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Workforce September 24, 2019

Island set to shine as clean-energy employment soars

By GREGORY ZELLER // Good news for research-rich, offshore-open Long Island: New York’s clean-energy economy is growing at more than double the rate of the overall state economy. So says the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which on Tuesday announced an 8.9 percent growth in statewide clean energy-related employment since 2016 – exceeding 158,000 employees in 2019, according to NYSERDA, and still climbing. These and other impressive numbers await in the state’s…

Clean Energy August 27, 2019

Ominous winds blow, but offshore efforts hold steady

By GREGORY ZELLER // President Trump is tapping the breaks on offshore-wind development, but the burgeoning billion-dollar industry is still poised to reset environmental and economic barometers. That’s the word from world-class energy guru Robert Catell, chairman of the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium, who’s staying calm in response to the announcement that the Trump Administration is delaying permits for the first major U.S. offshore wind farm, until such time that the administration…

Sustainability August 20, 2019

Albany plugging $79M into SBU campus efficiency

By GREGORY ZELLER // A variety of state-funded efficiency upgrades – including new lighting, ventilation and operations-management systems – are included in a new Stony Brook University infrastructure-improvement plan. Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday announced a comprehensive $79 million strategy to bring additional energy-efficient improvements to the Long Island jewel of the State University system. Financed and implemented by the New York Power Authority “in partnership with SUNY,” the upgrades target several SBU facilities –…

Awards and Events June 6, 2019

SBU commercialization shines at Incubator Showcase

By GREGORY ZELLER // Innovation is always on display at the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology, but it truly shined this week, when the stars of Stony Brook University’s economic-development universe soaked up some spotlight. The university’s fourth-annual Incubator Showcase, a one-day ingenuity bazaar highlighting Stony Brook’s complex commercialization ecosystem, filled CEWIT with imagination Wednesday, as residents and clients of SBU’s myriad incubators and business-development programs shared their progress with potential investors,…

Clean Energy May 29, 2019

Ambitious agenda, new partnership gas up the IGIT

By GREGORY ZELLER // A new cross-continental collaboration is just one of the innovative energy efforts revving things up inside the Institute for Gas Innovation and Technology. Stony Brook University’s 15-month-old IGIT is firing on all cylinders on its mission to address current and future power needs through increasingly low-carbon means – including a new memorandum of understanding inked this month with the San Diego-based Center for Sustainable Energy, seen as a major play toward…

Energy May 13, 2019

‘Switch’ set, superconductivity startup soars

By GREGORY ZELLER // Resistance, it turns out, is not futile – but in this power struggle, a Stony Brook startup may have the technological advantage. In the world of electricity transmission, resistance – opposition to an electric current’s flow, the opposite of electrical conductance – is the whole bowl of wax. Tip the scales from conductance to resistance, and it’s going to be a dark night on Main Street. The challenge is especially steep…

The Debrief May 2, 2019

Debrief: Catell, consortium set to blow the doors off

  Robert Catell isn’t so much “busy” as “hyperactive.” Decades after serving as chairman of KeySpan and National Grid’s U.S. operations, the iconic innovator (last Debriefed by Innovate LI in 2016) remains integrally involved in multiple energy-efficiency efforts. As chairman of the New York Smart Grid Consortium and of Stony Brook University’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, Catell is all in on sustainability, a focus reinforced by his leadership of the National Offshore Wind…

Invention April 22, 2019

At ICE laboratory, diversity fuels the fire within

By GREGORY ZELLER // Diversity is behind the wheel at Stony Brook University, where an unexpected team of mechanical engineers is fueling a new future for an old technology. Electric vehicles are an enormous part of an energy-efficient future – and they’re increasingly prevalent in the present, with hybrids quickly filling our HOV lanes. But that doesn’t mean internal combustion engines are dead. Instead, the drive for energy efficiency has researchers like SBU Department of…

Clean Energy April 9, 2019

ThermoLift runs with the elite at CERAWeek 2019

By GREGORY ZELLER // A Stony Brook startup in hot pursuit of game-changing heat-pump technology sizzled last month at one of the nation’s biggest annual energy conferences. ThermoLift, headquartered at Stony Brook University’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, was one of only 11 companies invited to present during Climate Investments’ Venture Day, part of the 37th annual CERAWeek conference, held in March in Texas. Named for Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a circa-1983 Massachusetts-based energy…

Clean Energy April 2, 2019

At offshore consortium, $7M is blowing in the wind

By GREGORY ZELLER // A syndicate of offshore-wind leaders from around the region, the nation and the world is looking to energize the path to sustainability with a hefty funding drive. The National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium this week announced the availability of up to $7 million in research-and-development funding, part of its “first comprehensive solicitation for offshore wind-technology projects.” The seven-figure stipend marks “an important step in advancing the long-term strategy for…

Awards and Events March 27, 2019

Breakfast of champions

Hundreds turn out to honor LI’s brightest innovators (photos by Bob Giglione) In a rare breakfast networker that delivered all the feels, Innovate Long Island saluted its 2019 Innovators of the Year Tuesday at the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury. More than 200 guests turned out to honor two dozen of Long Island’s brightest and boldest researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs and executives, including 2019 Master of Innovation Mitch Maiman and Stony Brook University Vice President…

Clean Energy March 6, 2019

ThermoLift lands on (Google for Startups) cloud nine

By GREGORY ZELLER // A rising star of Stony Brook University’s science-commercialization ecosystem is getting a major boost from Google. ThermoLift, headquartered at SBU’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center and a member of the university’s Clean Energy Business Incubator Program, has been accepted into Google Cloud for Startups and has received “cloud computing credits” valued at $20,000. Google Cloud for Startups is designed to help early-stage tech enterprises scale up their businesses by offering…

Clean Energy February 25, 2019

All systems flow: StorEn batteries in critical test phase

By GREGORY ZELLER // In an energetic example of Stony Brook University’s science-commercialization system firing on all cylinders, university researchers are getting into the vanadium flow – testing a prototype battery with unprecedented energy-storage capabilities. A vanadium flow battery developed by Stony Brook-based clean-gen company StorEn Technologies is being put through its paces by Unique Technical Services, a 2012 launch spun out of SBU’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center. Wielding an array of engineering…

Economic Development January 31, 2019

Shamash departs, SBU economic development realigns

By GREGORY ZELLER // Stony Brook University is bidding farewell to its longtime economic-development guru – and saying hello to a new innovation-and-commercialization protocol, starting with a union of its mighty research and economic-development offices. University President Samuel Stanley Jr. announced Thursday that effective April 1, SBU’s Office of Economic Development will be consolidated within the university’s Office of Research – creating the new Office of Industry-Research Partnerships & Business Services and the new Office of…

Technology December 3, 2018

Microscopic imaging for any science? You better ThINC

By GREGORY ZELLER // Stony Brook University is living large at one of the smallest ideas it ever had. If you’re a multinational fragrance company based on Long Island, or a marine scientist studying trace elements in North Shore shellfish populations, or a civil engineer trying to mitigate South Shore coastal erosion in an era of climate change-charged superstorms, you’re likely familiar with SBU’s Thermonuclear & Imaging Nanoscale Characterization Laboratory. Others probably don’t give ThINC…