Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
Scenes from Stony Brook University's 2017 commencement ceremony May 19. Photo by Greg Catalano
The temperature was high May 19 but that didn’t melt the enthusiasm of the nearly 7,000 students at Stony Brook University as they anticipated the moment they could turn their tassels and throw their graduation caps in the air.
The milestone event was chock-full of memorable moments including honorary degree recipients, Michael J. Fox — actor and advocate for a cure for Parkinson’s disease — and Jonathan Oringer — Shutterstock founder and a Stony Brook alumnus — clad in traditional caps and gowns, joining the students. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991, received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree for his acting career as well as establishing the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. The university honored Oringer with a Doctor of Science degree for creating Shutterstock, the first worldwide subscription-based service for acquiring images, as well as his other contributions to the tech industry.
The first degrees awarded were to Oringer and Fox. Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. introduced Oringer, a 1996 graduate of the university, as one who has “personified technologic innovation.”
As Fox approached the podium to deliver his speech, someone yelled, “Marty McFly.” The actor cleverly responded with a line from his 1985 movie, “Back to the Future.”
“You’re just too darn loud,” he said.
The actor said before that day he didn’t hold a degree from college or high school. He said he respects the university for its dedication to the sciences and its research.
Described by Stanley as a “fierce warrior in the fight to cure Parkinson’s disease,” Fox said he’s optimistic about the future.
“When I look out at the sea of red, I am filled with hope for you represent endless possibilities,” Fox said. “Among you may be the first human to walk on Mars, the engineer who will revolutionize the world’s energy technology, the next great investigative journalist who exposes political corruption, or the scientist who discovers a cure for Parkinson’s.”
U.S. Sen. and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D), also addressed the graduates and their families. Schumer advised the graduates to always take risks in life even when feeling uncertainty. He said to always “go for it.”
“The key is not to fear the unknown,” Schumer said. “Embrace it, relish it, soak up every possibility it has to offer.”
Among the nearly 7,000 graduates, ranging in age from 19 to 65 years old, in attendance, 42 states and 71 countries were represented. The degrees awarded included 4,292 bachelor’s, 1,999 master’s and 449 doctoral degrees.
From left, Christopher Gobler with his research team Andrew Griffith, Theresa Hattenrath-Lehmann and Yoonja Kang. Photo from SBU
By Daniel Dunaief
Christopher Gobler searches the waters around Long Island for signs of trouble, which can appear starting in April. This year, he found it, in Shinnecock Bay. Monitoring for a toxin carried by algae called Alexandrium, Gobler recently discovered levels that were three times the allowable limit from the Food and Drug Administration. His finding, along with measurements from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation of toxins in shellfish in the bay, have caused the recent closure of shellfishing in the bay for the fourth time in seven years.
While Gobler, a marine science professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, watches carefully for the appearance of red tides from these algae locally, he recently completed a much broader study on the spread of these toxins.
Gobler led a team that explored the effect of ocean warming on two types of algae, Alexandrium and Dinophysis. Since 1982, as the oceans have heated up, these algae have become increasingly common, particularly in the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans, according to a study Gobler and his colleagues recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When they become concentrated in shellfish, these algae can lead to diarrhea, paralysis and even death if people consume enough of them.
Over the course of the study, algae have begun to form “denser populations that are making shellfish toxic,” Gobler said. Temperature is one of many factors that can affect the survival, growth and range of organisms like the algae that can accumulate toxins and create human illness. “As temperatures get higher, they are becoming closer to the ideal for some species and out of the ideal for other species,” Gobler said.
The strongest effect of changing temperatures are at higher latitudes, which were, up until recently, prohibitively cold for these types of algae. The biggest changes over the course of the study came in the Bay of Fundy in Canada, in Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and Alaska. The toxic algal blooms increased in frequency between 40 and 60 degrees north latitude, according to the study. These are places where toxic algae lived but weren’t as prevalent, but the warming trend has created a more hospitable environment, Gobler said.
Raphael Kudela, a professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz who wasn’t involved in this research, explained that other papers have suggested a similar link between temperature and the movement of these algae. “We’ve seen the expansion of ciguatera fish poisoning, as the temperature range has moved poleward for those algae,” Kudela wrote in an email. NOAA biological oceanographer Stephanie Moore has documented an expanded window of opportunity for paralytic shellfish poisoning linked to changes in temperature, Kudela said. “While we can point to specific events, and it makes intuitive sense, the Gobler paper actually documented these trends using a long time series, which hasn’t been done before,” Kudela continued.
R. Wayne Litaker, a supervisory ecologist at NOAA’s National Ocean Service, collaborated with Gobler on the project. He said small differences in temperature are significant for the growth rate of these toxic algae. Extending this to other organisms, Litaker explained that fish are also extending their ranges amid a rise in global temperatures. “There’s been a general movement of temperate species toward the poles,” Litaker said. He’s seen tropical fish, such as butterfly fish, off the docks of North Carolina that he hadn’t seen that far north before.
Gobler and his colleagues estimate that the need to close shellfish beds, the increase in fish kills, and the health care damage to people has exceeded a billion dollars since 1982. The largest problem for people in areas like Alaska is their lack of experience with red tides.
“Communities are being exposed to these blooms where they had not been in the past,” Gobler said. “[The blooms] can be most dangerous when they take a community by surprise.” Gobler said this happened in Alaska during the study. In the last decade, shellfish toxins that are 1,000 times more potent than cyanide caused illnesses and were suspected in two deaths in Haines, Alaska.
