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Daniel Dunaief

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Florence Aghomo in Madagascar. Photo courtesy Florence Aghomo

By Daniel Dunaief

Don’t say “no” to Florence Aghomo.

A graduate student at Stony Brook University who was born and raised in Cameroon, Aghomo’s ability to get past no, don’t, and shouldn’t led to a continent-hoping life complete with a recent compelling discovery in the rainforest of Madagascar.

Working on her PhD research in the laboratory of Distinguished Professor Patricia Wright, Aghomo went north in Ranomafana National Park when almost every other researcher has gone south in the national park. She was searching for a type of lemur called the Milne-Edwards’s Sifaka when she came upon a large hole on a steep surface.

The fossilized hippo bones, including a tusk and a mandible. Photo courtesy Patricia Wright

She suggested to her guide that it was a cave. Her guide insisted she was wrong. When she spoke with Wright, her advisor also was unconvinced.

Aghomo, however, was sure that what she saw was similar to the caves she studied in the class of Adjunct Lecturer Dominic Stratford, who has a dual position at Wits University in South Africa.

In November, several months after Aghomo’s initial discovery, a team of scientists trekked into the remote part of the rainforest in the north.

“It’s very, very difficult terrain,” Wright said.

The group found 13 caves, one of which, to their amazement, contained fossilized bones.

“This is impossible,” Wright recalled thinking. “Bones don’t fossilize in the rainforest. Everyone knows that.”

But, as the evidence suggested, they can and they do.

The researchers initially thought the unexpected bones were a pig.

“I’m saying, ‘No, it’s not a wild pig,’” said Wright. “That is a hippopotamus. They couldn’t believe it.”

Indeed, while three species of pygmy hippopotami have been discovered in parts of the island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent, none have been discovered in the rainforest.

Once the group at Centre ValBio, the research station in Ranomofana National Park run by Wright, confirmed the discovery, Wright immediately took two actions.

First, she wrote to Stratford.

“This is what we found and it is your fault for teaching Florence how to look for a cave,” Wright said. “It’s your responsibility to come over and help us. I’m not a paleontologist and you are.”

Stratford described the first few weeks after the discovery as frantic, as he had to grade papers, apply for a visa and make complicated travel plans – all before any possible rain washed away this remarkable discovery.

Stratford was thrilled with the finding.

“It was great to know that something you teach at Stony Brook University in the middle of the Northeast has helped somebody make a discovery on the other side of the planet in a rainforest,” said Stratford. The discovery “couldn’t be further away from where we are right now, sitting here in the snow.”

She Wright also wrote to the Leakey Foundation to secure emergency funds to bring experts to the area quickly before the rainy season threatened to wash away this remarkable find.

“This was a really great opportunity to use these emergency funds and is exactly the kinds of things we want to do,” said Carol Ward, co-chair of the Scientific Executive Committee for Paleoanthropology at the Leakey Foundation. “To find a cave system in this rainforest that’s preserving these fossils is really special.”

Acidic rainforest soils make the discovery of fossils in these areas rare.

Seeing the bones

Once Aghomo was able to see the fossilized bones, Wright appreciated the variety of information they these fossils might contain.

The bones had a mandible with molars that “look like flowers,” Wright said. “They had a really nice wear pattern.”

Based on the amount of wear on the teeth, Wright estimates that the individual hippo might have been a young adult when it died.

The collection of bones also included a tusk and several leg bones.

Stratford, who helped carefully excavate the bones with researchers from the University of Antananrivo (Tana), believes this pygmy hippo likely died in the cave. He is hopeful that they might find other parts of the same hippo’s skeleton that got washed into different parts of the cave.

Relatively speaking, this hippo has a smaller cranium and longer legs than similar species on the island nation. Wright suspects that the hippo is a different species from the three that have been categorized in Madagascar.

The bones are sitting in a refrigerator at CVB and Wright hopes to bring them to Stony Brook by some time around May, when Stratford and others might be able to examine them.

Researchers are hoping to answer several questions about the animal, including the age of the fossil as well as the food in its diet based on whatever they can extract from the teeth.

Searching other caves

Researchers, meanwhile, have discovered a tusk from another hippo in another nearby cave.

Wright is excited about the possibility of finding other fossilized bones in caves created by granite boulders that tumbled down a steep slope. Some of the caves have water running at the bottom of them, which can be meters down from their entrance. Scientists used ropes to descend into the caves.

Wright, who has won a range of awards from her research on these quirky lemurs and was the subject of the Morgan Freeman-narrated film “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar,”  believes some of these caves may reveal a whole new set of fossil lemurs.

Wright hopes to return to Madagascar next summer to do the rest of the excavation with paleontologists.

As for Aghomo, the eagerness to blaze her own trail that led her to find these caves in an isolated area is part of a lifelong pattern in which persistence and a willingness to follow difficult paths has paid off.

When she was younger, Aghomo wanted to work in the forest. Her father, Jean-Marie Fodjou, however, suggested such difficult physical work might not be especially challenging for a woman.

Her father didn’t think she would be comfortable walking distances in difficult terrain, crossing rivers, and carrying heavy loads.

Aghomo, however, recognized that it’s “something I want to do.”

The path to Stony Brook wasn’t immediate either. The first year she applied to the graduate program, she sent her application to the wrong department.

In her second year, she was accepted in the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences but found it difficult to get a visa. Finally, in her third year, she was accepted and received her visa.

This past December, Aghomo won the Young Women in Conservation Biology Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, which recognizes the work of young women in Africa who advance conservation biology.

Recently, Aghomo was back home with her father, who is “so proud of me.”

While she didn’t listen to his advice about staying out of the rainforest, he is pleased that he urged her to pursue her interests to the best of her ability.

“He told me, ‘Do it as well as you can,’” said Aghomo.

Despite the challenge of trekking to parts of a Madagascar rainforest that others don’t generally visit, of following her own path into the forest and of persisting in her efforts to start a PhD program at Stony Brook, Aghomo remains committed to following her own path.

She is hopeful that the discovery of fossils in a few caves in Madagascar leads to additional searches in other rainforests.

After this finding, perhaps paleoanthropologists will “think of searching in Central African countries for fossils.”

As for Ward, she believes the fossilized bones from an extinct species might provide information about human interactions with the world and climate and environmental change that “we might learn from today. There might be lessons about what’s happening now that [we can get] buy looking at what happened in the past.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

We recognize and register the temperature as soon as we leave our climate controlled house, car or office and step foot outside.

Cold, windy air might cause us to raise our shoulders, protecting our necks the way frightened turtles might pull back towards the shell when they sense a threat.

