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Daniel Dunaief

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From left, Brenna Henn and Meng Lin at a conference last year in New Orleans. Photo from Meng Lin

By Daniel Dunaief

The story of the genetics of skin pigmentation in humans may have even more layers than the skin itself, depending on how close people live to the equator. The conventional wisdom for skin pigmentation is that it is a relatively simple trait, with a small number of genes accounting for almost half of the variety of skin tones.

That, however, isn’t always the case. Pigmentation genetics likely becomes more complex in populations near the equator or with greater variation in pigmentation, like with the Khoisan living in southern Africa.

Above, Brenna Henn, right, with an elder in the Khomani San community who gave her a book on the language formerly spoken in the southern Kalahari Desert. Photo from Brenna Henn

“As you move further toward the equator, the distributions are wide,” Brenna Henn, an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook University, said about the results she, along with collaborators from her lab and from Stanford University, recently published in the journal Cell.

Exploring the genetic determination of skin can serve as a model to understand the broad implications for various genetic variations for different populations as they confront a range of health challenges.

Henn has also worked with tuberculosis studies in South Africa. About one in three people in the world has a latent tuberculosis infection. Researchers have conducted studies to see which genes might be responsible for the different reactions to this disease. Tuberculosis susceptibility studies indicate that different genes may be responsible for infection in different populations, in areas including Russia, West Africa and South Africa.

According to Henn, scientists need to study and understand the disease in different populations to identify, through gene interactions, who will benefit from specific treatments in a vaccination campaign.

When Henn, who is a native of California, started the pigmentation study seven years ago when she was a graduate student at Stanford University, she had considerably different expectations. “When I was a post doc at Stanford, I expected the project to be quick because the genetics of pigmentation in Europeans was relatively well understood,” she explained in an email. When she started analyzing the results, she found that her hypothesis “was not true at all. There are so many different things involved.”

Calling this analysis the “tip of the iceberg,” Henn said she discovered many new genes beyond the ones scientists already knew contributed to skin pigmentation. She estimates that there are 50 if not more genetic sequences involved in skin pigmentation near the equator.

The range of skin pigmentation in South African populations reflected this increased genetic blueprint, with people in these areas demonstrating about twice the variation as people might encounter in a western European population.

These studies require the analysis of considerable data, through a field called bioinformatics, in which researchers analyze and process information through programs that search for patterns. “There’s a huge computational component” to this work, Henn said. “We don’t know where the genes are. We have to sample the entire genome” for as many as 500 people. “This blows up into a computational problem.”

Above, from left, Meng Lin and Brenna Henn at Lin’s graduation ceremony where she earned her PhD. Photo from Brenna Henn

Meng Lin, who worked in Henn’s lab for four and a half years and recently earned her doctorate, performs just such analyses. “We were hoping we’d be able to find some signals that had never been found before, to demonstrate the difference” in the genetic architecture, said Lin, who is now applying for postdoctoral research positions. “Given the prior studies on skin pigmentation traits, the complexity of the genetic architecture we found out was unexpected.”

People near the equator would likely need to have pigmentation that balanced between producing vitamin D from sunlight with protecting their skin from too much exposure to ultraviolet light. In areas such as in Africa, the ultraviolet light can be so strong that “the primary selection factor would be to avoid the photo damage from the strong UV, which favors melanin enriched dark skin pigmentation for photo protection,” Lin explained in an email.

Generally, people further from the equator, such as Scandinavian populations, have lighter skin because they need to process the limited vitamin D they can get, particularly during the darker months. That, however, isn’t the case for the Inuit people, who have darker skin in an area that gets limited sunlight. “Anyone who lives there should be under pressure for light skin,” Lin said. The Inuit, however, are darker skinned, which might be because their diet includes fish and fish oil, which is a rich source of vitamin D. “That would relax the selection force on lighter skin color,” she said.

With people able to travel and live in a wide range of regions across the Earth, selection pressures might be harder to decipher in the modern world. “Travel across continents is a recent” phenomenon, Lin said. The history of such travel freedom is “way too short for changing the genetic components.” Selection pressure occurs over tens of thousands of years, she added.

Diversity and the intake of vitamin D interact closely with each other. They can have impacts on the balance point. Using vitamin supplements could relax the selection on lighter skin, so the balance might shift to a darker population, Lin explained. Other modern lifestyles, such as wearing clothes, staying indoors and consuming vitamin D could complicate this and relax the strength of selection in the future, she added.

A native of China, Lin lives in Port Jefferson Station and enjoys applying math and computer skills to biology. “It’s great fun to solve the questions we have by developing and applying computational methods to existing data,” she said.

After five years at Stony Brook, Henn is transitioning to a position at the University of California at Davis, where she hopes to continue this ongoing work. “We want to follow up on how quickly these selective events occur,” Henn said. She’d like to discover how long it takes for the genetic average of the population to shift.

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Yali Xu and Christopher Vakoc at the 2013 Don Monti Memorial Research Foundation’s Anniversary Ball. Photo from Yali Xu

By Daniel Dunaief

It’s like a top scorer for another team that the greatest minds can’t seem to stop. Whatever they throw at it, it seems to slip by, collecting the kinds of points that can eventually lead to a life-threatening loss. The scorer is a transcription factor called MYB, and the points it collects can, and often do, lead to breast and colon cancer and leukemia.

Researchers have known for over 30 years that stopping MYB could help with cancer treatment. Unlike other possible targets, however, MYB didn’t seem to have the kind of structural weakness that pharmaceutical companies seek, where developing a small molecule could prevent the cancer signals MYB delivered. Some researchers have decided that drugs won’t stop this high-profile cancer target.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Associate Professor Christopher Vakoc and his graduate research assistant Yali Xu, however, have figured out a way around this seemingly intractable problem. The CSHL scientists recently published their results in the journal Cancer Cell.

MYB binds at a small nub to a large and important coactivation protein called TFIID (which is pronounced TF-two-D). This protein is involved in numerous life functions and, without it, organisms couldn’t survive. Vakoc and Xu found that they could use a small peptide decoy to trick MYB into believing it had attached to this protein when, it reality, it hit the equivalent of a molecular dead end.

In a mouse model of acute myeloid leukemia, this peptide caused leukemias to shrink in size by about 80 percent. “What we’ve discovered is head and shoulders above anything we’ve come across before,” Vakoc said.