Litaker said he gave a talk several years ago at a conference. Gobler approached him and asked if they could work together. “One of the wonderful things about these meetings is that you see things that trigger possibilities and whole new projects are born,” Litaker said.
Litaker described Gobler as a “major player in the field” who has done “fantastic work over the years.” Litaker said he was “quite impressed with what he’s done.” Litaker explained that the climate is changing and urged fisheries and shellfish experts to prepare to respond throughout the country. “As we get warmer and more run off of nutrients, toxic cyanobacteria [algal blooms] are causing problems in all 50 states,” Litaker said.
Kudela suggested that the “new records every year for the last several years … will undoubtedly continue to impact the range, duration and toxicity of blooms.”
Locally, Gobler continues to monitor dozens of sites on Long Island, where he suggested that Alexandrium could become less prevalent with warming, while Dinophysis could become more common. Temperature and other factors favorable for algae growth have led to red tides in the past.
In oceans across the world, Kudela said the next logical step would be to explore the interaction of temperature and nutrients. “We know both are changing, and they are likely to have additive or synergistic effects, but we haven’t done the same careful study as the Gobler paper looking at how the trends are interacting,” he explained.
Student Giancarlos Llanos Romero will be joining the SBU team on a trip to Kenya this summer. Photo by Phoebe Fornof
By Daniel Dunaief
In a region known for the study of fossils left behind millions of years ago, a team of students from Stony Brook University’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences is planning to travel to Kenya this summer to learn about and try to solve the challenges of today.
The university will send eight undergraduates to the Turkana Basin Institute for the engineering department’s first program in Kenya, which will run for over four weeks. In addition to classroom study, the students will seek opportunities to offer solutions to problems ranging from refrigeration, to energy production, to water purification.
The students learned about the opportunity in the spring, only a few months before they would travel to a country where the climate and standard of living for Kenyans present new challenges. “We were skeptical about how many students we would be able to get,” said Fotis Sotiropoulos, the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who “didn’t start marketing this” until after he took a trip to Kenya and the Turkana Basin Institute, which Stony Brook created at the direction of world-renowned anthropologist Richard Leakey.
Giancarlos Llanos Romero, who is interested in robotics and nanotechnology and is finishing his junior year, had originally planned to spend the summer seeking an internship in the Netherlands or Germany. When he learned about this opportunity, he immediately changed his focus. “I need to do this,” Romero said. “This is much more important than anything I could do in an internship.”
On first blush, the trip is anything but ideal for Romero, whose skin is sensitive to extreme heat, which he can expect to encounter in the sub-Saharan African country. He didn’t want that, however, to stop him and is planning to travel with seven other people he met for the first time last week. Romero said his immediate family, which is originally from Colombia, supported the trip.
Sotiropoulos, who is in his first year as dean, embraced the notion of connecting the engineering department with the Turkana Basin Institute. “Before I came here” said Sotiropoulos, “I felt very passionately about making sure that engineering students became familiar with the rest of the world” and that they understood global challenges, including issues like poverty and water scarcity.
Sotiropoulos met with TBI Director Lawrence Martin during one of his interviews prior to his arrival at SBU. Martin invited Sotiropoulos to visit with Richard Leakey, the founder of TBI whose family has been making scientific discoveries in Kenya for three generations.
Women and children in Kenya searching for, and drinking from, water found beneath the dry riverbed. Photo by Lynn Spinnato
This program quickly came together after those meetings. The two courses will teach students about design thinking, said Robert Kukta, the associate dean for undergraduate programs in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Stony Brook would like to help students develop “the ability to think broadly about solutions and boil it down to the essence of the problem,” Kukta said. This, he said, will all occur in the context of a different culture and local resources.
Students will start their summer experience in Nairobi and then they will travel to Princeton University’s Mpala Research Centre, Martin said. “The journey through Kenyan towns opens visitors’ eyes tremendously to how different peoples’ lives are in different parts of the world,” Martin explained by email. “The goal is not so much to contribute immediately but to understand the challenges that people face, the resources available locally and then to improve their ability to think through possible solutions.”
Once students arrive at TBI, they will have an opportunity to see fossils from many time periods, including those from late Cretaceous dinosaurs. “Every visitor I have ever taken to TBI is amazed and in awe of the abundance of fossil evidence for past life on Earth,” Martin said.
A distinguished professor in the Department of Chemistry at SBU, Benjamin Hsiao, who traveled with Sotiropoulos to Kenya in the spring, is a co-founding director of Innovative Global Energy Solutions Center. Hsiao has been developing water filtration systems through IGESC, which brings together TBI with universities, industry, international governments and foundations. He is well acquainted with the challenges the first set of students will face.
“Once we bring technologies over to Kenya, [sometimes] they do not work for reasons we have not thought of,” which include dust or a broken part for which it’s difficult to find a replacement, he said. “Those failed experiments give us tremendous insight about how to design the next-generation systems which will be much more robust and sustainable and easier to operate by local people.”
Acacia Leakey, who grew up in Kenya and is Richard Leakey’s grandniece, recently completed her senior design project as an undergraduate at Stony Brook. Her work is intended to help farmers extend the life of their tomato plants when they bring them to market.