We have developed a real feel temperature or a “it feels like” temperature. Yes, it’s 28 degrees, but it feels like 12, which, to some, is more like negative 20.

How people experience temperature varies widely. An 85 degree day, with bright sunshine, could make one person feel as if he’s ready to conquer the world and is absorbing the sun’s energy.

Another person, say me, for example, might step out into that same temperature and instinctively search for shade, an air conditioner or a place near the water.

Many of us have friends, coworkers, spouses, children or roommates who prefer temperatures that are diametrically opposed to our own heat or cold sensitivity.

If my house were, say, 66 degrees, I would likely feel comfortable, while my wife would probably come into my home office wearing a sweater, gloves and a frown.

Taking out the financial part of the equation, people can and often do battle for control of the thermostat.

Differences between the sexes can explain some of this temperature disconnect.

Beyond describing the different cultures, expectations, communications and score keeping between men and women, the metaphor from the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” also might aptly capture the temperature differences, as Venus, with its gaseous carbon dioxide atmosphere, is the hottest planet and Mars is the fourth hottest. Neptune, incidentally, is the coldest.

While the gender generalization may apply in some cases, that’s never been my family’s reality. My daughter and I tend to run hotter, while my wife and son are cooler and prefer some heat as a counterbalance.

During the extremes of either season, half of the family is comfortable while the other half is either looking to dive into a pool of ice water or is eager to sit with a book near a roaring fire.

Many years ago, my wife and I attended a spectacularly hot college reunion. Well, it was incredibly hot for me. My wife left my side for a moment and returned with some ice cubes. She dumped them down my back and was shocked when I didn’t arch my back or pull my shirt out of my waist to dump the ice on the floor. The ice provided welcome relief.

The moderate middle tends to keep the family happy, as no one is complaining about uncomfortable extremes.

Given temperature sensitivities in our house, we all tend to be closest to our temperature best in the fall and spring.

Of course, as with everything else in life, different stages bring different temperature sensitivities.

When my wife was pregnant with each of our children, her body ran much hotter. We took winter walks that would have been almost inconceivable, so to speak, before we conceived.

The passage of decades, however, has changed how I experience temperature. I have become much more comfortable sitting in a warm baseball stadium and am not so tough when confronted with single digit temperatures.

To be sure, I’m still not able to wallow in a jacuzzi or an unusually hot pool for any length of time without feeling as if my skin is starting to boil.

Recognizing that what constitutes comfortable temperatures varies, I wonder why people so often imagine hell as a place with fire and brimstone.

The poet Robert Service wrote a wonderful and lengthy poem about Sam McGee, which a bus driver recited from memory when my wife and I took a trip to Alaska. With beluga whales we could see surfacing in the distance as we drove along the coast, she shared “The Cremation of Sam McGee” about someone who left Tennessee to search for gold in the Arctic only to discover that the cold was much easier to find than gold.

Sam is so spectacularly cold that he delights in the idea of being cremated when he inevitably dies.

For Sam, and perhaps many others, heat might be far preferable to a frigid afterlife.

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SBU's David Wrobel with Wolfie. Photo by Anna Maria Gounaris

By Daniel Dunaief

David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook University since August, can relate to the school’s students.

Like about a third of the students at the downstate flagship SUNY university, Wrobel is the first member of his family to attend college.

David Wrobel. Photo by John Griffin

“I’ve had the advantage of that social mobility that higher education can provide,” said Wrobel, who grew up in England. To have the opportunity to facilitate that for thousands of other students is “hugely important and meaningful.”

Provost Carl Lejuez appreciates Wrobel’s passion for education and for providing opportunities to students from a wide array of backgrounds and experiences.

“For first generation students, there are some challenges that even the most empathetic, well-meaning person may want to help with, but because they don’t have that experience, they don’t know,” said Provost Carl Lejuez. “He brings both the experience of some of the things these students are going through as well as the humanity and personality that is very empathetic.”

Indeed, for Wrobel, who was dean at the University of Oklahoma for six years before joining Stony Brook, his new job appealed to him because of the opportunity to use education to help students expand their horizons and seek new opportunities.

Stony Brook has been successful in the area of social mobility, enabling students “from more disadvantaged backgrounds coming to the university” to complete their degrees at a high rate, said Wrobel. Higher education can perform the role it should as an “engine of democracy.”

Wrobel, who is a tenured professor in the Departent of History, oversees the breadth and depth of offerings at Stony Brook.

Lejuez suggested that Wrobel relates well to students from every background.

“You never see him at an event talking to other administrators,” said Lejuez. “He’s trying to really get in there and talk to people and make them feel welcome.”

Indeed, within his first few weeks of arriving, Wrobel met with several students who shared their concerns about visual arts, particularly as the music and art departments are about to move during an HVAC renovation project.

Wrobel worked with the students and partners around the university, including staff, the fire marshal and others, to see where they can display artwork and perform music.

The Arts Everywhere effort, which is “big in spirit” but “small in funding” provides an opportunities for the “work of students to be better understood by other students on campus,” Wrobel said.

Research opportunities

As a member of the Association of American Universities, an exclusive club that recognizes universities committed to research and education, Stony Brook provides students with opportunities to contribute to the forefront of new information.

“We have undergraduates doing research on genes that are led by some of the most important scientists in the world,” said Wrobel. These students are “not doing research that is tangentially associated with important science. They are contributing to the research teams” that lead to societal and life improvements.

These research contributions across a wide range of fields can and should address the question some people have asked about the return on investment of a college education.

Students are working in fields such as quantum science, artificial intelligence, climate and health.

“We should take great pride in the fact that, as a university, we are answering that question: why does a degree matter,” said Wrobel.

‘Not a spectator sport’

From left to right: Bonita London, associate dean of research development and communications; Danielle Papaspyrou, senior administrator for staff and faculty affairs; AnnaMaria Gounaris, assistant to the dean; Michael d’Ambrosio, senior director of development; Lois Carter, assistant dean for faculty affairs and personnel; Rachel Rodriguez, director of communications; Carol Davies, assistant director for budget and finance, and David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Photo courtesy Stony Brook University

The university is incorporating into the degree programs the kind of learning experiences that prepare students for success in areas ranging from private and industry positions to government jobs.

Wrobel is eager to demonstrate how “education is not a spectator sport” with every prospective student and their parents. Students become a “full participant not just in learning existing knowledge, but in the process of creating new knowledge.”

At the same time, the university is committed to enhancing the abilities of its educators.

“You work to reward teaching excellence at every level,” said Wrobel. “You make it clear that teaching does matter.”

