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Stony Brook University

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A snail eating colubrid snake, Dipsas indica, from Peru.
Pascal Title with a semi-arborial colubrid snake, Chironius multiventris, from Peru.
A tree boar, Corallus hortulamus, which is an ambush predator, in Peru.
Pascal Title with a neotropical colubrine snake at the Los Amigos field station in Peru.
A false boa eating a lava lizard. Photo by Ivan Prates, University of Michigan
A CT scan of a cat-eyed snake that shows a frog (the blue skeleton) in its digestive tract. Photo by Ramon Nagesan, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology
An emerald tree boa in the amazonian rainforest, a specialized predator of small mammals. Photo by Dan Rabosky
an eyelash pitviper from the new world tropics. Photo by Alejandro Arteaga
Graham’s crayfish snake, a harmless semiaquatic species from central Noth America that feeds on crayfish. Photo by Tristan Schramer
A defensive display by a western ring necked snake native to the western United States. Photo by Alison Davis-Rabosky
A cat eyed snake in the Amazonian rainforest. Photo by Alison Davis-Rabosky

By Daniel Dunaief

Eating machines even more focused than teenagers approaching a stocked refrigerator, snakes slither towards foods other animals assiduously avoid.

In a recent and extensive study of snakes using the genetics, morphology and diet of snakes that included museums specimens and field observations, a team of scientists including Pascal Title, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University, showed that the foods skin-shedding creatures eat as a whole is much broader than the prey other lizards consume.

At the same time, the range of an individual snake’s diet tends to be narrower, marking individual species as more specialized predators, a paper recently released for the cover of the high-profile journal Science revealed.

“If there is an animal that can be eaten, it’s likely that some snake, somewhere, has evolved the ability to eat it,” Dan Rabosky, senior author on the paper and curator at the Museum of Zoology and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, explained in a statement.

The research, which explored the genetics and diets of snakes, suggested that snakes evolved up to three times faster than lizards, with shifts in traits associated with feeding, locomotion and sensory processing.

“This speed of evolution has let them take advantage of new opportunities that other lizards could not,” Rabosky added. “Fundamentally, this study is about what makes an evolutionary winner.”

No singular physical feature or characteristic has enabled snakes to specialize on foods that are untouchable to other animals.

“It seems to be a whole suite of things” that allows snakes to pursue their prey, Title speculates.

One unique aspect of many advanced snakes is that they have more mobile elements in their skulls. Rock pythons can stretch their jaw around enormous prey, making it possible for them to swallow an entire antelope. Garter snakes, meanwhile, can eat Pacific newts that have a high concentration of a neurotoxin. Snakes also can eat slugs and snails that have evolved a defensive ability to secrete toxins.

A change to textbooks

Title, who is the co-lead and first author on the paper, suggested that the comprehensive analysis of snakes, particularly when compared with lizards, will likely change the information that enters textbooks.

“I think the analysis of lizard and snake diets in particular could potentially enter herpetology textbooks because diet is such a fundamental axis of natural history and because the visuals are so clear,” Title said. He doesn’t believe an analysis of dietary resolution that encompasses snakes and lizards has been shown like this before.

With a few exceptions, the majority of lizards eat terrestrial arthropods. Snakes have expanded into eating not only invertebrates, but also aquatic, terrestrial and flying vertebrates.

“They have absolutely evolved the ability to prey on semi-aquatic and aquatic prey,” said Title.

Title and his collaborators gathered considerable amounts of sequence data from GenBank. They also collected data from samples and specimens in the literature.

“Our dataset involves specimen-based data from museum collections that span the globe over the better part of the last century,” he explained.

The project started with the realization that several authors were generating high-quality sequence data for separate projects from biodiversity hotspots for lizards and snakes, such as in Australia, Brazil and Peru. The researchers realized that combining their data provided unprecedented coverage.

After Title completed his PhD at the University of Michigan, he took a leading role in building the phylogeny and conducting many of the analyses.

Indeed, the list of coauthors on this study includes 19 other scientists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil and Finland.

As for his work, Title is broadly interested in the ecological/ environmental/ geographic/ evolutionary factors that lead to different species richness. He is not restricted to lizards and snakes.

“I do think snakes are unbelievable,” he said. “I’ve seen sidewinder rattlesnakes flip segments of their body forward across the sand in California, I’ve seen snakes climb straight up trees and walls, I’ve seen long, skinny snakes carefully navigate tree branches, and I’ve seen semi-aquatic snakes swim with their head above water. It’s mesmerizing.”

‘Snakes are cool’

Co-lead author Sonal Singhal, Assistant Professor in Biology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, met Title when she was a PhD student and he was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley.

Singhal is excited that readers can “learn cool facts about snakes from our paper,” she explained. “Research papers don’t always inspire a sense of wonder in the reader.” She hopes people “walk away from this study thinking that snakes are cool.”

Singhal suggested that Title is leading a group of collaborators to create a package that will enable other researchers to download the data from this paper quickly and easily and use it in their own work.