About 32 percent of the tomatoes go to waste from the extreme heat. Acacia and her team developed a vegetable cooler that employs solar panels to reduce the temperature from 32 degrees Celsius to 15 degrees Celsius, which should extend the life of the tomatoes. Her classmates were “surprisingly supportive” of her work, she said, as some of them hadn’t considered applying their skills in a developing country.
Leakey, who will train for her master’s degree at Stony Brook this fall, will continue to provide insights into Madagascar, another developing African nation where the university has an internationally acclaimed research center. This summer, she will produce a video that will record information from villages near Centre ValBio in Madagascar, which she will bring back to Stony Brook in the hopes of encouraging others to use that information to create their own design projects next year.
As for Romero, who is raising money for the trip through a GoFundMe page, he is prepared to discover opportunities amid the challenges of his upcoming trip and is eager “to be able to actually help a community and say I left a mark.”
Patricia Wright speaks at the Earth Optimism Summit in April. Photo by Ronda Ann Gregorio
By Daniel Dunaief
Determined to share success stories instead of doom and gloom, Nancy Knowlton, the Sant Chair of Marine Science at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, decided to change the tone of the conservation dialog.
Knowlton organized the first Earth Optimism Summit around the most recent Earth Day this April. She searched for speakers who could share their progress and blueprints for success. That included Patricia Wright, a Stony Brook University distinguished professor who has developed an impressive legacy during her 25 years in Madagascar.
Nancy Knowlton, organizer of the first Earth Optimism Summit in April. Photo by Ronda Ann Gregorio
In Madagascar, the 10th poorest country on Earth, optimism has been growing, perhaps even more rapidly than the 1,000 endemic trees that have been making a comeback in the island nation off the southeast coast of Africa. The growth of those trees has encouraged the return of animals that had retreated from an area thinned out by selective logging.
“This year, the rare and furtive bird, the scaly ground roller, came back and nested,” Wright reported. The “black and white ruffed lemur gave the area the thumbs up and reestablished territories and reproduced.”
The critically endangered golden bamboo lemur also doubled the size of its population. “The forest took 25 years to recover, but it can recover,” Wright said in her speech. Dedicated to the study of lemurs, Wright in 1991 helped create Ranomafana National Park, which is the third largest park in Madagascar. She served as a plenary speaker for a gathering that drew over 1,400 people to Washington. Scientists and policymakers held sister summits in nine other countries at the same time.
“You can’t possibly make progress in conservation if you only talk about the problems,” said Knowlton, a co-host of the summit. Knowlton knew Wright from serving on the Committee for Research and Exploration, where the two interacted six times a year. When she was putting together the list of speakers, Knowlton approached the 2014 winner of the Indianapolis Zoo Prize to see if she could share a positive message in conservation.
When Wright accepted, Knowlton was “thrilled, not only because she’s a good storyteller, but because she’s also done incredibly important work in Madagascar.” Indeed, Wright said national parks have greatly expanded from only two in the 1980s. “Now with the work of many dedicated environmentalists, including the enlightened policy of the U.S. government through USAID, we have 18 National Parks and a National Park Service to manage and protect them,” she told the session.
Restoring trees to the area also offers economic opportunity, Wright said. Under the endemic trees, farmers can grow crops like vanilla, chocolate, cinnamon and wild pepper, she said. “All these products can be marketed for high prices. We will take back that land and make it productive again, doubling or tripling its value,” Wright continued.
A scientist featured in the 2014 film “Island of Lemurs: Madagascar,” Wright has engaged in a wide range of efforts on behalf of the Malagasy. Last year, she negotiated with a mayor on the island to pick up trash in exchange for the purchase of several wheelbarrows. She also helped encourage the renovation of 35 schools in communities around Ranomafana, where students learn critical thinking and molecular biology. This, Wright said, is occurring in a country where three out of five students don’t remain in school past fifth grade. “More children in this region are graduating from high school and over a handful have received university degrees,” she explained.
A health team also walks to 50 nearby villages, carrying medicines and basic health lessons. SBU brought drones last year, which can fly medicines as far as 40 miles away. Drones could monitor the outbreak of any unknown and potentially dangerous disease and can offer health care for people who live in ares that are inaccessible by road.
The financial support of the National Science Foundation helped create Centre ValBio, a field station and campus in the middle of the rainforest. The research station has modern facilities and equipment to conduct genetics and disease analyses. “We provide tools and training and even fiber-optic cable internet, the fastest in the region,” Wright said. They are expanding the research facilities this year.
Through research efforts, Wright and other scientists have also discovered two new species of lemurs and found two others that were considered extinct. Restoring the national forest not only brought back animals that had retreated into the inner part of the forest, but it also encouraged the growth of ecotourism.
In 1991, there was only one tourist hotel and now there are 32 hotels, providing facilities for the 30,000 tourists. “That can start to change an economy,” Wright suggested. “Cottage industries have developed like the woman’s weaving group and the basket weavers and blacksmiths who all make a good living from selling to tourists and researchers.”
Wright attributes these positive steps to a dedication to working with residents in the area. “We have been successful by training local residents and university students, by listening to what the communities want, rather than what we think is best,” she said.
Knowlton suggested that “you can’t helicopter conservation into a particular place. It’s got to be built from the ground up. She’s done it in Madagascar.” While these are positive steps, Wright declared this is just the beginning. “There are endless possibilities of scientific knowledge and research,” she said. “They all matter and impact our daily lives.”
