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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…

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….

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…

Invention January 9, 2020

Now batting for Hoplite Power, an innovation veteran

By GREGORY ZELLER // A regional rookie with major-league aspirations – literally – has teamed up with a heavy-hitting innovation all-star to knock its next-gen “power hubs” out of the park. Actually, into the park. Hoplite Power, a Long Island City-based startup and client of Stony Brook University’s Clean Energy Business Incubation Program, has enlisted the help of Hauppauge-based product-design expert Intelligent Product Solutions – specifically, IPS President Mitch Maiman – as it prepares to…

Startups January 8, 2020

After successful seed, Qunnect set for ludicrous speed

By GREGORY ZELLER // Marking another quantum leap for cybersecure long-distance communications, a high-tech Stony Brook University spinoff has completed a key financing round. Qunnect LLC, a 2017 startup launched by a Stony Brook PhD and the head of the university’s Quantum Information Technology Group, has closed its $800,000 seed round, an oversubscribed financing cycle backed by the Accelerate NY Seed Fund, French venture-capital fund Quantonation – the first VC fund dedicated to quantum technologies…

Newsletters September 20, 2019

No. 439: On iron thrones, pepperoni pizzas, pool parties – and best efforts, wasted

  No kidding: You’ve done it again, dear reader – another five-day gauntlet run, another well-earned weekend reached. Well played. It’s Friday, Sept. 20, a good one for the young and the young at heart, marking both National Youth Day in Thailand and Germany’s Universal Children’s Day. Let’s not go there: It’s also Independence Day in South Ossetia, but that’s a whole big thing. Thought for food: And since we dropped the bun and failed…

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 –…

Newsletters August 9, 2019

No. 428: On supergravity, winning wines and power plays – plus, market smarts for innovators

  Friday on your mind: The five-day plight ends once more, dear readers, as we wrap up another week of socioeconomic innovation and welcome another warm, well-earned weekend. On that note, put your hands together for … the Easybeats! Here first: It’s Aug. 9 on Long Island and around the world, marking the UN’s annual International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, which sticks up for the estimated 370 million natives who account for 5…

Startups August 8, 2019

For those with ‘charging anxiety,’ a lite in the dark

By GREGORY ZELLER // This is no AAA battery – a Long Island City startup with Long Island connections is bringing its field-tested “charge-sharing” tech straight to The Show. Hoplite Power, a client of Stony Brook University’s Clean Energy Business Incubator Program proliferating rechargeable smartphone battery packs and a network to rent and return them, is set to join the New York Mets just in time for the Amazins’ unlikely playoff run, with five “Hoplite…

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,…

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…

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 21, 2019

Island’s first large-scale digester to feed energy needs

By GREGORY ZELLER // If you’ve had a bellyful of landfill waste, hang on – Long Island’s first stand-alone large-scale anaerobic digester is finally on its way. The Long Island Power Authority’s Board of Trustees has approved an energy contract with a new food waste-recycling facility in Yaphank, claiming to be capable of reducing Island-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 85,000 metric tons annually – the equivalent of removing 18,000 cars from regional roads, according to…

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…