and with the broader scientific community through a published paper.
Heavy and humorous
The scientists and the playwrights appreciated the opportunity to learn from each other and to engage in a creative effort designed to use science, or the life of scientists, to appeal to audiences.
Lynch, who participated in the Science on Stage effort last year, suggested that this year’s plays are powerful and evocative.
“These are deep, adult serious issues,” she said, cautioning that the language includes some cursing and that the themes include loss, parenthood and grief. “This is not Disney.”
To be sure, the plays blend a wide range of emotions.
“With short plays that deal with heavier topics, playwrights will gravitate towards humor,” said Ken Weitzman, Founder and Associate Professor of Theater at Stony Brook, who started Science on Stage virtually in 2020. “It’s how we engage” and commune with an audience.
Counterfactual
Playwright Mat Smart
Author of the play “The Agitators,” about a true narrative describing the 45-year friendship between suffragist Susan B. Anthony and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Smart said he has taken long Uber rides with people whose views differ from his, leading to spirited conversations.
When Smart described his experiences to Reed, they discovered they had similar interactions.
While much of the script involves a combination of conversations and ideas, Smart explained that part of the dialogue in the play came from a discussion he and Reed had about food choices and climate change.
The interaction about cheeseburgers is “based on something [Reed] said to me,” Smart said. Reed explained the high carbon footprint of a cheeseburger, although he urged Smart to cut back rather than eliminate them from his diet.
“The play is about two people who see things very differently who choose to have a dialogue and to have a tough conversation,” said Smart. “They’re both affected by it.”
Ghost forest
Playwright Gab Reisman
Elizabeth Watson, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution, teamed up with Gab Reisman, who wrote “Ghost Forest.”
In this play, a climate researcher’s subjects spring to life as she writes an important grant proposal.
While it doesn’t reflect how field research or grant writing typically goes, it does capture “some things that have happened to me,” Watson said.
Her field work has involved considerable challenges, including getting stuck in the mud, being covered in ticks, crawling across mudflats, and being abandoned on a raft in a lagoon.
Watson appreciates how the artistic effort allows her to connect with people who probably aren’t the same ones who would read a publication she wrote or come to a presentation.
She also added that the world has what it needs to deal with climate change and that people need to understand the kinds of partnerships and actions that make a difference.
Resplendence
Playwright Kareem Fahmy
After speaking with Gilbert, playwright Kareem Fahmy wrote “Resplendence,” which follows three generations of a family who try to save their island off the coast of Maine.
The New England State is an important setting for playwright and scientist.
“Maine has such a special place in my heart,” said Gilbert, who has family in the state and attended college at the University of Maine. The pull of the “wild, eastern coast of Maine is so ubiquitous.”
Gilbert appreciated how Fahmy did a “great job of personalizing the context” of the state.
The challenge of preserving destinations, particularly those close to sea level, will likely persist.
“When you do any research about climate change, you have to be aware that this is not just a problem for people living today, but for people 200 years from now,” Gilbert said.
Weitzman said the play was an epic despite its short running time and thought it was “quite touching.”
Beyond the performance
Weitzman suggested that the plays can provide an educational component beyond the confines of the Staller Recital Hall.
While people can’t produce the plays as part of paid entertainment, teachers can read and use them in the classroom. Actors Bill Heck, April Matthis, Tina Benko, Mandi Masden and Taylor Crousore will provide dramatic reading of the plays.
In a short time, the actors are “practically off the book,” as they embrace the opportunity to bring the words to life, Weitzman said.
He suggested the plays offer a glimpse into researchers’ lives. “Here is this person on the front lines. I’m surprised at the angles that are taken” in these plays.
Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook will present this year’s Science on Stage: Climate Edition on Monday, Oct. 28 at 4 p.m. Doors open at 3:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public but reservations are strongly recommended.
To register, go to: https://bit.ly/4dcDtsi or click here.
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SBU’s Margaret Schedel brings endangered species to life through musi
Margaret Schedel discusses the ‘Carnival of the Endangered Animals’ with the band and conductor Justin Stolarik during rehearsal. Photo by Heather Lynch
Science on Stage at Stony Brook University added a new dimension to the performance this year, as Margaret Schedel, Associate Professor of Music, composed “Carnival of the Endangered Animals.” The original music, which will debut on Oct. 28 at 4 p.m. at the Staller Center’s Recital Hall, is a recreation of the sounds of a wide range of animals who are in danger of becoming extinct.
“It’s melodic, interrupted by moments of trying to translate” the calls from these animals, Schedel said.
Ken Weitzman, Founder and Associate Professor at Stony Brook, appreciates how quickly music can resonate for audiences.
“Music appeals to the emotions,” said Weitzman. “I’m jealous of how quickly music can do in 10 seconds what it takes me hours to do.”
The animals featured in the piece, along with the instrument that captures their sounds, are: the Atlantic Right Whale (Marimba); the A’kikiki bird, which is a Hawaiian honeycreeper (flute); Sumatran Tiger (trumpet); sage grouse (clarinet); Bajii, which is a Yangtze river dolphin; and the Jiangtun, which is a Yangtze finless porpoise (four-hand piano); gorilla (french horn); African bush elephant (trombone); Koala (bassoon); and the penguin (oboe).
