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Rob Gitto. Photo by Julianne Mosher

With the revitalization of Upper Port along with the changes downtown, people are choosing to downsize in Port Jefferson or start up their lives in the new Port Jefferson apartments.

Rob Gitto, vice president of The Gitto Group, said that his sites — and other places developed by Tritec Real Estate (The Shipyard), Conifer Realty (Port Jefferson Crossing) and The Northwind Group (Overbay) — are here to help people.

“That’s one of the big things,” he said. “That we’re trying to keep people here instead of moving off of Long Island.”

The Gitto Group currently has three locations between Upper and Lower Port: The Hills at Port Jefferson, The Barnum House and the recent The Brookport.

In September, The Brookport officially opened at 52 Barnum Ave. — the former Cappy’s Carpets — featuring 44 apartments that were 100% leased. The building is mixed-use and will soon be home to Southdown Coffee on the lower level.  

“By having these walkable apartment complexes, we’re helping the stores and the restaurants by bringing more people into the village without a strain on the parking,” Gitto said. “To me, that seems like a win-win.”

Photo from The Gitto Group

He said he knows the concern about parking, but his buildings — and those of other developers — have created their own spaces on premise that don’t interfere with the traffic within the village. In fact, he said, he knows many of his tenants are taking advantage of all Port Jeff village has to offer. 

“I know that I have at least two tenants here that are taking tennis lessons at the country club,” he said. “They’ve already been here a couple months and are trying to become part of the community.”

Many of those tenants — across all three of his locations — either chose Port Jefferson to establish their roots or had a home in the area and decided to stay but downsize as empty nesters.

“I can’t tell you how many tenants we’ve had, especially in The Barnum House, that moved here with a significant other or met someone while they were here, got married and had a child or children,” he said. “As they got older, they grew out of the apartment, but they fell in love with the community and became part of the community, so they ended up buying a condo, a townhouse or a home here.”

Gitto said they are filling a need that was never met in the community — giving people the opportunity to start up or slow down. 

The Barnum House, which opened 20 years ago this year, still has tenants who moved in originally in August 2001. A mixed building, he said many are young working professionals but quite a few empty nesters as well. 

“You’re checking a lot of boxes,” he said. “It’s easy living.”

A benefit his older tenants mention often is that they don’t have to worry about upkeep — if an appliance breaks or there’s an issue, they don’t have to worry about fixing it. They don’t have to landscape outside, and they are creating a home base for snowbirds who split their time between here and the South.

The Hills at Port Jefferson, however, has some more turnover, Gitto said, due to the type of clientele the apartments attract. 

Located in Upper Port, the Hills was one of the first projects as part of Port Jefferson’s master plan. 

“I do see there being a nice community uptown,” he said. “That connection to Stony Brook University and the two hospitals right there, there’s no reason why that can’t be a secondary community.” 

And in that 74-unit building, Gitto said the majority of tenants are young, working professionals — many of whom work at Mather Hospital, Northwell Health, St. Charles Hospital and Stony Brook University — a 10-minute train ride from the LIRR station across the street to campus. 

That being said, Gitto noted that “a couple of units will turnover” because of the residency programs at these places. 

“I would say 80 to 85% of the people that live there are affiliated with Stony Brook,” he said. 

A fourth project with The Gitto Group is currently underway on the corner of Main Street and North Country Road, where the PJ Lobster House used to stand before relocating. Gitto said that building will be smaller — roughly 36 to 38 units — and planning should be finalized by March. 

Gitto mentioned that there is often concern or comment about the IDA benefits developers receive to build these properties but noted that neighbors need to look at it long term. 

“Although our property taxes might be lower to start out, eventually, when the IDA program is over, we’ll be paying a lot more than this property would have ever given in terms of taxes if it had remained a boatyard, or the carpet store that it was,” he said. “It’s important to people to look at the long term — this is really going to help the school districts to have these tax bases being thrown into the mix.”

While he can’t talk about the other developers’ properties, he said that the addition of families and people into the community isn’t causing a strain on the school district at all. 

“In the Hills uptown, in the 74 units, I believe we have one child who goes to Comsewogue,” he said. 

Overbay

The Overbay apartment complex, which finally opened in September, had been in the process of being built shortly after The Northwind Group purchased the former Islander Boat Center building in 2013 for $1.8 million.

James Tsunis, managing member of Northwind, said that his family was “really excited” to bring a new complex to the village. 

Photo from The Northwind Group0

“The Northwind Group has been in the family business and we’ve lived in Port Jeff our whole life,” he said. “We were really happy to bring a boutique luxury apartment community here for Port Jefferson.”

Tsunis added that the complex also was planned to bring more positive traffic to the downtown retail shops and restaurants — especially since many struggled throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“It’s a win for the village in general,” he said. 

Located at 217 W. Broadway, the 54,000-square-foot “nautical style” apartment building consists of 52 rentals, with one-bedroom units ranging between $2,500 to $2,800 and two bedrooms starting at $3,500. 

