Striking the proper atone: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and the midpoint – for some – of another exciting week of socioeconomic innovation.
To our readers of the Jewish faith, we say g’mar chatima tova and wish you a peaceful Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement begins at sundown tonight.
Piling on: Double your pleasure today.
Twice as nice: It’s Sept. 15 out there, and come tomorrow, some of us may have to atone with our cardiologist – today is the annual salute to gluttony, excess and otherwise overdoing it known as National Double Cheeseburger Day.
Watching your cholesterol? Well, it’s also National Linguine Day – may we recommend the linguine alle vongole?
Remote learning before remote learning was cool: Off-menu, Sept. 15 is also National Online Learning Day, which salutes distance learning and actually predates the pandemic.
State your case: Predating the U.S. Department of State was the U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs, which became the State Department – and assumed broader authority – when President George Washington signed a legislative upgrade 232 years ago today.
Isn’t that sweet: Speaking of upgrades, the artificial sweetener saccharine – elevating benzoic sulfimide with grape sugar – was patented on this date in 1885 by Russian-American chemist Constantin Fahlberg.
Other improvements patented on Sept. 15 include a better golf tee – smaller shank, harder to break – invented in 1925 by Lewis Scott of St. Louis.
Minister of equality: Blackwell, barrier-breaker.
Yes, minister: Christianity bettered itself on this date in 1853, when teacher, writer, abolitionist and suffragist Antoinette Brown Blackwell became the first U.S. woman ordained as a mainstream Christian minister.
Float therapy: American weather balloons – still gathering key atmospheric data, and occasionally explaining UFO sightings – became a thing on Sept. 15, 1904.
Pen pal: And while the precise date varies depending on who’s telling the story, Sept. 15, 1928, is generally accepted as the day Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin.
Fleming inadvertently revolutionized medicine by leaving a culture of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus on an uncovered plate during a month-long vacation – and identifying the resulting “mold juice” as a bacteria-slaying antibiotic.
She done it: English crime writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the unparalleled master of mystery and best-selling author of all time, would be 131 years old today.
Born on the 15th of September: Hollywood veteran Stone, in Vietnam.
Also born on Sept. 15 were Italian explorer, merchant and writer Marco Polo (1254-1324), who paved the Silk Road; 19th Century American writer James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), considered the first major American novelist; 27th U.S. President William Howard Taft (1857-1930); English civil engineer Sir Donald Coleman Bailey (1901-1985), who helped win World War II by designing portable, pre-fabricated truss bridges; and American physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019), who earned a 1969 Nobel Prize for predicting the existence of quarks.
Etched in Stone: And take a bow, William Oliver Stone! The Academy Award-winning American film director, producer and screenwriter – who knew what he was doing when he wrote and directed “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” having earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in Vietnam – turns 75 today.
Give the Hollywood legend your best at editor@innovateli.com, where your emails open The Doors, your calendar events brighten Any Given Sunday (or Monday-Saturday) and your news tips are more valuable than all the money on Wall Street.
About our sponsor: St. Joseph’s College has been dedicated to providing a diverse population of students in the New York metropolitan area with an affordable education rooted in the liberal arts tradition since 1916. Independent and coeducational, the college provides a strong academic and value-oriented education at the undergraduate and graduate levels, aiming to prepare each student for a life characterized by integrity, intellectual and spiritual values, social responsibility and service. Through SJC Long Island, SJC Brooklyn and SJC Online, the college offers degrees in 50 majors, special course offerings, certificates and affiliated and pre-professional programs. Learn more here.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Big bangs: The federal grants are rolling into the New York Institute of Technology, with one National Science Foundation stipend aimed at formulating better membrane filters – potentially, a multibillion-dollar manufacturing marvel – and another aimed at solving one of history’s great cosmic mysteries.
First up is a $204,085 NSF grant for researcher Pejman Sanaei, an assistant Department of Mathematics professor and principal investigator on a project with major ramifications for the estimated $14 billion global membrane filter market. Membrane filters have myriad uses, ranging from water treatment to blood purification to beer clarification; Sanaei and a team of New York Tech undergrads will study the performance of membrane filters using mathematical models and simulations, with an eye on creating new manufacturing solutions.
Assistant Physics Professor Eve Armstrong, meanwhile, has landed a two-year, $299,998 NSF grant on her quest to determine exactly how elements heavier than iron and gold actually formed in the wake of the Big Bang, an origin story that has thus far eluded scientific explanation. “Physicists have sought for years to understand how, in seconds, giant stars exploded and created the substances that led to our existence,” Armstrong noted. “A technique from another scientific field, meteorology, may help to explain an important piece of this puzzle.”
