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Power of 3

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

In the typical process of developing cures for medical problems or diseases, researchers explore the processes and causes and then spend years searching for remedies.

Ke Jian Liu. Photo by Jeanne Neville, Stony Brook Medicine

Sometimes, however, the time frame for finding a solution is cut much shorter, particularly when the Food and Drug Administration has already approved a drug treatment for another problem.

This could be the case for hemorrhagic stroke. Caused by a burst blood vessel that leads to bleeding in the brain, hemorrhagic stroke represents 13 percent of stroke cases, but accounts for 50 percent of stroke fatalities.

That’s because no current treatment exists to stop a process that can lead to cognitive dysfunction or death.

A researcher with a background in cancer and stroke, Ke Jian “Jim” Liu, Professor of Pathology and Associate Director or Basic Science at the Stony Brook Cancer Center who joined Stony Brook University in 2022, has found a mechanism that could make a hemorrhagic stroke so damaging.

When a blood vessel in the brain bursts, protoporphyrin, a compound that attaches to iron to form the oxygen carrying heme in the blood, partners up with zinc, a similar metal that’s in the brain and is released from neurons during a stroke. This combination, appropriately called zinc protoporphyrin, or ZnPP, doesn’t do much under normal conditions, but could be “highly toxic” in hypoxic, or low-oxygen conditions.

“We have done some preliminary studies using cellular and animal stroke models,” said Liu. “We have demonstrated on a small scale” that their hypothesis about the impact of ZnPP and the potential use of an inhibitor for the enzyme that creates it ‘is true.’”

These scientists recently received a $2.6 million grant over five years from National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which is a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

Focusing on a key enzyme

After Liu and his colleagues hypothesized that the ZnPP was toxic in a low-oxygen environment, they honed in on ways to reduce its production. Specifically, they targeted ferrochelatase, the enzyme that typically brings iron and protoporphyrin together.

Iron isn’t as available in this compromised condition because it has a positive charge of three, instead of the usual plus two.

Liu discovered the role of zinc in research he published several years ago.

When a hemorrhagic stroke occurs, it creates a “perfect storm,” as the enzyme favors creating a toxic chemical instead of its usual oxygen carrying heme, Liu said. He is still exploring what makes ZnPP toxic.

The group, which includes former colleagues of Liu’s from the University of New Mexico, will continue to explore whether ZnPP and the enzyme ferrochelatase becomes an effective treatment target.

Liu was particularly pleased that currently approved treatments for cancer could be repurposed to protect brain cells during a hemorrhagic stroke. Indeed, with over 80 approved protein kinase inhibitors, which could work to stop the formation of ZnPP during a stroke, Liu and his colleagues have plenty of potential treatment options.

“We’re in a unique position that a clinically available drug that’s FDA approved for cancer treatment” could become a therapeutic solution for a potentially fatal stroke, Liu said.

To be sure, Liu and his colleagues plan to continue to conduct research to confirm that this process works as they suggest and that this possible therapy is also effective.

As with other scientific studies of medical conditions, promising results with animal models or in a lab require further studies and validation before a doctor can offer it to patients.

“This is an animal model, based on a few observations,” said Liu. “Everything needs to be done statistically.”

At this point, Liu is encouraged by these preliminary studies as the subjects that received an inhibitor are “running around,” he said. “You can see the difference with your own eyes. We’re excited to see that.”

Earlier hypotheses for what caused damage during hemorrhagic stroke focused on the release of iron. In research studies, however, using a chelator to bind to iron ions has produced some benefits, but they are small compared to the damage from the stroke. The chelator is “not really making any major difference,” said Liu.

The Stony Brook researcher did an experiment where he compared ZnPP with the damage from other metabolic products.

“ZnPP is several times more toxic than all the other things combined,” which is what makes them believe that ZnPP might be responsible for the damage, he said.

Proof of principle

For the purpose of the grant, Liu said the scientists were focusing on gathering more concrete evidence to support their theory. The researchers are also testing a few of the protein kinase inhibitors to demonstrate that they work.

In their preliminary studies, they chose several inhibitors based on whether the drug penetrates the blood brain barrier and that have a relatively high affinity for ferrochelatase.

“This opens the door for a new phase of the study,” Liu said. “Can we find the best drug that provides the best outcomes? We are not there yet.”

Removing zinc is not an option, as it is a part of 2 percent of the proteome, Liu said. Taking it out would “screw up the entire biological, physiological system,” he added.

Liu speculates that any future drug treatment would involve a relatively small dose at a specific time, although he recognized that any drug could have side effects.

In an uncertain funding climate in which the government is freezing some grants, Liu hopes that the financial support will continue through the duration of the grant.

“Our hope is that at the end of this grant, we can demonstrate” the mechanism of action for ZnPP and can find a reliable inhibitor, he said. “The next step would be to go to a clinical trial with an FDA-approved drug, and that would be fantastic.”