As a whole, snakes are moving around in their diet space at a much more rapid clip than lizards in general, Title suggested.

While snakes have evolved rapidly over short periods of time, it’s unclear how these creatures are responding to changes in the environment on smaller time scales, such as through what’s currently occurring amid climate change.

The scale, Title explained, is different, with climate changes affecting the world over decades and centuries, while snake evolution, particularly regarding specialized diets, transpired over the course of millions of years.

Grad school encounter

Title, who lives in East Setauket, met his wife Tara Smiley when both of them were graduate students.

An Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University, Smiley is a paleoecologist specializing in small mammals.

The couple enjoys taking their son Micah, who is almost three years old, on camping trips and spending time outdoors.

As for the paper scoring the coveted spot on the cover of Science, Title suggested the exposure validates “that lizards and snakes, and their natural history, are inherently intriguing to all sorts of people, regardless of whether or not they are trained biologists.”

He hopes the work will not only inspire young scientists to learn more about snakes and lizards, but also to seek to quantify and explore the different axes of biodiversity and to “appreciate the value of supporting natural history museum collections.”

———————————————————————————–Within a day of snake research published on the cover of Science last week, reports surfaced about the discovery of what may be the largest snake in the world. Scientists from the University of Queensland found a northern green anaconda in the Ecuadorian Amazon that was close to 21 feet long.

Pacal Title, Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolution at Stony Brook University and first author on the recent Science paper, offered his thoughts in an emailed question and answer exchange about the anaconda, which was not a part of his recent research.

TBR: Is this a particularly compelling find?

Title: This is compelling as it provides an example of broadly distributed, large species of snakes having pretty significant genetic differentiation. There are quite a few examples, both within snakes and in other groups, where populations look superficially similar, but turn out to have been genetically independent of one another for quite a long time.

TBR: How does a discovery of what might be the largest snake in the world fit into the context (if at all) of your research? Does this species validate the radiative speciation you described?

Title: It shows that the number of known snake species is likely to be an under-estimate, although this is likely to be true for most groups out there. This fits well into the perspective that snakes have incredibly high global species diversity.

TBR: Do you have any guesses as to what the diet of this snake could be?

Title: The article describes anaconda diets as generally consisting of terrestrial vertebrate prey, despite the species being semi-aquatic.

TBR: What, if any, predators might pursue this snake?

Title: Jaguars have been known to prey on anacondas.

TBR: What scientific, life history, genetic or other questions would you address, if any, about this species?

Title: Now that the green anaconda is being considered as two separate species, all morphological, ecological and natural history attributes will need to be re-examined to evaluate whether or not the two species actually differ along any of these axes.

TBR: Is the ongoing attention snakes receive positive for the study of snakes?

Title: It is great that snakes are receiving positive attention. Such new studies are essential for conservation, and for the study of biodiversity and ecosystems.

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From left, Prerana Shrestha, Sunghoon Kim (Postdoc), Andrew Gallagher (Research Support Specialist), Miura Traficante (SOAR Fellow, Summer undergrad researcher), Keith Yeung (Undergraduate researcher), Matthew Dickinson (PhD student), Saheed Lawal (PhD student), and Olivia Tabaka (MS student)

By Daniel Dunaief

An increasingly complex time filled with extreme stressors such as man-made and natural disasters creates conditions that can lead to post traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD, which can cause anxiety even amid safer conditions, can have adverse effects on the ability to enjoy life.

Prerana Shrestha

Stony Brook University Assistant Professor Prerana Shrestha, who joined the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at the Renaissance School of Medicine in 2021, recently received a four-year $2.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to study the molecular mechanisms underlying stabilization of emotional memories in the brain, which is relevant for PTSD.

“Her work will help us understand how the brain stores these traumatic memories,” said Alfredo Fontanini, chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. “The tools she has developed really are making possible a series of experiments that, before, were impossible to think about.”

Shrestha hopes to develop a druggable target that could “block a key machine inside neurons that are relevant for traumatic emotional memories,” she explained.

Using a mouse model, Shrestha plans to understand the neural signature at the level of molecules, neurons, and neural circuits, exploring the creation and stabilization of these potentially problematic memories and emotional reactions through a multi-disciplinary study.

Shrestha has developed and applied chemogenetic tools to block a key part of the memory process inside neurons that store traumatic emotional memories.

By developing tools to explore neural circuits in particular areas of the brain, Shrestha can help scientists understand the molecular mechanism involved in PTSD, Fontanini said.

‘From the ground up’

In humans, memories from traumatic events are over consolidated, creating an excessive avoidance behavior that can be a debilitating symptom.

“We are trying to understand the neurological basis for why these memories are so robust,” Shrestha said. She is looking at “what can we do to understand the mechanism that supports these memories from the ground up.”

With her chemogenetic tools, Shrestha can block protein synthesis in specific neuron populations in a time period of a few hours. She is developing new tools to improve the precision of blocking the protein synthesis machinery from hours to minutes.

Shrestha is trying to weaken the salient emotional memory while leaving all other processes intact.