As for the Earth Optimism Summit, Knowlton said this is just the beginning as well, originally thinking of organizing a second summit in 2020, but may hold the next one sooner. “We’re identifying what’s working and putting a spotlight on it,” Knowlton said. “The feedback has been extraordinarily, unbelievably positive. We’ve come to realize that people are demanding” another conference.
She appreciated Wright’s contribution to April’s conference.“By sharing her successes, Pat Wright brings home the message that if she can do it, so can we all,” Knowlton said. “The summit succeeded because Wright and over 240 other speakers made it obvious, through the successes that they shared, that solving the environmental problems we face is not out of reach.”
Honoree US Vice President Joe Biden (center) stands with Samuel L. Stanley Jr., President, Stony Brook University, Former and James H. Simons, Chair Emeritus, Stony Brook Fountation and IMAX CEO Richard L. Gelfond during the 2017 Stars of Stony Brook Gala at Chelsea Piers April 19, 2017, in New York, NY. (Mark Von Holden/AP Images for Stony Brook University)
Stony Brook University recognized the 47th vice president of the United States of America, the Honorable Joseph R. Biden Jr., at its 18th annual Stars of Stony Brook Gala on April 19 at Pier Sixty at Chelsea Piers in New York City. The former vice president was recognized for his outstanding career and dedication to the fight against cancer.
“Cancer touches us all in some way and at some point,” said Biden. “Everywhere I go, people share their stories of heartbreak and hope. And every day, I’m reminded that our work to end cancer as we know it is bigger than just a single person. It carries the hopes and dreams of millions of people who are praying that we succeed, praying for hope, praying for time — not someday, but now.”
As vice president, Biden led the White House Cancer Moonshot, with the mission to double the rate of progress in preventing and fighting the disease. Under his leadership, the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force catalyzed novel, innovative and impactful collaborations among 20 government agencies, departments and White House offices and over 70 private sector collaborations designed to achieve a decades’ worth of progress in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer in just five years.
In addition, Biden helped lead the effort to pass the 21st Century Cures Act that provides $1.8 billion over seven years for the Cancer Moonshot’s scientific priorities.
“We are privileged to have the opportunity to honor former Vice President Biden,” said Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley. “The Cancer Moonshot has the potential to transform cancer research and prevention around the world. This critical initiative is a reflection of the work our researchers and doctors are doing in Stony Brook Cancer Center labs — using insight, innovation and strategic collaborations to push the boundaries of what we know about how best to diagnose, treat and ultimately prevent the disease that is responsible for more than 8 million deaths a year worldwide.”
Research and discovery are at the heart of the Stony Brook ethos and the university’s Cancer Center is a shining example of its commitment to combating the malady. Stony Brook doctors are on the forefront of the next generation in cancer care.
The Cancer Center will relocate next year to the new 254,000 square-foot Medical and Research Translation facility (MART), which was designed to enable scientists and physicians to work side by side to advance cancer research and imaging diagnostic and will be the home to the new Bahl Center for Metabolomics and Imaging. Stony Brook researchers are receiving worldwide attention for their pioneering research into the genesis and behavior of cancer cells at the molecular level, which will one day help detect, treat, and eliminate the disease altogether.
Every spring the Stony Brook Foundation hosts the Stars of Stony Brook Gala to benefit student scholarships and a select academic program. Since its inception in 2000, the event has raised more than $42 million. A portion of the net proceeds from this year’s gala will support the Stony Brook Cancer Center.
Biden joins a distinguished roster of scholars, politicians, celebrities and luminaries who have been honored by the gala for their outstanding and relentless commitment to society, including Nobel Laureate CN Yang; actors Julie Andrews, Alan Alda and Ed Harris; founder of Renaissance Technologies Jim Simons; CA Technologies founder Charles Wang; and world-renowned conservationists Richard Leakey and Patricia Wright.
Fotis Sotiropoulos and Chrisa Arcan with local children in the village of Ileret.
By Chrisa Arcan
Led by Dr. Fotis Sotiropoulos, Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS), a group of Stony Brook University faculty and administrative personnel visited the Turkana Basin in Kenya in March with the goal of setting the stage for the 2017 CEAS Global Engineering Field School (https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/ceas/news/2017/march/global_innovation.php).
The trip was organized by Dr. Lawrence Martin, Professor at Stony Brook University Department of Anthropology and Director of the , (TBI) (https://www.turkanabasin.org), a Stony Brook University affiliated institute established in 2005 in Turkana, Kenya, by world renowned anthropologist and Stony Brook University Professor Richard Leakey.
Fotis Sotiropoulos and Chrisa Arcan with local children in the village of Ileret.
Under this newly established CEAS summer program, a group of undergraduate engineering students will visit TBI for an immersion education on global issues and needs that are different from what they are familiar with, in order to develop engineering solutions to address the survival challenges of people in rural Kenya and other places facing similar issues.
TBI facilities were developed with the purpose of offering a permanent infrastructure to enable year-round paleoanthropology and related scientific research in this remote area of sub-Saharan Africa. The Turkana Basin is a region where abundant evidence documenting the history of human evolution has been uncovered.
Recent research on DNA shows that every human being alive today can be traced to a common ancestral population that lived around that area 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. It is literally the birthplace of humankind. Today TBI, with its two field centers, one on either side of Lake Turkana, is a global center of excellence in paleoanthropological research.