Teachers need to refine their approaches and methods based on the way students learn, which includes working with technology and its possibilities more effectively than in the past

Wrobel meets with the Dean’s Student Advisory Committee, which includes students from numerous majors, to learn about student needs. These can include expanding quieter study spaces or finding places for more collaborative work.

Additionally, the committee helps select outstanding teaching faculty.

“Faculty go to conferences to improve their research skills,” said Lejuez. “We want to think about teaching in the same way.”

Lejuez appreciates how Wrobel engages with students to understand what would improve the university’s learning environment.

The Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching provides opportunities not only for those educators who might be struggling to connect with their students, but also for those who want to improve their craft, Lejuez said.

As a part of student evaluations of their educators, Stony Brook has improved the quality of questions in its educator evaluations for the spring semester, which Lejuez hopes encourages more students to offer valuable feedback.

A dedicated educator

In addition to serving as an administrator, Wrobel hopes to put his experience to work as an educator himself by next spring.

Wrobel could imagine leading or contributing to several possible classes.

He would enjoy teaching a graduate seminar that addresses the history of American thought and culture from the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War in the 1870’s to the end of the New Deal in the 1940s.

At the University of Oklahoma, he also taught an introductory survey class that first year students typically took. The course covered the period from the end of the Civil War to the present.

“I love the idea that I have the opportunity to engage with brand new students when they come to the university,” he said.

Wrobel would like to share a view of America from the Great Depression through the Vietnam War, focusing on John Steinbecks view of the core political and social debates of the time.

Steinbeck was “better than just about any other author at finding what is extraordinary in the lives of ordinary Americans,” said Wrobel.

As for his roles at Stony Brook, Wrobel is “thrilled to have the opportunity to help first generation students and other financially disadvantaged students find their way.”

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These composite brain images from the study of WTC responders reveal evidence of amyloidosis. Areas shaded in red and yellow indicate regions of the brain with amyloid. Image courtesy of Sean Clouston, Stony Brook Medicine

By Daniel Dunaief

Even over 23 years after first responders raced to the smoldering site of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, many emergency crews continue to battle the effects of their exposure.

With a combination of toxic aerosolized particles infusing the air, first responders who didn’t wear personal protective equipment and who had the highest degree of exposure have suffered from a range of symptoms and conditions.

Sean Clouston

In a recent study of 35 World Trade Center first responders in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, lead author Sean Clouston, who is a Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine, found evidence of amyloid plaques, which are often linked to Alzheimer’s Disease.

The paper links exposure to a neurodegenerative protein.

Research with World Trade Center first responders not only benefits those who worked tirelessly to try to find survivors and to restore the area after the attack, but also could help other people who inhale aerosolized toxins.

Indeed, such research could help those who are spending hours battling the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, which have been consuming forests and trees, homes and commercial buildings, at a furious and uncontrolled pace.

People have a feeling that fresh air is safe, but what scientists have learned from their studies of the World Trade Center first responders is that “just being six feet away from a pile of rubble that’s smoldering, even if you can’t see that it’s dangerous, doesn’t mean it isn’t,” said Clouston. “There is at least some risk” to human health from fires that spew smoke from burned computers and refrigerators, among others.

Given the variety of materials burned in the fires, Minos Kritikos, Senior Research Scientist and a member of the group in the collaborative labs of Clouston and Professor Benjamin Luft, suspects that a heterogeneity of particles were in the air.

People in Los Angeles who are inhaling these particles can have them “linger in their circulation for years,” said Kritikos. “It’s not just a neurological issue” as the body tries to deal with carrying around this “noxious” particulate matter. Since most neurons don’t regenerate, any toxicity induced neuronal death is irreversible, making damage to the brain permanent.

Even in non-emergency situations, people in polluted cities face increased health risks.

“There is a recognition that air pollution is a major preventable cause of Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias, as noted by the latest Lancet Commission,” Clouston explained.

Two likely entry points

People who breathe in air containing toxic chemicals have two likely pathways through which the particulates enter the body. They can come in through the nose and, potentially, travel directly into the brain, or they can enter the lungs, circulate through the body and enter the head through the blood-brain barrier. The olfactory route is more direct, said Kritikos. 

Minos Kritikos in front of Stony Brook Hospital.

The amyloid plaques in these first responders was found primarily in the area near the nose, which supports the idea that maybe inhaling the dust was the problem, Clouston said.

Once these chemicals enter the brain, Clouston and his team believe the body engages defenses that are designed much more for viruses than for toxic compounds. The immune system can encapsulate these chemicals in amyloid plaques.

Amyloid plaques, in moderation and under conditions that protect the brain against pathogens, are a part of a protective and helpful immune response. Too much of a good thing, however, can overwhelm the brain.

“When there’s too much plaque, it can physically disturb neuronal functions and connections,” said Kritikos. “By being a big presence, they can also molecularly and chemically react with its environment.”

A large presence of amyloid can be toxically necrotic to surrounding neural tissue, Kritikos added.

What the scientists believe they are tracking is the footprint of an adaptive response that may not help the brain, Clouston added.

Clouston cautioned that the plaques and cognitive decline could both be caused by something else that scientists haven’t yet seen.

The findings

The research, which used positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging scans to search for evidence of amyloid plaques, found evidence that doesn’t look like old age Alzheimer’s, explained Clouston. Usually these levels of plaques are not located in one spot, but occur throughout the brain during Alzheimer’s. 

The immune response may be causing some of these plaques.

The amount of amyloid plaque doesn’t look like Alzheimer’s Disease and does not appear abnormal in the traditional way of testing, but with careful analysis of the olfactory system, the researchers can find elevated levels.

“I was surprised by how little amyloid was necessary to show this association,” said Clouston.

Researchers at Mt. Sinai have examined the effect of exposure to these same particulates in mice.

“The answer is very much similar to what we see in humans,” said Clouston. “That supports this work.”

To be sure, Clouston and Kritikos are hoping to build on this research. They are particularly interested in following up with participants to measure the rate of change in these plaques from the observed amyloid signals they measured at baseline.

“Doing so would enable us to calculate the rate of amyloid buildup allowing us to assess our responders more precisely, opening doors to possible therapeutic interventions such as the recently approved anti-amyloid therapies,” Kritikos explained. 

Additionally, they hope to expand on the study beyond the 35 people who participated.

It is unclear whether tamping down the immune system could make patients better or worse. By reducing amyloid plaques, scientists might enable the harmful dust to cause damage in other areas of the brain. Alternatively, however, a lower level immune response with fewer plaques might, in the longer term, be better for the brain.