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This bar graph shows the various forms of violence victimization over a 24-hour period as reported in more than 12,000 mobile phone surveys of almost 500 adolescent boys. Credit: Rachel Kidman

By Daniel Dunaief

Rachel Kidman

Researchers have long connected exposure to violence, particularly at a younger age, to expressions of violence as people age.

In a recent study of boys between the ages of 15 and 19 years old published in the journal PLOS One, lead author Rachel Kidman, Core Faculty in the Program in Public Health and Associate Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, however, has made a connection between various types of violence adolescent boys witnessed or were subjected to and violence within 24 hours towards intimate partners.

“Those boys who experience violence that day are much more likely to act out and engage in intimate partner violence against their girlfriend or boyfriend,” said Kidman. 

Adolescent boys are getting “trapped in a cycle” in which they experience and then perpetuate violence, Kidman said.

In parts of Africa, in particular, intimate partner violence could be particularly dangerous as the rate of HIV infection — the virus that causes AIDS — is higher.

This study, which was conducted with 498 adolescents living in Soweto, South Africa who responded to cell phone surveys from November of 2020 to June of 2022, expands the understanding of the development of abuse and violence.

Amy Hammock, Associate Professor in the School of Social Welfare at Stony Brook University, who has collaborated on research with Kidman but was not a part of this paper, lauded the work for its “strong design” which relies on surveys that measure violence within 24 hours. The surveys allow for “more accuracy in reporting” than a typical question about violence within the last year.

“Many of the boys in the sample experienced significant violence, both at the community level and the interpersonal level,” Hammock explained.

Previous evidence indicates that men who experienced or witnessed childhood trauma or domestic violence between their parents perpetrate intimate partner violence at higher rates.

“We don’t have a lot of evidence of what happens during the teenage years,” said Kidman. “This could be setting the course for relationships in the future.”

Adolescents could be responding to triggers and may not know how to cope with their own emotions, which leads to their own violent actions.

Working with boys

Public health programs typically focus on ways to protect people in relationships, often women, against violence, by encouraging them to take self-defense classes and to recognize the signs of an abusive relationship. Many of these approaches place the onus on the victim, which seems too narrow, Kidman said. As a next step, “we can work with boys, acknowledge the trauma.”

By exploring the link between physical, verbal and sexual violence perpetrated against adolescent boys, researchers are taking a first step towards developing methods that might help boys cope with their own emotions without lashing out at their partners.

“We need to learn more to design the right intervention,” Kidman explained.

Breaking the cycle

The real-time mobile phone surveys revealed a sharp increase in the odds of intimate partner violence (IPV) when teenage boys were victims of violence within 24 hours, particularly sexual violence. Credit: Rachel Kidman

Kidman chose to work with adolescents in this area of South Africa in part because she had forged connections with researchers in the area in previous studies and in part because of the high levels of HIV and violence for an underserved population.

She feels it’s important to understand the epidemics of violence in low and middle income countries.

“The area we work in has a history of apartheid and racial and economic segregation and a long history of violence and a high rate of HIV,” Kidman said.

To be sure, ideally, these adolescents wouldn’t experience any violence. Many of the adolescents who participated in this study experienced intimate partner violence directed against them as well, which could be initiated by a girlfriend or be used by a girlfriend in self defense.

“Some of this may be in the context of bi-directional violence in the relationship,” said Kidman.

Participants in this study could ask to speak with a counselor. Kidman appreciates the adolescents who shared personal and painful details their lives.

“These are not easy topics to talk about and they get a lot of credit for being so open,” she said. “This gives us insights into how we can help.”

Meaningful semester abroad

The direction Kidman’s research has taken springs from research she did during her undergraduate training at Swarthmore College, particularly during a semester abroad in Zimbabwe. She was interested in the social dimensions of HIV. During her master’s degree at the Harvard School of Public Health, she studied the survival and education of orphaned children.

As she conducted that research, Kidman considered the many adversities affecting children, including violence, child abuse, neglect, and living with someone who has substance abuse problems, among others. The current project is exploring how these experiences during childhood and adolescence, including child abuse, verbal violence and bullying, affect youth and their behavior towards intimate partners.

Indeed, when youth with HIV experience violence, they sometimes don’t take their medications, which increases the health risks to themselves and their partners.

Role models

Born and raised in Portland, Maine, Kidman received considerable support for her broader interests in the world from her parents Joan and Bruce Kidman.

“When I announced that I was going to Zimbabwe for the semester, they were absolutely on board,” said Kidman.

Indeed, both of her parents, who met in college, worked together for the Peace Corps in Micronesia after they graduated. When she was in college, Kidman was eager to learn about a different culture.

Kidman and her husband Sean Clouston, Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine at SBU, live in Stony Brook with their 10 and 12-year old children Riley and Quinn.

As for her work, Kidman suggested numerous questions remain. She urged further studies that could assist with preventing violence and supporting those people who can be victims and perpetrators.

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Dr. John Inglis Photo from CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Evolution doesn’t just favor species that have adaptive advantages in a changing environment. It’s also relevant for businesses, as they move into new markets, and even to scientific publishing.