The Stony Brook Assistant Professor said she has methods to create a targeted approach that limits or minimizes any off target or collateral damage from inhibiting the synthesis of proteins.

“Up until now, whenever scientists wanted to study the role of the synthesis of new proteins in memory formation” including those involved in the formation of aberrant memories such as those in PTSD, they had to “use drugs which would manipulate and affect protein synthesis everywhere in the brain,” said Fontanini.

The plan over the next four years is to understand and develop molecules to target cells in the prefrontal cortex, which, Shrestha said, is like the “conductor of an orchestra,” providing top-down executive orders for the brain.

She is focusing on neurons that interact specifically with the amygdala, which is the emotional center of the brain, exploring what happens in these streams of information between brain regions.

By increasing or reducing protein synthesis in the prefrontal cortex, Shrestha can see an enhanced or diminished avoidance response in her mouse experiments.

She is interested in how a memory is stabilized, and not as much in what is involved in its retrieval.

Shrestha works with inbred mice that are more or less genetically identical. Her experimental group has the transgenic expression of the chemogenetic tool to block protein synthesis and receive a drug after learning that triggers the tool to block the machinery from making new proteins.

When she introduces the inhibitor of protein synthesis, she found that the wave involved in stabilizing what the animal previously learned is finite in time.

Using a drug to block protein synthesis within an hour alters future behavior, with the animal showing little or no fear. Blocking protein synthesis after that hour, however, doesn’t affect the fear response.

In the first year of the grant, which started in December, Shrestha would like to send out some papers for publication based on the research her team members — postdoctoral researcher  Sunghoon Kim and graduate student Matthew Dickinson —  has already done. She also hopes to use some of the funds from this grant to hire another postdoctoral researcher to join this effort.

She has data on how the regulators of ribosomes are recruited in the prefrontal cortex, which stabilizes memories.

In other preliminary data, she has identified neurons in the prefrontal cortex that project into the amygdala that are selectively storing information for recent parts of emotional memory.

To be sure, while this research offers a potential window into the mechanisms involved in forming emotional memories in a mouse model, it is an early step before even considering any new types of diagnostics or treatment for humans.

Nepal roots

Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, Shrestha received a full scholarship to attend Bates College, in Maine, where she majored in biological chemistry. She received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute fellowship for an internship at Harvard Medical school during her junior year. While preparing for a pre-medical track, she “got spoiled after getting a taste of research in my junior year,” she said. “The idea of trying something new for the first time and seeing how things work was so cool.”

Shrestha lives about eight miles west of Stony Brook and is married to Sameer Maskey, the founder and CEO of an advanced machine learning company called FuseMachines Inc. They have a nine-year old daughter and a two-year-old son.

As for her ongoing work, Shrestha is eager to combine her expertise with those of people from different backgrounds.  “It’s a fascinating time to combine molecular approaches,” she said. 

Fontanini, who helped recruit Shrestha, has been impressed with the work she’s done.

“She’s on an outstanding trajectory,” he said.

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Jocelyn Bell Burnell addresses the audience at Stony Brook University on Feb. 14. Photo by Joshua Klein
Jocelyn Bell Burnell addresses the audience at Stony Brook University on Feb. 14. Photo by Rico Maxino
Jocelyn Bell Burnell addresses the audience at Stony Brook University on Feb. 14. Photo by Rico Maxino

By Daniel Dunaief

It wasn’t easy, back in the late 1960’s for astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, to discover pulsars, which are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit detectable radio waves. So it only seems fitting that the famous and award-winning scientist, who is now a Visiting Academic at the University of Oxford, might run into obstacles when she came to Stony Brook University’s Simons Center for Geometry and Physics to deliver a Della Pietra Lecture to the public.

The recent snowstorm, which canceled classes and events at the university for a day, also pushed back her talk by 24 hours. When the delayed talk began, Bell Burnell contended with a microphone that cut in and out. “It might be designed for a male voice,” Bell Burnell joked. Combining humor, accessible scientific detail, and a first-hand narrative, she delighted and inspired a crowd ranging from local high school students to Stony Brook professors.

“Her talk was refreshing and different,”  said Marivi Fernández-Serra, Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department and at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at SBU. “I loved that it was both a personal story and a physics talk.”

Luis Álvarez-Gaumé, Director for the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, recruited Bell Burnell for a three-part lecture series that included a talk for high school students and one for faculty and advanced graduate students.

Her talks were “very inspiring,” said Álvarez-Gaumé. Bell Burnell is “very sharp, extremely intelligent and easy to talk to.”

Humble beginnings

Born in Northern Ireland, where, Bell Burnell said, “Catholics and Protestants fight each other,” she earned her bachelor’s degree in Glasgow, Scotland.

Bell Burnell endured a tradition where the men whistled, stamped and made cat calls when a woman entered the room, which, in lecture halls with wooden floors, meant she heard considerable noise. She learned to control her blushing because “if you blushed, they’d only make more noise.”

