Earth to everyone … come in, everyone: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and not just any Wednesday but Wednesday, April 22 – a date baked into the story of human evolution, environmental stewardship and innovation.
Today, of course, is Earth Day, a worldwide phenomenon first launched in 1970 by a former Wisconsin governor turned U.S. senator who determined to do something about human pollution’s effects on the global ecology.
Earth Day has grown in ambition and influence ever since, at least internationally. But here in the States, with retrograde thinking threatening environmentalism at every turn, a moment’s pause to consider the past, present and future of humanity’s influence over the planetary climate has never been more politically charged – or more important.
Good for your heart?: Maybe not, but jellybeans will surely put a smile on your face.
Administration celebration: Also important are the men and women behind the men and women – the support staffers who make our innovation economy tick, taking center stage on National Administrative Professionals Day.
Show some appreciation today for those receptionists, office managers and bean counters – especially the bean counters, who may play an unrelated but also crucial role on National Jellybean Day, mixing colors and flavors every April 22.
Wheely big deal: Also mixing things up was industrious London fruit-seller Robert Tyers, who needed a faster way to deliver his wares, so he invented roller skates and patented his wheeled wonders on this date in 1823.
Senior circuit: Roller skates were nowhere in sight, but there were plenty of bats and mitts in play on April 22, 1876, when professional baseball’s National League played its first game. (The Boston Red Stockings defeated the Philadelphia Athletics, for those keeping score.)
On the clock: With low-score games boring fans, minor-league basketball team owner Danny Biasone came up with the 24-second shot clock.
Make it quick: Bats and mitts were nowhere in sight, but there were plenty of balls and hoops in play on this date in 1954, when the National Basketball Association sped things up (and pumped up scores) with the 24-second shot clock.
All on the line: Also running up the score was optical fiber, which was used for commercial telecommunications purposes for the first time 49 years ago today.
A whole new world: There was likely some optical fiber in the mix on April 22, 1993, when Mosaic 1.0 – the first web browser to achieve public popularity – was released by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Though quaint by today’s dazzling lightspeed standards, the OG “Internet information browser” – mostly used for sharing text, pictures and a few audio files – is credited with putting the World Wide Web on the map.
Mixed bag: Russian Communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist Vladimir Lenin (born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, 1870-1924) – who did some good stuff (universal education, free healthcare, extended legal rights for women and minorities), lots of bad stuff (mass killings, political repression, state-sanctioned terrorism) and finished up as one of the 20th Century’s most influential world leaders – would be 156 years old today.
Jack out of the box: Nicholson was universally praised for his amazing versatility.
Also born on April 22 were German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), an aesthetics ace and metaphysical master ranked among the Enlightenment’s greatest thinkers; Russian American novelist, poet, translator and entomologist Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), who put literary style to innovative use in “Lolita” and other classics; American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), the conflicted and utterly brilliant “Father of the Atomic Bomb”; retired American actor, producer, director and screenwriter Jack Nicholson (born John Joseph Nicholson, 1937), an historically versatile Hollywood performer who earned three Academy Awards; and American billionaire businessman Samuel Altman (born 1985), who co-founded OpenAI, the R&D company behind ChatGPT.
Frampton comes alive: And take a bow, Peter Kenneth Frampton! The English singer, producer and guitarist – a 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee and frequent Grammy Award nominee who finally broke through with his first win in 2007 – turns 76 today.
Send birthday wishes to the multi-instrumentalist at editor@innovateli.com, where we feel like you do, especially when you rock one of music history’s greatest live performances (or at least share some news tips and calendar events).
About our sponsor: ZE Creative Communications is a full-service integrated marketing communications agency specializing in public relations, creative marketing, crisis communication and social media. Founded in Great Neck, ZE Creative Communications has been helping clients create compelling and successful messaging campaigns for more than three decades. Learn more here.
BUT FIRST, THIS
Break on through: Six decades of cutting-edge research – including work done at Long Island’s own Brookhaven National Laboratory – have earned a prestigious Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.
Awarded by the Silicon Valley-based Breakthrough Prize Foundation, the six Breakthrough Prizes awarded this year – including prizes in Physics, Life Sciences, Mathematics and other categories – honor transformative advances that deepen human understanding (quantum theory, the origins of the universe, other breezy topics). In the Physics category, so-called “Oscars of Science” were awarded this year to the surviving researchers who led 60 years of campaigns at BNL, CERN (the Switzerland-based European Council for Nuclear Research) and Illinois-based Fermilab to measure the subtle wobble of tiny subatomic particles known as muons, key to deciphering the fabric of the universe.