A preprint scientific publishing effort that started in 2013 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory with bioRxiv and expanded in 2019 with medRxiv is making changes that its creators believe positions it to grow while continuing to serve the scientific community.

BioRxiv and medRxiv are becoming an independent nonprofit, called openRxiv. The new format, which takes the preprint offerings outside the home of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, will create a product that is outside the realm of a single institution and that has transparent governance.

“We had an independent needs assessment done by a consulting company,” said Dr. John Inglis, Chair of the openRxiv Scientific and Medical Advisory Board. The governance needed to be “more community-oriented, with not just funders, but committees of working scientists.”

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has been the major funder for the preprint services, understood the benefits of transitioning to an independent non profit. They also wanted to “see a diversification of funding” from other sources and contributors, Inglis said.

Up until co-founders Inglis and Dr. Richard Sever, Chief Science and Strategy Officer at openRxiv created these two preprint services, most biological and medical scientific discoveries progressed through the slower pace of peer review publishing that helps them advance their fields while sharing their results.

Preprints, however, greatly accelerated that process by allowing researchers to display their work before peer review. While scientists might need to amend their findings by adding further studies, these preprints enable researchers to do the equivalent of presenting their research to a worldwide audience, the way scientists do at meetings.

The preprint servers are “like the biggest conference you’ve ever seen, with millions of people,” said Inglis.

A growing market 

In each month of the last quarter of 2024, bioRxiv recorded between 8 million and 9.7 million page views, with between 4.7 million and 6.8 million downloads, Inglis said. MedRxiv, meanwhile, had between 1.8 million and 1.9 million page views with a million downloads per month.

With more than 110 new articles per day last year, bioRxiv added 11 percent more original preprints last year. MedRxiv grew by 12 percent, adding 12,863 preprints last year, or about 35 new articles per day.

MedRxiv launched the year before the pandemic and quickly became the major channel of communication for pandemic-related preprints.

In 2020, when pandemic related coverage accounted for 80 percent of everything posted, medRxiv shared a total of 14,070 research pieces.

At this point, contributing authors have come from 190 countries. The most prolific contributors are the United States and the United Kingdom. With readers coming from around the world, openRxiv’s primary task is to convert some of the readers from other countries into contributors, Inglis said.

Search for a CEO

OpenRxiv creates opportunities for several executives.

Sever, who had been CSHL Press Assistant Director, will leave the lab to become the chief scientific and strategy officer for openRxiv.

At the same time, openRxiv, which has an annual budget of $3 million, has hired a recruiting firm to lead the search for its first Chief Executive Officer.

The new CEO will need to “believe in the mission, promise, potential and ambition of openRxiv,” said Inglis, as the CEO will be the “principal ambassador” for the effort.

The new leader will also need experience running a complex organization with various stakeholders and that has community engagement.

Inglis described the current employees, which includes eight full time staff, as “fantastically motivated.” He anticipates the new leader could be announced as soon as three or four months from now.

Expanded opportunities

The preprint servers has appealed to academic institutions directly for ongoing repeated support, through a membership model.

Indeed, preprint managers reached out on the 10th anniversary of bioRxiv and received backing from institutions that are listed on every bioRxiv and medRxiv preprint.

“We want to build on that, to reach out to more institutions,” said Inglis. He wants to have a “real dialog with them about what these servers mean to their faculty and how we can be useful in terms of their operations.”

Some academic institutions don’t always know which research studies are appearing on these servers.

OpenRxiv can give universities information for researchers who are posting their studies.

Additionally, these servers have been offering authors the chance to transfer their manuscripts to particular journals. At this point, openRxiv has connections with 45 publishers who oversee 380 journals.

Inglis said they charge a small fee to set that up and described this effort as the “germ” of a business model. He anticipates that openRxiv could provide more of these connections.

Professional pathways

Authors have the ability to correct or amend their work on these servers. The preprints encourage people to explain the changes, while discouraging too many corrections or changes for grammatical reasons. The record for revisions on bioRxiv or medRxiv is seven.

Inglis has heard from numerous researchers who are grateful to increase the visibility of their work and their careers in a timely way.

These non peer reviewed studies can help scientists move up the ladder, getting job offers from other institutions while they await publication in a journal.

Ongoing support

CSHL, BMJ Group and Yale School of Medicine remain key supporters of openRxiv.

“OpenRxiv is the natural evolution and progression of free and open access to scientific information,” Bruce Stillman, President and CEO of CSHL said in a statement. “BioRxiv and medRxiv have revolutionized the field of science and scientific publishing. The establishment of openRxiv will allow for continued innovation in how the latest scientific results are communicated.”

In the last few weeks, openRxiv had the first in a series of webinars they are mounting on their own behalf. They plan to offer them to institutions across the world and believe they are an effective way to engage with the world of international science.

OpenRxiv is in conversation with faculty at an institution in Japan about organizing a webinar and will reach out to institutions in India. Staff at openRxiv plan to expand the scope of this process by contacting authors in potential locations who have multiple articles on the servers.