Schedel plans to share information about each piece, which eight area high school students and two graduate students will perform, with the audience through a QR code, so they can connect the sounds with the message or visuals she was conveying.
Schedel tried to use a logical progression of the instruments, mixing up the woodwinds, percussion and brass.
Threatened by land development, the sage grouse includes high and low notes from the clarinet that gets covered up by the sounds of a flute and trumpet, imitating the sounds excavators make when they back up and develop McMansions.
Endangered by the spread of avian malaria carried by mosquitoes, the Hawaiian A’kikiki bird had been able to evade these insects by traveling higher up the mountain, where the colder temperatures kills the mosquitoes. That is not happening as much because global warming is enabling the blood sucking creatures to survive at higher elevation.
The sage grouse music starts with a melodic theme on the flute and as it goes higher, the theme becomes compressed. The buzzing brass, meanwhile, gets louder and louder as the mosquito pursues its meal, infecting the bird with a lethal parasite.
Reflecting the struggle for survival these creatures face, the Yangtze river dolphin, which had about 20 members when Schedel first started composing the music, may have become extinct by the time of the performance. That is, in part, why she combined the dolphin and the finless porpoise on the four hand piano.
As for the sounds of the elephant, Schedel recalled a safari she had experienced when she had been in South Africa. Elephants charged at Schedel and her group, who had come too close to the younger ones in the herd.
The elephants growled at Schedel and her companions.
“You can feel it in your chest, the sound waves moving,” she said. “Little by little, the younger ones put up their trunks and eventually a big momma elephant with a broken tusk put up her trunk, which is a symbol of, “we are calm,’” she said. With the trombone representing the elephant, the bass drum connotes its growling sounds.
When she was growing up, Schedel listened to the Leonard Bernstein version of “Peter and the Wolf” so many times that the recording is “nearly dead,” she laughed. She hopes people enjoy her piece with the same energy and excitement, connecting the sounds and the stories with the endangered animals.
Schedel described the experience of creating the music as a “labor of love.”
The American Society for Microbiology named Stony Brook University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology a “Milestone” program on Oct. 17th, recognizing the department’s historical research contributions in fields ranging from Lyme disease to polio virus, and infection and vaccines.
Stony Brook is the 20th program to receive this distinction from the ASM, joining Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as the second such distinguished program on Long Island, and the fourth in the state.
It’s a “shared distinction among all the friends and colleagues from the department over the years” since its inception in 1972, said Carol Carter, Distinguished Professor in the department, and recent inductee into the National Academy of Sciences.
“It’s a family-community [honor],” she continued.
The Milestone recognition from the ASM raises the profile of the department and the university, as it recognizes its historical contribution to the field, and encourages and inspires the growing staff in a department in which basic research can lead to breakthrough discoveries.
“This is not an award or discovery for the last year or year before,” said Kevin Gardner, Vice President for Research and member of the Office of the President. “This is for historical levels of achievement over a really long period of time.”
Gardner planned to join department members, politicians including Assemblymember Edward Flood (R-Port Jefferson) and executives at ASM, as part of the recognition ceremony. The ASM, which was founded in 1899, and has over 32,000 members, is a “high-quality professional society and is about as good as they get,” Gardner added.
“It’s a tremendous honor.”
Theresa Koehler, president of ASM, will give a speech on the historic microbial science accomplishments at Stony Brook and designate the site officially a Milestone program.
Professor Emeritus, Nassau Community College/ University Medical Center and ASM Member, Lorraine Findlay, will also attend.
The ASM has been recognizing Milestones in Microbiology sites since 2002, when the first such honoree, Selman Waksam’s Laboratory at Rutgers University, received the honor.
“The program celebrates groundbreaking achievements that have shaped our understanding of microbiology and inspire future generations,” ASM Archivist Colleen Puterbaugh explained in an email.
The Stony Brook Department of Microbiology and Immunology has made the kind of fundamental discoveries regarding how cells work and how DNA and RNA and the different genetic building blocks come together that have led to treatments for diseases like polio, Gardner added.
“These types of recognition really help put the word out about what we’ve done and continue to do,” said David Thanassi, Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “It helps build morale” and aids in recruiting additional faculty.
Last year, the department added four faculty members and is in the process of searching for another person to join.
In the wake of the COVID Pandemic, universities and research facilities have emphasized the importance of microbiology, immunology and virology, which are fields that could help provide the kind of basic science that leads to early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment.
“Other places want virologists, too, because there’s a greater awareness of the need for these types of researchers,” said Thanassi.
Compelling research
In the application Carter helped prepare to submit to the ASM, she focused on three specific basic research achievements that have had an important impact on human health.
Joseph Kates, Founding Chair of the department, discovered that viruses could package enzymes required to copy themselves. His research made it possible to target viral polymerases as a type of therapy.
