As Seen on News12: Jarkon Discusses Psychological Impact of Israel-Palestine Conflict

Oct 10, 2023

In the wake of the attacks in Israel and the Gaza Strip, psychiatrist Liat Jarkon, D.O., director of the Center for Behavioral Health, was featured in a News12 segment about safeguarding children's mental health. Jarkon urged parents to be wary of what their children see on television and in social media, noting that exposure to disaster news coverage is known to trigger post-traumatic stress in children thousands of miles away. She advised parents to keep explanations simple and reassure children that they are safe and that the war is not happening in their backyard.

“There’s absolutely no reason for them to be exposed to that. As a parent, take precautions, remove the phone, remove the apps, and explain to them in a language they would understand based on their age what’s going on – that there are countries at war, bad things happen, but we’re okay right now, that’s all they need to know,” she says.

 

Letsou Quoted in DNA Mutation Story

Sep 29, 2023

William Letsou, Ph.D., assistant professor of biological and chemical sciences, lent his expertise to an AI Business article about the use of Google's DeepMind AI tool to detect mutations in human DNA. Letsou, a computational biologist who conducts breast cancer mutation research, noted the tool's potential to accelerate research in this area by improving experimental efficiencies.

“The DeepMind tool assesses how changes at each missense variant of every human protein affect protein structure, saving immense experimental effort,” he said. “The alternative to DeepMind's variant pathogenicity tool is to generate and crystallize each variant of a protein and look for gross structural alterations. Not only is the experimental work costly and time-consuming, but there are thousands of potential variants to try for each protein.”

Similar coverage also appeared in IoT World Today.

 

Hometown News Outlets Cover Student Achievements

Sep 26, 2023

Hyperlocal media outlets, including Parsippany Focus, Reading Eagle, and The Evening Times highlighted spring 2023 graduates; Huntington Now and other hometown media outlets publicized local students who completed the Internship Certificate Program during summer 2023.

 

Jarkon Appears in News 12 Suicide Prevention Series

Sep 26, 2023

Throughout the month of September, which is National Suicide Prevention Month, psychiatrist Liat Jarkon, D.O., director of the Center for Behavioral Health, appeared in multiple News 12 segments to raise awareness for this serious issue. In separate interviews that aired on September 26, 13, and 7, Jarkon discussed suicide risk factors, treatment, and the need to break the stigma around mental health struggles.

 

Rajnarayanan Quoted in COVID-19 Coverage

Sep 25, 2023

Rajendram Rajnarayanan, Ph.D., assistant dean of research and associate professor at NYITCOM-Arkansas, was quoted in several COVID-19 articles in September. As seen in Verywell Health, Fortune, and other outlets, Rajnarayanan, who maintains a coronavirus variant tracker, shared insight on the latest COVID-19 variant to emerge, the highly mutated BA.2.86. He told Verywell Health, “Even with a lot of mutations, there are a lot of spots in the virus that can be recognized by our immune system, and there are many shared mutations as well. There will be some protection from the new vaccine booster, as well as prior infections.”

In a Fortune article published later in the month, he discussed common user errors with at-home testing kits. Similar coverage appeared in Yahoo News and MSN.com.

 

The New York Times Interviews Whale Evolution Expert

Sep 25, 2023

The New York Times interviewed Jonathan Geisler, Ph.D., chair of the department of anatomy, regarding the discovery of a miniature whale dubbed, Tutcetus rayanensis, which lived approximately 40 million years ago. Geisler, who was not involved in the study but is an expert on the evolutionary history of Cetacea (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) discussed the evolution of body size, as it relates to feeding patterns. The miniature whale was alive just a few million years before primitive whales began their evolutionary split into the two cetacean suborders of today: the toothed whales, dolphins and porpoises known as odontoceti, and the baleen-bearing mysticeti, including blue whales and humpbacks.

“The mysticetes tend to be much larger than the odontocetes,” said Geisler. “And this difference is related to their different feeding strategies. Understanding the size of the ancestor of all modern whales helps us understand how these feeding behaviors and distinct body size differences evolved. Tutcetus is one data point in the effort, but it supports the hypothesis that the common ancestor of all living cetaceans was fairly small.”

 

Media Publicize New Research Center Coming to Long Island Campus

Sep 19, 2023

As seen in InnovateLI, The Island 360, and Patch (Oyster Bay), on Sept. 15, members of the New York Tech community and elected officials gathered on the Old Westbury campus for a ceremony at the site of the former 500 Building, which officially kicked off the construction of the Biomedical Research, Innovation, and Imaging Center (BRIIC). The project, expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2025, will feature collaborative laboratories and cutting-edge imaging equipment, including a multi-color 3-D STED (stimulated emission depletion) microscope with a resolution approximately 10 times higher than standard confocal microscopes. The facility will also include a functional magnetic resonance imaging suite dedicated solely for research purposes. 

InnovateLI writes, “More than simply transforming the campus’ former '500 Building' into a modern imaging mecca – a ginormous advantage for a region filled with biotechnology researchers (and biotech investments) – the BRIIC is a major component of New York Tech’s master strategy to qualify as a Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Learning Research 2 University by 2028.”

 

Newsday, The Island 360 Report on Best Colleges Rankings

Sep 18, 2023

Newsday included several local colleges and universities in its coverage of the 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, including New York Tech’s position at No. 21 among regional universities in the north. The Island 360 detailed New York Tech’s ranking in several categories and noted, as did Newsday, that among all public and private universities in the state in the Regional Universities (North) group, New York Tech ranked tenth. “The rankings continue to underscore our unwavering commitment to the quality of the student experience at New York Tech,” President Hank Foley was quoted as saying in both articles. 

 

Newsday Taps Nizich for Cyberattack Anniversary Story

Sep 10, 2023

Newsday tapped cybersecurity expert Michael Nizich, Ph.D., director of the ETIC and adjunct associate professor of computer science, for an article about the one-year anniversary of the Suffolk County ransomware attack. He notes that the reason the county has taken so long to restore its services is likely because it lacked a written disaster recovery plan. 

“The preparation that's supposed to be in place in a textbook world doesn't seem to have been in place at all,” said Nizich, who noted corporate recovery times from such attacks are typically measured in hours, not weeks or months. “In a perfect environment, they should have gone back to September 7 [to their backup systems] and been back up in a day or so,” or a week at most, he said.

 

Local Media Publicize Federally Funded Research Projects

Sep 10, 2023

Newsday, in its weekly Winners column, reported on three federally funded research projects by NYITCOM faculty. The awards, which total approximately $1.4 million, include the medical school’s first grant from the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and two competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). On September 10, the column featured NIH-funded research by Associate Professor Maria Alicia Carrillo Sepulveda, Ph.D., which investigates obesity-related hypertension; on August 20, the column highlighted DoD-funded research by Associate Professor Haotian Zhao, M.D., Ph.D., which investigates a rare form of brain cancer found mainly in children; on August 6, the column publicized NIH-funded research by Professor Qiangrong Liang, M.D., Ph.D., which aims to prevent long-term heart damage in cancer survivors previously treated with a potent chemotherapy drug.

Coverage of these prestigious grants also appeared in InnovateLI.