The response from students is an “encouragement to do more,” said Inglis. “Having more people and more resources will allow us to ramp up educational development of what we’re doing.”

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Dr. Sritha Rajupet. Photo from Stony Brook Medicine/Jeanne Neville

By Daniel Dunaief

While many people are fortunate enough to ignore Covid or try to put as much distance between themselves and the life altering pandemic, others, including people throughout Long Island, are battling long Covid symptoms that affect the quality of their lives.

Dr. Sritha Rajupet
 Photo from Stony Brook Medicine/Jeanne Neville

Sritha Rajupet, Director of the Post-Covid clinic at Stony Brook Medicine and Chair of Family, Population & Preventive Medicine, puts her triple-board certified experience to work in her efforts to provide relief and a greater understanding of various levels of symptoms from Covid including pain, brain fog, and discomfort.

Rajupet serves as co-Principal Investigator, along with Dr. Hal Skopicki, chief of cardiology and co-director of the Stony Brook Heart Institute, on a study called Recover-Autonomic.

This research, which uses two different types of repurposed treatments that have already received Food and Drug Administration approval in other contexts, is designed to help people who have an autonomic nervous system disorder called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. People with this syndrome typically have a fast heart rate, dizziness or fatigue when they stand up from sitting down.

Stony Brook is contributing to a clinical trial for two different types of treatments, each of which has a control or placebo group. In one of the trials, patients receive Gamunex-C intravenous immunoglobulin. In the other, patients take Ivabradine by mouth.

Stony Brook has been enrolling patients in this study since the summer. The intravenous study is a nine-month trial.

Some improvements

Dawn Vogt, a 54-year-old Wading River resident, is enrolled in the intravenous trial.

While Vogt, who has been a patient of post Covid clinic since November of 2022, doesn’t know whether she’s getting the placebo or the intravenous treatment, she has been feeling better since entering the study.

Dawn Vogt in 2018.

The owner of a business called Office Solutions of Long Island, Vogt has been struggling for years with body aches, headaches, fever, stomach pain, fatigue and coughing.

“I’m definitely feeling better,” said Vogt, whose Covid fog can become so arduous on any given day that she struggles with her memory and her ability to put words together, as well as to engage in work that required multitasking.

“I’m a big puzzle person,” said Vogt. “[After Covid] I just couldn’t do it. It was and still is like torture.”

Still, Vogt, who was earning her undergraduate degree in women and gender studies at Stony Brook before she left to deal with the ongoing symptoms of Covid, feels as if several parts of her treatment, including the clinical trial, has improved her life.

Since her treatment that started during the summer, she has “definitely seen improvement,” Vogt said.

Dawn Vogt in 2023.

In addition to the clinical trial, Vogt, who had previously run a half marathon, received a pace maker, which also could be improving her health. “I’m starting to have more energy, instead of feeling exhausted all the time,” she said, and has seen a difference in her ability to sleep.

Vogt feels fortunate not only for the medical help she receives from Rajupet and the Stony Brook clinic, but also for the support of her partner Tessa Gibbons, an artist with whom Vogt developed a relationship and created a blended family in the years after Vogt’s husband died in 2018.

“My hope is that I can find a new normal and that I can become functional so that I can get back to doing some of what I love,” she said.

Vogt urges others not to give up. “If your doctors don’t believe you, find one who does,” she said. “My doctors at Stony Brook, including Dr. Rajupet and the whole team, are amazing. They listened, they are compassionate and they don’t ever say, ‘That’s crazy.’”

Indeed, in working with some of the over 1,500 unique patients who have come to Stony Brook Medicine’s post-Covid clinic, Rajupet said she “explores things together.” When her patients learn about something new that they find through their own research, she couples that knowledge with her own findings to develop a treatment plan that she hopes offers some comfort and relief.

Ongoing medical questions

Doctors engaged in the treatment of long Covid are eager to help people whose quality of life can and often is greatly diminished. 

People “haven’t been able to work, haven’t been able to do activities they enjoy whether that’s sports as a result of their fatigue or myalgia [a type of muscle pain]. Concentration may be affected, as people can’t read or perform their work-related activities,” said Rajupet.

At this point, long Covid disproportionately affects women.

During her family medicine residency, Rajupet learned about preventive medicine in public health. She worked with specific populations and completed an interdisciplinary women’s health research fellowship.

Her research background allowed her to couple her primary care experience with her women’s health background with a population approach to care.

The Stony Brook doctor would like to understand how many infections it takes to develop long Covid.

“For some, it’s that one infection, and for others, [long Covid] comes in on the third or fourth” time someone is battling the disease, Rajupet said.

She also hopes to explore the specific strains that might have triggered long Covid, and/ or whether something in a person’s health history affected the course of the disease.

Rajupet recognizes that the need for ongoing solutions and care for people who are managing with challenges that affect their quality of life remains high.

“There are still 17 million people affected by this,” she said. “We have to make sure we can care for them.”

As for Vogt, she is grateful for the support she receives at Stony Brook and for the chance to make improvements in a life she and Gibbons have been building.