Tightening the seal: North Hempstead will spruce up its town seal, currently featuring Native American leader Tackapausha.
Let’s make a seal: With the Cleveland Guardians coming soon and the “Washington Football Team” in perpetual flux, North Hempstead has begun a collaborative process to redesign its town seal – though the Nassau County municipality is determined to maintain its Native American roots.
While “the Town Board recognizes the need to redesign the town seal,” according to Supervisor Judi Bosworth, it is also “committed to carrying out the Town Board’s intent from 1935,” when the current seal was adopted. The current seal features a profile of Algonquian leader Tackapausha, who negotiated with European settlers in 1643 on the sale of lands currently within the borders of Hempstead and North Hempstead.
The Town Board voted unanimously this month to retain Wampum Magic – a Mastic-based, Native American-owned craft company – to provide illustration and design work on the new town seal, and will be forming a Town Seal Review Committee including representatives of the Matinecock and Unkechaug nations. “We are looking forward to … working in partnership with representatives from the Matinecock and Unkechaug nations as we move forward with this collaborative effort,” Bosworth said.
POD PEOPLE
Episode 6: Scheidt, commercialization queen.
As Stony Brook University’s director of economic development, Ann-Marie Scheidt is one of the most influential contributors to the Long Island innovation economy – and the Yale graduate/Stony Brook PhD is just one of the in-depth conversations that made Season 1 of Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast so amazing. Season 2 now in production … better catch up fast!
TOP OF THE SITE
Long process: The 20th anniversary has come and gone, but for the heroes of 9/11 – and the Northwell Health professionals caring for them – the recovery is far from over.
Component proponent: Up and down the supply chain, Long Island companies of all sizes have roles to play in the evolving 21st Century space race, according to insider Ray Donnelly.
Help us help you: Sharing is caring, so forward this engaging newsletter to everyone in your innovation circle – and tell them to get their own subscriptions, which really helps us out. Always easy, always free.
VOICES
A plane crash, international intrigue, speeding tickets … nothing was going to stop Voices historian Tom Mariner – on top-secret special assignment for The Whistler Group – from building a better radar detector.
STUFF WE’RE READING
In securities: Searching for much-needed innovation in the critical security industry. Security Magazine hunts the unicorn.
Cosmic concrete: Future astronauts may create building blocks for space-age habitats out of Martial soil and their own blood. New Atlas mixes it up.
Flying Delta: As the variants rise, international travel still isn’t what it used to be – and before you go, you need solid answers. Forbes asks the right questions.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ Skydweller Aero, an Oklahoma-based aerospace company, raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Leonardo S.p.A, Marlinspike Capital and Advection Growth Capital.
+ Amagi, a New York City-based provider of cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV, raised $100 million-plus in funding. Backers included Accel, Avataar Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and existing investor Premji Invest.
+ Obsidian Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based biotech pioneering engineered cell and gene therapies, closed a $115 million Series B financing led by The Column Group Crossover Fund, RA Capital Management, Surveyor Capital, Cowen Healthcare Investments and Deep Track Capital, among others.
+ American Treatment Network, a Pennsylvania-based outpatient substance-abuse clinic, raised $5.3 million in Series A funding led by Independence Alternative Investments.
+ Attralus, a California-based clinical-stage biopharma focused on systemic amyloidosis, closed a $116 million Series B financing led by Logos Capital, Janus Henderson Investors, Redmile Group, Samsara BioCapital, Sarissa Capital Management, Surveyor Capital and Vivo Capital.
+ Jeeves, a NYC-based expense-management platform for global startups, raised $57 million in Series B funding led by CRV, with participation from Tencent, Silicon Valley Bank, Alkeon Capital Management, Soros Fund Management and angel investors including Kevin Durant, Andre Igoudala, Odell Beckham Jr. and The Chainsmokers.
BELOW THE FOLD (Send In the Clones Edition)
Clone wars: They all look alike to us.
Welcome to Pleistocene park: Woolly mammoths could be resurrected by the end of this decade.
Say it again: With amazingly accurate AI, everyone will soon be able to clone their voice.
Over the hump: The demand for cloned camels is rising fast.
Copy that: Please continue supporting the amazing institutions that support Innovate Long Island, including St. Joseph’s College, which has been repeating its successful formula for academic and social success for more than a century. Check them out.