Bell Burnell had one female lecturer, who survived one class and then quit. When she got to Cambridge to do her PhD, she had the wrong accent, came from the wrong part of the country and was “clearly heathen-educated,” she said. “It was quite daunting.”

Surrounded by young men full of confidence, she thought the university made a mistake in recruiting her and that she would probably get thrown out. Until that day arrived, she decided to work her hardest so when they did, she won’t have a guilty conscience. Her strategy, she said, was to “do your best until they throw you out.”

Hard work

Working with five other people for two years, Bell Burnell helped build a radio telescope at Cambridge to search for quasars, which are enormous black holes that release energy and light. When  quasar jets interact with gas around the galaxy, they emit radio waves. The data in the search for quasars came out on long rows of red ink paper charts that she had to go through by hand.

By the end of her survey, Bell Burnell had gone through about 5 kilometers (or over 3 miles) of paper. She discovered an odd signal she couldn’t explain, which could have been radio interference. Recalling she had seen something like it before, she checked and found that it was in the same place in the sky.

When she conferred with her thesis advisor Anthony Hewish, he told her she needed to enlarge the signal by increasing the speed of the data collection.

For the first 10 days, she didn’t find anything.

“The thing had gone way,” she recalled. “That’s the grad student’s [i.e., her] fault. If you’re thinking of being a grad student, go ahead and go for it. You will get the blame for things that aren’t really your fault. Your thesis advisor has to vent their fury somehow.”

She persisted with these high-speed recordings until she got one. After pondering the signal for months and speaking with other astronomers, she found another signal the day before Christmas.

Bell Burnell was planning to leave the next day with her boyfriend to visit her parents, where the couple prepared to announce their engagement.

“I kind of have to be there,” she laughed.

At 2 a.m., she heard the pulse at a slightly different repetition rate in a different part of the sky. During her absence, her thesis advisor kept the survey running. When she returned, she found a pile of charts on her desk. 

Hewish told her to go back over the charts and found occurrences of these patterns. Bell Burnell and her advisor worked with another radio astronomer and student to see if other researchers could see the same signal.

When they didn’t, the two academics started walking away. The other student, however, stayed with the equipment and found the same signal. He had miscalculated when his telescope would be able to see the pulsar by 15 minutes.

“If he had miscalculated by an hour and 15 minutes, we would have all gone home,” Bell Burnell recalled.

What Bell Burnell had found — first with the unusual signal in the paper and then with a careful search for other signals — were rotating neutron stars that spin like a lighthouse and that emit pulses of radiation. Scientists have now catalogued over 3,000 of them.

The pulsars are “fantastically accurate time keepers,” she said, losing only about a second of time since the age of the dinosaurs.

You don’t want to visit

Pulsars have numerous compelling properties. The neutrons that make up a pulsar are so dense that a thimble full of them weighs as much as seven billion people. To climb a one centimeter mountain would require effort comparable to reaching the peak of Mount Everest.

“It’s not recommended to go to one of these,” Burnell said.

The force of gravity is so strong that an object falling from a few feet would hit the surface at half the speed of light.

Attendees react

Fernández-Serra, who, among others, described Bell Burnell as “a rock star,” appreciated how the guest speaker was an “extremely dedicated and hard worker and also a very sharp student. She went above and beyond what her advisor had asked her to do and was persistent in pushing for what she thought was something special. Thanks to that, pulsars were discovered.”

While science has made huge strides in its treatment of women since the 1960’s, Fernández-Serra still sees opportunities for improvement. “The science community values aspects that are more commonly found in men: loud voices, quick opinions, more presence in the room (height actually matters a lot!!!),” she said, and added that science would benefit from valuing the opinions and thoughts of people who are introverted, mild-mannered and cautious decision makers.

Rosalba Perna, Professor in Physics and Astronomy at SBU, believes “we still have a long way to go” in correcting various unconscious bias.

Perna, who conducts part of her research on pulsars in her work on neutron stars, suggested that Bell Burnell’s description of pulsar’s extreme gravity “still leaves me in awe any time I think about it!”

Neelima Sehgal, Associate Professor in Physics & Astronomy at SBU, said the technical talk was “of particular interest to our female graduate students who asked a number of thoughtful questions” while the high school students almost filled the big auditorium at the Simons Center.

“It was pretty great that we were able to bring her to Stony Brook,” said Sehgal.

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#12 Ellie Masera and #43 Alex Finn celebrate after Sunday's victory. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook women’s lacrosse scored 11 of the first 13 goals and got career offensive performances from Alex Finn and Ellie Masera to open the 2024 season with an 18-11 victory at LaValle Stadium on Feb 18.

Stony Brook (1-0) got a career-high eight goals and 10 points from Masera along with a career-high seven assists and nine points from Finn. Masera took 16 of Stony Brook’s 36 shots in the game. Kailyn Hart also added five goals on eight shots (.625), with Charlotte Verhulst getting in the scoring column twice and Morgan Mitchell once.