Her hope is that “every day, week, month and even hour, I take one more breath towards being able to function as best as possible,” Vogt said. “My goal is to live the best life I can every day.”

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Andrew Singer with students in a newly created makers space in the Engineering Building at SBU. Photo by Debra Scala Giokas/Stony Brook University

By Daniel Dunaief

Andrew Singer. Photo courtesy of SBU

Andrew Singer, the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) at Stony Brook University, has bigger numbers in mind. For starters, he’d like to see CEAS increase in size, from 5,000 total students, including 3,500 undergraduates, to as many as 10,000 students.

“We are small as an institution compared to other institutions of our reputation in research,” said Singer, referring both to the overall population of the university and to the college he leads.

He believes growth at the CEAS could occur because there is “that much demand for a Stony Brook College of Engineering and Applied Sciences education right now.”

Singer, who joined Stony Brook in July of 2023, believes that state schools like Stony Brook provide an education that create life changing opportunities for people and their families. The lack of available housing on campus at this point is a rate limiting step in increasing the number of students who can attend.

Getting the word out

Singer, who came to Stony Brook after 25 years in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Illinois, believes public universities have historically seen themselves as being local and serving the mission of the state, without needing to advertise.

“As public funding diminished, many public institutions realized they needed to tell the world that they were serving this tremendous mission and adding tremendous value to society,” Singer said.

Indeed, the late Chemistry Professor Paul Lauterbur helped invent the MRI machine, which has become such an important diagnostic tool in medicine. Lauterbur, who was a tenured professor at Stony Brook from 1963 to 1985, shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with British Physicist Sir Peter Mansfield in 2003.

Singer also wants prospective students to know that John L. Hennessy, the former president of Stanford University and current chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, earned his Master’s and PhD degrees from Stony Brook.

“Telling our story not only can help to bring some of the world’s greatest educators and researchers to campus, but can also ensure that the resources needed to continue to build on our successes are available,” said Singer.

Finding funds

Additionally, the CEAS Dean believes professors in the college can diversify their sources of funding.

“One of the things I noticed at Stony Brook is that most of the research is funded through grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy,” he said. “That concentration of funding makes you vulnerable to changes in the funding cycle.”

Additionally, competition for funding from those agencies is extremely high.  Singer has been urging faculty at CEAS to seek funding from industrial sponsors.

“At the end of the day, what’s important is the scholarship you create,” he said.

Singer appreciates how his colleagues at Stony Brook are pursuing funds for larger interdepartmental funds.

Vice President for Research Kevin Gardner has “strong experience in building these larger portfolios of funding for faculty research,” Singer said. Gardner and Singer talk “often about ways we can continue to develop opportunities for faculty to go after new funding and present ideas to industry.”

Gardner described Singer as a “rock star” who has “great ideas” and is “super brilliant with tons of positive energy. He can move things and already has been moving things in a positive direction for CEAS.” 

Gardner believes engineering could and should be twice the size it is and suggested that Singer is “the guy who will get us there.”

Opportunities for growth

Singer appreciates the depth and breadth of faculty interests at the CEAS. “Our faculty are brilliant researchers, working at the forefront of many areas of importance to society, from information and energy systems, to human health and disease prevention, to clean water and security,” he said.  “With nine departments in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, it is difficult to find an area of science and engineering where our faculty are not having impact.”

Singer sees opportunities for growth in areas including artificial intelligence.

The university launched the AI Innovation Institute (AI3) in September of last year, which will expand the Institute for AI-driven Discovery and Innovation, which was established in 2018 from a department-level institute within the CEAS to the university-wide AI3, reporting to Provost Carl Lejuez. Steve Skiena, distinguished professor in the department of Computer Science, is serving as the interim director of AI3 while the university has been searching for an inaugural director.

The provost appreciates the efforts Singer has been making on behalf of the CEAS and the university. Singer is “good at thinking about the big things we need to focus on,” Lejuez said in an interview. Singer has “brought a leadership style that is consistent with the culture we’ve been trying to create over the past few years. We are partners with faculty, staff and students. We are including them not just at the end of decisions.”

Singer is also continuing to pursue his own scientific studies. His research interests include signal processing and communication systems. He has worked on underwater acoustics, where he studied underwater communication for the subsea industry. He has also worked in wireless communications for cellular and radio applications and in fiber optic communication systems.

Singer has two graduate students at Stony Brook and several students who are completing their work at Illinois. His students are working in areas related to audio signal processing, such as improving the performance of hearing aids and devices like noise-cancelling headphones, as well as in underwater acoustics.

Singer has had two companies emerge from research in his lab. He would like to continue to engage in innovation and entrepreneurship and help grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Stony Brook.

Quantum work

CEAS has invested in areas related to quantum communication.

In August 2024, Stony Brook was chosen to lead a project in the National Quantum Virtual Laboratory program. Funded by the National Science Foundation and led by Principal Investigator Eden Figueroa, Stony Brook Presidential Innovation Endowed Professor, the team is designing and implementing a 10-node quantum network connecting labs at Stony Brook, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University and Yale University.