“Up to that point, it really wasn’t known about the basics of how viruses replicate themselves,” said Carter. “Finding this enzyme that viruses have to carry in their coat meant humans could devise a strategy for countering their ability to replicate.”
When she was considering joining the young state university, Carter interviewed with Kates in 1975. Kates “was so impressive and so much fun,” said Carter, “it was difficult to envision why you wouldn’t come and work in his department.”
Additionally, the ASM considered the research of Jorge Benach, Willy Burgdorfer and scientists from the Rocky Mountain Laboratory, who identified the cause of Lyme disease, which is a particular problem on Long Island.
This work made it possible to create antibiotic therapies.
Benach was able to “isolate the spirochetes from patients and demonstrate that they were the causative agent of Lyme,” said Carter.
Benach also characterized the form of the infection that occurs in dogs. Meanwhile, Eckard Wimmer was the first to describe the chemical synthesis of a polio virus without using a natural template. He was also the co-discoverer, with Vincent Racaniello, of the human receptor for poliovirus.
Wimmer’s work started efforts to synthesize organisms in the absence of a natural template, making it possible to develop new strategies in virus vaccine development.
Two plaques
As a part of the ceremony, the ASM will award Stony Brook two plaques. One of them will be visible in the department itself, while the other will go up in the Renaissance School of Medicine’s lobby, near the dean’s office and the library.
Carter suggested that the department continues to conduct research that is globally important.
“These days, the [discoveries] are not low-hanging fruit,” Carter said.
“The answers don’t come easily. You do feel gratified, whether you or somebody else in your unit, provides some sort of understanding that we didn’t appreciate before,” she continued.
In addition to the principal investigators who conducted research that proved important for human health, Carter added that the students who gained experience and insights at the university have gone on to develop productive careers.
SBU's Elizabeth Watson, second from right, and her team coring.
By Daniel Dunaief
Daniel Dunaief
I used to liken the process to sitting on a highway divider where the speed limit was 70 miles per hour, holding a notebook and trying to read and record as many license plates as I could, sometimes in the pouring rain, under a bright sun, or in thick fog.
Working for a wire service, with its 24-hour news feed and its endless space for stories, was exhilarating and exhausting. My editors sometimes called me at 4 a.m. to tell me about an important story that was breaking and to encourage me to come into the office to get to work.
Oh, and every three months, when the companies I covered reported earnings, I’d arrive at work for at least a week around 7 in the morning, wait for the numbers to come out, and then spend the day reading the reports, talking with analysts and investors, getting on media conference calls with top executives and watching the stock price of the company rise and fall.
My job was to search through all that information to anticipate how people would react to piles of electronic news.
It was a great opportunity to write on deadline and to experience the absurd. One day, I helped write a few headlines and then had to use the bathroom. As I pushed the door open, my editor, following uncomfortably closely behind me, hovered.
“Can I help you?” I asked, as I stopped and turned around.
“Yeah, how long are you going to be in here?” he asked in his usual staccato, urgent tone.
“As long as it takes,” I shrugged.
“Yeah, well, there’s a headline out there and you need to send out the first version of the story within 15 minutes,” he reminded me, as if I didn’t know our rules.
“I know,” I said, “and I’m sure my system will comply with the requirements.”
Those were tough days at the office.
I’m sure everyone has difficult days at work, whether it’s a police officer dealing with someone who is in an altered, drug-induced state who may be a danger to himself or others, a teacher helping a high-stress student prepare for a standardized test, a truck driver taking a long detour around a crash site, or any of the many other possible strains or obstacles between the start of the day and the workload.
Recently, I spoke with several climate scientists who are a part of the Science on Stage free celebration at Stony Brook University’s Staller Center, which is coming up on October 28th at 4 p.m. (see related story in the Arts & Lifestyles section).
These scientists endure everything from creature discomforts, to resistance to the work they’re doing, to their own deadlines and the need to conduct their studies, publish their results and apply for funding.
Indeed, Elizabeth Watson, Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University, shared several challenging moments.
“I’ve gotten stuck in the mud, covered with ticks, I’ve gotten Lyme, crawled across mudflats, pushed boats across mudflats, had to row our power boat back to the launch ramp more than once, [and] got forgotten about on a raft in a lagoon,” Watson wrote in an email.
Each of those challenges could have become the focal point of action for a biopic about a scientist.
Heather Lynch, Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution, explained that her research on penguins in Antarctica requires considerable advanced planning.
“The main challenge of working in Antarctica is really the uncertainty imposed by the weather and logistics,” she explained in an email. “It’s not enough to have Plan B, it’s more like Plan B through Plan F and then some. Covid and now avian flu have made an already difficult situation even harder.”
Still, at their most challenging moments, waiting for the weather to change, hoping someone will remember to pick them up, or living without creature comforts, these researchers find joy and derive satisfaction in doing valuable and constructive work.
“I’m like a bricklayer, adding more bricks to an enormous wall of knowledge that was started long before I started working on penguins and will continue to be built long after,” Lynch wrote.
Or, to put it another way, Watson wrote that “I love my job! No regrets.”
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