Each apartment features walk-in closets, custom built-ins, zero-entry showers with rain heads, a fireplace and a flat-screen TV. Other amenities include an 800-square-foot common room and a fitness facility. 

The complex also contains an office area, concierge service and in-building parking with over 80 parking stalls for residents and their guests. 

Leasing, Tsunis said, opened up in fall of last year, and sold out almost immediately. 

“There was definitely a high demand for it,” he said. “We get calls about this every day and we have a long list of people waiting to get in here, which is good —it’s good for us and it’s also good for the village, because it means that people want to live here and that’s a very good sign.”

Jake Biro, Overbay’s property manager, said that like the other developments around the village, there is a good mix of different types of people living at Overbay.

“Honestly, it’s really diverse,” he said. “We have people all the way down to the undergrad at 19 or 20 years old to I think our oldest resident is about 94.”

Biro said the proximity to Stony Brook University and the hospitals helps.

“We get a lot of doctors and nurses,” he said. “But then we also have a bunch of empty nesters — people that are taking advantage of the real estate market and selling their houses right now, then renting for a year or two and reassessing.”

“Port Jefferson has been our home and we want our residents to call it their home,” Tsunis said. “We want to help them try to transition that process as hard as possible and as best as possible.”

Tritec and Conifer did not respond to requests for interviews by press time. 

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Photo courtesy of Stony Brook Athletics

Nine distinguished Seawolves were enshrined in the Stony Brook Rita & Kurt Eppenstein Athletics Hall of Fame on Oct. 22. The Hall of Fame ceremony honored the induction classes of 2020 and 2021, at Island Federal Arena, as the inductees were celebrated for their outstanding contributions to Stony Brook athletics.

The class of 2021 included William Carmona ’16 (Baseball) and Joe Castiglie ’79  (Men’s Basketball Coach). Seven inductees composed the class of 2020 as Tommy Brenton ’12, ’13 (Men’s Basketball), Michael Crooks ’06 (Men’s Tennis), Bryan Dougher ’12 (Men’s Basketball), Paul Dudzick ’72 (Coach/Administrator), Kathy Koshansky (Head Athletic Trainer), Jenny Payne (Simpkins) ’03, ’07 (Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country, and Aden Smith ’03 (Football) all were inducted into the Hall of Fame on Friday evening.

“This is always one of my favorite nights of the year. Celebrating our history and those who helped to shape it makes the Hall of Fame induction event so incredibly special. The lasting impact of our nine new Hall of Famers can’t be overstated, and I’m beyond excited to honor their legacy,” said Stony Brook Director of Athletics Shawn Heilbron.

The Athletics Hall of Fame began in 1991 with the induction of its first members. On October 20, 2007, the Hall of Fame was dedicated as the Rita & Kurt Eppenstein Athletics Hall of Fame to honor the memory of Rita and Kurt Eppenstein, two quintessential New Yorkers whose lives serve as a higher lesson in ethics, character, and perseverance, and who sacrificed much to enable their son to graduate from college and law school and to enjoy the opportunities and experiences that flowed from their own American dream. Their son, Ted Eppenstein ’68, was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in the fourth class to be inducted in 1994.

Class of 2021:
William Carmona ’16, Baseball: William Carmona helped the Stony Brook baseball team shock the world and reach the College World Series in 2012. Carmona then was drafted in the 11th round by the Philadelphia Phillies that June and played three seasons of professional baseball. At his induction date, Carmona continued to sit atop the Stony Brook record book with 255 hits. He also ranked second in doubles (65), eighth in homers (24), fourth in RBI (161), and 10th in runs (143). His .380 career batting average ranked third in the program’s Division I era. Carmona was named a Louisville Slugger and ABCA Third Team All-American as well as the Most Outstanding Player of the Coral Gables Regional during his junior season in 2012. He drove in a program single-season record 73 runs that year. The previous season as a sophomore, he became the first America East player in 13 years named a Louisville Slugger First Team All-American. He also became the first-ever Seawolf to be named the America East Player of the Year.

Joe Castiglie, Men’s Basketball Coach, 1984-1991: Joe Castiglie served as men’s basketball head coach from 1984 to 1991, during which he posted a 138-56 record and led the team to a pair of Division III East Regionals. As a student-athlete at Stony Brook, he captained the 1977-78 team that reached the Final Four. Castiglie played 71 games during his Stony Brook undergraduate career from 1975 through ’78. He tallied 139 points, 125 assists, 35 rebounds, and shot 49.5 percent from the field.

Class of 2020:
Tommy Brenton ’12, ’13, Men’s Basketball: Brenton graduated as the program’s all-time leader in rebounds and steals and the program’s Division I leader in assists. He earned the Lefty Driesell National Defensive Player of the Year award as a senior in 2013, becoming the first Seawolves basketball player to win a national award. He also was the America East Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year for the 2012-13 season — only the conference’s second player ever to win both awards in the same season. Brenton played professionally in the Japan Basketball League from his graduation through 2017.