Defensively, the Seawolves had six caused turnovers and 10 ground balls as a team. Clare Levy and Emily Manning each caused two turnovers. Manning led the way with three ground balls and Finn, Levy and Masera each picked up two. In her first start as a Seawolf, Emily Manning made eight saves with a .421 save percentage.

In the possession game, Stony Brook got six draw controls each from Masera and Clare Levy, with Verhulst adding three.

For Dartmouth, Kate Elders scored four times, while Catherine Erb added three tallies and Lucy Murray scored twice. Goalkeeper Gisele Todd made nine saves in net on a .360 save percentage.

 The team is back home on Feb. 20 to take on Bryant, with first draw scheduled for 3 p.m. The Bulldogs are 2-1 on the season with wins over Holy Cross and Sacred Heart. Stony Brook is 3-0 against Bryant all-time and this will be the two teams’ first meeting since 2019.

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#5 Aaron Clarke looks to pass the ball during Saturday's game. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

The Stony Brook University men’s basketball team fell, 84-61, to Monmouth on Feb. 17 at OceanFirst Bank Center in West Long Branch, N.J. Three Seawolves finished in double figures, but it was not enough to overcome the Hawks strong second-half performance.

Stony Brook fell behind 13-7 early on, but battled back to grab a one-point lead after a 7-0 run spearheaded by Keenan Fitzmorris. After Monmouth evened things up at 16 apiece, the Hawks scored eight straight points to open up a 24-16 lead. Another eight-point scoring run to close the half helped Monmouth take an eight-point lead into the break.

The Hawks opened the second half by scoring the first 10 points and 24 of the half’s first 30 points to jump out to a 26-point advantage. The Seawolves never truly trimmed the deficit much further, pulling within 20 points of the Hawks momentarily before eventually falling, 84-61.

“Monmouth physically dominated us today, particularly on the glass. We were fortunate enough to catch them on a day where Xander Rice was off, but we weren’t in position to win due to an inability to deal with their fours and fives on the glass,” head coach Geno Ford said. “Our perimeter guys collectively couldn’t make any shots, so it was a formula for a convincing loss.”

The team returns home to host North Carolina A&T on Thursday, February 22. The Seawolves and Aggies tip-off at 6:31 p.m., with the contest streaming live on SNY and Flo Hoops.

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By Steven Zaitz

The Smithtown-Hauppauge swim team capped off their undefeated season at Stony Brook University by winning the Suffolk County championship in overwhelming fashion on Saturday, Feb. 10.

They collected 366 points which was 98 more than second place Connetquot-East Islip.

Dylan Gallub won the 50-yard freestyle event and finished second in the 100-yard freestyle. The Smithtown East senior was also part of the team that won the 200-yard freestyle relay, along with his brother Tyler Gallub, Christopher Sweeney and Alex Trzaskowski. The quartet’s time of 1:25.13 was a Suffolk County High School record, qualifies them for New York State championships and also garners All-American consideration. This same foursome also won the 200-yard medley relay with a state qualifying time of 1:36.07. 

Tyler Gallub placed second in the 100-yard butterfly; his brother Dylan was second in the 100-yard freestyle. Overall, these four swimmers were fast enough to qualify for state championships in eight different events.

Also contributing to the big win for the ‘Smith-pague’ team were the divers. Five divers from the team scored points including second place overall diver Colin Buscarino. Also in the top 12 were Kristen Krause, Danielle Krause, Sydney Poulis and Lexie Poulis. The diving event is mixed gender.

——————————–

The Northport-Commack and Huntington-Harborfields-Whitman and Glenn boys swimming teams made excellent showings at the Section XI championships as well.

The HHWJ team finished third overall behind overall winner Smithtown-Hauppauge and second place Connetquot-East Islip. Northport-Commack was a respectable eighth out of 22 teams.

HHWJ’s 200-yard medley relay team, featuring Evam Creter, Lucas Spagnolleti, Patrick O’Brien and Liam O’Hanlon finished in third place and qualified for New York State championships, Creter finished second in both the 200-yard freestyle and 100-yard backstroke adding two more state qualifiers to his resume. His teammate Max Leroy was fourth in the 200-yard freestyle and also qualified for state championships. Their times were 1:44.04 and 1:46.51, respectively. 

Spagnoletti, Leroy, O’Hanlon and Creter regrouped to finish second in the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 3:16.88 and yet another state qualifier.

Northport-Commack’s 200-yard medley relay team of Milo Marrero, Kyle Sundberg, Jasper Johnson and Logan Decena finished in sixth. Sundberg just missed a state qualification in the 200-yard individual medley, finishing fifth with a time of 2:02.80. The NoCo 200-yard freestyle relay team of Sundberg, Johnson, Decana and Oskar Sokolowski finished fifth with a solid time of 1:32.29.

The New York State High School swimming championships will be held at Ithaca College on the first weekend of March.

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Sara Annamaria Medved at Saturday's game. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

Stony Brook tennis picked up its first victory of the 2024 season, starting off the match with a victory in doubles and winning four of the six singles matches for a 5-2 win at the Tennis Club of Trumbull on Feb. 11 in Fairfield, CT.