This study “does open the door for some of those questions,” Clouston said. Kritikos and Clouston plan to study the presence of tau proteins and any signs of neurodegeneration in the brains of these first responders.

“More research needs to be done,” Clouston said, which specifically targets different ways of measuring exposure, such as through a biomarker. He’s hoping such a biomarker might be found that tracks levels of exposure.

Future research could also address whether post traumatic stress disorder affects the immune response.

“It’s certainly possible that PTSD is playing a role, but we’re not sure what that might be,” said Clouston.

The researchers are continuing this research as they study the effects of exposure on tau proteins and neurodegeneration.

“We are hopeful that this will be an important turning point for us,” Clouston explained

From the Medditerranean to the Atlantic

Born and raised in Cyprus, Kritikos comes from a large family who are passionate about spending time with each other while eating good food.

He earned his doctorate from the University of Bristol in England.

Kritikos met his wife Jennifer LoPresti Kritikos, who is originally from Shirley, New York, at a coffee shop in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he was doing postdoctoral research.

LoPresti, who works at Stony Brook as the Department Head Administrator for Biomedical Engineering, and Kritikos live in Manorville and have an eight year-old daughter Gia and one-year old son Theseus.

As for his work, Kritikos is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to research with Clouston and Luft, who is the Director of the Stony Brook WTC Health and Wellness Program.

“I’m happy to be in a position whereby our large WTC team (the size of a small village) is constantly pushing forward with our understanding for how these exposures have affected” the brain health of WTC first responders, Kritikos explained. He would like to continue to uncover mechanisms that underly these phenomena, not just for WTC responders but also for similarly exposed populations.

 

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

With temperatures soaring, the large gathering of friends and family used programs to fan themselves.

Sweat dripped down my back as I waited in a wooden chair amid bright sunshine to witness and celebrate my brother’s graduation from Colgate University. Thoughts of my brother mixed with a need to find shade and an ice cold drink.

I had attended several graduations before this one, including my older brother’s and my own from college. I recall my Ward Melville High School graduation being incredibly warm as well, but this one seemed longer and more protracted, perhaps because we had to drive several hours to attend.

I pondered all the phone calls to the 315 area code with my younger brother, who complained about the snow, the ice and the bitter cold temperatures, which was an enormous contrast to the stifling heat of that day.

The commencement speaker, Fay Vincent, was the commissioner of baseball at the time. His tenure started when his predecessor Bart Giamatti died of a heart attack at 51, eight days after banning Pete Rose from baseball for life for gambling on the game. 

I thought about Vincent this week when I learned he had died at the age of 86 from cancer. I remember a surprising number of thoughts and ideas he shared during that momentous and proud day in our family’s life.

Fortunately, the sound system on that field was clear enough that I could hear almost every word he said.

He started off by saying that there’s no such thing as a good, long commencement speech. Similarly, there’s no such thing as a bad, short commencement speech.

The overheated audience laughed at both well-delivered lines, relieved that their children’s names would be called fairly soon.

He had three pieces of advice for these graduates. He recommended that they do something good. While that course of action depended on each person’s definition of “good,” he urged people to use their time effectively and to contribute something to society.

He then suggested that people do something well. Merely taking a job, moving on to graduate school, or doing some kind of internship wasn’t enough: graduates needed to commit to completing any task well, whatever that might be.

And, finally, he urged them to do something. That line also elicited considerable laughter from the appreciative crowd, who, by now, was eating out of his hand and wasn’t so sure they wanted this speech to end too rapidly.

He urged graduates not to return home and spend too much time pondering their future. They needed to go out and experience life. And, of course, once they took whatever next steps, they should remember to engage in good work while committing to doing it well.

Recognizing that the commissioner of baseball couldn’t get off the dais without sharing a baseball story, he also offered one about a rookie umpire.

The Houston Astros were playing the Yankees at the Astrodome in front of more than 50,000 adoring fans during their home opener.

Nolan Ryan, the ace of the team and one of the best pitchers in baseball who still holds the record with seven no hitters, was on the mound.

Mickey Rivers, the speedy Yankees center fielder, was stepping up to the plate. The umpire signaled for Ryan, who entered the Hall of Fame in 1999 as a Texas Ranger, to throw the first pitch.

The ball exploded into the catcher’s mitt. The fans waited as the seconds ticked by. The players looked in for the call. The umpire signaled weakly, “strike?” and extended his arm. The crowd cheered wildly as the catcher tossed the ball back to Ryan, who had started out his 27-year career as a member of the New York Mets.

Rivers took a step out of the box and smiled at the umpire. “Hey, it’s okay, blue,” Rivers said. “I didn’t see it either.”

Vincent told the story and offered his advice with such gusto and passion that I can still recall the speech and its effect on people all these years later. 

Is it possible that Ryan was on another team during that speech and that another batter shared such relatable words to the umpire? Sure. But, I can remember the message, the charm and the encouragement (and, of course, the searing heat) as if I were sitting in that field yesterday, celebrating my brother’s graduation and appreciating Vincent’s word’s of wisdom.

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Alexandra Nowlan

By Daniel Dunaief

The DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory doesn’t just provide educational opportunities for students; it can also inspire their teachers.

That was the case for PhD graduate Alexandra Nowlan, who worked in the lab of Professor Stephen Shea.

When Nowlan met her required teaching component at the center as a part of the graduation requirement for her doctorate, she found educating the next generation inspiring.

“It’s very rewarding to get kids excited about science,” said Nowlan.

Alexandra Nowlan giving a talk at CSHL. Photo from Constance Brukin

Indeed, Nowlan, who did her postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, has taken a job as assistant teaching professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the same institution. She is teaching two neuopsychopharmacology classes and is preparing for an advanced molecular pharmacology class in the fall.

“I was really drawn to outreach opportunities and put more of my focus into teaching,” she said. “The opportunity presented itself, so I jumped at it. I’m having a really good time.”

Established in 1988, the DNA Learning Center was the first site to focus on genetic education for the public, offering classes to students in 5th through 12th grades.

The Learning Center, with sites in five different locations in New York, provides classes and labs for 30,000 students each year.

Amanda McBrien, Assistant Director of the DNA Learning Center, observed Nowlan in action.

“She had a magnetic energy about her,” said McBrien. “She came in and was young, enthusiastic and cool all wrapped into one.”

During a Fun with DNA course in the summer offered in conjunction with Women in Science, Nowlan was the “perfect role model,” McBrien added, who proved to be “utterly approachable” and enthusiastic, making her an engaged presenter.