Stony Brook held a workshop on Quantum Information Science and Communication systems in Manhattan that Figueroa led, in which some of the foremost experts in the field presented their work and discussed collaboration opportunities with Stony Brook, Singer explained.

Stony Brook has its “local and global strengths.” Singer wants to focus on building on those areas and to have SBU becoming well known to students and faculty as a destination of choice.

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Research associate Dr. Ejiro Umaka is pictured with BNL’s sPHENIX detectorEjiro Umaka at the sPHENIX. Photo by Kevin Coughlin/BNL

By Daniel Dunaief

Despite their importance in making a turkey sandwich, a clarinet, and an adorable puppy wagging its tail possible, quarks and gluons don’t figure into the realm of subjects discussed at water coolers, which, incidentally, also depend on the interaction between these subatomic particles.

Ejiro Umaka has the opportunity to change that, at least for a general audience including national legislators, in under three minutes while using only one slide.

A Research Associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Umaka won $2,000 at BNL’s second SLAM competition, in which she and nine other junior scientists presented their research in front of a live audience. Umaka planned to present her work this past Wednesday, March 5th to an audience of politicians, judges and people generally interested in science.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY1) attended the previous event and extended his congratulations to Umaka.

“Dr. Umaka’s unwavering commitment to advancing scientific knowledge and her exceptional curiosity exemplify the pioneering spirit that positions Long Island at the forefront of research and technological development,” LaLota wrote in an email. “I am confident that [she] will represent Suffolk Count with distinction, and I eagerly anticipate her continued achievements.”

While the winner of the national competition will receive $4,000, the opportunity to compete and to describe her work for a general audience has already provided important experience for Umaka.

“I am honored to represent BNL,” Umaka explained in an email. “I am thrilled to discuss my work to a large audience without the usual scientific jargon, which has led to a deeper understanding of my work.”

During the SLAM competition, these scientists, whose competition will be live-streamed, use three minutes to inspire, captivate, and enlighten audiences whose decisions could affect future support and funding for important research projects.

In 2023, when Daniel Marx, Deputy Group Leader of the EIC Accelerator Design Group at BNL, traveled to Washington to represent BNL, he met several politicians from around the country, including Reps LaLota and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY2).

The politicians, many of whose districts, like LaLota’s included a national lab, were “certainly interested,” said Marx. He recalls speaking with Chuck Fleischmann (R-TN3), who served as Chairman of Energy and Water Appropriations.

Fleischmann, whose committee sets the budget for the Department of Energy and the national labs, was “very interested in having a conversation with us about the interplay between science and politics and how we can work together on that.”

Marx also enjoyed meeting with Bill Foster (D-IL14), who has a PhD in physics and has signs like “I love physics” in his office. “He has a really good grasp of what’s going on,” Marx recalled.

Foster asked penetrating and important questions about Marx’s work on developing the Electron Ion Collider.

Quarks, gluons and slowing down

Umaka is looking forward to representing BNL at the national competition and to sharing the science she does with a national audience.

Umaka works at the sPHENIX experiment, which is a radical makeover of the original PHENIX experiment. The experiment collects data at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC.

The size of a two-story house with a weight of about 1,000 tons (or about five adult blue whales), the sPHENIX detector will capture snapshots of 15,000 particle collisions per second.

After the superconducting magnet at the core of the sPHENIX traveled across the country from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California to Brookhaven, it was installed in 2021. Umaka arrived at the lab before the sPHENIX was assembled.

“It’s not every time as a physicist or junior researcher that you start off with an experiment that is new,” said Umaka. 

The sPHENIX had to work out some early challenges. Initially, the experiment planned to use a mixture of gases in the time projection chamber that included neon. The war in Ukraine, however, created a shortage of neon, so the lab switched to a different gas and added isobutane. The group celebrated with an isobutane cake. Fortunately, the supermarket hadn’t run out of them.

Umaka explained in her winning talk that her experiments allow the team to explore the universe as it was millionths of a second after the Big Bang, when the primordial soup that contained quarks and gluons came together to create the world we know.

She compares the process at sPHENIX to having chicken soup in the form of the quark gluon plasma. The researchers then shoot small objects within a jet that are similar in scale to the other ingredients in the soup so they scatter off each other. From there, they can deduce the microscopic nature or point like structure of the plasma.

The role of sPHENIX is to record jets that come from the collision of nuclei that release quarks. 

“The jet shoots through the soup, and this is why we can use jets as a probe,” Umaka explained.

In the experiments, the soup exhibits collective behavior, which is similar to the response of a school of fish that turn in unison when disturbed. When the researchers look at the soup on the level of individual quarks and gluons, the particles should behave like molecules in a gas. 

By recording lots of collisions, sPHENIX increases the likelihood of finding and recording desirable jets useful for probing the soup at the level of individual quarks and gluons.

“We want to discover how the fluid-like (collective) nature of the soup emerges from fundamental interactions of quarks and gluons,” Umaka explained. 