Women and children dig deep into the dry river beds to find their daily water supply.
Our first stop was a two-day stay at Mpala Research Centre. The center is affiliated with Princeton University and conducts research in conservation and wildlife with a focus on benefiting the surrounding communities. Thanks to the director of the center, Dr. Dino Martins a former TBI postdoc at Stony Brook, our stay at Mpala was absolutely memorable: We toured the research facilities, the surrounding areas and dry river beds and brainstormed on opportunities to harness the local resources and develop programs that would benefit the local communities, and we marveled at the amazing landscape and its rich wildlife.
From Mpala we boarded a single-engine Cessna Grand Caravan airplane and flew to TBI to start our next journey in the northern-most region of Kenya to Ileret, a small remote village in northern Kenya, in the east side of Lake Turkana, close to the Kenya-Ethiopia border.
As we took a tour of the local clinic, Beatrice, the nurse of the clinic described the multiple health conditions of the locals, especially the children, and the limitations under which she works. The majority of children suffer from at least one type of malnutrition with a large percentage of them being stunted; the latest prolonged drought has exacerbated their condition and increased their deficiency of multiple essential nutrients.
The clinic we visited, a stand-alone small structure, consisted of only a few rooms and of bare medical essentials; everything was in dire need of repair: broken windows, cracked walls, limited medical supplies and a nonfunctioning fridge meant to store drugs, to name a few.
Yet, despite all this, Beatrice and her assistants work tirelessly to perform medical miracles (and always with a smile), from prenatal care, to deliveries, albeit their complications in need of serious surgical procedures, to child nutrition supplementation, to treating any communicable disease, to community education for family planning, vaccinations and many more. My discussions with the nurse brought to life my education on global health and nutrition.
We had the opportunity to see firsthand the local needs and current community projects supported by TBI, like the clinic, school and teachers, and appreciated the opportunities in alternative energy solutions, food systems and health.
We visited the local villages and witnessed the devastating effects of the worst drought in 60 years on peoples’ survival. We saw women and girls digging by hand deep into the ground to find a little bit of precious water, which they also had to carry back to their homes.
Needless to say the water was contaminated with organic and inorganic material, and the apparently clean water from boreholes had fluoride at dangerously high levels. The drought and scarcity and poor quality of water took a devastating toll on food production and livestock for people in that region. Thus food quantity and variety are extremely limited and the signs of food insecurity are apparent in every child and adult.
Village houses
We visited the village homes, single-room domelike structures, built by women from tree branches and corrugated metal sheets that serve as both a cooking and sleeping space for the entire family. Cooking inside the structures creates dangerous air pollution, and as the nurse in the clinic pointed out, respiratory problems are the most prevalent health conditions, especially among children.
We had the chance to interact with the locals and best of all to play with the children; their excitement and fascination when we took selfies and saw themselves on the screen was contagious. What a joy to interact with the happiest children that I have ever seen, despite their daily hardship for survival!
Located in a remote area with scarce resources, TBI is the ideal place to serve as an incubator for inspiration and pilot testing of future engineering, agriculture and public health ideas that can be transferred to benefit the local communities.
All the facilities at TBI have been built by locals using construction materials that, for the most part, were manufactured on-site. The facilities are powered using wind and solar energy and the water is purified using reverse osmosis. It is even equipped with a small greenhouse farm, testing vertical hydroponic and organic farming techniques that can support the growth of a variety of vegetables under harsh local conditions. All these initiatives and more serve as inspirations for future sustainable programs that can benefit the local communities.
Our trip to Kenya lasted only a week but it was filled with fascinating and enriching experiences. We left with many images, impressions and feelings, but most of all with a hope and a motivation that each one of us has found a compelling reason to return and contribute. However, our trip would not have been as rewarding and fulfilling without the organization and hospitality of everyone whom we met and who contributed to our memorable experience.
Chrisa Arcan, PhD, MHS, MBA, RD is an Assistant Professor for the Department of Family, Population, and Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University.
Escobar-Hoyos, center, holds her recent award, with Kenneth Shroyer, the chairman of the Department of Pathology at Stony Brook on the left and Steven Leach, the director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research on the right. Photo by Cindy Leiton
By Daniel Dunaief
While winter storm Niko in February closed schools and businesses and brought considerable precipitation to the region, it also coincided with great news for Luisa Escobar-Hoyos, who earned her doctorate from Stony Brook University.
Escobar-Hoyos, who is a part-time research assistant professor in the Department of Pathology at Stony Brook University and a postdoctoral fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, received word that she was the sole researcher selected in the country to receive the prestigious $600,000 Pancreatic Cancer Action Network–American Association for Cancer Research Pathway to Leadership Award.
When she heard the news, Escobar-Hoyos said she was “filled with excitement.” After she spoke with her husband Nicolas Hernandez and her current mentor at MSKCC, Steven Leach, the director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research, she called her parents in her native Colombia.
Her mother, Luz Hoyos, understood her excitement not only as a parent but as a cancer researcher herself. “My interest in cancer research started because of my mom,” Escobar-Hoyos said. Observing her example and “the excitement and the impact she has on her students and young scientists working with her, I could see myself” following in her footsteps.
The researcher said her joy at winning the award has blended with “a sense of responsibility” to the growing community of patients and their families who have developed a deadly disease that is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death by 2020, according to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, moving past colorectal cancer.