Stony Brook marked a historic victory, as head coach Thiago Dualiby earned his first collegiate head coaching win on Saturday.

Stony Brook battled to win two tiebreakers in doubles to earn the point, with sophomore Kristi Boro and freshman Elena Lobo-Corral combining to win one tiebreaker, while sophomore Debby Mastrodima and freshman Cornelia Bruu-Syversen won the other.

The singles victories came courtesy of freshman Mia Palladino, Lobo-Corral, Boro and junior Sara Medved. Three competitors came back from a set down to win their respective matches.

RESULTS

Doubles

  • Boro/Lobo-Corral (SBU) def. Malinowski/Karman (FU), 7-6 (7-2)
  • Mastrodima/Palladino (SBU) def. Liu/Loeffler (FU), 7-6 (7-5)
  • Perfiliev/Bruu-Syversen (SBU) def. Hutchinson/Tuttle (FU), 6-2

Singles

  • Palladino (SBU) def. Liu (FU), 1-6, 6-4, 6-0
  • Lobo-Corral (SBU) def. Plumtree (FU), 4-6, 6-3, 6-0
  • Boro (SBU) def. Loeffler (FU), 6-1, 6-4
  • Karman (FU) def. Perfiliev (SBU), 3-6, 6-4, 6-3
  • Malinowski (FU) def. Bruu-Syversen (SBU), 6-2, 6-0
  • Medved (SBU) def. Harding (FU), 2-6, 6-3, 6-3

“I’m really proud of our team today. We showed resiliency and resolve, overcoming difficult moments and believing in ourselves throughout the match. Winning the doubles point today was a result of that resiliency and the commitment to keep pushing through our comfort zone in our gameplay. We look forward to keep building one day at a time,” said head coach Thiago Dualiby.

The team  heads back to Connecticut next weekend, beginning with a match with UConn on Friday, Feb. 16 with first serve at 6 p.m.

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Photo from Stony Brook Athletics

The Stony Brook University men’s lacrosse team fell to No. 14 Rutgers, 16-12, on Feb. 10 at LaValle Stadium. Six different Seawolves registered multi-point games, but Stony Brook’s late comeback effort fell short in the 2024 home opener.

The Scarlet Knights exploded out of the gates, scoring seven of the game’s first eight goals. Noah Armitage was responsible for the first two Stony Brook goals, the first coming on a man-up opportunity, but despite his efforts the Seawolves found themselves in an early seven-goal hole.

Freshman Justin Bonacci tallied a pair of goals to end the first half, trimming Stony Brook’s deficit to five heading into the halftime break. Tommy Wilk entered the contest with just under 10 minutes to play in the half, immediately making his presence felt and swinging the momentum back into Stony Brook’s favor. He made four saves in the final eight minutes of the half, conceding just one goal.

Jack Dougherty opened the second-half scoring off an assist from Nick Dupuis, but Rutgers responded with four of the next five tallies to build its lead back to seven, 13-6, with just over six minutes to play in the third frame. What ensued was a furious comeback effort from the Seawolves; the squad scored six of the game’s next seven goals, conceding the lone goal against on a man-down opportunity. Dupuis scored back-to-back goals and Dougherty’s man-up goal with 8:28 left to play whittled the Seawolves deficit to two goals, 14-12.

 Rutgers locked in defensively from that point on, holding Stony Brook scoreless over the final eight-plus minutes and putting the game away with a pair of goals down the stretch.

“I think it was a tale of being disciplined and consistent,” head coach Anthony Gilardi noted after the game. “The first half got away from us in the cage and I thought Tommy Wilk did a great job coming in and settling us down.”

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Brooke Ellison and her mother, Jean Ellison. Photo courtesy Jean Ellison
New York, NY; Edison Ballroom: (1/26/16) 40 Under Forty Event (1/27/16)
Brooke Ellison, 11 years old. Photo courtesy Jean Ellison
Ellison family at Suffolk County Women's Hall of Fame on Nov. 18, 2009. Photo courtesy Chris Carrion
Brooke Ellison with her siblings aged 5, 7 and 9. Photo courtesy Jean Ellison
From left to right, back row, David Martin, Kysten Ellison, Jean Ellison, Ed Ellison, Reed Ellison (holding Oliver), Ellen Ellison: front row, Carter, Harrison, Jamie, Theodore and Brooke. Photo courtesy Chris Carrion

Prepared by Daniel Dunaief

Brooke Ellison, 45, a pioneering disabilities advocate whose abilities with words and compassion far outdid her disability, died on Sunday, February 4.

Ellison was a tenured Associate Professor in the School of Health Professions in the Department of Health Sciences at Stony Brook University.

A resident of Stony Brook, Ellison was returning home from Murphy Junior High School as an 11-year old when she was struck by a car. The accident, which paralyzed her from the neck down, didn’t deter her budding academic interest or her ambitions.

As soon as she woke from the accident, she insisted she not fall behind in school.