As with many scientific discoveries, researchers have to clear numerous hurdles between this conceptual discovery and any potential new cancer therapy. “This is not a medicine a person can take,” Vakoc said.

Indeed, scientists and pharmaceutical companies would need to study what leukemia cells escaped this type of treatment to understand how a cancer might rebound or become resistant after an initial treatment. “Our goal is to develop something with longer lasting effects” that doesn’t become ineffective after three to six months, Vakov said. He described understanding the way a disease reacts to a treatment as an “arms race.” Nature inevitably “finds a way to outsmart our decoy. We’d like to know how [it] does it. We’re always trying to study both sides and trying to anticipate” the next steps.

Down the road, Vakoc could foresee researchers and, ultimately, physicians using this kind of approach in combination with other drugs or therapies, the way doctors now provide patients who have the HIV infection with a cocktail of drugs. Conceptually, however, Vakoc is thrilled that this work “highlights what’s possible.”

One of the most encouraging elements of this approach, Vakoc said, is that it combats MYB without harming organ systems. When the researchers gave the treatment to rodents, the mice were “running around, eating and gaining weight.” Their body tissues appeared normal, and they didn’t demonstrate the same sensitivity that is a common byproduct of chemotherapy treatment, such as losing any hair or having problems in their gut.

An important step in this study, Vakoc said, was to understand the basics of how MYB and TFIID found each other. That, Xu said, was one of the first steps in her graduate work, which took about five years to complete.

In Vakoc’s lab, which includes 13 other researchers, he described how scientists make thousands of perturbations to cancer and normal cells, while they are hunting for cancer-specific targets. By using this screening technique, Vakoc and his team can stress test how cancer cells and normal cells react when they are deprived of certain proteins or genes.

“This began as a screen,” he said. “We took leukemia and normal blood cells and did a precise comparison of the perturbation.” They searched for what had the most specific toxicity and, to their surprise, found that interfering with the binding between MYB and TFIID had the strongest effect. “Once we understood what this nub was doing, we applied all kinds of biochemical assay experiments,” Vakov added.

Ultimately, the peptide they found was a fragment of a larger protein that’s active in the cell. Vakoc credits Xu for her consistent and hard work. “When we started on this hunt, we had no idea where this was headed,” he said. Xu was “relentless” in trying to find the answers. “She pieced it all together. It took a great amount of imagination and intellect to solve this puzzle.”

Vakoc suggested that Xu, who plans to defend her thesis this spring and graduate this summer, has set a great example for the other members of his lab. “I now have 13 other people inspired to outdo her work,” he said. “We know we have a new standard.”

Xu is grateful for the support she has received from Vakoc and appreciates the journey from her arrival as a graduate student from China to the verge of her graduation. “It’s very satisfying when you look back and think how things evolved from the beginning to the end” of her graduate work, said Xu, who lives near Huntington Village and enjoys the chance to visit local restaurants and sample coffee and ice cream when she isn’t conducting research toward her doctorate.

The scientific effort, which was published recently, has attracted the attention of others, particularly those who are studying MYB. Vakoc recently received an email from members of a foundation that is funding research on a solid tumor in which scientists believe MYB plays a role. He is writing grants to get more financial support to pursue this concept. Vakoc is encouraged by the opportunity to make progress with a protein that has been “staring [scientists] in the face for three decades.”

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Furie, above sailing on her 26-foot boat that is moored at Manhasset Bay, is navigating the American Journal of Pathology toward new waters. Photo by Richard Furie

By Daniel Dunaief

Martha Furie has a job no other woman has held in the 122-year history of a highly regarded scientific periodical. A professor of pathology and molecular genetics and microbiology at Stony Brook University, Furie is the new editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Pathology, taking over the top editorial job at a journal where she has been a contributor since 1993.

Martha Furie. Photo by SBU

“As a woman, it is certainly gratifying to see an accomplished and capable woman such as Martha being chosen to lead the way,” said Kari Nejak-Bowen, an assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine, in an email. “Seeing women such as [Furie] in positions of power and visibility will empower other female scientists to dream that they can accomplish similar goals.”

Richard Mitchell, a senior associate editor at the journal and a professor of pathology and health sciences and technology and vice chair for education at Brigham and Women’s Hospital also applauded the choice. Furie “was probably the very best person we could recruit for the job and is someone who has the energy and vision for leading us into the challenging future,” Mitchell said.

From 1986 through 2014 Furie ran a lab that focused on the study of the body’s immune response to infections from Lyme disease and tularemia, which is cause by a bacterium that is classified as a potential agent of bioterrorism. In 2014, she became the director of the Graduate Program in Genetics at Stony Brook.

Kenneth Shroyer, the chair of the Department of Pathology at SBU, described the periodical Furie starts leading in 2018 as the “top pathology journal.”

As she takes the helm of the journal, Furie plans to navigate the periodical toward more translational research. “The Journal has been very focused on understanding the basic mechanisms of disease,” she said. “Research in all areas is getting much more translational: The bench-to-bedside thinking is where funding agencies are focusing their efforts,” and it’s also where the periodical she now leads is heading.

The tagline for the journal, which Nejak-Bowen said helped pioneer the current understanding of cell death, used to be Cellular and Molecular Biology of Disease. Furie changed that to Discoveries in Basic and Translational Pathobiology.

Shroyer believes the new direction should help the journal compete and redefine its niche for a wider range of readers. While Furie is excited about the opportunity, she acknowledges the increasingly challenging nature of the business. “Scientific publishing is a tough area right now,” she said. “There are fewer people in research because funding has diminished,” while, at the same time, more journals are competing to highlight research discoveries.

She will try to raise the journal’s profile for research scientists. Furie plans on expanding the journal’s social media presence and will do more marketing, while working with expert associate editors and getting them more involved in soliciting submissions. She also plans to make collections of highly cited papers in targeted areas and intends to use these to market the journal to attendees at specialized conferences.

Furie will spend this month contacting each of the associate editors and will solicit suggestions for people who might like to join the publication. She will also seek ideas for the journal. Mitchell suggested that Furie would likely benefit from these interactions. She is a “very good listener and is thoughtful in the questions she asks,” he said. “She is very discerning in assimilating the answers she gets back.” Shroyer expressed confidence in Furie’s leadership, citing a string of accolades and accomplishments in an SBU career that began in 1986.