Michael Crooks ’06, Men’s Tennis: Crooks is the singles, doubles, and total wins leader in the history of Stony Brook men’s tennis. He was a four-time All-America East selection. He never lost a conference tournament singles match during his four-year collegiate career. Crooks currently works as a technology consultant and software engineer in London.

Bryan Dougher ’12, Men’s Basketball: A four-year starter at point guard, Dougher graduated as the all-time leading scorer in the program’s Division I era. He also owns a school record of 337 three-pointers. He earned a spot on the America East All-Rookie Team in 2009 and was a three-time All-America East selection. Dougher led the Seawolves to consecutive America East Regular Season Championships. He played professionally in Australia. Dougher went on to work on the basketball staffs at Stony Brook and Rutgers, and currently is an assistant coach at Fairfield.

Paul Dudzick ’72, Coach/Administrator, 1968-2003: Dudzick founded and coached the Stony Brook crew, women’s cross country, and women’s tennis teams and launched the department’s Hall of Fame. His roles also included serving as men’s Athletic Director from 1983 through 1991, NCAA compliance coordinator, and associate professor of physical education. He coordinated the elevation of the program from Division III to Division I.

Kathy Koshansky, Head Athletic Trainer, 1983-2011: The first full-time athletic trainer in program history, Koshansky also was a pioneer. She also became the first woman to be a head certified athletic trainer in Stony Brook football history. She also served as a tenured associate professor and received the prestigious President’s and Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching in 1989. Koshansky was inducted into the New York State Athletic Trainers’ Association Hall of Fame in 2011 for her commitment to the athletic training profession.

Jenny Payne (Simpkins) ’03, ’07, Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country: Payne was the first NCAA Division I qualifier in the cross country program’s history. She also became the program’s first D-I All-American and first America East Champion, winning the indoor 5000 meters in Boston in 2002. She was a recipient of the NCAA’s postgraduate scholarship the following year. Payne last year joined the government in Lilburn, Ga., as assistant city manager.

Aden Smith ’03, Football: A two-year captain and linebacker, Smith owns the top two single-season tackle totals in program history — 140 in 2002 and 112 in 2001. His 323 career tackles are the most in school history. His accolades include second-team Don Hansen Football Gazette All-American honors as a senior. Smith is the varsity football coach at Shoreham-Wading River High School.

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Olivia Swanson
Arianna Maffei

The role of neuron and dopamine loss in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) has long been recognized by neuroscientists. However, how dopaminergic modulation affects brain regions involved in the control of voluntary movement remains a subject of investigation.

Researchers in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, used an experimental model to demonstrate that a loss of midbrain dopaminergic centers impairs the ability of the primary motor cortex neurons to transform inputs into appropriate output. The finding, published in eNeuro, supports a new line of research regarding the origins of changes in the motor cortex and its role during PD.

Patients with PD show abnormal activity in the motor cortex, which to date remains difficult to explain. Scientists have proposed that motor cortex dysfunction in PD may come from loss of direct dopaminergic innervation of the cortex, or, alternatively, it could arise as a consequence of basal ganglia pathology.

Dopamine neurons are vital to a healthy brain, but they degenerate in Parkinson’s Disease. This coronal section of the ventral part of the brain visualizes midbrain dopamine neurons in a healthy brain. Green: dopamine neurons. Red: axons from the motor cortex. Blue: all neurons, cell bodies. Image from Olivia Swanson

“Our study shows that the changes in excitability of motor cortex neurons very likely are due to basal ganglia pathology and not loss of direct dopaminergic innervation of the motor cortex,” says Arianna Maffei, PhD, Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior. “The results we showed support the idea that changes in motor cortex activity due to loss of dopamine are very important for the pathophysiology of PD. This adds to our current knowledge and points to the motor cortex as a potential novel site for intervention.”

The research team assessed how the loss of dopamine affects the input/output function of neurons in the motor cortex. They tested three different ways to reduce dopamine signaling to ask how motor cortex dysfunction may arise: 1) Used pharmacology to block the receptors selectively in the motor cortex 2) Injected a toxin that kills dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain to induce basal ganglia pathology, and 3) Used the same toxin to eliminate dopamine neuron axons in the motor cortex to test the possibility that loss of dopaminergic input to the motor cortex may be responsible for its dysfunction.

Professor Maffei explains that the idea behind these approaches was to dissect out the circuit mechanisms underlying loss of function in the motor cortex and possibly use these data to better understand PD pathophysiology.

Overall, the research demonstrated that diminished dopamine signaling, whether acute or chronic, has profound effects on the excitability of primary motor cortex neurons.

The authors believe the results should spur additional research that focuses on the primary motor cortex as an additional site of intervention to treat motor symptoms and improve outcomes in PD patients.