With her mother Jean at her side throughout her education, Ellison became the first quadriplegic to graduate in 2000 from Harvard College, where she received magna cum laude honors in cognitive neuroscience and gave the class commencement speech.

Ellison earned a Master’s in Public Policy in 2004 from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and received her PhD in sociology from Stony Brook University in 2012.

A passionate advocate for accessibility and opportunity for the disabled, Ellison conducted research on the ethics and policy of science and health care.

Her mission “was to turn what happened to her into a [way to] help people who are handicapped achieve independence,” said Miriam Rafailovich, Distinguished Professor in Material Science and Engineering.
Ellison wrote two books about her life. The first, called “Miracles Happen” became a movie directed by Christopher Reeve titled “The Brooke Ellison Story.” More recently, Ellison published “Look Both Ways.”

Jean Ellison said her daughter felt her recent book was one of her most important contributions. Knowing she was in failing health after surviving three bouts with sepsis over the last year and a half, Brooke Ellison felt a sense of urgency to share her experiences.

“She poured out [her life] to the universe through this book,” said Jean Ellison.

While Ellison died young, she lived for over 33 years after the accident, which is well above the seven years the medical community expected at the time for someone on a ventilator.

‘Deep sadness’

Ellison served on several committees and boards, including the Board of the Directors of the New York Civil Liberties Union and the search committee for a president of Stony Brook.

In a letter to the campus community, President Maurie McInnis, who expressed her “deep sadness” for Ellison’s passing, recounted how Ellison was one of the first people she met on campus.

“Her legacy at Stony Brook and beyond is defined by passionate advocacy for inclusive education, healthcare and disability rights,” McInnis wrote in a letter to the campus community. “She helped alert me and others to our blind spots and offered many ideas for making this campus more inclusive and welcoming.”

Ellison was recently teaming up with students using drones and artificial intelligence images to map the topography of Stony Brook.

“To go from one building to the next looks like a straight pathway, but at the end, a one-inch drop, which is not encoded anywhere” could be a huge problem for someone in a wheelchair, said Rafailovich.

Ellison’s students asked her what she would want a robot near her that she could control to do. She suggested a hand she could control that could turn the pages of a book.

Ellison was working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure that people with disabilities who need power for ventilators or other equipment receive immediate attention after power disruption.

“She noticed during Hurricane Sandy that emergency workers had no idea where people who were on life support were during two weeks,” said Rafailovich.

Ellison was working with the state to get a new system where people on life support could receive help quickly.

Ellison had planned to do a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Caring for everyone

In addition to her focus on helping people with disabilities achieve independence, Ellison served in many capacities at Stony Brook, including as the Director of the Center for Community Engagement and Leadership Development.

Among her many efforts, Ellison also ran for election in 2006 for the New York State Senate, where she lost to republican incumbent John Flanagan.

Ellison was a committed educator who asked students before they met her in an ethics class to describe what they thought would make a life not worth living. Students suggested this would include not being able to do things they needed, needing care from someone else, or living on life support.

At the end of the semester, she asked the same question.

“They thought if they were on life support or if they had to have someone take care of them, maybe it could be done,” Jean Ellison said. “Their whole outlook changed.”

Senior Sabah Bari, who is a Health Science student, appreciated how Ellison spent the first 15 minutes of class asking how students were doing. Describing Ellison as “one of the most influential people I’ve gotten to know,” Bari plans to dedicate her pursuit of a master’s in public health to Ellison.

Stacy Gropack, Dean of the School of Health Professions explained that the school is eager to make sure students are doing well and feeling well at all levels.

“Many of our instructors do that,” Gropack said, but “Ellison in her position took it to a different level. She was always very concerned that students were in the right place and were healthy. She made sure students had the capacity to succeed at all levels.”

A dedicated family

Ellison received considerable ongoing support from her family.

Jean Ellison served numerous roles, from getting up at 3:45 am each day to get her dressed to driving her to ensuring her slides were ready and in order for her presentation. It took six hours from the time Ellison awoke until she was ready to leave.

Jean Ellison is “probably one of the most dedicated, strongest women I know,” said Gropack. Ellison “could not have accomplished what she did without [her mother] on all fronts.”

Mathias Risse, Berthold Beitz Professor in Human rights, Global Affairs and Philosophy at the Harvard Kennedy School, recalled how he taught an ethics class that included Ellison in the fall of 2002.

Ellison was “one of the most talented students in the class,” Risse wrote in a memorial to his former student. “Jean was there with her, every time, and she was as much a member of the [class] of 2004 as [Ellison] was herself.”

When the two of them were on campus, “everyone knew who they were, mother and daughter,” Risse wrote.

Ellison’s father Ed and her siblings Kysten and Reed provided important, meaningful and ongoing care for her.

“One of us had to be with her 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Ed Ellison. “Jean and I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to help her do what she wanted to do. It was a life well-lived.”

Ellison adored her family and, in particular, her five nephews, who not only returned her affection, but were also fiercely protective of her.