Above, Furie welcomes students and faculty to the graduate program’s retreat in 2016. Photo by Constance Brukin

Furie was the president of the American Society for Investigative Pathology from the middle of 2011 through the middle of 2012. She was also the recipient of the Robbins Distinguished Educator Award in 2017, which recognizes people whose contributions to education in pathology had an important impact at a regional, national or international level.

Furie and Nejak-Bowen co-organized and co-chaired the ASIP Scientific Sleuthing of Human Disease for High School Teachers and Students in April 2017. With this effort, Furie has already had some success in changing the direction and target audience of an ongoing program. The session, which provides high school teachers with concepts of human disease that they can incorporate into their classroom, now includes high school students.

“This has really revitalized the program, as the students are inquisitive and very engaged with the material,” Nejak-Bowen explained. Furie was “instrumental in encouraging this change in focus, and is passionate about building an improving this session every year.”

The opportunity Furie has as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pathology “continues her role as a national leader that she’s established,” Shroyer said.

Furie said she benefited from a diverse staff at Stony Brook, that included women like current Professor Emeritus Gail Habicht, when she first arrived. One of the best pieces of advice she received from Habicht was to understand that you can have a family and a successful career.

“You might not be able to do it to the same standard of perfection you did before you had children, but you can have a meaningful career and raise successful children and be happy doing both,” recalled Furie, who has two sons, Jon and Dan, and a 10-month-old grandson Tyler, who lives in Bedford, New York. She is married to Richard Furie, the chief of the Division of Rheumatology at Northwell Health, whom she met in a physics class at Cornell over 45 years ago.

Nejak-Bowen said Furie “leads by example when it comes to work/life balance.” Nejak-Bowen urges women scientists to find a mentor who can offer advice through all stages of a career. She has long considered Furie “a friend, mentor and inspiration.”

Based on Furie’s track record, Shroyer is confident in her continued success and anticipates that the journal will “thrive under her direction.”

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Alexander Krasnitz. Photo by Gina Motis?CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Seeing into the future is one of the most challenging, and potentially rewarding, elements of studying cancer. How, scientists and doctors want to know, can they take what evidence they have —through a collection of physical signs and molecular signatures — and determine what will be?

Researchers working on a range of cancers have come up with markers to divide specific types of cancers to suggest the likely course of a disease.

With prostate cancer, the medical community uses a combination of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA), magnetic resonance imagining (MRI) and biopsy results, which are summarized as the Gleason score, to diagnose the likely outcome of the disease. This analysis offers probable courses for developing symptoms.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Michael Wigler and Associate Professor Alexander Krasnitz recently published an article in the journal Cancer Research of a promising study of eight patients that suggests a way of using molecular signatures to determine whether a prostate is likely to contain cells that will threaten a patient’s health or whether the cells are in a quieter phase.

The third most common cancer among Americans, prostate cancer kills an average of 21,000 men each year. Doctors and their patients face difficult decisions after a prostate cancer diagnosis.

“A major challenge is to determine which prostate cancers have aggressive potential and therefore merit treatment,” Herbert Lepor, a professor and Maritin Spatz Chair of Urology at the NYU Langone Medical Center School of Medicine, explained in an email. A collaborator on the study, Lepor provided a clinical perspective and shared patient samples.

A conversation with a doctor after such a diagnosis may include a discussion about how the cancer is not likely to pose an immediate risk to a patient’s life, Krasnitz explained. In that case, doctors do not recommend surgery, which might cause other problems, such as incontinence.

Doctors typically recommend active surveillance to monitor the disease for signs of progression. Some patients, however, make their own decisions, electing to have surgery. The Gleason score, which is typically 3, 4 or 5, can’t provide “meaningful information regarding aggressiveness of the disease,” Lepor explained. “The unique genetic profile of a cancer cell should have infinite more prognostic capability.”

Wigler and Krasnitz, who have been collaborating since Krasnitz arrived at CSHL in 2005, use several hundred single cells from biopsy cores. The research group, which Krasnitz described as a large team including research investigator Joan Alexander and computational science manager Jude Kendall, look for cells with a profile that contains the same irregularities.

“If you take two cells and their irregularities are highly coincident, then perhaps these two cells are sisters or cousins,” Krasnitz explained in an email. “If they are less coincident, then the two cells are more like very distant relatives. We looked for, and sometimes found, multiple cells with many coincident irregularities. This was our evidence for a clonal population.”

By looking at how many biopsy cores contain clonal cells, and then determining how far these clonal cells have spread out through the prostate, the researchers gave these patient samples a score. In this group, these scores, determined before any intervention, closely tracked a detailed analysis after surgery.

“We get a high correlation” between their new score and a more definitive diagnosis that comes after surgery, Krasnitz said. “Our molecular score follows the final verdict from the pathology more closely than the pathological score at diagnosis from the biopsy.”

Wigler, Krasnitz, Lepor and other researchers plan to continue to expand their work at Langone to explore the connection between their score and the course of the disease. Lepor explained that he has been collaborating with Wigler and Krasnitz for five years and suggested this is “an exceptional opportunity since it bridges one of the strongest clinical programs with a strong interest in science (NYU Urology) and a world-class research program interested in clinical care (CSHL).

The research team has submitted a grant to the National Institutes of Health and hopes to expand their studies and provide “compelling evidence” that single-cell genomic mapping “will provide an unmet need defining aggressiveness of prostate cancers,” Lepor said.

While Krasnitz is encouraged by the results so far, he said the team has work ahead of them to turn this kind of analysis into a diagnostic tool physicians can use with their patients.

Realistically, it could take another five years before this score contributes to clinical decision-making, Krasnitz predicted. “You can’t do it overnight,” he cautioned. When this test offers specific signals about the likely outcome for a patient, a researcher would likely need to wait several years as the patient goes on active surveillance to see whether the score has predictive value for the disease in a larger population.

Krasnitz has a sense of urgency to produce such a test because there is “no point in delaying something that potentially looks promising and that one day might well be a part of a clinical practice.”

The work that led to their article took three or four years to complete. The study required technical improvements in the way the researchers processed DNA from single cells. They also had to develop algorithmic improvements that allowed them to use copy number variation to determine clonal structure. The scientists tapped into a wealth of information they gained by taking cells from several locations within the prostate.