Students can find information about these classes through the DNA Learning Center and can register for summer courses starting this week.

Recent publication

In addition to her professional journey into teaching, Nowlan recently published the results of a study she conducted in the journal Current Biology based on research conducted at CSHL.

Working with Shea and other scientists who followed her in Shea’s lab, Nowlan studied the way the mouse brain processes sensory signals such as odor and sound as a part of a pup retrieval process.

Important in the behavior of mothers and of surrogates who care for the young, pup retrieval helps ensure that developing mice stay closer to their mothers or caretakers.

“Pup retrieval is one of the most important things for mothers or caregivers,” Shea said in a statement. “It requires the ability to smell and hear the pup. If these things are both important, that may mean they merge somewhere in the brain.”

Indeed, during pup retrieval, neurons from an area of the brain called the basal amygdala carry smell signals to the auditory cortex, which is the brain’s hearing center. The basal amygdala is involved in learning and processing social and emotional signals, linking perception with emotion and social learning.

When Nowlan and others blocked the ability of maternal mice to access smell signals, the mice  didn’t provide their customary parental pup retrieval.

Shea and his lab suspect that what’s reaching the auditory cortex is being filtered through social-emotional signals from basal amygdala neurons.

“We’ve known that pup odor is important,” said Nowlan. “People have eliminated odors and seen deficits.”

Deficits in vocalizations also can affect this behavior.

“The pathway that would allow olfactory signals to reach the auditory cortex was unknown and we’ve identified a pathway that is functionally capable of linking those two senses,” Nowlan explained.

A winding path

Nowlan, who grew up in Williamstown, Massachusetts, played rugby in college at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. While three concussions encouraged her to search for a non-contact sport, it also piqued her interest in neurology.

After she graduated, she worked for four years in the laboratory of Sandeep Robert Datta at Harvard Medical School, where she learned about the importance of the olfactory system.

At the Datta lab, she worked with then postdoctoral researcher Paul Greer, who let a flier on her desk about Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s graduate program.

“The umbrella program appealed to me,” she said. “You could get an education not only in the subject you’re interested in but you also had an opportunity to learn about cancer biology and plant genetics, which was exciting.”

Nowlan attended courses and meetings, interacting with top scientists across a range of fields.

The first year she lived in a house on campus near the water, where she and her fellow graduate students could see the lights of all the buildings at night.

“My classmates and I felt like we were at Hogwarts, this magical science camp,” she said.

Postdoctoral transition

When she was writing her PhD thesis, Nowlan became interested in motivated behaviors.

She had been following reports about the opioid epidemic and knew it was affecting Berkshire County, where she grew up.

She was curious about how opioid use disrupted noradrenaline signaling, which plays an important role in motivation, rewarding and the body’s stress response.

“I wanted to explore how these motivational circuits can get disrupted in examples where drugs that are commonly misused are involved,” she said.

She and others in the lab of Zoe McElligott at the Bowles Center were trying to understand various brain circuits as people undergo the painful experience of addiction withdrawal.

More information about these processes could reduce the negative experience and lead to better and perhaps more effective treatments.

Born on the same day

Nowlan met her husband Craig Jones, a Long Island native, through a dating app.

“I joked when we first met that the algorithm” from the app that brought them together was lazy, she said. They were both born on the same day, just hours apart.

Jones, who works as a user experience designer for fitness company Zwift, is “older and he won’t let me forget it,” said Nowlan.

As for her current teaching role, Nowlan is hoping to emulate the inspirational approach of Enrique Peacock-López, a college professor at nearby Williams College. In addition to coaching a soccer team with his daughter and Nowlan, Enrique-López took time to share chemistry demonstrations in primary school and to bring high school students into his lab.

Nowlan appreciated how Peacock-López connected with students.

“The way he made science exciting and accessible to members of the community is really inspiring,” said Nowlan.

Peacock-López has known Nowlan for decades.

“There’s a lot of satisfaction that I may have contributed a little bit with my grain of salt in their careers,” said Peacock-López. When he teaches, he seeks ways to motivate students to solve problems.

For younger children as a starter experiment, he works with reagents that reveal considerable color or that has fumes.

“They love to hear sounds or see colors,” he said.

Peacock-López’s advice to future teachers is to “interact with students” and get to know them.

A native of Mexico, he promised himself when he started teaching that he would treat students the way he would want to be treated.

As for Nowlan, she is eager to continue the teaching tradition.

“It makes me want to keep giving back and provide opportunities to educate the public about what we’re doing and why it’s interesting and important,” Nowlan said. 

Her goal is to educate the next generation of neuroscientists and curious community members about how discoveries made in the lab are translated into treatments for disease.

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Dr. Aleena Zahra/St. Charles Hospital

By Daniel Dunaief

Bird flu, which is a virus that has so far primarily infected animals, has affected a duck farm in Aquebogue.

Amid concerns about transmission, Crescent Duck Farm, which has operated as a family business since 1908, has had to put down close to 100,000 ducks.

At this point, health officials haven’t reported any cases of humans contracting the virus, although the farm, its workers and doctors have been looking out for signs of illness.

Local doctors suggested that the risk to humans from bird flu is limited to those people who have worked with or handled sick birds.

Dr. Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/ Northwell Health. File photo

The virus “transmits easily from bird to bird, but so far transmission to humans has not occurred to my knowledge,” Dr. Adrian Popp, chair of Infection Control at Huntington Hospital/ Northwell Health and associate professor of medicine at Hofstra School of Medicine, explained in an email. “There is a theoretical possibility that this can occur, but so far, I think we are safe,” as New York State is monitoring exposed workers.

Doctors urged residents to see a healthcare worker if they have any contact with birds and they develop symptoms such as a fever, conjunctivitis (an eye infection that can include redness or watery eyes), or breathing issues.

“Monitor yourself for 10 days after exposure,” urged Dr. Aleena Zahra, infectious disease physician at St. Charles Hospital. “If you develop any symptoms, seek medical attention.”

The treatment for bird flu, which can affect people in ways that are similar to influenza, is to take tamiflu, which is more effective in the earlier stages of an infection.

“If you’re in contact with an animal that is sick, then that would be a potential risk factor,” added Zahra.

Zahra advised residents to avoid picking up a dead bird in their yard without gloves and other safety measures.

Dr. Sharon Nachmann, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, added that the jump to humans from other animals is rarely happening.

People who have become infected are typically recovering, although one person in Louisiana died from the virus.

Despite the relatively low risk, viruses have the ability to mutate, which could make them more transmissible and more dangerous.

