Ingenuity, innovation and cross-campus collaboration have been keeping patients more comfortable, care providers better protected and, bottom line, saving lives as we enter the third month of the COVID battle here at Stony Brook University. I’m Interim President Michael Bernstein and host of this podcast series, Beyond the Expected -- The Coronavirus Effect. Today, we will talk with two experts from Stony Brook University whose areas have been driving results through engineering-driven medicine, which is in partnership with Stony Brook Medicine. They’ve been redesigning ventilators, improving respirators and making hand sanitizer ... all at the rapid pace pandemic conditions have necessitated. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the effort, 9,000 faculty and staff have helped care for 5,000 symptomatic patients who have come through our doors since we saw our first COVID-suspected patient back in February. Let’s hear more about the unparalleled work they’ve been doing across campus, together, to meet the challenge
Fotis Sotiropoulos serves as Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University and is a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering. Since joining the faculty in October of 2015, Dean Sotiropoulos has steered the College towards tackling major societal grand challenges by advancing convergence science initiatives in collaboration with the School of Medicine, the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences and Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is driving University-wide initiatives in Engineering-Driven Medicine and Artificial Intelligence and is at the forefront of the College’s strategic commitment to expand diversity and invent the future of engineering education in the era of exponential technologies.
Peter Tonge is the Chair of the Department of Chemistry and a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Radiology at Stony Brook University. Dr. Tonge is a founding member of the Institute of Chemical-Biology and Drug Discovery, co-Directs the NIH-funded chemical biology training program, and has strongly supported initiatives to build the infrastructure for non-invasive positron emission tomography (PET) human imaging that links chemistry with life science departments and the School of Medicine. He is also the Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Drug Action, whose mission is to improve the prediction of drug activity in humans, thereby increasing the success rate of new drug approvals. He will talk with us about the research and solutions the Department of Chemistry has been offering to help deal with the pandemic crisis
Production Credits
Guest Host: Michael Bernstein
Executive Producer: Nicholas Scibetta
Producer: Lauren Sheprow
Art Director: Karen Leibowitz
Assistant producer: Ellen Cooke
Facebook Live and Social Media: Meryl Altuch, Emily Cappiello, Casey Borchick, Veronica Brown
Production assistant: Joan Behan-Duncan
YouTube Technician: Dennis Murray
Vodcast Director: Jan Diskin-Zimmerman
Engineer/Technical Director: Phil Altiere
Production Manager: Tony Fabrizio
Camera/Lighting Director: Jim Oderwald
Camera: Brian DiLeo
Editor: Tony Fabrizio
Original score: “Mutti Bug” provided by Professor Tom Manuel
Special thanks to the Stony Brook University School of Journalism for use of its podcast studio.