Krasnitz was born in Kiev, now part of the Ukraine, and grew up in the former Soviet Union. A resident of Huntington, he lives with his wife Lea, who produces documentaries, including “Maria — The Russian Empress” on Dagmar of Denmark, who was also known as Maria, mother of Nicholas II, the last Romanov czar who was overthrown in 1917. As for his work with Wigler, Krasnitz is excited about the possibilities. “It’s very encouraging,” he said. “We look forward to a continuation of this.”

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Born in response to tragedy, the organization aims to start conversations about immigration rights, racial divisions, social injustice

Tom Lyon, center, and Gregory Leonard, right, of Building Bridges in Brookhaven with an attendee of the group’s 2017 Martin Luther King Day Jr. event. Photos by Will McKenzie

By Daniel Dunaief

Tom Lyon, Mark Jackett and Susan Perretti, among many others, don’t have all the answers. In fact, they are filled with difficult questions for which the Town of Brookhaven, the state of New York and the country don’t have easy solutions.

That, however, hasn’t stopped them from trying to bring people together in Brookhaven to address everything from social injustice to immigration rights to racial divisions.

Members of Building Bridges in Brookhaven, Lyon, Jackett and Perretti have met regularly since 2015 when the group formed in the wake of the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Members of the group Building Bridges in Brookhaven share the common purpose of opening up community dialogue. Photos by Will McKenzie

Building Bridges personally connects with people, according to Tehmina Tirmizi, who is the education chair at the Islamic Association of Long Island. Building Bridges members attended an interfaith event at IALI in late 2016, and its members have gathered with others for monthly vigils to support Muslims.

Tirmizi said she appreciates the understanding, solidarity and unity and feels members of Building Bridges are out there for support.

The group meets on the second Monday of each month from 7 to 9 p.m. to get together and talk, forge connections, understand differences and encourage peace. They have met at churches throughout the region, as well as at the Center for Social Justice and Human Understanding at the Suffolk County Community College campus in Selden.

“The origins were in response to the shootings,” said Jackett, an English teacher at Smithtown High School West. He added continued gun violence is part of what the group is trying to address. “It’s part of the sense of urgency.”

Jackett decried the drumbeat of hatred, negativity and division in the country and in communities on Long Island.

“We’re trying to be a voice speaking up in favor of bringing people together and finding ways that we have common ground and respecting the dignity and humanity of all people,” Jackett said.

The gatherings bring together people of different backgrounds, ages, races and sexuality and attract a crowd from a wide cross section of Long Island.

This past year, the organization hosted a celebration on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January and a Unityfest at Bethel Hobbs Community Farm in Centereach in September. The MLK event drew more than 200 people, while the Unityfest brought almost 300.

The Unityfest enabled Building Bridges to donate $1,600 to support Hobbs farm and highlight its program to supply fresh produce to local food pantries.

Coming in February, the group will host its second annual MLK festival, which moves beyond King’s iconic “I have a dream” speech and embraces his broader approach.

“King talks a lot about the beloved community,” said Lyon, who is also one of the founders of Building Bridges. “That was his ultimate vision for the world and it involves a lot more than [defeating] segregation.”

Lyon said former head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover had an enemies list, as did former President Richard Nixon. For King, his enemies were militarism, racism and materialism.

While BBB formed in response to violence in a church and brought people together through church organizations, it is an interfaith group, Lyon said.

The group encourages people to contribute to, and participate in, other efforts on Long Island as well.

Many of the group members belong to other organizations, according to Jackett. Building Bridges has also been supporting other efforts, which include Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense and People Power Patchogue, a group dedicated to defending civil rights and creating stronger and safer communities.

Building Bridges has also formed subcommittees on immigration rights and criminal justice reform.

Jackett said efforts to address and combat racism need to be done regardless of who is in office.

“We try our best to do that work and highlight the need,” he said.

“We’re trying to be a voice speaking up in favor of bringing people together and finding ways that we have common ground and respecting the dignity and humanity of all people.”

— Mark Jackett

The group has a Facebook page and the group is working on a website too. A mix of retired people and people still in the workforce, the members of Building Bridges have been discussing the architecture for a web page. It is also hoping to forge deeper connections with millennials through Stony Brook University, Suffolk County Community College and a new Artists Action Group in Patchogue.

Perretti, a retired writer who worked as an editor at St. Joseph’s College, suggested that Building Bridges is looking to create a network of people who can respond to various needs.

“We need to build ourselves into a community more and more and when that happens, more people will come,” Perretti said.

The group is also focused on jumping to action during times of crisis.

“This is the opportunity to get to know people who may be the targets of hate or violence and to develop a friendship and alliance with them,” Perretti said. “When something happens to them, it happens to us as well.”

Looking ahead, Perretti said the group has to find ways to attract and encourage involvement from a broader base of community members in 2018.

She said she would like to make room for people who have vastly different views. She encouraged people with different opinions to engage in courageous conversations, without fear of reprisals or attacks.

“It’s nice and fun and easy to be with people we are like, [but] it’s really hard work to talk to people who hold different opinions who may argue with us,” she said.

Members of the Building Bridges community know they face uncertainty with the issues and challenges ahead.

“We don’t have all the answers,” Perretti said, adding that the group’s primary mission is to start conversations about the things happening in the United States.

“This is a community that wants to build and grow,” she said. “We need to hear other people. We’re open to ideas.”

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Stony Brook University surgeon James Vosswinkel, above left, is recognized prior to the Dec. 5, 2016 New York Jets game at Metlife Stadium. Photo from Melissa Weir

When they come to him, they need something desperately. He empowers people, either to help themselves or others, in life and death situations or to prevent the kinds of traumatic injuries that would cause a crisis cascade.

Dr. James Vosswinkel, an assistant professor of surgery and the chief of trauma, emergency surgery and surgical critical care, as well as the medical director of the Stony Brook Trauma Center, is driven to help people through, or around, life-threatening injuries.

Vosswinkel speaks to people in traffic court about the dangers of distracted driving and speeding, encourages efforts to help seniors avoid dangerous falls and teaches people how to control the bleeding during significant injuries, which occur during mass casualty crisis.

