Honorary Degree Provided to Nobel Prize-Winning COVID Biochemist and Researcher Katalin Karikó
More than 7,600 Stony Brook University students joined the ranks of the university’s accomplished alumni at the 2024 Degree Commencement Celebration ceremony. The ceremony took place at LaValle Stadium on Friday, May 17, 2024.
Students from this year’s graduating class in the university’s 67-year history, were awarded a combined 7,785 degrees and certificate completions. All candidates, with their family and friends, were invited to participate in-person or could watch via livestream.
Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian American biochemist Katalin Karikó was bestowed with an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science at the university’s earlier May 14th doctoral hooding ceremony to celebrate her efforts that helped pave the way for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID vaccines that helped stem the spread of the pandemic.
Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis, Provost Carl Lejuez, and University Deans conferred the degrees to the university students.
Stony Brook University President McInnis challenged this year’s graduating class: “Be a changemaker in the world. This is what it means to carry the spirit of Stony Brook with you.” She also paid tribute to the late former Stony Brook Department of Mathematics Chair and university benefactor Dr. Jim Simons, who she said had “a shared belief in the world-changing potential within each and every Stony Brook student that led [him] and his wife [Dr.] Marilyn [Simons] a Stony Brook alum, to make a $500 million dollar endowment gift to Stony Brook from the Simons Foundation in 2023….I am certain Jim would be so proud of you today, and I can’t think of a better tribute to his legacy than each of you leveraging your Stony Brook education in service of today’s greatest challenges.”
The Class of 2024 officially joined the ranks of more than 220,000 Seawolves worldwide. This class contains students from 65 countries and 45 states, and ranges in age from 19 – 77 years.
Degrees were bestowed in the following categories:
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4,905 Bachelor’s Degrees
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2,075 Master’s Degrees
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580 Doctoral and Professional Degrees
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225 Certificates
Several graduating students were highlighted in this resilience recording that can be found here.
As part of the ceremony, the President of the Undergraduate Student Government announced to President McInnis that more than 600 students donated to the Senior Class Gift, resulting in over $26,000 donated to the Stony Brook University Community. Also, the Stony Brook Alumni Association provided matching dollars for this gift.