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network has awarded $35 million in funding to 142 scientists across the country from 2003 to 2016, many of whom have continued to improve an understanding of this insidious form of cancer.
David Tuveson, the current director of the Cancer Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, received funds from PanCan to develop the first genetically engineered mouse model that mimics human disease. Jiyoung Ahn, the associate director of the NYU Cancer Institute, used the funds to discover that two species of oral bacteria are associated with an over 50 percent increased risk of pancreatic cancer.
Over the first decade since PanCan started awarding these grants, the recipients have been able to convert each dollar granted into $8.28 in further pancreatic cancer research funding.
In her research, Escobar-Hoyos suggests that alternative splicing, or splitting up messenger RNA at different locations to create different versions of the same protein, plays an important part in the start and progress of pancreatic cancer. “Her preliminary data suggest that alternative splicing could be associated with poorer survival and resistance to treatment,” Lynn Matrisian, the chief science officer at PanCan, explained in an email. “The completion of her project will enhance our understanding of this molecular modification and how it impacts pancreatic cancer cell growth, survival and the progression to more advanced stages of this disease.”
Escobar-Hoyos explained that she will evaluate how mutations in transcriptional regulators and mRNA splicing factors influence gene expression and alternative splicing of mRNAs to promote the disease and aggression of the most common form of pancreatic cancer. Later, she will evaluate how splicing regulators and alternatively spliced genes enriched in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma contribute to tumor maintenance and resistance to therapy.
Escobar-Hoyos will receive $75,000 in each of the first two years of the award to pay for a salary or a technician, during a mentored phase of the award. After those two years, she will receive $150,000 for three years, when PanCan expects her to be in an independent research position.
Escobar-Hoyos said her graduate research at Stony Brook focused on ways to understand the biological differences between patients diagnosed with the same cancer type. She helped discover the way a keratin protein called K17 entered the nucleus and brought another protein into the cytoplasm, making one type of tumor more aggressive.
While Escobar-Hoyos works full time at Memorial Sloan Kettering, she continues to play an active role in Kenneth Shroyer’s lab, where she conducted experiments for her doctorate. She is the co-director of the Pathology Translational Research Laboratory, leading studies that are focused on pancreatic cancer biomarkers. The chair in the Department of Pathology, Shroyer extended an offer for her to continue to address the research questions her work addressed after she started her postdoctoral fellowship.
“When you do research projects and you develop them from the beginning, they are like babies and you really want to see how they evolve,” Escobar-Hoyos said. Numerous projects are devoted to different aspects of K17, she said.
Shroyer said Escobar-Hoyos had already been the first author on two landmark studies related to the discovery and validation of K17 even before her work with pancreatic cancer. “She has also conducted highly significant new research” that she is currently developing “that I believe will transform the field of pancreatic cancer research,” Shroyer wrote in an email.
Shroyer hopes to recruit Escobar-Hoyos to return to Stony Brook when she completes her fellowship to a full-time position as a tenure track assistant professor. “Based on her achievements in basic research and her passion to translate her findings to improve the care of patients with pancreatic cancer, I have no doubt she is one of the most promising young pancreatic cancer research scientists of her generation,” he continued.
Yusuf Hannun, the director of the Stony Brook Cancer Center, said Escobar-Hoyos’s work provided a new and important angle with considerable promise in understanding pancreatic cancer. “She is a tremendous example of success for junior investigators,” Hannun wrote in an email.
Escobar-Hoyos said she is hoping, a year or two from now, to transition to becoming an independent scientist and principal investigator, ideally at an academic institution. “Because of my strong ties with Stony Brook and all the effort the institution is investing in pancreatic research” SBU is currently her first choice.
Escobar-Hoyos is pleased that she was able to give back to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network when she and a team of other friends and family helped raise about $4,000 as a part of a PurpleStride 5K walk in Prospect Park earlier this month.“I was paying forward what this foundation has done for me in my career,” she said.
Matrisian said dedicated scientists offer hope to patients and their families. “Researchers like Escobar-Hoyos spark scientific breakthroughs that may create treatments and ultimately, improve the lives of patients,” she suggested.
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
Scenes from a March For Science rally at Stony Brook University April 22. Photo by Jenn Solomon
It was a rainy afternoon April 22, but that didn’t stop local residents along with Stony Brook University students and faculty members from participating in a March for Science rally at the school. Similar marches took place across the country as Americans joined together to show their support for federal funding for science, as well as to remind President Donald Trump (R) and his appointees how important science is, especially when it comes to researching climate change issues.
Pamela Block, of Setauket, and professor of disabilities studies at Stony Brook University, organized the march with Jenn Solomon, a bilingual speech language pathologist. During a phone interview, Block said approximately 500 people participated, and the marchers ranged in age from young children to senior citizens. Block said the organizations Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, the Audubon Society, the United University Professions and others had representatives on hand.
Block said she and Solomon were talking to a group of local activists including Shoshanna Hershkowitz of Suffolk Progressives and Cindy Morris of Time2Care Long Island, when they decided to organize the April 22 march.
“This is my first time really doing this kind of activist organizing,” Block said. “It feels pretty good.”
The Setauket resident said because she lives in the area and works at the university, the event was a personal one for her. Her mission was to focus on the important part the university plays in the community, as well as in the world of science.
“It was awesome to see the strong turnout, and to be surrounded by thoughtful people who care deeply about the environment and understand the importance of science for our survival and our humanity.”