For his tireless efforts on behalf of the community, Vosswinkel is a Times Beacon Record News Media Person of the Year.

Vosswinkel teaching bleeding control in April at MacArthur Airport Law Enforcement Division for the Town of Islip. Photo from Stony Brook University

Vosswinkel is the “quarterback for developing all the resources and making sure the quality of those individuals is up to very, very high standards,” said Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the dean of the Stony Brook University School of Medicine. “He’s a very fine trauma surgeon, who has assembled a team of additional fine surgeons. If he’s ever needed, he’s always available, whether he’s on call or not.”

Vosswinkel has earned recognition from several groups over the last few years. He was named the Physician for Excellence in 2016 by the EMS community.

In 2016, Lillian Schneider was involved in a traumatic car accident for which she needed to be airlifted to Stony Brook Hospital. Despite the severe nature of her injuries, Schneider gradually recovered.

In September Vosswinkel was honored as the first Lillian and Leonard Schneider Endowed Professor in Trauma Surgery at Stony Brook University.

“What’s different about Vosswinkel,” or “Voss” as Jane McCormack, a resident nurse and the trauma program manager at Stony Brook calls him, is that “a lot of people talk about working harder, but he does it. He’s an intense guy who is very passionate about what he does.”

Dr. Mark Talamini, the chair of the Department of Surgery and the chief of Surgical Services at Stony Brook Hospital who is also Vosswinkel’s supervisor, said Vosswinkel will come to the hospital to help a member of his team at any hour of the night.

“When his people need help, he’s there,” Talamini said.

Vosswinkel was recently promoted to chief consulting police surgeon by the Suffolk County Police Department.

Dr. Scott Coyne, the chief surgeon for the Suffolk County Police Department said he’s come to rely on Vosswinkel repeatedly over the years.

Coyne said Vosswinkel is frequently on the scene at the hospital, where he shares critical information about police officers and their families with Coyne.

“He’s a very valuable adjunct to our police department,” Coyne said. “If you are transferred because of the seriousness of your trauma or the location of your trauma and you end up at Stony Brook, you can be well assured that you’ll receive state-of-the-art care. Vosswinkel is one of the leaders in the delivery of that surgical care.”

“If you are transferred because of the seriousness of your trauma or the location of your trauma and you end up at Stony Brook, you can be well assured that you’ll receive state-of-the-art care. Vosswinkel is one of the leaders in the delivery of that surgical care.”

— Dr. Scott Coyne

The trauma surgeon is also involved in helping train members of the community with a system called B-Con, for bleeding control.

Amid the alarming increase in mass casualty events that have occurred throughout the country, the first provider of care is often a civilian.

“Even before the EMS gets there, civilians can take action,” McCormack said. Vosswinkel has been directly involved in helping civilians to recognize life-threatening hemorrhaging, how to place a tourniquet and how to pack wounds.

“He’s been the energizer bunny for that [effort] all throughout Suffolk County and on Long Island,” Talamini said. “It’s been an incredible effort.”

Talamini said he is impressed by the work Vosswinkel has also done at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center to help prepare for its Level 3 certification.

“He has begun doing his magic at another significant Suffolk County hospital,” Talamini said. Talamini called his work on blood control at Brookhaven “superhuman.”

Talamini said he is impressed with his colleague’s ability to connect with people from various walks of life, which is an asset to the trauma surgeon.

“He’s that kind of person, which is why he’s been so successful with all these outreach events,” Talamini said. “His patients adore him.”

Working with the Setauket Fire Department, Stony Brook’s Trauma Center offers tai chi for arthritis and fall prevention, which uses the movements of tai chi to help seniors improve their balance and increase their confidence in performing everyday acts.

Discussions about Vosswinkel often include references to a conspicuous passion: the New York Jets.

Kaushansky called Vosswinkel the most die-hard Jets fan he has ever seen. His office is decorated with Jets paraphernalia, leaving it resembling a green shrine.

In December 2016, the Jets honored Vosswinkel for his lifesaving care of two Suffolk County police officers. He participated in the coin toss to kick off a Monday Night Football game.

Vosswinkel credited the trauma group for the favorable outcomes for the two officers.

“This is not about me,” he said at the time. “This is about Stony Brook. It is a true team that truly cares about patients.”

To be sure, the successful and effective doctor does have his challenging moments.

“He gets tired and cranky once in a while, like everyone else does,” McCormack said. “Most people in this building would be, like, ‘I want to be on his team. I know we’ll probably win with him.’”

A win for Vosswinkel and the Stony Brook trauma team is a win for the patient and for the community, which benefits from some of the best trauma care in the country, Talamini said.

“There’s nobody that’s more deserving and done so much and continues to do so much for the people of Suffolk County than Dr. Vosswinkel,” Coyne said

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The Reboli Center for Art and History is located in Stony Brook at the former site of the Capital One Bank. File photo

It’s much more than a place to go to appreciate the work of late artist and painter Joe Reboli.

Located at the former site of Capital One Bank across the street from where Reboli grew up in Stony Brook, the Reboli Center for Art and History, which opened a little more than a year ago, blends a collection of art from the prolific painter with works by other local artists, rotated every three months.

Housed in an A-frame white building with blue awnings, the center has showcased the work of artists including Ken Davies, who was Reboli’s teacher and mentor.

Reboli was born and raised on Main Street, not far from where his name is memorialized.

He and his family had a long history in the area. His grandfather ran a business across the street from where the center now stands, and decades later his aunt worked in the same building when it was a bank.

He died in 2004 at age 58 after being diagnosed with lung cancer. Since his death, his wife Lois Reboli had been attending makeshift meetings at coffee and kitchen tables across Three Village with a squad self-identified as The Rebolians, working to make sure Joe Reboli’s story lived on.

“[The center is] hopefully a gift back to the community my husband loved so much,” said Reboli, a former art teacher.

The Reboli Center is named in honer of late Stony Brook artist Joe Reboli. File photo

He was on the board of the Three Village Community Trust and Gallery North. When asked by his wife why he attended those gatherings, she said he told her he loved the community and wanted to support it in some way.

“I didn’t really understand it at that point,” she said. “I did after he got sick, and I just really wanted to give something to the community so they would remember Joe.”

As part of the center’s cultural contributions, free talks are given with local artists, and, after a successful musical debut, the center may be the site of future concerts.