Among them: William Morse of BNL and Bradley Lee Roberts, currently part of the Boston University faculty, who helped lead Brookhaven’s revealing “muon g-2” experiment between 1990 and 2004. “The brilliant scientists who win the Breakthrough Prize are building a cathedral of knowledge on foundations laid down by the giants who came before them,” Breakthrough Prize Foundation Co-founder Yuri Milner said in a statement. “We owe our civilization – and its future – to them.”
Better late than never: Andrea Goldsmith, who’s been leading Stony Brook University for more than eight months, has finally been inaugurated as SBU’s seventh president.
Long time coming: Andrea Goldsmith now officially has a job she’s been doing since last Summer.
Stony Brook University’s newest president – who succeeded Interim President Richard McCormick last August, after McCormick took over for former President Maurie McInnis, who resigned last May to become president of Yale University – was inaugurated April 18 as the culmination of Inauguration Week, during which a variety of academic symposia and community events were held to usher in this new chapter for the SUNY flagship institution.
State University of New York Board of Trustees Chairwoman Merryl Tisch and SUNY Chancellor John King Jr. conducted the official investiture, conferring powers, duties and responsibilities (which she already had) on SBU’s seventh-ever president – and its fourth in seven years, including McCormick and longtime President Samuel Stanley Jr., who left in 2019 to head up Michigan State University. “[Goldsmith] understands that Stony Brook is uniquely positioned to drive … economic growth for the region and for New York,” King noted. “I can’t imagine a person who would better encapsulate the values of Stony Brook and ultimately of the State University of New York.”
TOP OF THE SITE
Make a day of it: With scientific illiteracy flowing proudly from the White House, Earth Day in America is not what it used to be – though several Long Island cornerstones aren’t giving up the sustainability fight.
They’re grrrreeeaaat!: The next great “Spark: The Innovate Long Island Podcast” conversation drops next week … more than 60 great conversations, featuring the biggest brains in regional innovation, are standing by now. Feed your own greatness, 30 (or so) minutes at a time.
VOICES
With cost and care quality in mind, a growing alliance of bipartisan federal lawmakers is making an earnest effort to break up the Big Medicine super-conglomerates that control your doctors, insurers and pharmacists – but according to Voices Healthcare Anchor and former Northwell Health Senior VP Terry Lynam, they face a difficult uphill battle.
STUFF WE’RE READING
“Trust” fund: Why trust may be the most valuable (and undervalued) commodity in the fight against climate change. Fast Co. has faith.
Water view: Why waterfronts are attracting more and more innovation districts. Forbes eyes location, location, location.
Breaking the (male) pattern: Science may have accidentally cured baldness. Popular Mechanics splits hairs.
RECENT FUNDINGS
+ ViewsML, a Vancouver, BC-based biotech focused on biomarker discovery, raised $4.9 million in Seed funding led by Wittington Ventures, with participation from Continuum Health Ventures, Mayo Clinic, RiSC Capital, Debiopharm, WUTIF, Defined and e-Fund.
+ Giggles, a California-based social app that allows users to invest in tradable video content, raised $1 million-plus in pre-Seed funding led by 1kx, with participation from Noar Ventures, Bain Capital Scout, Virtuals Protocol and Night Capital.
+ Wavelet Medical, a Connecticut-based health-tech startup specializing in noninvasive fetal brain monitoring, raised $7 million in Seed funding. Aegis Ventures made the investment.
+ Antioch, a New York City-based manufacturer building simulation tools for robot developers, raised $8.5 million in Seed funding led by A* and Category Ventures, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Abstract, Box Group and Icehouse Ventures.
+ Coral, a NYC-based healthcare automation platform, raised $12.5 million in funding led by Lightspeed and Z47.
+ Loop, a California-based artificial intelligence platform for supply chain and logistics management, raised $95 million in Series C funding led by Valor Equity Partners and the Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from 8VC, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners and Tao Capital Partners.
Like this newsletter? Innovate Long Island newsletter, website and podcast sponsorships are a prime opportunity to reach the inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and executives you need to know – on Long Island, and soon, across New York State (just ask ZE Creative Communications). Gregory Zeller can tell you more.
BELOW THE FOLD (The Onion Edition)
Breaking the news: Nobody does it like The Onion.
This means Infowars: How lowlife conspiracy conman Alex Jones lost his shirt to The Onion.
The sire of satire: Before The Onion, there was The Weekly World News. (And there still is.)
Ripped from the headlines: Ranking The Onion’s all-time funniest headers.
Bringing the funny (when appropriate): Please continue supporting the amazing agencies that support Innovate Long Island, including ZE Creative Communications, where a fantastic sense of humor never interferes with the super-serious business of presenting your best message. Check them out.
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