Stony Brook University Undergraduate Admissions

Our Outstanding Faculty

glimm At a world-class research university such as Stony Brook, you can expect to find world-class researchers and scholars. But many of our leading scholars and researchers are also inspiring teachers and they have the awards to prove it. At Stony Brook, we're committed to putting our best teachers into our undergraduate classes, so you can take courses in biochemistry, Spanish, music, philosophy, or any number of other subjects with teachers who've earned the recognition of their students and their peers as the best in their class.

In fact, many of our faculty have been recognized by the Chancellor of the State University of New York as some of the best teachers SUNY has to offer.

		With nearly 2,200 faculty, our student/faculty ratio is 18:1.

		Nearly all full-time faculty hold doctoral degrees or the highest degrees in their fields.

		More than 90% are engaged in active research and ranked second in articles published in prestigious journals.

		Responsible for more than 1,500 inventions and more than 400 patents.

Faculty awards include the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, MacArthur Fellowships, the Fields Medal in Mathematics, the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology, and Grammy Awards. The internationally recognized Emerson String Quartet is quartet-in-residence here, teaching master classes and performing at the Staller Center for the Arts. Read more about our outstanding faculty [PDF].

Faculty Spotlight
Click on a portrait to watch a video interview with each faculty member!

Paul Bingham, Biochemistry

Research Interests: Genetics of development and regulation of gene expression.

"The answer to the human uniqueness question actually contains a theory, not only of our origins, but also our entire history, beginning with the first humans about two million years ago, and extending to the present. I teach a popular course exploring this remarkable story, and its implications for human behaviors, including our social, linguistic, intellectual, ethical, and sexual behaviors. We hope that some of you will join us. You will find that your understanding of yourself and of others is changed utterly by the experience."

Latha Chandran, MD, Pediatrics

Research Interests: General pediatrics and adolescent medicine.

“The great teacher inspires the learner by the enthusiasm she conveys - about the topic, about the learners, and about the experience."

Nancy Franklin, Psychology

Research Interests: Human memory; source monitoring, spatial cognition; mental models of events and scenes.

"Half the insights I had about how the mind works have come from talking with the best of my colleagues at national conferences. The other half I have come from puzzling out ideas with my students."

Hanna Nekvasil, Geosciences

Research Interests: Experimental and thermodynamic investigations of mineral/malt equilibrium in silicic magmas.

"There is nothing more rewarding than teaching students. They want to know, 'What is Geology about?' 'What is the most current thinking in my field?' 'What is the newest research?' All of those things together make a fantastically interesting package: the research and the teaching."

Gary Mar, Philosophy

Research Interests: Logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science.

"Some of the most powerful opportunities for teaching happen when a group of students share a set of goals and are actively committed to realizing them."

John Shea, Anthropology

Research Interests: Paleolithic archaeology and Pleistocene paleoanthropology of the Near East, Africa, and Europe, early hominin adaptive radiations, origin of Homo sapiens, Neandertals, lithic technology, experimental archaeology.

"I love archaeology, because it's the perfect balance between working with your mind and working with your hands."

Amanda Stent, Computer Science

Research Interests: Spoken and multimodal dialogue systems, natural language generation, theories of discourse, information extraction.

"When you become a computer scientist, you become trained to breakdown problems in a particular way, and to think of solutions in a particular analytical way, and then you attempt to approach all of life like that."

Patricia Wright, Anthropology

Research Interests: Primate ecology; primate behavior; primate conservation; Madagascar.

"The best part of the job is working with students, because...I can see the future. I get a lot of fulfillment out of the idea that my students, and their future students, will be able to answer a lot of the questions still out there."