CDC silence

At the same time, local doctors are concerned that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stopped publishing information on infectious diseases.

“This is an unprecedented attack on timely access to reports about transmission of various infectious diseases in the country and worldwide,” Popp explained. “It will lead to delayed prevention measures, poor health care, and potentially allowing infectious disease outbreaks to get out of control.”

Dr. Sharon Nachmann/Stony Brook Children’s Hospital

The CDC has created travel bans in the past, but has not closed its reporting on outbreaks, Nachmann said.

“It’s incredibly stressful,” said Nachmann.

Doctors added that they were missing the bigger picture that might offer important information about the source of an illness and the best possible treatment.

“We want to do the best for our patients. We want to tell them that this is working or that is not working and you need a different medication,” Nachmann said.

For right now, doctors are gathering information from state and local officials, said Zahra.

The CDC typically shares details about the specific type of infections in an area or region, its responsiveness to various treatments and its differential impact on any specific subgroup, such as children.

“It is sad to see how political, partisan measures are used to suppress sharing of scientific information between healthcare professionals,” Popp added.

Doctors are hoping for more and better information before too long.

“All we have now is a stop,” said Nachmann. “We don’t know what happens after the stop.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

A few years ago, a friend of mine called the night before a major operation.

I could tell he was nervous. His usual, unflappable voice was weaker and unsteady, as if he weren’t sure how things would go and was reaching out for encouragement.

“There’s pretty much nothing you can do at this point,” I said. “You really don’t need to be sharp or focused or even attentive tomorrow. You better hope the doctor is getting plenty of rest and is at his best.”

“That’s true,” he laughed. “Maybe I should send over a good dinner or encourage him to go to bed early tonight.”

Doctors, like so many other people in other professions, deal with activities and routines that are unimaginable for the rest of us.

As a child, I watched my father slowly and carefully remove glass from the eyes of a construction worker who had been in an accident. I also sat in horror as he ate a steak just hours after being in surgery for most of the day to reconstruct the eye of a local patient who had suffered extensive trauma.

The medical world’s ability to get past the “ick” factor is pretty incredible. These professionals, on whom we rely for our overall health and for the health of our specific organs and systems, improve and extend our lives, offering the best of modern medicine to counteract the effect of bad habits, hidden genetic problems that can complicate and threaten our lives, and pathogens that cause damage and destruction.

Recently, I visited a urologist. If you’ve been reading this column long enough, you might recall that I’ve had kidney stones. These are exceptionally unpleasant, causing pain and vomiting, among other discomforts.

Long ago, I shuffled into an emergency room, bent over double from the pain. After I told the admitting nurse what was wrong, she didn’t even bother with paperwork or with taking my blood pressure. She immediately took me to a room, where another nurse almost instantly provided a painkiller. I am still grateful to them years later.

So, you see, I feel the need to monitor the health of this system to reduce the risk of future such episodes.

This year, I was meeting with a new urologist. I tried not to think about the parts that are unpleasant but that are much less problematic than a kidney stone.

He knocked politely on the door, as if he might have been delivering a dish of salmon with steamed vegetables and couscous.

Who is it? I was tempted to ask in a falsetto voice. What difference did it make? Anyone who knocked was coming in regardless of what I said.

He washed his hands – thankfully – sat down and asked me to tell him about myself.

“My health history?” I wondered.

“No, I mean, are you married, do you have kids, what do you do for a living?”

Well, I write about weird meetings like this. But enough about me, how do you do what you do? I wondered. No, I didn’t say that. I smiled and offered the 20 second tour of my life. 

We even chatted about the Yankees losing Juan Soto to the Mets. Would they be better or worse this year?

After he asked me about my health history, he told me to lower my pants and underwear and put my elbows on the examining table.

“You’re going to feel some pressure as I examine your prostate,” he said.

I thought of my dog, whose head is often in my lap or near my face when they probe parts of his body he’d just as soon no human ever touched. He makes a face I imagine was similar to mine at that moment. Shocked expressions transcend species.

Afterwards, the urologist smiled at me, gave me a quick assessment and told me he wished me and the Yankees well this year.

Later, I tried to imagine sitting at a meal with him, chatting in an airport waiting room, or standing outside the backstop of a softball field as we waited for the chance to hit.

I couldn’t do it. Routine as his work might be for him and necessary as it might be for me, I struggle to disconnect from an exam that is a routine part of his work.

But, hey, I’m not anticipating that either of us will call the other on our birthdays this year. I’m glad he’s there, doing his thing and hope not to need additional services.

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From left, postdoctoral researcher William Thomas, Professor Liliana Dávalos and former undergraduate fellow Maria Alejandra Bedoya Duque. Photo courtesy of William Thomas

By Daniel Dunaief

Captivity causes changes in a brain, at least in the shrew.

Small animals that look like rodents but are related to moles and hedgehogs, shrews have different gene expression in several important areas of their brain during captivity.

In a study led by 2022 Hearst summer Undergraduate Research Fellow Maria Alejandra Bedoya Duque in the lab of Stony Brook Professor Liliana Dávalos, shrews in captivity had  different gene expression in the cortex, hippocampus and olfactory bulb. These brain areas are important for cognition, memory and environmental sensing.

“I was very surprised by what we found,” said Dávalos. While she expected that the research might uncover differences between the brains of captive and wild animals, she didn’t expect the changes to be as many or as strong.

The change in brain activity could offer potential alternative explanations for studies that explore the effect of various experiments on animals kept in captivity.

“It could be very useful to find out if these environmental influences could be confounding,” said Dávalos. “We don’t know all the dimensions of what captivity is doing.”

Additionally, brain activity changes in captivity for shrews in terms of the transcripts that are over or under expressed mirror those found in humans who have neurological changes such as major depressive disorder or neuro degenerative disorders.

“How these [changes] influence behavior or cognition is a separate question,” Dávalos added.

To be sure, extrapolating from shrews to humans is different and requires careful analysis, Dávalos explained.

Humans and shrews have distinct life history, ecology, body size and other characteristics. While scientists can study genes they think might have similar functions, more studies are necessary to determine the effects of those genes in expression and how similar they are to those studied in humans or mice.

Dávalos does not expect to find a silver bullet that reorganizes human brains or a gene or pathway that’s going to revolutionize neurodegenerative research.

Nonetheless, in and of itself, the study suggested opportunities for further research and exploration into the effects of captivity on animals in general and, in particular, on their mental processes, which are affected by changes in conditions and needs in their environment.