 

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Suffolk County Police, with assistance from Stony Brook State University Police, arrested a Stony Brook University student on more than a dozen drug charges following an extensive narcotics investigation.

Members of the Stony Brook University Police Department contacted Suffolk County Police Narcotics Section detectives last month regarding a student possibly selling drugs on campus.

Suffolk police said that following a joint investigation, it was determined Domingo Zaba, 41, who lived on campus, was allegedly selling drugs through social media. Detectives arrested Zaba on October 28 and then executed a search warrant at Zaba’s dorm room. Investigators seized drugs including fentanyl, cocaine, mushrooms, Xanax, ketamine and marijuana.

Zaba was charged with 15 felonies—three counts each of Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance 2nd Degree, Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance 3rdDegree, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 3rd Degree, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 5th Degree and one count each of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 2nd Degree, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 4th Degree and Criminal Sale of a Controlled Substance 5thDegree. He was also charged with three counts of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance 7th Degree, a misdemeanor.

Zaba is scheduled to be arraigned today at First District Court in Central Islip.

A criminal charge is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

 

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Qingyun Li. Photo by Xuecheng Chen

By Daniel Dunaief

Qingyun Li has a plan for carbon dioxide.

The newest hire in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University, Li, who is an assistant professor, is a part of a team exploring carbon capture and storage.

“My work is expected to help reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere,” Li said. It will “help people find ways to promote carbon dioxide mineralization for safer carbon dioxide storage” below the ground. While her work will help promote carbon storage, it doesn’t include capturing and transporting the gas.

By selecting sites carefully, researchers can store carbon dioxide for geologically long periods of time.

While carbon sequestration occurs on the scale of kilometers, Li often works on a minuscule level, at the nanometer to centimeter scale. Smaller scale alterations affect properties such as the permeability of the rock formation.

Li is trying to predict nucleation of a certain mineral in her computer models. She has done that for carbonate minerals, which could be what carbon dioxide becomes after it is stored in geologic formations.

A similar process of nucleation occurs in clouds, when fine particles form the nuclei around which gases condense to form water or ice.

Li used a small angle x-ray scattering synchrotron to explore important details about each particle. This technique, which doesn’t look directly at the particles, reveals through data analysis the particle’s shape, size and surface morphology and, eventually, the rate at which nucleation occurs.

For carbon dioxide sequestration, the minerals that provide nucleation start at the nanoscale, which give them a high specific surface area.

“That matters for later reactions to generate carbonate minerals,” Li said. “That’s one reason we care about the nanoscale phenomenon. The bulk minerals are generated starting from the nanoscale.” 

A larger surface area is necessary in the beginning to lead to the next steps.

Li’s work involves exploring how carbonate starts to form. Her earlier efforts looked at how calcium carbonate forms in the aqueous or water phase.

Carl Steefel, Head of the Geochemistry Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, worked with Li during her PhD research at Washington University in St. Louis. Steefel believes her research will prove productive.

“She has an approach to science that combines that one-of-its-kind capabilities for studying nucleation with a deep understanding of modeling and how these open systems involving flow and transport work,” Steefel said. “The combination of these unique capabilities, in nucleating and in understanding reactive transport modeling, will put her a very good position.”

As of now, Li plans to study carbon sequestration in natural gas formations in shale, which has nanometer sized pores. The particles can change the permeability of the rock.

Some companies, like British Petroleum and ExxonMobil, have started to explore this method as a way to reduce their carbon footprint.

While geologic carbon sequestration has shown promising potential, Li believes the process, which she said is still feasible, could be decades away. She said it may need more policy support and economic stimuli to come to fruition.

Part of the challenge is to incorporate such carbon sequestration in the established market.

Scientists working in this field are eager to ensure that the stored carbon dioxide doesn’t somehow return or escape back into the atmosphere.

“People are actively investigating possible leakage possibilities,” Li wrote in an email. “We try to design new materials to build wells that resist” carbon dioxide deterioration.

Controlling pressure and injection rates could prevent various types of leaks.

In her earlier studies, Li explored how cement deteriorates when contacted with carbon dioxide-saturated brine. She hoped to find cracks that had self-healing properties. Other studies investigated this property of concrete.

It’s possible that a mineral could form in a fracture and heal it. In natural shale, scientists sometimes see a fracture filled with a vein of carbonate. Such self healing properties could provide greater reassurance that the carbon dioxide would remain stored in rocks below the surface. Li hopes to manage that to inhibit carbon dioxide leakage.

The assistant professor grew up in Beijing, China, studied chemistry and physics in college. She majored in environmental sciences and is eager to apply what she learned to the real world.

For her PhD, Li conducted research in an engineering department where her advisor Young-Shin Jun at Washington University in St. Louis was working on a project on geologic carbon dioxide sequestration. 