— Jenn Solomon
“It was a circle of support for Stony Brook in gratitude for the work that it does in the areas of science — medical science, engineering science, environmental science, physics,” she said. “It does some really important work, and I wanted to acknowledge that.”
Solomon credited Block with leading the effort, but like Block, she was excited to be part of the event.
“It was awesome to see the strong turnout, and to be surrounded by thoughtful people who care deeply about the environment and understand the importance of science for our survival and our humanity,” Solomon said.
Morris, who lives in Stony Brook, said a coalition of community groups joined forces a few months ago to reach out in progressive ways to U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley) regarding various issues, and the groups have been planning local events to raise awareness about other current issues.
“This march in particular, we felt at the national level we were seeing the March for Science, but we needed to make sure there was accessibility so local people could also participate without going all the way into New York City or all the way to Washington D.C.,” Morris said.
She said it felt great to take part in the rally, and noted the attendees were different from those who normally come out to protest at similar rallies.
“There were enormous numbers of families who were there to talk about clean water and clean air,” she said. “It was a community that really had the opportunity to speak knowledgeably about this issue, and from that perspective, it was empowering to be among people who really understand the importance and really take it to heart.”
Block said rally participants contributed in many ways, even if they were unable to walk the three-mile route along the Circle Road bike path at the university. Many set up stations to cheer marchers on or were available to drive if anyone fell behind in the marching due to physical demands or having children with them.
“As Stony Brook faculty and a Three Village resident, I am proud of how our community is standing up for science.”
— Shoshanna Hershkowitz
Hershkowitz was just one of the participants who attended the march with her family, which includes her four children.
“As Stony Brook faculty and a Three Village resident, I am proud of how our community is standing up for science,” Hershkowitz said. “Given that our area is a major research hub between Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Lab, we’re in a unique position to speak to this issue. I attended with my children and with another family, because I think it’s important that my kids see activism modeled, and that they know it is part of our duty as citizens to speak truth to power. While bringing kids to events like these isn’t easy, it’s an important lesson that I want to impress upon my kids as a parent.”
Genna Tudda, who has advanced degrees in the sciences and is a 2012 graduate of SBU, said the march hit home for her. While she originally was planning to attend the New York City march, she said, as a Long Island native, it was important for her to show “that people out in the suburbs care just as much about these issues as people in larger cities.”
“Scientific research and environmental issues seem to have been put on the back burner in this new administration,” Tudda said. “Seeing this many people show up to a local event was extremely empowering. I feel hopeful that with these numbers it may be possible to persuade our politicians in the right direction.”
Christopher Forella, standing, third from left, and Dhaval Shah, standing, third from right, with fellow members of Pi Lambda Phi at the Open Door Exchange. Photo from the Open Door Exchange
One fraternity at Stony Brook University has opened the door to a new volunteer adventure that benefits families in need.
When Christopher Forella, a member of the fraternity Pi Lambda Phi at Stony Brook University, was searching the school’s Handshake database for volunteer opportunities, he came across the Open Door Exchange furniture bank. The fraternity’s vice president of programming and risk management said he knew it would be the perfect place for his fraternity brothers to volunteer at this spring semester.
Pi Lambda Phi members from Stony Brook help with the Open Door Exchange. Photo from Open Door Exchange
“I really liked their mission — getting furniture and donating it to people who need it, helping people in need who really can’t afford it,” Forella said in a phone interview.
The Open Door Exchange is an outreach program that allows the underprivileged to shop for furniture free of charge at their Port Jefferson Station warehouse. Kate Jones Calone, a Presbyterian minister affiliated with the Setauket Presbyterian Church, manages the organization. When she heard the fraternity brothers were willing to volunteer at the warehouse, she said she was thrilled.
“It’s especially exciting for us to be able to connect with the university,” Calone said. “The Open Door Exchange really is a community-based project, and the university is such an important part of our community. To be able to work together with students on something that benefits the whole community is a really nice gift for us.”
For Sanjay Jonnavithula, a senior at SBU and a member of the fraternity since it was founded in 2014, the experience of helping those in need to acquire furniture for free has been a rewarding one.
“Furniture is often overlooked as a vital ingredient for a stable household, so it makes me feel incredible that our fraternity is able to aid this great organization in the work that they do,” Jonnavithula said.
The senior said the experience is one that will stay with him even after graduating from SBU, and he believes it has made a positive impact on his fraternity brothers as well.
“I’m sure I speak for all graduating seniors in Pi Lambda Phi when I say that the amount of different community service projects we’ve been a part of, especially Open Door Exchange, has tremendously influenced our lives,” he said. “We are all diverging on our separate paths next year, but we will continue to aid our local communities and get involved with the local charitable organizations in whatever way we possibly can.”
Dhaval Shah, junior at the university and fraternity president, said this type of volunteer work is different from the beach cleanups and assisting at a Head Start preschool like the group has done in the past.
“Something like Open Door Exchange, we see results right away,” Shah said. “We see people coming in and taking the furniture, and the impact on their lives.”
“Furniture is often overlooked as a vital ingredient for a stable household, so it makes me feel incredible that our fraternity is able to aid this great organization in the work that they do.”
— Sanjay Jonnavithula
Forella said the fraternity has 46 members, and when it comes to volunteering every other week at the warehouse for three to four hours, they usually will have about a dozen members working together depending on their schedules. Most of the students help to unload furniture from trucks, but some go out with the loading trucks to pick up donations.