A foundation for future work

Maria Alejandra Bedoya Duque

The study, which was recently published in the journal Biology Letters, grew out of a two-month internship Bedoya did at Stony Brook in which she studied the brains of four captive shrews and four wild animals. The analysis of the results involved numerous calls and discussions when she returned to Colombia to finish her undergraduate degree.

At the end of the summer, Bedoya was “going to present her work internally at Stony Brook,” explained William Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher in Dávalos’s lab and one of Bedoya’s mentors throughout the project. “Instead, she turned it into a paper.”

Thomas appreciated how Bedoya “put in a lot of work to make sure she got this out,” he said.

The shrew’s brain changed after two months in captivity, which is about 20 percent of their total lifespan, as shrews live an average of one year.

“We don’t know what the limits are,” in terms of the effect of timing on triggering changes in the shrew’s brain, Thomas said. “We don’t know how early the captive effect is.”

Thomas suggested that this paper could “lay the foundation for future studies with larger samples.”

Dávalos was pleased that the study resulted in a meaningful paper after a summer of gathering data and several years of analyzing and presenting the information.

“I’m immensely proud and happy that we had this unexpected finding,” said Dávalos. “It is one of the most gratifying experiences as a mentor.”

A launching pad

Bedoya, who graduated from Universidad Icesi in 2023 and is applying to graduate school after working as an adjunct professor/ lecturer at her alma mater, is pleased her work led to a published paper.

“I was so happy,” said Bedoya. “If it hadn’t been for [Thomas] and [Dávalos] cheering me on the whole time when I came back to Colombia, this study could have ended as my fellowship ended.”

Bedoya believes the experience at Stony Brook provided a launching pad for her career.

“It is a very valuable experience to have conducted this research all the way up to publication,” she said.

Thomas and Dávalos each recalled their own first scientific publication.

“I’m happy and relieved when they come out,” said Thomas. “While internal validation is important, the pleasure comes from providing something that you believe can help society.”

Dávalos’s first publication involved some unusual twists and turns. When she submitted her first paper about deforestation in the Andes, the journal wrote back to her in a letter telling her the paper was too newsy. She submitted it to several other publications, including one that indicated they had a huge backlog and weren’t publishing new research.

When it was published, the paper didn’t receive much attention. That paper, and another on her thoughts about how peace between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels might be worse for the rainforest, have since been cited frequently by other researchers.

Winter brain

At around the same time that Bedoya published her work about the effect of captivity on the shrew brain, Thomas published a study in the journal eLife in which he examined how shrew brains shrank during the winter and then regrew during the spring.

This work could offer genetic clues to neurological and metabolic health in mammals. Thomas focused on the hypothalamus, measuring how gene expression shifts seasonally.

A suite of genes that change across the seasons were involved in the regulation of energy homeostasis as well as genes that regulate cell death that might be associated with reductions in brain size.

Temperature was the driver of these seasonal changes.

The genes involved in maintaining the blood brain barrier and calcium signaling were upregulated in the shrew compared with other mammals.

After the winter, the shrew’s brains recovered their size, although below their pre-winter size.

Originally from Syracuse, Thomas attended SUNY Albany.

When he was younger, he entertained ideas of becoming a doctor, particularly as his grandmother battled ALS. On his first day shadowing a physician, he felt claustrophobic in the exam room and almost passed out.

He wanted to be outside instead of in “the squeaky clean floors” of a doctor’s office, he explained in an email.

As a scientist, he feels he can meld his passion for nature and his desire to help those who suffer from disease.

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Robert and Shirley Kenny

By Daniel Dunaief

When Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny was getting ready to leave Queens College to become president of Stony Brook University in 1994, she called her mother in Tyler, Texas, where she grew up.

She told her mother she was taking “a much more important job” and she “burst into tears.”

Dr. Shirley Strum Kenny

She felt Queens College had a heart and cared about its students and that she was taking over at Stony Brook where “science ruled” and where the “faculty were more important than students.”

She believed the public university had the “most incredible science faculty for a state institution, but it didn’t have a heart.”

Supported by her husband Dr. Robert “Bob” Kenny, the first female president at Stony Brook made numerous changes during a tenure that lasted until the summer of 2009, overseeing the beautification of the campus, directing the school’s athletic program into Division 1, and forging lasting connections with luminaries including world-renowned paleanthropologist Richard Leakey and celebrated actor Alan Alda.

In a wide-ranging celebrity podcast phone interview from their home in McLean, Virginia, Shirley and Bob Kenny shared numerous stories, insights, observations and reflections, offering specific steps the former president took to bring about cultural change at the university.

“When I got there, students didn’t matter,” said Kenny. “Faculty mattered and we had incredible faculty, particularly in the sciences.”

Kenny appreciated how hard her predecessors worked to recruit and retain talented faculty.

“Each of us played a very different role,” she said.

John Toll, the first longtime president who held the role from 1965 to 1978 “couldn’t have cared diddly squat what the campus looked like or felt like,” said Kenny. “He just wanted the best scientists in the world.”

Kenny believes John Marburger, who was president from 1980 to 1994, consolidated what Toll had done. “I came in at a very different point in history,” said Kenny. “I thought students did matter.”

Changing the campus and the focus of the university wasn’t easy. She said she received numerous figurative bruises along the way.

University leaders thought it was a “waste of time” and money to focus on undergraduates, she said. “We want to be the best graduate university that we can be,” she recalled, echoing the underlying philosophy of the school in the mid- 1990’s. “There was tremendous resistance.”

‘The ugliest campus in America’

Kenny brought in famed architect John Belle, who had worked with her at Queens College and had also been involved in the 1990 restoration of Ellis Island.

“The first important thing I did was to change [Stony Brook] from the ugliest campus in America to the beautiful campus it is now,” said Kenny.

When Kenny arrived, the area that is now the central mall was asphalt. She and Belle, who was one of the founders of architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, walked the campus.

Belle asked Kenny if the university had a center and “it really didn’t,” she said. Buildings went up here and there, seemingly without much consideration for developing aesthetically pleasing and relaxing outdoor green space.

Kenny also urged Belle to add a fountain, building on her experience at the University of Texas at Austin, where the fountain became not only a focal point for gatherings and activities but also a place to celebrate.

While Stony Brook doesn’t condone throwing people in the fountain, the way students did in Texas, the fountain has become a “central campus focus” and a place to show prospective students touring the university, she said.

Kenny also helped build and expand the student center, which created a place for students to interact and “have fun,” she said.

Important partners

Through easy-going laughter and self-deprecating humor, Shirley described meaningful and important partnerships that helped shape the direction of the school, academic opportunities and campus life.

