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Pandemic Primer September 25, 2020

Innovation in the Age of Coronavirus

The COVID-19 pandemic and its evolving aftermath are reshaping the world around us, and myriad Long Island forces – large and small, corporate and nonprofit, industrial and academic – have risen 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: Bulging ‘travel advisory’ a concern for…

News September 24, 2020

New York Forward widens field for small-biz loans

By GREGORY ZELLER // Gut-punched small businesses on Long Island and across New York State just caught a break from the Empire State Development Corp. Albany’s main economic engine announced Thursday that statewide small businesses that received earlier assistance through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program are now eligible to receive low-interest working-capital loans through the New York Forward Loan Fund. When the $100 million NYFLF launched in May, it was meant as…

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…

Calendar September 24, 2020

Stuff we’re (mostly virtually) thinking about going to

  September 30 Offshore Wind Supply Chain  1-3 p.m., online  The Composite Prototyping Center presents the second in a series of free virtual events focused on the regional supply chain, featuring presentations by wind-energy supply chain specialist Composites One and The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation. To register or for more information, email prugile@compositepro.org. October 2 Hofstra University Healthcare Entrepreneurship Community Challenge  10 a.m.-12:30 p.m., online  Hofstra University’s Center for Entrepreneurship presents its annual…

Environment September 22, 2020

With a wing and a grant, SBU researchers set to soar

By GREGORY ZELLER // High-flying Stony Brook University researchers will take to the skies to better understand atmospheric chemistry in two very different places. Fueled by National Science Foundation grants totaling nearly $6 million, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Dean Paul Shepson and Professor John Mak – both experienced pilots – will lead airborne studies involving scientists from across the land and a variety of sophisticated aircraft owned by the NSF, the University of…

Economic Development September 21, 2020

PILOT lands lights, cameras, action in Port Washington

By GREGORY ZELLER // Spoiler alert: Hollywood is coming soon to a Long Island county near you. Actually, pandemics notwithstanding, television and movie production is already thriving on the Island – but you can expect it to gain steam now that the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency has embraced a $15 million renovation plan that will bring a new film studio to Port Washington. The IDA has issued approvals for a Payment In Lieu Of…

Voices September 18, 2020

Pay attention: TikTok has already changed the world

By DAVID CHAUVIN // For those who don’t regularly interact with Generation Z, TikTok’s meteoric rise to the forefront of public attention is somewhat bewildering. Throw in the president’s public feud and the battle over TikTok’s pending “sale,” and suddenly the video-sharing app seems everywhere. As trivial as the entire saga can seem, it’s really the opposite: TikTok is fundamentally changing social media and the ways people create and interact with content. And even with…

Environment September 17, 2020

For fisheries’ sake, a voyage to the bottom of the sea

By GREGORY ZELLER // The annual Dropping of the Junk has once again killed two birds with one stone, while saving a whole bunch of fish. In what has become a yearly splashdown event, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on Wednesday continued what Albany plugs as “the largest artificial reef expansion in state history,” dumping rail cars, a tugboat, a steel turbine and other defunct machinery along a 744-acre stretch of the…

Economic Development September 17, 2020

Study: In pandemic’s wake, expect LI land-use changes

By GREGORY ZELLER // When the pandemic is finally over, expect a drastically different Long Island land-use landscape. So predicts the Long Island Regional Planning Council, which this week announced the results of a wide-ranging study that considers the past and future of LI brick-and-mortar retail – already challenged before COVID-19, according to the council – and other substantial regional land uses, all likely to be “altered significantly” when the smoke clears. The land-use study…

Opinion September 15, 2020

The crowd goes quiet: For sports, the psyche of silence

By GREGORY ZELLER // You’ve been there, sports fan: bottom of the ninth, sudden-death overtime, one-point lead, two-minute warning, third and long, the odd-man rush, the alley-oop, the champ goes down, the kick is up… And in every sport, behind every great play, around it and inside it and below and above it – the roar of the crowd. Sports are back. In fact, after months of reruns and silence, fans are enjoying an unprecedented…

Voices September 11, 2020

Without galas and dinners, will charities go hungry?

By JEFFREY REYNOLDS // If this were any other year, our mailboxes would be overflowing with charitable-event invitations and we’d spend the next three months sprinting between Crest Hollow Country Club, Oheka Castle and the Garden City Hotel. There’d be small talk, speeches, swag, silent auctions and a nice chicken, fish or vegetarian entrée. Every night of the week. But this year isn’t like any other. Most charities, on Long Island and across the nation,…

News September 10, 2020

That one time it all worked out for LI, thanks to IPS

By GREGORY ZELLER // A masterstroke of Long Island socioeconomics – how it should work, or at least how regional rainmakers wish it would – has come full circle. Forward Industries, the formerly Florida-based manufacturer that acquired Long Island product developer Intelligent Product Solutions in 2018, has moved its corporate headquarters to Hauppauge – bringing the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak, in a rare case of a corporate parent relocating to its subsidiary’s home…

IT September 9, 2020

Quantum powers unite in Island’s $115M QIS center

By GREGORY ZELLER // A $115 million research effort rooted at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University will try to push the United States to the head of the global quantum-information class. The U.S. Department of Energy has chosen BNL to lead one of five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, each supporting the National Quantum Initiative Act, which became law in 2018 and mandates a 10-year national strategy to “accelerate the development of…

Coronavirus September 8, 2020

SUNY’s LI schools look good as COVID tracker debuts

By GREGORY ZELLER // Note to the party crowds on SUNY’s 64 statewide campuses: Big Doctor is watching. With colleges and universities across the land reporting significant COVID-19 outbreaks – and a coronavirus cluster already closing one state university campus for the entire fall semester – Albany and SUNY are getting a little more proactive, with the launch of a system-wide COVID-19 tracking system. The new dashboard, officially introduced Sunday by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and…

Voices September 3, 2020

A ‘common sense’ call for nursing home visitations

By TERRY LYNAM // We buried my 91-year-old father-in-law on Aug. 21 at St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, one day after his wake, where most of his family saw him for the first time in five-and-a-half months. Because he was in an assisted-living facility, a hospital and a nursing home during that time, the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from receiving visitors. He survived COVID-19, but spent the final 161 days of his life in isolation,…