2019

Stony Brook was named the highest ranking state institution in New York in the  prestigious  Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education  U.S. College Rankings for 2020, and No. 25 among all U.S. public universities. The rise marked an increase of thirty places over the previous year. The higher rankings are due to particularly strong showings in the areas of campus environment and student outcomes and reflect a significant increase in reputation. The University also recorded its highest-ever ranking on  Forbes  magazine’s list of “America’s Best Value Colleges,” coming in at No. 29 on the 2019 list, and No. 13 among public universities. Stony Brook was the top-ranked SUNY institution listed.

Stony Brook marked 2019 with a record number of students winning major honors for academic achievements. 

Senior biology major Claire Garfield was awarded the Marshall Scholarship, one of the most prestigious academic honors available to U.S. undergraduates. The ultra-selective scholarship is granted annually to 46 outstanding seniors identified as future leaders in their fields and finances two years of study at the most distinguished universities in the United Kingdom.

In May, 10 Stony Brook students were recognized by the Department of State’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program, a highly competitive scholarship opportunity that provides funding for American students to conduct research or teach English in more than 140 countries around the world. 

Stony Brook also boasted 11 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships and had three Goldwater Scholarship nominees selected at the national level.

Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, distinguished professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Physics and the  C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, was awarded a Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in November, one of three Stony Brook faculty to be recognized with national awards. Van Nieuwenhuizen, an architect of the influential supergravity theory, shared a $3 million prize with two other honorees.  

Heather Lynch, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and a faculty member of the University’s  Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), was named a winner of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists in the category of Life Sciences. Lynch was honored for “her unique synthesis of cutting-edge statistics, mathematical models, satellite remote sensing and Antarctic field biology.”

Howardena Pindell, a professor in the Department of Art, won the 2019 Artist Award from the Artists’ Legacy Foundation for her “multifaceted practice that explores composition and color, as well as political topics including racism, feminism, and exploitation.”

Stony Brook, a powerful incubator of teaching and research innovation, saw record high R&D expenditures in 2019. The University received several significant grants in support of its efforts.

Stony Brook’s Institute for Advanced Computational Science received a $6.3 million anonymous donation to advance data-driven research that will improve understanding of some of the world’s most pressing challenges, including climate change, machine learning and next generation nuclear energy, among others. Additionally, a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will enable researchers nationwide to test future supercomputing technologies and advance computational and data-driven research.

On the medical side, Stony Brook is advancing research in the field of Alzheimer’s disease with the help of five new grants that were awarded in the last fiscal year. The grants, totaling more than $7 million, will go toward developing next-generation treatments and funding Long Island’s Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s disease at Stony Brook. 

An economic impact report compiled by Stony Brook University’s John A. Rizzo, professor of economics and population, and supported by the University’s Office of Economic Development, attests to the institution’s vast economic influence on the regional and global economy. The report found that Stony Brook University’s annual economic impact on Long Island totaled an impressive $7.23 billion in increased output, $2.39 billion in earnings and 54,637 local jobs. In addition, the University’s graduates increased aggregate economic output worldwide by $15.3 billion, supporting an impressive 99,815 jobs .

The study, which employed a methodology developed by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, found that the University’s economic activity supports eight percent of all jobs in Suffolk County and accounts for three percent of all economic activity in Nassau and Suffolk Counties.

November marked the opening of Stony Brook University’s new SMART Cluster, a dual use GPU Cluster for both machine learning and visualization. The high-tech cluster will facilitate powerful AI-enhanced computational capabilities, high-end visual computing and analytics, and acceleration of data-intensive and computer-intensive processes. According to Arie Kaufman, Distinguished Professor in Stony Brook’s  Department of Computer Science, it can execute 3 quadrillion operations per second.

The new technology also drives the freshly upgraded Reality Deck 2.0, the largest immersive display in the world with 1.5 billion pixels. “This kind of cluster is a supercomputer on steroids,” Kaufman said. 

Stony Brook University officially launched the Institute for AI-Driven Discovery and Innovation in a May 9 event held at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. The new Institute will support potentially revolutionary research relating to human-machine symbiosis, grounded in the principle that AI technology should amplify human intelligence instead of replacing it.

The Institute will serve as a hub for the AI research effort at the University and will fuel the workforce for the AI-driven economy of the future through programs that fuse computer science, engineering and applied mathematics with medicine, life sciences, and the arts and humanities.

In October,  Stony Brook University celebrated the latest advances  in medical care for children with the completion of the new Stony Brook Children’s Hospital. The state-of-the-art facility will expand Stony Brook’s capabilities to meet the growing healthcare needs of children and families across Long Island.

Stony Brook Children’s provides cutting-edge research, child-sized technological innovations, clinical trials and breakthrough techniques to benefit pediatric patients as Long Island’s only children’s teaching hospital.

The new hospital was designed with patients’ well-being and healing in mind. It is  the only children’s hospital on Long Island with all single-patient rooms, allowing Stony Brook to combine the best practices in modern pediatric medicine with a “child-first, family-first philosophy.”

With four lifesaving surgeries in May, Stony Brook Medicine’s  Kidney Transplantation Services created a unique kidney transplant chain that now binds together donors and recipients in shared gratitude and friendship.

It started when Al Barbieri’s wife, Deborah, decided to donate a kidney to her husband. Unfortunately, her rare blood type was not a compatible match for her husband, but it turned out to be a perfect match for New York Mets legend Ed Kranepool, whose kidneys were failing.

Port Authority Police Officer Brian Cooney completed the kidney chain by donating a kidney to Barbieri, saving not only his day, but his very life.

“With this transplant I’ll be able to see my children graduate,” said an emotional Barbieri, who’d spent years on dialysis. “I’ll be able to go to their weddings, I’ll be able to see my grandchildren. That’s a very special thing.”

Hosted by the Stony Brook Foundation, the 20th Stars of Stony Brook Gala in April honored alumna and  Simons Foundation President  Marilyn Hawrys Simons ’74, PhD ’84, for her leadership at one of the nation’s premier philanthropic institutions devoted to driving progress in basic science, as well as her contributions to improving educational opportunities for the underserved at the University and beyond.  

The 20th Stony Brook Gala proved to be a record-breaker, raising $28.2 million. The total included $25 million from Simons, which will establish a new Center for Applied Economics and Public Policy at the University, and another record-breaking $3.2 million to support student scholarships.

Since its inception in 2000 and prior to this event, the Stars of Stony Brook Gala had raised more than $36 million for student scholarships and $21 million for academic programs of excellence.