Donna Crinnian, a photographer whose pictures of egrets were featured at the center in the fall, called the center a great addition to the community.

“Everybody in the community likes having it there,” she said. “They get a really nice crowd coming in for the speakers.”

Besides Reboli, the idea for the studio gallery came together with the help of Colleen Hanson, who worked as executive director of Gallery North from January 2000 until her retirement in September 2010. She worked alongside Lois Reboli after Joe passed and also helped launch the first Reboli Wet Paint Festival weekend at Gallery North in 2005.  Hanson also worked with B.J. Intini, a former Gallery North assistant and executive director who is the president of the Farmingville Historical Society.

“I made a vow that we would do something for [Reboli],” Hanson said. “If we were to find a space, it had to be in Three Village and it had to have a Joe-like feeling. Now, I pinch myself and think, ‘This is so cool.’ We love this community. We want it to be even better and richer for everybody, and I see this as a beautiful upbeat place where people want to be.”

State Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) is credited with helping to make the purchase a reality, Reboli said. He helped the three, self-dubbed the “tres amigas” create a not-for-profit called the Friends of Joseph Reboli, with a mission of collecting, preserving and exhibiting artwork and artifacts related to Joe Reboli. The group filed for federal 501(c)(3) status in 2012.

Reboli had been looking for a suitable place to share her late husband’s work with the public and had been demoralized by a few false starts when she wondered if she would be able to find the right spot.

“If we were to find a space, it had to be in Three Village and it had to have a Joe-like feeling. Now, I pinch myself and think, ‘This is so cool.’”

— Colleen Hanson

It wasn’t until March 2015 when Hanson said she heard of Capital One in Stony Brook potentially leaving the historic landmarked building at a price tag of $1.8 million. Englebright spearheaded securing a $1.3 million state grant that went toward the purchase of the building, and two anonymous $150,000 donations turned the dream into a reality.

“He went to bat to help us get as much funding as we could,” Reboli said of the lawmaker. “He was remarkable.”

She signed the contract Sept. 25, 2015 — her late husband’s 70th birthday.

“It’s everything I hoped for and more,” Englebright said of the center. “I have heard from dozens of people and they are absolutely thrilled that this is a new part of the cultural dimension in our community.”

Englebright said the late artist’s paintings open up a wide range of conversations about the interaction between nature and development. One of his favorites is of three gas pumps in front of a coastal scene on the North Shore.

“He put this scene together that clearly to me is an expression of concern regarding the impact of overdevelopment, on a way of life, and on the beauty of Long Island,”
Englebright said.

In its first full year of operation, the center, which is free for guests, has hosted a range of crowds and events. In May, it welcomed a visit from the Commack High School Art Honor Society. In late October, world-renowned cellist Colin Carr, who has appeared with the Royal Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Montreal Symphony and is teaching at Stony Brook, performed at a benefit concert.

He said the way the sound worked its way through the building was an unexpected
surprise.

“When I went in there and played the cello briefly as a trial run, it was immediately apparent that this was perfect for the cello,” Carr said. “It’s always exciting to walk into a new place, whether it’s a room or concert hall or even a church, to sit down and start playing and feel that there’s an immediate rapport between me, the instrument and the space.”

Carr is the one who suggested that the center would be a “wonderful place for a small music series.”

Reboli said she is thrilled with the direction the center is taking and suggested the showcase is far beyond what she had imagined when she first discussed highlighting her late husband’s artwork.

On a Friday in late November, the building hit a high-water mark with about 180 guests in attendance, Reboli said.

“I would have been happy with a wall somewhere,” Reboli said. “This has morphed into something that would have been unimaginable before. Never did we expect to have a place like this. This is a miracle.”

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Scott Kelly and Amiko Kauderer.Photo by Stephanie Stoll/ NASA
Astronaut Scott Kelly’s girlfriend recounts a year apart

By Daniel Dunaief

One night, her leg drifted to his side of the bed, where she often snuggled up so close that she nearly pushed him off the bed. The cold woke her up. After that, she stayed away until he returned from his perch, circling 249 miles above the Earth for a record-breaking year.

Amiko Kauderer, who works for NASA, has been dating astronaut Scott Kelly for years. Indeed, she had been through a six-month separation when he traveled to the International Space Station in 2011. This time, however, Kelly was gone for a year, conducting a range of experiments, including one in which he grew flowers in space. He also took samples of his own blood, which NASA will use to compare to his identical twin brother Mark to track the effects of extended time in space on his body. The information Kelly collected will help NASA prepare for future missions deeper into space, including to Mars.

Kelly’s journey, and his NASA career, ended on March 1, 2016, a year after jetting away from Kauderer and his two daughters from a previous marriage for an extraordinary journey that covered 144 million miles, or more than the distance from Earth to the sun.

Kelly recently published an in-depth book about his life before and after his historic mission titled “Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery.” Kauderer has her own story to tell about their prolonged separation. When asked about the time apart, both of them acknowledge that the challenges are no different from the ones people face when a spouse is on active deployment with the military.

During their separation, Kelly and Kauderer spoke regularly, including by videoconference. In an early videoconference, Kelly took Kauderer on a tour of his orbiting home, where he circled Earth 5,440 times. “I’ve seen it,” Kauderer recalled, as he drifted from room to room, using his toes to push off and float to the next destination. When he entered a room, Kelly asked her to guess where he was. “I know where you’re at,” she laughed. “You’re in the gym.”

While he was beaming images of his life in space, Kauderer returned the favor with video of their home in Houston, Texas. She took him outside, where he could see the pool. She knew he loved the water. When they were on these calls, Kelly focused on Kauderer as well as on areas around the house that he could see from space that needed attention. He saw that the refrigerator water filter light was on, indicating it was time for a new one. He told her, “You need to change the filter,” she recalled. She enjoyed the observation because “those kinds of moments felt like he was home.”

Kauderer recalled an experience where she was on a video conference with Kelly while she cooked a pizza, something he couldn’t eat during his journey. He asked her to show it to him when she was taking it out of the oven and then told her the pizza wasn’t done and she needed to stick it back in the oven for another few moments. “Him being from New Jersey and me being from China Spring, Texas, I’m not going to argue with the New Jersey guy on how to make a pizza,” she recalled. That, too, felt more like normal.