One of Ellison’s nephews had a cat that she almost ran over in her wheelchair. She asked her students to help her design a 360 degree camera so she could survey the perimeter when the cat was nearby.

“That’s the kind of independence she wanted,” said Rafailovich.

Ellison shared affection with her family and friends by blowing kisses frequently. Her father stroked her cheek and lifted her up out of her chair and put her arms around his neck.

“The love she had for everyone oozed out of her,” Jean Ellison said. Her daughter “constantly told people how much she loved them.”

Before the accident, Ellison had been a ballet dancer. She would sometimes dream of herself dancing.

“We both like to think that she’s dancing now,” said Jean Ellison.

Stem cell research

Ellison became a powerful voice in some of the earlier battles in 2000 over stem cell research. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that could one day help in the treatment and care of people with neurological limitations.

Ellison, who founded the Brooke Ellison Project, helped establish the New York State stem cell research organization, which provided research funding outside of the federal level.

Ellison and the Christopher Reeve foundation “had the courage to put [state funding] in place,” said Rafailovich. “She saw stem cell research as the key if we’re ever going to regenerate nerves.”

Ellison recognized any new treatment wouldn’t happen immediately, but wanted to help people in the future who were dealing with similar challenges.

Ellison is featured in the upcoming documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story,” which was recently shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

Ellison served as a board member on the Empire State Stem Cell Board, which designed New York State’s stem cell policy from 2007 to 2014.

In 2017, Ellison also served on the board of directors of the New York State Civil Liberties Union and, in 2018, was chosen as a political partner for the Truman National Security Project.

“We count ourselves incredibly lucky to have known her and are extraordinarily humbled by who she was and what she accomplished in her short life,” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman wrote in an email. “I have benefited immeasurably from [Ellison’s] wisdom and friendship, and I am especially grateful or her patience and determination in helping the NYCLU to better understand and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.”

Leaders from the Truman National Security Project, which is a diverse nationwide community of leaders united with the goal of developing smart, national security solutions that reinforce strong, equitable, effective and non-partisan American global leadership, expressed their appreciation and admiration for Ellison’s contributions.

Ellison was a “visionary, leader, teacher, and, most importantly, a true friend to us and the disability community. [Ellison’s] eloquence captured the heights and depths of the disabled experience – beauty, pain, nuances, and silver linings – while pushing society’s boundaries of a more inclusive and dynamic world. Amongst [Ellison’s] vast list of accomplishments and accolades, her kindness and strength touched everyone she met,” wrote Jessica Gottsleben and Kristin Duquette, TruDisability Experts, in a statement.

Ellison thought well outside of her wheelchair and outside of the proverbial box.

In the first day of class, Bari recalled how Ellison asked students to think about the character Thanos from the Marvel series.

Bari recalled wondering, “are we in the right class? Where is she taking us?”

Throughout the class, Bari suggested that she and her fellow students rethought numerous aspects of their lives.

In her own words

In the introduction to her book “Look Both Ways,” which people can hear Ellison read on YouTube or on her web site BrookeEllison.com, she shares her life and perspective.

Look Both Ways

 

“People living with disability are celebrated yet rejected, are the objects of both praise and of ridicule, and are heralded for their understanding of challenge, while often left to battle those challenges on their own,” she wrote.

Ellison continued, “the lens from which I view the world is not one of disability, but rather one of humanity touched by disability, which serves to heighten the lessons fundamental to our lives: those of adaptation and problem solving, leadership and growth, compassion and hope. These are the lessons of disability. These are the lessons of life.”

Funeral

Ellison is survived by her parents Ed and Jean Ellison, her sister Kysten Ellison and her husband David Martin, their sons Carter and Harrison, her brother Reed Ellison and his wife Ellen Ellison and their three sons Jamie, Oliver and Theodore.

Visitation will be held next Monday, February 12 at Bryant Funeral Home, 411 Old Town Road in Setauket  from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. The family will hold a private burial service.
How you can help
Those interested in helping to sustain the legacy of Brooke Ellison can donate to the Brooke Ellison Legacy Scholarship through the following website: https://alumniandfriends.stonybrook.edu/site/Donation2?df_id=2660&2660.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T&designation=5701

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Jocelyn Bell Burnell

By Daniel Dunaief

The free public lecture at Stony Brook University by Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Astrophysicist and Visiting Academic at Oxford University, scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 13 at 5 p.m. has been rescheduled for the same time tomorrow, Wednesday, Feb. 14 due to the weather.

Burnell, who discovered radio pulsars in 1967 and who received a $3 million Breakthrough Prize, which she donated to help advance women and minorities in science, will give a talk on pulsars, or pulsating radio stars, at the Della Pietra Family Auditorium, Room 103, at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics on Stony Brook University’s West Campus. The university is providing a reception at 4:15 pm.

Burnell received a Royal Medal, a Copley Medal and the 2010 Faraday Prize. She was also the first female president of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is a member of seven Academies worldwide.

Stony Brook is providing a livestream of the lecture, which is available at scgp.stonybrook.edu.live.

See more here.

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