By GREGORY ZELLER //
Two Long Island professors have added noteworthy honors to their impressive résumés – one from Europe’s home of scientific excellence, the other from Earth’s base for extraterrestrial contact.
Stony Brook University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Iwao Ojima has been named a fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, the non-profit, non-governmental organization assembling Europe’s most distinguished scholars and engineers (and a few from abroad, more below).
Suffolk County Community College physics and astronomy instructor Zachary Richards, meanwhile, is one of a handful of nationwide teachers selected for the 2021 NASA Airborne Astronomy Ambassador program – an elite NASA-based training effort offering specialized instruction in astrophysics and planetary science.
That includes a week-long STEM “immersion experience” at a NASA research facility, where Richards – one of 30 middle school, high school and community college teachers from 10 states selected for the 2021 AAA program – will undergo professional development specifically designed to help instructors improve student engagement across science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses.
Upon completion, Richards will be qualified to teach a physics curriculum module created by NASA and the SETI Institute, the California-based 501(c)3 nonprofit where the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the order of the day. The institute, which manages the NASA-funded AAA program, “has impacted tens of thousands of high school students through the immersive and inspirational experience of their teachers,” according to SETI Institute CEO Bill Diamond.
“This powerful STEM program will allow the SETI Institute to help bring NASA science into classrooms across the country,” the CEO added.
Suffolk County Community College Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs Paul Beaudin called it “an honor for a faculty member to be chosen to participate” in the competitive national program.
“This acknowledges the outstanding reputation of our programs in the natural, physical and engineering sciences,” Beaudin said in a statement.
Zachary Richards: Deep STEM dive.
In joining the Belgium-based EurASc – the European equivalent of the American nonprofit National Academy of Sciences – SBU’s Ojima adds another rare distinction (and sixth fellowship) to a curriculum vitae already overflowing with major achievements and high honorifics, including long ties to the European scientific community.
The SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, who joined the SBU faculty as an associate chemistry professor in 1983 and later founded the university’s Institute for Chemical Biology and Drug Discovery, held sabbaticals early in his career at French universities in Lyon and Paris; later inventions focused on natural anticancer agents were licensed by French and Italian pharmaceutical companies. He’s also held advisory board positions at biomedicine institutes and centers of excellence in Germany.
Overall, the scientist – also a fellow of the American Chemical Society, the John S. Guggenheim Foundation, the American Association of the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors (and president of the NAI’s Stony Brook chapter) – has secured more than 100 patents and published nearly 500 peer-reviewed articles.
He’s especially thrilled to join the European Academy of Sciences “as an American scientist,” Ojima said, noting the organization’s heavily European mien.
“I feel deeply honored … given EurASc puts a 20 percent cap for its members from outside of Europe,” he added. “Accordingly, I am thrilled to have been added to the exclusive roster of scientists in this prestigious academy.”
Elected a fellow as part of EurASc’s Class of 2020, the Stony Brook scientist is set to be honored during an April 15 virtual event beaming from the Sorbonne University in Paris.
“Iwao’s commitment to excellence in science has been invaluable to the Department of Chemistry, our colleagues and to the many students he has mentored over the years,” noted SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Nicole Sampson, dean of SBU’s College of Arts and Sciences. “We are proud of his international recognition.”
