Looking back at the Stony Brook Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors Annual Meeting 2020
The Stony Brook University Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Annual Meeting and New Members Induction Ceremony was held virtually this past December. President of Stony Brook University, Dr. Maurie McInnis, was one of several speakers who opened the ceremony. “Stony Brook University has an exceptional track record when it comes to research and inventions”, President McInnis said in a statement provided for the ceremony. She recognized the SBU faculty along with the SBU culture that promote outstanding discoveries - from the invention of the MRI by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Paul Lauterbur in the 1970s, to the revolutionary drug ReoPro, which prevents blood clots from forming during a procedure to open blocked blood vessels, invented and patented by Dr. Barry Coller.
Along with Dr. McInnis, Dr. Richard Reeder, VP for Research at SBU, Dr. Karen Burg, Board Member of the NAI, and Dr. Paul Sandberg, President of the NAI, provided their greetings and congratulations to the new members with Dr. Burg explaining the concept behind the NAI Pin. Dr. Sanberg highlighted the incredible breakthroughs the university has made in innovations and technologies during the pandemic year and congratulated the inventors on their outstanding accomplishments.
“This year's new inductees and honorary members are all truly talented individuals and represent a growing and ever so vibrant innovation ecosystem at Stony Brook University,” said Dr. Sean Boykevisch, Executive Director of the NAI-SBU Chapter. “The inventions of our new members continue to feed the pipeline of SBU’s innovation.”
Dr. Iwao Ojima, Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and President of the NAI-SBU chapter, gave the State of the NAI-SBU Chapter report along with a brief overview of the NAI. The NAI-SBU Chapter was founded to recognize and encourage academic inventors on the SBU Campus. Dr. Ojima announced that this year, the NAI-SBU Chapter welcomed twelve new members from the Stony Brook Renaissance School of Medicine, Departments of Computer Science, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Anesthesiology, and Applied Mathematics and Statistics. The Academy was also proud to induct three honorary members: Mr. Peter Donnelly (Assoc. VP for Technology Partnerships, Office of Economic Development, Stony Brook University), Mr. John Gallagher, Esq. (The Farrell Law Firm, P.C.), and Mr. Brian Volk, Esq. (Cowan Liebowitz & Latman PC). Each Inductee was introduced with his/her portrait photo and the NAI Member certificate by Dr. Ojima and Dr. Boykevisch.
One of the highlights of the meeting was the keynote talk by NAI Fellow, Dr. Arie Kaufman, who spoke about his own “fantastic voyage” of inventorship and about the discovery of the Virtual Colonoscopy, his invention that is a breakthrough in colon cancer screening.
The NAI’s mission is to: “enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation; to encourage the disclosure of intellectual property; to educate and mentor innovative students; and to translate the inventions of its members to benefit society”. The academy now has more than 4,000 individual members and over 200 member institutions throughout the world. The NAI-SBU Chapter was established in 2016 and was a big step forward in fostering the Stony Brook inventors’ community, increasing visibility of the Stony Brook innovations and research at both the national and international level.
Congratulations to the new members of the National Academy of Inventors:
Dr. Galina Botchkina, Department of Pathology
Dr. Carol Carter, Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Dr. Samir Das, Department of Computer Science
Dr. Michael Frohman, Department of Pharmacological Sciences
Dr. Qiaode Ge, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Xianfeng Gu, Department of Computer Science
Dr. Prashant Jha, Department of Material Sciences
Dr. Joseph Marino, Department of Computer Science
Dr. Srinivas Pentyala, Department of Anesthesiology
Dr. Helmut Strey, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Erez Zadok, Department of Computer Science
Dr. Wei Zhu, Department of Mathematics and Statistics