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. Cuomo: No mask, no service in New York State (May 28)…
By GREGORY ZELLER // With canceled internships and rescinded job offers adding insult to injury for shortchanged U.S. college students, Long Island universities are working hard to keep their flocks working this summer. Longstanding career- and business-development programs at Adelphi University and Hofstra University have refocused their efforts through a pandemic-friendly lens, with a growing number of virtual internships and other remote-working (and remote-learning) opportunities now in play. The need for a Summer 2020 internship…
Thirty years later, Hilary Topper – part marketing ace, part social influencer, all 21st century It Girl – is still going strong. Game-changing technological jolts, 9/11, the Great Recession and now, of course, the great 2020 coronavirus pandemic … none have stopped the clever self-promoter and fierce businesswoman from building Long Beach-based HJMT Public Relations into one of Long Island’s best-known and most-respected marketing brands. With a new book (“Branding in a Digital World: How…
Yes, you May: Welcome to Friday (we checked, it’s true) and a brand-new month in the surreal odyssey that is the Age of Coronavirus. It’s May 1 out there – the earliest date Mother’s Day can fall in Samoa, Hong Kong, Hungary, Lithuania, Mozambique, Portugal, Spain and Romania, though today is not Mother’s Day in any of those places (nor in the States, where it falls two Sundays hence). Legally delish: It is, however,…
Rock on: It’s another work-from-home Wednesday, dear readers, as we muscle through a tough workweek marked by bitter national divisions, phased re-openings and no real endgame (yet) for the great 2020 pandemic. The good news is, a mile-wide planet-killer asteroid zooming through the Solar System at a breezy 19,000 miles per hour will narrowly miss Earth today. So, no worries there. Wish list: On that cheery note, welcome to April 29 – World Wish…
By GREGORY ZELLER // The coronavirus couldn’t stop tradition at Hofstra University, where the regularly scheduled Hofstra-Digital Remedy Venture Challenge went off without a hitch, virtually. Now in its eighth year, the business plan contest – which challenges Hofstra students to come up with new products or services and create business plans to commercialize them – held its final competition round April 24. As per custom, the penultimate pitch-off pitted 10 finalists in a winners-take-all…
By GREGORY ZELLER // An international research consortium with Long Island roots may have identified the culprit behind COVID-19’s worst cases. It’s been well-documented that a large majority of patients who contract SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, suffer only mild to moderate symptoms and fully recover. Much more documented: The novel coronavirus can kill, with severe COVID-19 infections leading to Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, pulmonary inflammation, airway-blocking mucus secretions, blood clots and…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Long Island’s top-shelf institutions of higher learning are springing to action to help one of the pandemic’s healthiest – and most negatively affected – populations. Among other well-documented chaos, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on every level of national education, but especially among university-bound high-schoolers who are a) losing out on proms and other senior-year victory laps and b) caught in the middle of their college-application processes. No doubt, academia’s coming recovery…
By GREGORY ZELLER // An emotional rite of passage for future physicians has made a high-tech, if slightly more impersonal, Age of Coronavirus pivot. Match Day is an annual event during which graduating medical students across the nation open personalized letters from the National Resident Matching Program, revealing the next steps of their long educational journeys: their residencies, where they will spend years finishing off their medical educations. Usually a joyous tearjerker featuring packed college…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Health equity – a concept freshly redefined by our times – takes center stage in this year’s Healthcare Entrepreneurship Community Challenge. Hofstra University’s long-running entrepreneurship competition is offering $50,000-plus in cash and business-resource prizes to early-stage enterprises addressing socialized healthcare problems in underserved Long Island, New York City and Hudson Valley communities. This year’s “challenge topic” is “advancing health equity,” focused on innovative products and services that “improve the total health…
By TERRY LYNAM // Healthcare has always been at the forefront of technological development; robotics and artificial intelligence are no exception. Science fiction may spur images of sentient robots living seamlessly among us, but the reality is also remarkable, in unexpected ways. At Northwell Health, AI is revolutionizing not only the practice of medicine but also good health far beyond hospital walls, enabling providers to analyze healthcare data through complex algorithms. When coupled with advanced…
Halfway home: Welcome to Wednesday, dear readers, as we reach the midpoint of this latest busy week of innovation and economic progress. It’s Feb. 26, and honestly, the pickings are fairly slim on Planet Earth: You can go nuts for National Pistachio Day (one of only two nuts mentioned in the Bible, by the by) or go medieval for Ash Wednesday (not mentioned in the Bible, more of a 6th century thing), and that’s…
By GREGORY ZELLER // With a national nursing shortage in their sights, Hofstra University and Northwell Health are launching a new undergraduate nursing program on Long Island – and planning a $60 million learning center to house it. The people who brought you the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra/Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies on Monday announced a new Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, with…
By GREGORY ZELLER // Albany’s biggest economic engine is hitting the gas on a clever, multifaceted Long Island workforce-development initiative, offering a reality-TV look at the Island’s thriving 21st century industries. The Empire State Development Corp. is joining the Long Island STEM Hub – a consortium of regional educators, executives and other stakeholders boosting regional science, technology, engineering and mathematics industries – to launch “Full STEM Ahead Long Island,” a new video series pushing STEM…
The time warp, again: It’s happened once more, dear readers – that blink-and-you-missed-it jump to the left (or was it a step to the right?) and the whole first month of 2020 is gone, poof, just like that. Yep – it’s Jan. 31 already, a Friday this year, wrapping up both the month and the week in socioeconomic innovation. Ad on: Speaking of socioeconomic innovation (and the first weekend in February), we already know…