“It’s really making good use of my time to be out helping people who can definitely use the help,” Forella said.
Calone said the other volunteers with Open Door Exchange have enjoyed working with the college students, and they have brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the project.
“They’ve extended our capacity to do what we do in a really meaningful way,” the minister said. “It has a real big impact on what we’re able to do.
Calone is even more appreciative of the time the fraternity brothers have given the organization because she understands how valuable free time is to college students.
“They’re taking time out of their weekend, and it’s precious time for students,” she said. “And giving back to the community, that’s something just really nice for all of us to see what the university brings and how it benefits all of us. These students — the way they are giving back — is just really nice for the community as a whole.”
At the first meeting of the HiTOP consortium. Kotov is in the center. Photo from HiTOP consortium.
By Daniel Dunaief
Instead of lamenting the shortcomings of a system they felt didn’t work as well as it should, Roman Kotov and a growing group of collaborators whose numbers now exceed 50 decided to do something about it. An associate professor of psychiatry at Stony Brook University, Kotov and his collaborators are building their own mental health tool, which, they hope, will offer specific diagnoses for everything from anxiety to schizophrenia.
Roman Kotov. Photo from SBU School of Medicine
The current resource psychologists and psychiatrists use is called the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5,” which came out in 2013. The latest version of the DSM, as the manual that offers psychologists and psychiatrists a way to link a collection of symptoms to a diagnosis is called, “felt far too limited,” Kotov said. “Once we started discussing [an alternative], almost everyone was interested in the scientific community. They thought it was a good and necessary idea.”
Called the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, or HiTOP, the developing classification system uses scientific evidence, illness symptoms and impaired functioning in its diagnoses. Another HiTOP co-creator, David Watson, the Andrew J. McKenna Family professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, recognized Kotov’s important early work on the project.
Kotov “deserves sole credit for the idea of putting all of our data together to provide the basis for an alternative model,” Watson explained in an email. “He did some preliminary work along these lines, which convinced us that this was a great idea that was worth pursuing.” Watson, who served as Kotov’s graduate adviser at the University of Iowa, said that his former student leads meetings and conference calls for the HiTOP group.
The HiTOP system, which was recently described in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, views mental disorders along a spectra, while also using empirical evidence to understand overlap among disorders and classify different symptoms within a given diagnosis. As an example, Kotov said that depression in the DSM is “treated as one thing. We know that depression is heterogeneous.”
Indeed, some people with depression may have lost their appetite and have trouble sleeping, while others may be eating and sleeping considerably more than they would if they weren’t depressed. “In some ways, these are opposite presentations, yet they get the same diagnosis” in the DSM, Kotov said.
HiTOP unpacks this variability into seven dimensions, which describe symptom types. That is helpful not only for a diagnosis but also for a treatment. HiTOP also goes beyond the binary description of the presence or absence of a particular symptom, offering clinicians a way of indicating the severity of a problem. At this point, HiTOP is a developing prototype and not a completed diagnostic tool. The scientists developing this tool have made inroads in four primary areas: anxiety and depression, substance use problems, personality problems and psychotic disorders.
“The HiTOP system currently is incomplete, as it primarily focuses on more common and widely studied forms of psychopathology,” Watson suggested, “but mental health professionals certainly could use it to assess/ diagnose a broad range of conditions.” Mental health professionals can view this new resource at the website https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/HITOP.
Kotov hopes this new paradigm will “focus on science and do everything we can to keep unpolitical, nonscientific considerations out of it,” he said. “We hope that it provides the most up-to-date alternative” to the DSM. The HiTOP approach, Kotov said, relies more heavily on scientific evidence, which can include genetic vulnerabilities, environmental risk factors and neurobiological abnormalities.
Kotov, who is working on several projects, said HiTOP takes about a quarter of his time. He is also involved with a long-term study of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, which was started in the early 1990s, before he arrived at Stony Brook in 2006.
Kotov is following up on this cohort, looking at outcomes for treatment and analyzing risk factors and processes that determine the course of an illness. He is also leading a study on first responders to the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center, which is exploring the physical and emotional consequences of participating in the response to the unprecedented attack.
Kotov and his collaborators are investigating the health of responders in their daily life using mobile technology. They are also studying how personalities affect their health, which may soon help guide personalized treatment.
Another project involves the study of children who are 14 to 17 years old and explores the emotional growth and personality development. This study includes reports, surveys and interviews. During those years, “much happens as far as personality development,” Kotov said.
Colleagues at Stony Brook praised Kotov’s scientific contributions. Kotov is a “rising star” and is “perhaps best known for his work on the role of personality in psychopathology and, increasingly, for work on classification of psychiatric disorders,” Daniel Klein, a distinguished professor in the Department of Psychology at Stony Brook, wrote in an email.
A resident of Port Jefferson, Kotov lives with his wife Tatiana, who is a controller for a small company in Manhattan. The couple has two young daughters. Kotov grew up in Russia in a small town near Moscow. He was always interested in science and developed a particular curiosity about psychology when a high school psychology teacher sparked his interest when he was 15.
As for the HiTOP effort, Kotov is convinced this endeavor will offer the mental health community a valuable tool. “We believe that describing patients more accurately, precisely and reliably will help provide better and more personalized care,” he said.
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