In her post doctoral research at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which is operated by Stanford University, Li explored mineral reactions in shale, extending on the work she did on mineral reactions in concrete as a graduate student. She sought to understand what happens after hydraulic fracturing fluids are injected into shale. These reactions can potentially change how easily the mix of gas and oil flow through a formation.

With Stony Brook building a lab she hopes is finished by next spring, Li plans to hire one graduate student and one post doctoral researcher by next fall.

She is teaching a course related to carbon sequestration this semester and is looking for collaborators not only within geoscience but also within material science and environmental engineering.

Li is looking forward to working with other researchers at the National Synchrotron Lightsource 2 at Brookhaven National Laboratory, which provides beamlines that can allow her to build on her earlier research.

Li and her husband Xuecheng Chen, who are renting an apartment in South Setauket and are looking for a home close to campus, have a three-year old son and an 11-month old daughter.

Outside the lab, Li enjoys quality time with her family. A runner, Li also plays the guzheng, which she described as a wooden box with 21 strings.

Steefel, who wrote a letter to Stony Brook supporting Li’s candidacy to join the Geosciences Department, endorsed her approach to science.

“She’s very focused and directed,” Steefel said. “She’s not running the computer codes as black boxes. She’s trying to understand what’s going on and how that relates to her experiments and to reality.”

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Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Inauguration for Maurie McInnis. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Senator Chuck Schumer spoke at the event. Photo by Kimberly Brown
Senator Chuck Schumer spoke at the event. Photo by Kimberly Brown

By Kimberly Brown

Stony Brook University celebrated the inauguration of Maurie McInnis as the university’s sixth president on Saturday, Oct. 23, at the Island Federal Arena, Stony Brook. 

Standing before students, alumni, local officials and representatives from universities across the country as well as family and friends, McInnis was proudly given her title as president. 

Transporting the crowd back to 1962, when Stony Brook University was merely a handful of buildings that has sprouted out of a field where potatoes were farmed, McInnis said the 800 students who first began their journey at the university would know that big plans were in the works. 

“Out of these potato fields and muddy woods on Long Island, an educational powerhouse would soon emerge, and in less than a decade our university grew ten-fold to 8,000 students and ambitiously recruited the faculty and staff that would come to define this institution,” McInnis said.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Chen Ning Yang came to Stony Brook in 1965 and became the university’s first director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. To which McInnis said he must have sensed the university was making big moves and breaking new ground in areas of science.

“Looking around the arena today, I see that same bold spirit that attracted Yang and legions of other distinguished faculty,” she said. “Thank you for joining me as we celebrate the luminous and ambitious future of Stony Brook University.” 

McInnis thanked the crowd for trusting her to lead the institution.

Also touching on her own family’s heritage, which is rich in careers of education, she mentioned her great-grandparents and grandparents were both teachers. Her parents were also college professors and her husband is a first-generation college graduate.

“I have dedicated my life’s work to this enterprise and I am thrilled and honored to apply my knowledge, experience and energy to Stony Brook University,” she said. “What I have learned is that our institution yesterday, today and tomorrow is a university of dreaming big, of expanding the reach of discovery and creating knowledge for the benefit of society.”

In 1973, the university welcomed Rich Gelfond, who came from a disadvantaged household in Plainview.

Stepping foot onto the campus for the first time as a college student, Gelfond went full force in his academics by working on the school newspaper, designing his own curriculum, winning an election to be the first student on the university council as well as guest teaching at his own sports sociology class.

“He was delivering on his potential, and then some, because he had found a university that valued the promise of first-generation college students,” she said. “He had found a university that wanted to empower its students to be their best.”

McInnis said after college, Gelfond went on to be a successful investment banker, acquiring IMAX Corporation in 1994 where he remains CEO today. 

Touching on the topic of COVID-19, McInnis said she is proud of the way Stony Brook University has succeeded in the past year and a half by providing superior patient care and extending its reach across Long Island to care for new communities.

“The power of a public research university is that it has the ability and the duty to benefit the community around it, as well as foster the groundbreaking discoveries that can impact the world for generations to come,” she said.

As the university’s newest president, McInnis wants to ensure that Stony Brook is leading the way, serving the community and tackling the global challenges that face us in the coming century.

“I look forward to seeing all that we can achieve,” she said. “The moment is upon us. Seawolves, let’s answer this call to greatness.”

As chief executive for Stony Brook, McInnis also oversees Stony Brook Medicine, Long Island’s premier academic medical center, which encompasses five health sciences schools, four hospitals and 200 community-based health care settings. 

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A scene from 'Eurydice'
Matt Aucoin
Liv Redpath

Stony Brook University’s Staller Center for the Arts, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook presents a lecture and recital by award-winning composer Matthew Aucoin titled “Primal Loss: Four Hundred Years of Orpheus and Eurydice in Opera” in the Recital Hall on Thursday, Oct. 28 from 8 to 9:30 p.m. Aucoin will discuss his opera Eurydice premiering at the Metropolitan Opera in November 2021, the influences of playwright Sarah Ruhl and the history of Orphic operas. Soprano Liv Redpath will perform selections from the play. Free.