Kauderer didn’t dwell on the dangers of his trip, even though she had considerable information about his schedule and his daily assignments. Knowing “her man,” as she puts it, well also helped her recognize the early signs of trouble for him from afar. Once, when they began a conversation, she heard an aggressiveness and frustration in his voice. She told him to check the carbon dioxide levels, which were above normal.

The most stressful moment for her was when he went on the first of his three space walks. “I had seen how hard he worked,” she said “I knew all the behind-the-scenes stuff, even the things that are not as fun and [are] painful. I was extremely excited that he was finally going to do this.”

She said she knew he’d be fine as soon as he got back inside. While he was gone, she forgot what it felt like to have physical contact with Kelly. “The one thing you can not replicate is human touch,” she said. “There does come a time when you forget what that person feels like, what it feels like to get a hug.” The moment of realization is “sad,” although she said she always knew there was an end point.

Indeed, when his journey was almost over, Kelly sent her a list of the things he wanted and craved back on Earth, including green Gatorade, strawberries and salad. She didn’t have any similar such lists for him. “You tend to put your own needs aside,” she said. “You focus on everything for him. I didn’t think about what I wanted.”

At first, she felt an urgency to make sure he adapted to his return, which was no small task. In addition to getting him to doctors’ appointments, she helped him deal with a painful rash that developed after an extended time when gravity didn’t push clothing against his skin. He also had swelling in his legs. When she massaged his feet, she couldn’t feel his ankle bones. At the beginning, it was “disgusting,” she said. “I knew they weren’t his feet.” She said he was “in such a fog” after his return. Physically, he was back, but the pain, particularly in his feet, was difficult for him.

Kauderer felt limited in what she could do for herself. “When he came home, I didn’t have any me-time,” she said. She went to the door to go for a run and Kelly asked her where she was going. She told him she needed to get out for 20 minutes to take a run. “That’s all I need,” she said. “He was like, ‘OK.’”

Kelly’s life has returned to a new normal, as he travels to promote his book. Kauderer said the distance apart brought them closer together. At night, she said she has returned to moving over to his side of the bed, which is warmer than it was during his absence. “When he was back, I went back to pushing him off the bed again,” she said.

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Above, Scott Kelly, right, with his twin brother Mark. Photo by Robert Markowitz

By Daniel Dunaief

Dear readers,

Each week, in the Power of Three, Times Beacon Record News Media highlights the efforts of dedicated scientists at Stony Brook University, Cold Spring Harbor Lab and Brookhaven National Lab. This week, we will feature astronaut Scott Kelly, who set an American record for consecutive days in space.

Kelly not only conducted research on flowers and performed space walks while orbiting the Earth, he also became his own living laboratory, taking blood samples to compare to his twin brother Mark. Some day, the pioneering studies from the twins may turn the dream of a trip to Mars and beyond into a reality.

He had a spectacular view for close to a year, watching 16 sunrises and sunsets each day aboard the International Space Station. He even pretended to catch a pass thrown by television host Stephen Colbert from over 249 miles away.

A view of Earth aboard the ISS. Photo by Scott Kelly

Astronaut Scott Kelly set an American record for consecutive days in space, floating from one part of the multinational station to another for 340 days. During that journey, in which Kelly traveled over 143 million miles with cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, the New Jersey native conducted numerous experiments, including on himself. NASA plans to use the information gained from Kelly’s mission to design future extended trips into space, including any future journey to Mars.

Kelly, who returned to Earth in March of 2016, recently published a book titled “Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery” (Knopf), in which he shared a long journey from underachieving high school student to celebrated astronaut.

“There are things about the experience that are absolutely amazing,” he said, “but, then, at the same time, the things that make everything amazing also make other things more difficult.” For starters, moving from a Soyuz rocket to the space station isn’t as simple as stepping out of a car and opening another door. When the rocket attaches to the station, it can take hours to equalize the pressure. In a film or documentary of life in space, “You can’t show 11 hours of docking or six hours of preparation to go out on a space walk,” Kelly said.

Once aboard, the astronaut, who had lived on the space station on an earlier six-month mission, said he had to adapt to the logistics of meals in space. Gravity doesn’t hold the astronauts on a chair or their food on a plate. For close to a year, he couldn’t relax his body while eating, which meant that he felt like he was standing and balancing during meals.

Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly in 1967. Photo from Scott Kelly

Kelly said the transition from life on Earth to the station, and then back again, requires adjustments. One of the most significant scientific efforts he was a part of originated from a conversation Kelly had with a NASA scientist, asking him what he should say if a reporter asked if NASA was comparing the changes in his body to those of his identical twin brother Mark. The NASA scientist then asked if he and his brother, who is a retired astronaut, would consider participating in such an effort. Thus, the NASA Twins Study was born.

Before his mission, Kelly got several small tattoos on his body, to make sure he was drawing blood from the same place each time. Scientists have spent over a year examining changes in his genes. While more results will be published next year, the work so far shows an uptick in the methylation of Scott’s DNA. That means he potentially had more signals that can turn on or off genes.

Additionally, Scott’s telomeres, which protect the ends of DNA strands, were longer during the same period than those of his Earth-bound twin. Also, Scott returned from space closer to two inches taller than his brother because the discs in Scott’s spinal column weren’t compressed by gravity. That difference didn’t last long, however, as his spine returned to normal after he came back to Earth.

While life aboard the space station included movies like “50 Shades of Grey” in Russian and books like “The Right Stuff” by Thomas Wolfe, which Kelly said inspired him to become an astronaut, it also involved unusual environmental challenges.

Scott Kelly. Photo from NASA

As part of his training, Kelly needed to recognize any of the symptoms of carbon dioxide buildup in his system. His girlfriend Amiko Kauderer provided some necessary observations during one particular conversation. Within seconds of speaking with him, Kauderer told him to stop talking to her and check the carbon dioxide levels. She quickly had diagnosed that the carbon dioxide levels, while not dangerously high, were above Kelly’s comfort level.

Kelly explained that the routine in space doesn’t leave much time for relaxation or down time. “You have one day on the weekend when you’re off,” he said. “You can arrange your workweek such that you’re taking advantage of that. You still have stuff like cleaning the space station and you still have to exercise and organize the living environment.”

