Stony Brook University’s Top 12 Stories of 2012
Recap highlights amazing year at Stony Brook
STONY BROOK, NY, December 27, 2012 – A recap of the top 12 stories for 2012 at Stony Brook University:
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| Stony Brook Seawolves baseball “Shocked the World” and became the darling of the sports world with their deep run into the NCAA College World Series. |
1) Seawolves Baseball Program “Shocks the World” by Advancing to College World Series (June) – The Stony Brook University baseball team became the story of the sports world when it defeated six-time national champion LSU at home in a best-two-out-of-three NCAA Super Regional to advance to the College World Series. Embraced by the city of Omaha as their team for the tournament, the Seawolves finished the year with a school-record 52 wins and a number 7 national ranking. Matt Senk was named the National Coach of the Year, and Travis Jankowski was National Co-Player of the Year.
2) Simons Foundation Matching Gift Challenge Grant inspired an unprecedented level of philanthropic giving to Stony Brook University in 2012 including: a $10 million anonymous donation which led to a $20 million impact to establish a world-class institute for Advanced Computational Science; a $2.5 million gift with a $5 million impact to advance research and clinical care at the newly named Lourie Center for Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis at Stony Brook Long Island Children’s Hospital; a $1.5 million gift resulted in an impact of $3 million for the Shinnecock Bay Restoration Program on the Stony Brook Southampton Campus; a $1 million gift with a $2 million impact to create an Endowed Chair in Immunology; a $500,000 pledge, matched from Christopher Pendergast and the Ride for Life organization for an impact of $1 million to help support the development of an ALS Clinical Trials Program at Stony Brook University’s ALS Center of Excellence ($1 million impact); and many more.
3) Groundbreaking for and completion of five major campus facilities projects marked Stony Brook’s growth and trajectory in 2012. Stony Brook opened the doors to a beautiful new $37.5 million, 85,000 square foot Campus Recreation Center and cut the ribbon to a new Agriculture Consumer Science Center at the Stony Brook University Incubator at Calverton. The University also commenced work on three major facilities projects: a $21.1 million Stony Brook Arena renovation project: a new $13 million Marine Science research and teaching facility on the Southampton Campus; and, a new $40 million state-of-the-art Computer Science building.
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4) SBU Breaks Top 100 National, Top 40 Public Universities Rankings (September) – Stony Brook University ranked among the top 100 National Universities in America and among the top 40 Public National Universities in the country according to the 2013 edition of U.S. News & World Report survey.
5) Stony Brook Faculty Elected to prestigious scientific organizations in 2012 – In April, Eckard Wimmer, PhD, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, a private, non-profit society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research. In May, Jeffrey A. Segal, PhD, was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies and the leading center for independent policy research; and in November, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced a record high nine SBU faculty were elected as AAAS Fellows, the most ever elected in one year for Stony Brook University.
6) Intel 8: SBU Mentors Intel Finalists including Overall Winner (January) – Stony Brook University mentored a record eight of the 40 high school students chosen as finalists in the prestigious 2012 Intel Science Talent Search which accounts for twenty percent of the nation’s total. The overall grand prize winner, Nithin Tumma, was mentored by Dr. Berhane Ghebrehiwet, Professor in the Department of Medicine at Stony Brook University.
7) Through the “Flame Challenge,” Alan Alda and the SBU Center for Communicating Science Inspire Scientists Around the World to Better Communicate Science (March, June, December) – Legendary actor Alan Alda, founding member of the Stony Brook University Center for Communicating Science and a Visiting Professor in the School of Journalism, challenged scientists world-wide to explain a flame to 11-year-olds in the Flame Challenge. The contest was a tremendous success and through widespread media coverage, led to more than 80 million impressions around the world. It also spurred the launch of the Flame Challenge II: “What is time?”
8) Stony Brook Medical Campus on the Move – In April, Stony Brook took a bold step toward excellence when it introduced a new unifying brand – “Stony Brook Medicine” – integrating all of Stony Brook University’s health-related initiatives: education, research and patient care. It includes five Health Sciences schools – Dental Medicine, Health Technology and Management, Medicine, Nursing and Social Welfare – as well as Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook Long Island Children’s Hospital and 35 community-based healthcare settings throughout Suffolk County. In September, Reuven Pasternak, MD, was appointed CEO of Stony Brook University Hospital and Vice President for Health Systems, a title which reflects a new initiative for SBUH – development a Long Island-wide network of facilities that deliver world-class academic healthcare to the citizens of New York.
9) Stony Brook University announces results of the first interdisciplinary faculty Cluster Hire initiative (November) – As part of the University’s SUNY 2020 plan to add more than 250 faculty members over the next five years, five clusters hiring proposals were selected for funding, which will result in 25 new faculty hires in the areas of: Behavioral Political Economy; Biomolecular Imaging; Coastal Zone Management and Engineering; Photon Sciences at the Joint Stony Brook-Brookhaven National Laboratory Photon Sciences Institute (JPSI); and Smart Energy Technology.
10) Lucy Van Dalen becomes Stony Brook’s first ever National Champion (March) – Senior Lucy Van Dalen won the mile at the 2012 NCAA Indoor Track & Field Championship to become Stony Brook’s first-ever national champion. The six-time All-American earned her seventh All-American honors in the Outdoor 1500 before qualifying and competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics for her home country of New Zealand.
11) SBU Opens Largest Resolution Immersive Visualization Facility Ever Built (November) – Stony Brook University unveiled an unmatched engineering feat, a 1.5 billion pixel Reality Deck, a 416 screen super-high resolution virtual reality four-walled surround-view theater, is the largest resolution immersive display ever built driven by a graphic supercomputer.
12) Stony Brook Medicine and Southampton Hospital Take Major Step Toward Stronger Partnership (October) – Leadership at Stony Brook University, State University of New York, and Southampton Hospital signed a non-binding letter of intent to strengthen an affiliation in which the 125-bed facility would join the Stony Brook Medicine healthcare system as the two hospitals work more closely to improve healthcare quality and access, coordination of care and efficiency for their patients.
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© Stony Brook University 2012