Proof of vaccine or valid exemption required for all attendees.

See stallercenter.com/contact/Covid for details.

Sponsored by the English Department, the Office of the Provost, the Music Department, the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook, The Hellenic Center, the Graduate Student Organization, the Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, the Walt Whitman Birthplace, and the Walt Whitman Initiative.

For more information, www.stonybrook.edu/hisb

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Above, an AI-Grid prototype that is being built by the research team. Image courtesy of Stony Brook Power Lab

By Daniel Dunaief

The Department of Energy is energized by the possibility of developing and enhancing microgrids.

What are microgrids? They are autonomous local power systems that have small, independent and often decentralized energy sources. Often, they use renewable energy, like wind or solar power, although some use natural gas or diesel.

The DOE’s dedication to developing these microgrids may cut costs, create efficiencies and enhance energy reliability.

Peng Zhang. Photo from SBU

Peng Zhang, SUNY Empire Innovation Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stony Brook University, is leading a diverse team of researchers and industry experts who received $5 million of a $50 million investment the DOE recently made to developing, enhancing and improving microgrid technology.

Bringing together these energy experts, Zhang hopes to use artificial intelligence to create a usable, reliable and efficient source of energy, particularly during periods of power outages or disruption to the main source of energy.

“The traditional microgrid operation is based on models and human operators,” Zhang said. “We developed this data-driven or AI-based approach.”

Artificial intelligence can enhance the safety and reliability of microgrids that can receive and transmit power.

One of the objectives of the systems Zhang and his collaborators are developing will include protecting the power supplies against faults, accidents from natural disasters and cyberattacks.

“This project led by Professor Zhang is a great example demonstrating the impact of this novel research on essential infrastructure that we rely on daily,” Richard Reeder, Vice President for Research at Stony Brook University, said in a statement.

Zhang said he has verified the methods for this AI-driven approach in the lab and in a simulation environment.

“Now, it’s time to demonstrate that in more realistic, microgrid settings,” he said. He is working with microgrid representatives in Connecticut, Illinois and New York City. His team will soon work with a few representative microgrids to establish a more realistic testing environment.

The urgency to demonstrate the feasibility of this approach is high. “We need to kick the project off immediately,” said Zhang, whose team is recruiting students, postdocs, administrative staff and technicians to meet a two-year timeline.

The group hopes AI-grids can be used in different microgrids around the country. If the platform is generic enough, it can have wide applications without requiring significant modifications.

While operators of a microgrid might be able to know the ongoing status, they normally are not able to respond to contingencies manually. “It’s impossible for the operator to know the ongoing status” of power sources and power use that can change readily, Zhang explained. “That’s why we had to rely on a data driven approach.”

Additionally, end users of electricity don’t necessarily want their neighbors to know about their power needs. They may not want others who are using the same microgrid system to know what appliances or hardware are in their homes.

Instead, the system will rely on the data collected within each microgrid, which reflects the behavior at different intervals. Those energy needs can change, as people turn on a TV or unplug a wind turbine.

At the same time, the power system load and generation need to remain in balance. Microgrids that produce more energy than the system or end users need can send them to a utility grid or to neighboring microds or communities. If they don’t send that energy to others who might use it, they can lose some of that energy.

Power needs to be balanced between supply and demand. Storage systems can buffer an energy imbalance, although the cost of such storage is still high. Researchers in other departments at Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory are pursuing ways to improve efficiencies and reduce energy storage costs.

Balancing energy is challenging in most microgrids, which rely on intermittent and uncertain renewable energy sources such as sunlight. In this project, Zhang plans to connect several microgrids together into a “mega microgrid system,” that can allow any system with a surplus to push extra energy into one with a deficiency.

Microgrids aren’t currently designed to replace utilities. They may reduce electricity bills during normal operations and can become more useful during emergencies when supplies from utilities are lower.

While artificial intelligence actively runs the system, people are still involved in these programmable microgrids and can override any recommendations.

In addition to having an alarm in the event that a system is unsafe or unstable, the systems have controllers in place who can restore the system to safer functioning. The programming is flexible enough to change to meet any utility needs that differ from the original code.

In terms of cybersecurity, the system will have three lines of defense to protect against hacking.

By scanning, the system can localize an attack and mitigate it. Even if a hacker disabled one controller, the control function would pop up in a different place to replace it, which would increase the cost for the attacker.

Stony Brook created a crypto control system. “If an attacker got into our system, all the information would be useless, because he would not understand what this signal is about,” Zhang said.

While he plans to publish research from his efforts, Zhang said he and others would be careful in what they released to avoid providing hackers with information they could use to corrupt the system.

For Zhang, one of the appeals of coming to Stony Brook, where he arrived two years ago and was promoted last month to Professor from Associate Professor, was that the university has one of the best and best-funded microgrid programs in the country.