Indeed, astronauts need to exercise aboard the station or risk losing bone mass and encountering muscular atrophy during their missions. In addition to stretching his body, Kelly expanded the typical limits of his responsibility for some scientific experiments.

As he chronicled in his book, he was following a protocol for growing zinnias. When the flowers weren’t flourishing, Kelly asked NASA if he could take over the decision-making process, which NASA approved. “The satisfaction came more from the idea that it was an experiment that we were making the decisions on and controlling,” he said.

Typically, he reported what he saw to NASA, and scientists back on Earth came up with a plan that they sent to Kelly. While they required considerable effort, the astronaut also took satisfaction in the three space walks he conducted during his journey. As with the movie “Gravity,” Kelly recognized the danger that orbiting space debris, even small pieces, could pose for the space station and him. “You could get hit with something that would not only put a hole in your visor, but would put a hole in your head,” he said.

Kelly didn’t bother watching out for such objects when he’s outside the station because he’d “never see it coming at you at 17,000 miles an hour.” As for what he could see from space, Kelly watched wildfires in California and Hurricane Patricia, which was a storm off the coast of Oman. In addition to information NASA might take from his mission that could inform decisions about future missions, Kelly hopes people view his experience, and his success, as a model for them.

“There’s a lot of opportunities for redemption in the United States,” Kelly said. “It’s not the preferred or easy path, but it is a path, especially in this country.”

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BeLocal winners from left, Yuxin Xia, Luke Papazian, Manuela Corcho, Johnny Donza and their thesis advisor Harold Walker. File photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Yuxin Xia and Johnny Donza

Johnny Donza wants to use the training he’s received as an engineering undergraduate at Stony Brook University to help people 8,600 miles and another continent away in Madagascar.

The group leader of a senior project, Donza is working with Yuxin Xia, Luke Papazian and Manuela Corcho to design and hopefully help build a bridge that will cross a stream on the outskirts of the village of Mandrivany. People living in that village had been walking across a log that has broken to buy and sell food or get to a hospital.

“I wanted to be involved in something that would make an impact,” said Donza, who is studying civil engineering with a concentration in structural engineering. This project presented an opportunity to help “people on the opposite side of the world. I thought that was pretty cool.”

Donza’s project is one of 15 senior design efforts that arose from a collaboration between Stony Brook and a group called BeLocal. The company sent Stony Brook graduates Acacia Leakey and Leila Esmailzada to collect video footage this summer in Madagascar. They hoped to return with the kind of information about the needs and resources of the people they met.

“These projects create the perfect opportunity for students to manage a real engineering project,” Harold Walker, professor and chair of the Department of Civil Engineering, explained in an email. Walker is Donza’s senior advisor on the project. “The experience the students have with these projects will be invaluable as they start their engineering careers.”

Acacia Leakey, on left

Walker said he initially expected to have one team of four to five students work with BeLocal in Civil Engineering. Instead, 13 students signed up. Walker spoke with Leakey and they decided to divide the students into three teams, each of which is working on different types of bridges. “If the bridge design can be implemented locally in Madagascar, this will improve the safety of river crossings and also provide the community [with] greater access to education and other opportunities,” he continued. “A bridge may seem like a simple thing but it can really be transformative.”

In addition to the bridge project Donza and his teammates are developing, Stony Brook teams are working on projects including rice storage, rat control, rice processing and briquette manufacturing.

Eric Bergerson, one of the three founders of BeLocal along with Mickie and Jeff Nagel of Laurel Hollow, said the group was thrilled with the range and scope of the projects. The response is “overwhelming,” Bergerson said, and “we couldn’t be happier.” Bergerson is the director of research at the social data intelligence company TickerTags.

For their project, Donza’s group is exploring the use of bamboo to create the bridge. “Deforestation in the region is a major problem,” which reduces the ability to find and use hardwood, Donza said. “Bamboo grows rampantly, so there’s plenty of bamboo we can use.”

To gather information about the structural details about this material, Donza and his team are testing bamboo they harvested from the Stony Brook campus. Leakey, who is earning her master’s at SBU after she did a Madagascar senior design project last year, said using bamboo creates a useful supply chain. “It’s such a sustainable resource,” said Leakey, who speaks regularly with Donza and other project managers who are seeking additional information about how to use local resources to meet a demonstrated need in Madagascar.

The Stony Brook team is working to model its structure after the Rainbow Bridge, which is an ancient Chinese bridge. The Rainbow Bridge has a longer span and has a more exaggerated arch than the one Donza and his classmates are designing. The group plans to build a structure that will hold several people at the same time. During monsoon season, the stream below the bridge also floods. The design may need to include nails or bolts, creating a durable, longer-lasting bond between pieces of bamboo.

The team is also waiting to collect information about the soil around the stream, so they know what kind of foundation they can construct. In their design, they are trying to account for a likely increase in the population and future windy conditions.

Donza said he and his team are excited to make a meaningful contribution to life in Madagascar. “We’re not just doing this to graduate,” he said. “We’re doing this because we have a chance to help people. They need this bridge.”

Leila Esmailzada

The BeLocal approach to the collaborations with Stony Brook involves learning what people need by observing and interacting with them, rather than by imposing expectations based on experiences elsewhere. Esmailzada said they spoke with women about various materials because women were the ones using the charcoal and firewood.

At some point, BeLocal may also foster an exchange that allows students from Madagascar to come to Stony Brook to learn from their American counterparts while also sharing first-hand information about what might work in Madagascar. “It’d be great if we could get people to come” to Stony Brook, Bergerson said. “We’re just developing relationships with universities now.”

Leakey said Stony Brook students have shown genuine interest in life in Madagascar and, as a result, have found some surprises. People across various disciplines assume incorrectly that developing nations progress along the same technological path that America did, which leads them to the inaccurate expectation that Madagascar is 100 years behind the United States. When engineering students learned that “people in Madagascar have smartphones” with Twitter and Facebook accounts, “their jaws fall. It’s important to recognize that so you can realize it isn’t a simple story that you’re innovating for and that there is this mixture of technology that’s familiar in a lifestyle that’s unfamiliar.”

Even while these projects are still in the formative stages, with students continuing to gather information and refine their projects, Walker suggested they have already provided value to engineering students. “The students have already learned a great deal,” Walker explained. They appreciate how their classroom skills “can really transform the lives of people across the world.”

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