Kenny described inviting Charles Wang to lunch. At the time, she was president of Queens College and he was the chief executive officer of Computer Associates.

“I thought I was being so sophisticated,” she laughed. “Here I am, Shirley, from Tyler, Texas. I thought, ‘He knows Chinese food. I’ll take him to a Korean restaurant.’”

Wang, as it turns out, was a Chinese food gourmet and thought she was mixing up his Chinese background with that of Korea.

“He never let me forget what a terrible mistake I’d make,” Kenny said. “He thought I didn’t know the difference between Chinese and Korean.”

She considered Wang one of her several brothers in her academic career. 

Kenny met Richard Leakey at a lunch in Manhattan. She intended to see if Leakey might give a lecture at Stony Brook, but started by asking him why he was in New York.

He had come for new prosthetics, after he’d lost his legs in a suspicious plane crash in 1993 when he was working to save endangered elephants and eliminate the trade in ivory tusks.

When she found out he didn’t have insurance, she encouraged him to become a visiting faculty at Stony Brook, where he could get insurance.

“That connection with Leakey and the Leakey Center has endured since then and has been very important to the university,” said Kenny.

Shirley met actor Alan Alda of MASH fame at a dinner at the Staller Center.

Alda shared an idea he pitched to other university presidents around the country that deploys improvisational acting techniques to communicate and, in particular, to share information about science.

Kenny was receptive to the idea, which led to the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.

A life partner

Shirley and Bob Kenny shared anecdotes and advice about their lifelong partnership.

The couple, both of whom grew up in Texas and met as undergraduates at the University of Texas when they worked for the school newspaper, have been married for 68 years.

When asked for the key to such a lasting marriage, Bob suggested it was “patience and tolerance.”

Shirley suggested the scales weren’t balanced as her husband “had to be patient with me more than I have to be patient with him. I’ve never doubted how clever I was to hook him.”

The Kennys have four grandchildren and a great grandchild.

The couple, who don’t travel as often to the university as they had in the years after leaving Stony Brook, maintain a close connection to the school through their daughter Sarah Azzara, who is a Full-Time Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stony Brook.

The next leader

While the Kennys aren’t involved in the current search for a new president at Stony Brook, Shirley shared some thoughts on the qualities she’d like from the next leader.

“What I really want is somebody who cares about Stony Brook and who is not just looking at this as a weigh station to a more ‘prestigious’ presidency,” she said. “The last few people have been on their way to other presidencies.”

She would like someone who “loves and cares about Stony Brook and wants to keep making it better.”

As for advice she’d share with anyone contemplating becoming a university president, Kenny suggested the importance of hearing other people.

“You need to be able to listen and not just talk,” she said. Presidents need to be sensitive to “what the campus wants, as well as having your own vision of where you think it should be going.”

Even if a prospective leader believes in a particular vision, that person “shouldn’t just pronounce and do, even if [he or she] thinks they have a wonderful vision.”

She urged universities and their leaders to focus on recruiting extraordinary teachers as well as talented researchers.

Robert Kenny spent 12 years without electricity, then rose to top academic posts

When the lights go out, Robert Kenny feels like he’s home.

“I react by saying, ‘Yeah, I’ve been there. I’ve been to this place,’” said Kenny.

That’s because, for the first dozen years of his life, Kenny had no indoor plumbing or electricity on what he described as a “hard scrabble farm” in Texas.

Shirley and Robert Kenny at Robert’s 90th birthday lunch. Photo courtesy of the Kennys

“I grew up basically in the 19th century,” said Kenny, from the current home he and his wife of 68 years Shirley share in McLean, Virginia.

Kenny brought buckets of water from the windmill to the house, while his mother cooked on a four-burner wooden stove.

The family, which farmed land to raise cattle for beef, had a battery powered radio powered by a windmill on the roof of the house.

When the wind blew, the battery charged and the family could listen to news and entertainment, but when the air was still for longer periods of time, the radio wouldn’t function.

Kenny also lived in a home with a phone that looked like a box with a crank. His neighbors, whose homes were about a mile away, all had similar boxes connected to one line.

Everyone was on the same line and a call to each family had a distinctive ring.

When the summer evenings got too hot indoors, the family took their beds outside and slept under the sky.

“It was terrific,” recalled Kenny. “I enjoyed it. You tended to wake up early.”

On the unusual night when it rained, the family would bundle everything up quickly and race indoors.

“I knew from childhood that I wanted to leave that world,” said Kenny.

When the family finally received electricity, Kenny was thrilled that he could read in the evening as long as he was allowed to stay up.

Kenny’s parents were “very supportive of education,” he said. “That’s what made” it possible for him to leave the farming world and enter academia.

Army counterspy

Before adding to his academic resume, Kenny served as a counterspy in the army.

“That was the age in which everybody was suspected of being a communist,” said Kenny. “The army was very worried about people becoming subverted and becoming spies.”

His unit’s job was to search for people who might be susceptible to any leverage the Russians might find.

“At that time and one hates to say it now, the Army was very suspicious of homosexual activity,” he said. “They thought [gay soldiers] were vulnerable to blackmail.”

When his unit found gay men, they were “usually pushed out of the Army,” he said.

That, Kenny said, proved ironic, because he was sure at least one of the people in this counterspy group was, himself, a closeted gay man who rose through the ranks.

While he was in the army, Kenny married Shirley Strum, who decades later would serve as the first female president of Stony Brook University.

Kenny, meanwhile, built on his love of reading and appreciation for education, becoming Dean of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University.

Real world lessons

While dedicated academics, the Kenny couple received difficult lessons in the real world during their honeymoon.

They were robbed twice on their honeymoon, first in Miami and then in Puerto Rico when they swam in the hotel swimming pool.

When they returned to the United States, Bob Kenny had to call his commanding officer to ask for an advance on his money so he could get back to the base.

Looking back on his over 90 years of life, Kenny suggested he especially enjoyed his 20s, when he could travel the world. He also reveled in the 40’s, when the family enjoyed time with their young children.

He described visiting the shrine at Delphi in Greece as being “absolutely eerie and magical.”

As for the way he best supported his wife during her tenure as the president of Stony Brook, Kenny suggested that his role was as a “listening post” and a “place to vent where she could express her frustrations.”

Looking at an academic legacy that has continued through the generations, with their daughter Sarah Azzara at Stony Brook and grandchildren including Avi Kenny, an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics at Duke, the Kennys are proud of their ongoing academic legacy.

For Bob Kenny, such academic success came from a humble beginning.“Books were not easy to come by in that part of the world,” he said. “I read everything” he could get his hands on. His favorite was Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.”

 

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