The COVID-19 pandemic is reshaping the world around us, and myriad Long Island forces – large and small, corporate and nonprofit, industrial and educational – are rising to the challenge. Innovate Long Island presents Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus as a real-time journal of this region’s resourceful response to the greatest global challenge since World War II. Stay healthy, dear readers. At SBU and elsewhere, new MDs arriving a little early (April 7)…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Like virtually every business in virtually every industry, law firms are scrambling in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some more than others, though – not every business, and certainly not every law firm, was as ready as Nixon Peabody. Thanks to modern thinking, a few nimble pivots and some old-fashioned serendipity, the international law firm (12 U.S. locations, including a thriving Jericho office, and four across Asia) remains business-ready – if…
By GREGORY ZELLER // The federal government will construct four emergency hospitals across Downstate New York, including two on Long Island, in response to the coronavirus crisis. The Stony Brook University and SUNY College at Old Westbury campuses have been identified by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as potential sites for temporary hospitals, along with Manhattan’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and the Westchester County Center – and on Sunday, President Donald Trump announced…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Just weeks after announcing an expanded international collaboration targeting the menacing novel coronavirus, Applied DNA Sciences is preparing to mass-produce four potential vaccines. Leveraging the Stony Brook-based biotech’s unique DNA-manufacturing abilities, Rome, Italy-based Takis Biotech will test potential vaccines against the coronavirus (now going by COVID-19) in laboratory mice, on a large scale. Applied DNA expects delivery of four DNA-based “preclinical vaccine candidates” from Takis this month, and “within weeks” will…
By GREGORY ZELLER // As deadly shootings rage across the nation, a common theme is ricocheting more frequently around Long Island socioeconomics: protection from gun violence. Several Island-based institutions and organizations have announced fresh efforts targeting the national gun epidemic, ranging from one-off lectures to an expert-laden national research center determined to dent the crisis from a healthcare perspective. Topping the list is Northwell Health’s new Center for Gun Violence Prevention, which is throwing $1…
Back stretch: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, and the clubhouse turn of our latest socioeconomic sprint. It’s Feb. 12 out there, replete with offbeat observations: choose from National Lost Penny Day, National Plum Pudding Day and Valentine’s Hug Day, a cuddly precursor to the big lovers’ day. They do: Speaking of lovers, it’s also a notable date for same-sex unions – National Freedom to Marry Day, which was actually started by a law firm…
Never ceases to amaze: Don’t know how you do it, dear reader, but here you are again – another workweek winding down and another hard-earned weekend coming up. Well done! Numerical order: It’s Friday, Feb. 7 – notable to mathematicians, who of course know the date best as E Day, which celebrates the mathematical constant e (a.k.a. Euler’s number), which needless to say has a value of 2.7182818… (it goes on for quite a…
By GREGORY ZELLER // The winds of workforce development are blowing again through Long Island’s leading academic institutions, two of which will anchor a new state-sanctioned project targeting the offshore wind industry. Farmingdale State College and Stony Brook University will leverage a $20 million New York State Energy Research and Development Authority grant to create the Offshore Wind Training Institute, a worker-readiness effort focused on the burgeoning clean-gen industry, which looms large over future regional…
That happened fast: Wait … what? January is half-over already? Strange but true, dear readers, as we reach Jan. 15, the approximate midpoint of the month and undeniable hump day of this busy week of socioeconomic innovation. Smear campaign: Rejoice, America – it’s National Bagel Day, a bona fide carb-a-thon requiring no further introduction. Mind your po’s and chu’s: And give them a nice Hangul in North Korea, where Jan. 15 is Korean Alphabet…
Off we go: The holidays are over and reality returns, dear readers, as a fresh month, year and decade of socioeconomic innovation begins. It’s Wednesday, Jan. 8 – Babinden in Belarus, celebrating midwives, and World Typing Day, promoting speed and accuracy. Sweets: It’s also National English Toffee Day and National Man Watchers Day, which attempts to balance societal scales by encouraging women to gawk at men for a change (not sure about the thinking…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Governor Andrew Cuomo’s annual “budget proposal” tour rolled on Monday, with a whopper of a plan for Long Island commuters. Billed as “the 30th proposal” of the governor’s annual State of the State multibillion-dollar masterplan, the Empire Station Complex – unveiled by Cuomo during a speech before the nonprofit Association for a Better New York – would create a modern transit hub on Manhattan’s West Side. The plan centers on the…
Moving right along: It’s Wednesday already, dear readers, as we speed through this latest busy workweek and plow straight toward the big year-end holidays. The hills are alive: It’s Dec. 11 out there, a.k.a. International Mountain Day, when the U.N. would like you to consider the overexploitation of mountainous regions, home to 15 percent of the human population and one-quarter of Earth’s non-marine lifeforms. Level headed: There aren’t many mountains in Indiana, where Hoosier…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Going up? You bet – minimum wages on Long Island and around New York State are set to rise again. As part of a Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s phased-in master plan, which ultimately targets a statewide $15 minimum wage, Westchester-, Nassau- and Suffolk-based employers are required to pay a $13 hourly minimum as of Dec. 31, with the $15 minimum scheduled to arrive in 2021. In New York City, where the minimum…
Tipping point: Over the hump we go, dear readers, as we speed into the second half of this autumnal week of innovation and economic development. It’s Nov. 20 out there – National Name Your PC Day, and yes, that’s absurd. But what do you expect on National Absurdity Day? Also absurd: Today is also National Pay Back Your Parents Day, as if. Episodic: Before we catch you up on the innovation economy, in honor…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Long Island’s newest college is really nothing new. Empire State College, stepchild of the State University of New York system, is all grown up, thank you: The school has been helping students, particularly working professionals, earn accredited degrees since 1971, both in-person – at 30 statewide locations and seven international sites – and, increasingly, through distance-learning opportunities. But its 6.6-acre, $14 million Empire State College at Selden – that’s new, even…