Nigerian roots

Born in Nigeria, Umaka moved to Houston in her teens when her parents transferred to the United States. When she was younger, she wasn’t confident in her science aptitude. She took difficult courses in which the social structure worked against her advancement as a woman.

In Houston, she took a particle physics course. The professor suggested she’d do well in his group and that she’d get to go to Geneva to do research.

“Sign me up,” she recalled saying, and she did.

A resident of Brookhaven, Umaka enjoys visiting the mall, reading books, attending yoga classes, listening to music and talking with family.

As for the SLAM event, Umaka appreciates the way the competition has increased her visibility.

“If people like the talk, they will invite you to do other stuff, which is great,” she said.

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To watch Ejiro Ukama give her presentation at the National SLAM competition, click here and go to 1:48.

 

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Rob Martienssen with Nobel Prize winning scientist Barbara McClintock in 1990. Photo by Tim Mulligan, CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Cells, like the organisms they are a part of, are trying to balance between staying the same and making the kind of changes that might save a life or increase fitness.

At the cellular level, pieces of important genetic information, called small RNA, have the ability to introduce important so-called epigenetic changes. These alterations allow an individual to survive a potential threat, such as a disease or a toxin in the environment, without altering their DNA.

In a recent publication in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the University of Cambridge demonstrated that a slightly altered form of uridine, which is a combination of the base uracil and ribosome, can act as something of a master key throughout nature.

“When you see something like that conserved in plants and animals, it has to be basic in terms of inheritance or mechanisms,” said Rob Martienssen, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator who has been at CSHL since 1989.

Indeed, pseudouridine guides epigenetic inheritance, which, unlike a mutation, can represent a temporary change in gene function.

Pseudouridine helps transport small RNAs into reproductive cells in both plants and mammals.

Without pseudouridine, these small RNAs that lead to epigenetic changes can become the target of the body’s immune system, which reacts to anything that introduces changes into the genetic machinery as a potential threat, such as a virus.

The body’s Rig-1 pathway, which monitors the extracellular space for foreign genetic material, triggers a cascade of reactions that lead to the release of interferon by white blood cells.

“We think a conserved protein called RTL1 might provide this function in plants (and animals),” explained Martienssen.

Pseudouridine can signal to the body that these genetic codes that are heading towards the nucleus are “self,” keeping the immune system’s reaction at bay.

“It is known that pseudouridine (and other RNA modification) prevent recognition of long RNA as a virus by human cells and we think the same is true in plants,” Martienssen said.

Some viruses have effectively slipped behind the immune defenses by incorporating pseudouridine into their codes. The most famous example of this, Martienssen suggested, is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV.

Parasitic nematodes and plants also transfer small RNA into the plants they are parasitizing.

Martienssen speculates that those RNA depend on pseudouridine. In his current experiments, he is testing that hypothesis.

Vaccinations

The immune system initially treated the developing mRNA vaccines that were so instrumental in providing an immune defense against COVID-19 as a viral threat, rather than a potential life-saving shot.

A strong immune response prevented the vaccine from providing any benefit.

By adding pseudouridine, among other chemical modifications, to the mix, the pharmaceutical companies created vaccines that functioned effectively without triggering an immune reaction that would otherwise block their effectiveness.

By contributing to a filter that evades immune detection, pseudouridine can also enable the kinds of epigenetic changes — apart and aside from human intervention — that contribute to survival during challenging conditions.

Small RNA that contains pseudouridine can induce epigenetic changes that might be caused by the environment or some disease, enabling an important alteration in the genetic code that could protect an individual against harm.

Martienssen and his team believe pseudourilyation is required to get into the germ line, the cells that are a part of contributing to the next generation. He believes pseudourilyation might also make the germ line more stable.

Martienssen’s collaborator from Cambridge, Tony Kouzarides, independently found pseudouridine in mouse small RNA.

Shorter term changes

As for the long term impact of these changes, epigenetic inheritance typically only lasts a half a dozen generations in animals like worms.

Well known enzymes, such as demethylases, can remove epigenetic marks over time, as several mechanisms are trying to “clean up” the genome before these changes become permanent.

Lower organisms, such as fungi, can become epigenetically resistant to drugs. Epigenetics gives them a lot more variation than they would otherwise have had under natural selection.

An example includes cryptococcus, an infection that can be deadly for immunocompromised people, Martienssen explained.

About five percent of the bases in ribosomal RNA are pseudouridine and 100 percent of ribosomal RNA molecules have these bases rather than uridine at these locations.

Martienssen interfered with the process in his experiments by knocking out an exportin, which is a protein required to export small RNAs. He was able to knock it out without killing the plant.

English origins

Martienssen grew up in Essex, England by the Blackwater estuary near Maldon, which is famous for its sea salt.

Martienssen lived his childhood close to London. Long Island and New York City remind him of home.

When he was eight years old, his father Anthony Kenneth Martienssen gave him the book “The Double Helix’ by former CSHL chair and Nobel Prize winner James Watson.