Zhang feels like he’s settled into the Stony Brook community, benefiting from interacting with his neighbors at home and with a wide range of colleagues at work. He appreciates how top scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and national labs have proactively approached Stony Brook to establish collaborations.

Zhang is currently discussing a Phase II collaboration on a microgrid project with the Navy, which has funded his research since his arrival. “Given the federal support [from the Navy], I was able to recruit top people in the lab,” he said, including students from Columbia and Tsinghua University.

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Stony Brook Trauma Center, Suffolk County’s only Level I Trauma Center, earns Safe States Alliance's Injury and Violence Prevention Program Achievement Award for 2020.

The Safe States Alliance awarded the Stony Brook Trauma Center, Suffolk County’s only Level I Trauma Center, an Injury and Violence Prevention Program Achievement Award for 2020. The award recognizes Stony Brook’s ability to pivot and make many of its injury prevention programs available to the community despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

James A,. Vosswinkel, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Chief, Trauma, Emergency Surgery, and Surgical Critical Care, Medical Director, Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU), Medical Director, Trauma Center

“This award is a thank you to the team here that works tirelessly to reach the community and provide the care they need no matter the circumstances,” says James A. Vosswinkel, MD, FACS, Trauma Medical Director and Chief of the Division of Trauma, Emergency Surgery, and Surgical Critical Care in the Department of Surgery at Stony Brook Medicine. “This is a reminder that every idea can make an impact. These programs can and will save lives.”

The Stony Brook Trauma Center offers free in-person injury prevention programs to the public, educating local communities on best practices in safety to prevent a trip to the emergency room and help save lives. In March 2020, that came to a halt when in-person injury prevention programs were cancelled due to the pandemic. Kristi Ladowski, MPH, Injury Prevention and Outreach Coordinator at Stony Brook Medicine, together with volunteers, staff, and community partners, quickly pivoted and made sure their programs could still be accessible to the community by moving to virtual programming. 

“The strength of our partnerships, everyone’s willingness to quickly adapt, and our passion for injury prevention ensured that this transition was accomplished quickly and seamlessly,” says Ladowski. “We developed win-win partnerships that harmonize organizational goals, student experiential learning, and most importantly served our community needs.”  

Stony Brook’s highly effective “Tai Chi for Arthritis,” a Fall Prevention workshop, immediately began a virtual schedule that allowed the team to hold more than 40 eight-week workshops, reaching over 1,000 participants. The availability of easily accessible recorded segments helped participants practice longer, more often and helped reduce attrition. Other programs such as “A Matter of Balance and Stepping On” also moved to virtual programming with great success. 

School-based programs were also pivoted to virtual platforms. Programs such as Impact Teen Driver and the extremely popular Teddy Bear Clinic both promote road safety. In an effort to reach even more schools and students, the Stony Brook Injury Prevention team created a Teddy Bear Clinic video utilizing a “Blues Clues” approach to appeal to children and get more classroom participation than ever before possible. The video will reach thousands of students and potentially hundreds of classrooms every year helping keep the community safe, informed and become a great tool for parents and teachers in preventing major trauma injuries in children. 

To make sure clinical students at Stony Brook could still fulfill their learning requirements, the Trauma Center expanded their undergraduate and graduate experiential learning opportunities by offering student participation in virtual programs. Occupational therapy students created multiple one-hour fall prevention workshops that helped fill a need for more accessible, shorter, informational workshops. These workshops were so well received that they are being continued indefinitely along with multiple practicum opportunities for master’s in public health students.  

To learn more about the Injury Prevention Programs offered through the Stony Brook Trauma Center, visit https://trauma.stonybrookmedicine.edu/injury–prevention.

About Stony Brook University Hospital:

Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) is Long Island’s premier academic medical center. With 624 beds, SBUH serves as the region’s only tertiary care center and Regional Trauma Center, and is home to the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, Stony Brook University Cancer Center, Stony Brook Children’s Hospital and Stony Brook University Neurosciences Institute. SBUH also encompasses Suffolk County’s only Level 4 Regional Perinatal Center, state-designated AIDS Center, state-designated Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, state-designated Burn Center, the Christopher Pendergast ALS Center of Excellence, and Kidney Transplant Center. It is home of the nation’s first Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis Center. To learn more, visit www.stonybrookmedicine.edu/sbuh.

About Stony Brook University Trauma Center:

As Suffolk County’s only Level I Trauma Center, Stony Brook provides the highest possible level of adult and pediatric trauma care. We are state designated as the only Regional Trauma Center in Suffolk County, treating 1,800 trauma patients annually, including 200 children. For children, we provide a dedicated 24/7 Pediatric Emergency Department adjacent to the main Emergency Department, staffed by board-certified Pediatric Emergency Medicine physicians. The eight-bed Suffolk County Volunteer Firefighters Burn Center is Suffolk County’s only state-designated regional Burn Center. To learn more, visit www.trauma.stonybrookmedicine.edu.

