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Opinion December 30, 2020

After rocky 2020, Island startups set to rock in 2021

By DAVID HAMILTON // What a challenging and tumultuous year! If you’d told the December 2019 me what was going to transpire, I’d have called you crazy – and suggested you’d read one too many sci-fi novels by our favorite Innovate LI editor. There was no way to see this coming: a never-ending pandemic, an unprecedented economic collapse, social upheaval on a national scale, political turmoil unlike anything we’ve ever seen, endless Zoom calls, three…

Startups December 22, 2020

With Next Cryo, a startup that’s really cooling its jets

By GREGORY ZELLER // The Stony Brook University scientist who came in from the cold is getting some serious chills – and this time, he’s really got something to cryo about. Slowa Solovyov, a multi-patented, 23-year veteran of U.S. Department of Energy collaborations, is diving into the coldest environments man can create on a quest to improve quantum-level efficiencies. The longtime SBU adjunct professor of electrical engineering is flipping the switch on Next Cryo, a…

Clean Energy December 15, 2020

In ThermoLift, SBU commercialization done right

By GREGORY ZELLER // The shining star of Stony Brook University’s commercialization ecosystem is all growed up – and ready to reshape the global heating-and-cooling landscape. As a client of Stony Brook’s Clean Energy Business Incubator Program and a resident of the university’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, 2012 startup ThermoLift – co-founded by current Director Paul Schwartz and international engineering stalwart Peter Hofbauer – has advanced the principles of the extreme-temperature Vuilleumier thermodynamic…

Opinion September 24, 2020

Life lessons from my own big, fat international crisis

By SHRUTI SHARMA // Following my passion for science to the United States has been a life-defining moment for me. Leaving my parents and everything familiar behind – it’s one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. Coming to a new country is exciting. You are experiencing new culture, visiting beautiful places and growing personally and professionally. However, some of these very things can make being “international” difficult at any given time. You…

Newsletters March 18, 2020

No. 484: We do the twist, the bump and the IDA shuffle – all from the comfort of home!

  It could be worse: A lot worse, dear readers, as we hunker down, suck it up and otherwise follow sage advice designed to save lives. It’s Wednesday out there, March 18 to be precise, and as everyone readjusts to the new normal, we acknowledge National Supreme Sacrifice Day – and remember there’s plenty of real estate between inconvenience and true sacrifice. Too close for comfort: Another natural for a coast-to-coast lockdown, today is also…

Biotech March 5, 2020

Team effort pushing Allied Microbiata toward pay dirt

By GREGORY ZELLER // Raymond Sambrotto is knee-deep in toxic waste in Delaware, and pretty happy about it. It’s been nearly three years since Sambrotto and co-founder Frana James launched Allied Microbiata, a now-Stony Brook-based biotech with a taste for environmental remediation, and about four months since the startup engaged its most ambitious field test to date, setting its PCB-eating microorganisms upon thousands of pounds of contaminated soil and sediment at a site in Delaware….

Manufacturing March 3, 2020

Next-gen lasers cut to the heart of manufacturing

By GREGORY ZELLER // Fire all lasers! But not just for cutting – Stony Brook University is warming up new tech that uses energy beams to both shape materials and alter their molecular states, a next-level manufacturing breakthrough. Welcome to the new Center for Laser Manufacturing, which aims open this fall inside SBU’s long-awaited Innovation and Discovery Center, a state-funded $60 million jewel for Stony Brook’s commercialization crown. Alongside the Center of Excellence in Wireless…

Technology January 30, 2020

At CEWIT tech conference, the future is in their hands

By GREGORY ZELLER // Stony Brook University will flex its innovation muscle in March, bulking up its Technology Commercialization Conference with an entire campus worth of creativity. The university’s Office of Economic Development is inviting students and faculty to showcase new technologies for possible commercialization, with an audience of potential investors and industry insiders expected to fill SBU’s Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology. The Technology Commercialization Conference is not to be confused…

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…