Martienssen’s father was an author and an aviation consultant who pioneered computer guided air traffic control, his son said. The family recently reprinted some of his father’s books from 50 to 75 years ago.

When he arrived at CSHL, Martienssen worked with Nobel Prize winner Barbara McClintock, who studied transposable genetic elements.

“She showed me how to isolate male germline cells (pollen precursors) from maize plants,” Martienssen recalled. “She told me not to make models, but to stick to the observations.”

McClintock’s earlier models had been more accurate than she realized at the time, he said.

As for his study of epigenetics, Martienssen explained that such alterations are “amazingly useful” in theory, as they can “be induced in many individuals at the same time (random mutations would only occur in one individual at a time), inherited, but then reversed when conditions change.”

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Smartphones are an attractive nuisance not just during family time, when parents might otherwise struggle to see anything other than the top of the heads of their children, but also during school.

Lauren Hale. Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Medicine

In a recent research letter published in JAMA Pediatrics, scientists led by Lauren Hale, Professor in the Department of Family, Population and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University, found in a study of 117 students from the ages of 13 to 18 that smartphone use during school hours typically consumed an average of about 1.5 hours. That’s about 23 percent of a typical school day.

“School time should be a time for being present,” said Hale. It should involve interacting with peers and learning from teachers. “When a quarter of your day is spent with your finger on the phone” students are missing opportunities for academic and social growth.

The study, which was funded by the Della Pietra Family Foundation, comes as Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has unveiled a plan to restrict cell phone use during the day for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. 

The governor’s plan allocates $13.5 million for pouches, cubbies and other storage devices and comes as other states and countries seek to limit the kinds of distractions that diminish learning and that prevent face-to-face social interactions.

The JAMA study “really does underscore the need to help children reduce their screen time, both at school and at home,” said Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development.

At this moment, “we are seeing a crisis in childhood that is highly correlated with the introduction of the smartphone and social media platforms,” Perry added.

In the JAMA Pediatrics study, the researchers found that a quarter of the participants spent more than two hours on their phone during school.

The top five most used apps or categories, other than internet browsing, were messaging, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email.

The study may underestimate the amount of time typical students spend on their phones, in part because the participants in the research knew that their phone use was being tracked.

Study design

The students in the study, who were divided almost equally between boys and girls and who came from a representative sampling of different backgrounds, completed a 15-minute smartphone-based survey and installed RealityMeter to measure their smartphone use.

The researchers examined data from these students, whose phones sent signals throughout the day about the time they are using the phone.

The average number of hours these students were on their phones during the day was 5.59, which excludes other electronic devices such as video games, desktop computers or laptops.

To be sure, the survey didn’t analyze the times during the day that these students were on their phones. Some of these participants, for example, could have used their smartphones during their lunch or free periods rather than during calculus classes or lectures about American History, French or any other subject.

“We didn’t have the granularity of each student’s schedule to know” when the phone usage was the highest, Hale said.

Still, using the phone instead of interacting directly with students in the room, at a lunch table, or in a hallway is a “missed opportunity for eye-to-eye contact in real life,” said Hale.

In the study, about 22 percent of the participants indicated that their parents restricted their phone use when they are at home.

The data for this group during school tracks, however, closely with the students who said they didn’t have any such similar phone restrictions at home. The study also compared phone usage for students whose parents attended college with those who didn’t attend or finish college.

The children of college graduates used the phone about 30 minutes less per school day.

Combination of factors

Several factors may have contributed to any potential increase in the use of smartphones in school.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the lockdown and remote learning, students relied on technology to log in to their classrooms. Adolescents who couldn’t interact with each other in person also spent considerable time texting and interacting with each other on social media.

Additionally, various apps have enhanced their platforms to encourage users to stay on them for longer periods of time.

“The algorithms know that I like Shih Tzus, so I keep getting reels for tiny white dogs doing tricks,” said Hale. “If they put up cats, I wouldn’t watch.”

The same is true for adolescents, who see sports clips or other content regularly that compels them to stay online and that may interfere with their ability to learn in class or to socialize with people around them. 

These apps and the devices adolescents use could provide information about usage patterns.

“I would love to see social media platforms share more information,” said Hale.

Perry added that parents act as important role models for their children when it comes to screen time. “What you’re modeling is going to be replicated,” she said. “Things that adults do without thinking, their children are copying.”

Next steps

Hale indicated that the research team has just finished collecting a second wave of data on the same participants. The scientists will be following up to see screen use patterns as well as any observed changes in mental health and physical well being.

The recent work published in JAMA Pediatrics is a “descriptive baseline” of smartphone usage in school, said Hale. She suggested that researchers need to conduct further research to understand the impact of phone usage patterns on education. “We need replication in science” to uncover more details over a larger population for smartphone use.

Like Gov. Hochul and others who have focused on this issue, Hale believes these personal electronics may hinder the learning process.

“I’m concerned about kids losing precious school hours to distracting devices,” Hale said. When students go to school, they should “be ready for learning and social time. That’s what’s going to make a difference in their education.”

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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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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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