About Safe States Alliance:

A national non-profit organization formed in 1993, comprised of public health and injury and violence prevention professionals. Their mission, to strengthen the practice of injury and violence prevention. To learn more visit, https://www.safestates.org/page/InnovativeInitiative.

Photos from Stony Brook Medicine

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Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University. Photo from Stony Brook Medicine

Dr. Sunil Dhuper’s actions speak as loudly as his words.

The chief medical officer at Port Jefferson’s St. Charles Hospital is planning to get a booster for the COVID-19 vaccine this Thursday, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention authorized Friday, Sept. 24, the additional shot for a range of adults, including those in jobs that put them at an increased risk of exposure and transmission, such as frontline health care workers.

Earlier, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration announced Sept. 22 that “a single booster dose” was allowed “for certain populations” under the emergency use authorization, although the EUA “applies only to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.” 

Dhuper received his first vaccination in January and would like to raise his immunity.

“I am very eager to get the booster dose,” he said in an interview. “I reviewed scientific data from all over the world — from the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom — and I had reflected that, after six months after the second dose, it’s time to get a third dose.”

While St. Charles and other hospitals haven’t required a booster, Dhuper believes that state and national guidance will likely recommend it before too long.

“Over time, I do anticipate people may begin to get severe infections or get hospitalized” if they haven’t enhanced their immunity with a booster, he said. “It would be prudent to get the booster dose in the arms of those who are fully vaccinated.”

Stony Brook University Hospital is providing boosters to employees and to eligible members of the public.

Meanwhile, Northwell Health and Huntington Hospital are deliberating how to proceed and will announce a decision soon, according to Dr. Adrian Popp, chair of infection control at Huntington Hospital.

While boosters are available for education staff, agriculture and food workers, manufacturing workers, corrections workers, U.S. Postal Service employees, grocery store workers, public transit employees and a host of others, the overall infection rate in Suffolk County has stabilized over the past few weeks.

Decline in infections

As of Sept. 25, the seven-day average rate of positive tests in the county fell below 4% for the first time since Aug. 15, dropping to 3.9%, according to data from the New York State Department of Health.

“We think the numbers might have plateaued,” Dhuper said. That decline coincides with the increasing number of people who are vaccinated. In Suffolk as at Sept. 29, 1,043,478 people (70.7%) have received at least one dose and 950,058 (64.3%) are fully vaccinated, according to Covid Act Now. Anybody who is at least 12 years old is eligible to be vaccinated.

The number of COVID Patients from Huntington Hospital has fallen in the last month, dropping to 20 from about 30, according to Popp. Five patients are in the intensive care unit at the hospital with COVID.

Dr. Sharon Nachman, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, described the downward trend in the seven-day average as “great news,” but added that such an infection rate is “not close to where we need to be to say we have turned a corner.”

The current infected population includes children, as “more kids are getting infected,” she said, with children currently representing 25.7 percent of all new COVID cases nationwide.

With the FDA and CDC considering approving the emergency use authorization that provides one-third of the dosage of the adult shot for children ages 5 to 11, Nachman urged residents to vaccinate their children whenever the shot is available to them.

“There is no advantage to picking the right age or dose for a child,” she explained in an email. “If they are 12 now, get that dose. If they are 11 and 8 months [and the CDC approves the vaccine for younger children], don’t wait until they are 12 to get a different dose. Get the dose now that is available for that age.”

When younger children are eligible for the lower amount of the vaccine, Dhuper also urged them to get that lower dose, which he feels “offers a good level of protection for the foreseeable future.”

Nachman said she sees the issue of weight or age bands regularly in pediatrics.

“The take-home message is to not play any games and treat the child at the age or weight that they are now and not wait for them to be older or heavier,” she suggested.

As for the next month, Dhuper cautioned that the county may show another peak, particularly with the increase of indoor activities where the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant is more likely. At this point, concerns about the Mu variant, which originated in South America and was much more prevalent in the United States and in Suffolk County in June, has decreased.

“We were seeing 5% of the cases in New York state were Mu variants and the remaining were Delta,” Dhuper said.

Popp estimated that the Mu variant constitutes between 0.1% and 0.3% of cases.

The World Health Organization has urged wealthier nations like the United States not to administer boosters to their populations widely before the rest of the world has an opportunity to vaccinate their residents.

Dhuper said the United States has contributed 500 million doses to the rest of the world this year and plans to donate about 1.1 billion doses to the rest of the world in 2022.

“I hope that other upper and middle income nations can do the same, so we can get [the shots] in the arms of those who need them,” he said.

Popp urged people to recognize that COVID is a global disease.

“We in the U.S. will not be safe until the epidemic is cleared in other parts of the world as well,” he explained in an email. “I believe it is in our national interest to help other countries fight the COVID epidemic.”

 

Popp said the United States has plenty of vaccine, with enough for boosters and to vaccinate those who haven’t gotten a shot.

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