Every Monday from July 9 through July 30, Professors Aruna and Niranjan Balasubramanian, from the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, held a machine learning workshop for children at Comsewogue Public Library.

Nine students participated in the workshop that was open to children entering grades six through twelve.

A group of participating students with the professors

Guided by the professors, students learned about the inner workings of computer science through hands-on activities. They worked with software on computers that helped them understand Optical Character Recognition, digital creation, and various other computer-related tools.

“The reason I wanted to introduce computer science to local children is because I think it is critical to engage with the community, let the members of the community know what Computer Science is about, and get students interested in computer science from an early age,” said Professor Aruna.

For their last session, students created a “chatbot” that took the form of a digitally-created owl. They successfully met the challenge of programming the owl to respond to certain questions by strategically developing and organizing key words in the software.

Aruna is an assistant professor and Niranjan is a research assistant professor. Both joined the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook in Spring 2015.

Read more: https://news.stonybrook.edu/stony-brook-matters/alumni/sbu-professors-host-computer-science-summer-workshop/

Manuel — an accomplished trumpeter who earned his Doctor of Musical Arts in performance from Stony Brook University two years ago — is the president and founder of the Jazz Loft, a unique museum and performance space in downtown Stony Brook that has already become a home away from home for the University’s student jazz combos and big band.

Now, Manuel is joining the University as an Artist in Residence — a position created through an anonymous gift — and his new colleague, Professor of Jazz Studies Ray Anderson, couldn’t be happier.

40 Under Forty honoree Tom Manuel ’16 is joining Stony Brook’s Department of Music as Artist in Residence.

For Perry Goldstein, chair of the Department of Music in Stony Brook’s College of Arts and Sciences, Manuel’s scholarship — developed through his years of performing, teaching music in Long Island schools, and building the Jazz Loft’s collection — makes him an ideal figure to complement Anderson’s achievements as a performer.

“Long Island is a very important place – Stony Brook especially – for jazz education in America,” Manuel said. “The first not-for-profit organization for jazz, the International Art of Jazz, was started here in Stony Brook; the first concerts were held on the campus of Stony Brook University.”

And, while Manuel’s early activities as Artist in Residence will include teaching jazz history classes and trumpet lessons and supervising small ensembles, he envisions innovations that will add to Suffolk County’s proud jazz history.

With the resources of the Jazz Loft and the breadth of education that Manuel aims to offer, jazz at Stony Brook will become more accessible to a wider array of students.

Read more: https://news.stonybrook.edu/facultystaff/new-endowed-position-strengthens-stony-brooks-jazz-chops/

Scientists in Madagascar have for the first time performed DNA sequencing in-country using novel, portable technology to rapidly identify the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis (TB) and its drug resistance profile.

The project, led by a global team of doctors and scientists from Madagascar’s National TB Program, Stony Brook University, the Institut Pasteur Madagascar (IPM), University of Oxford and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is seeking to transform the surveillance, diagnosis and treatment of TB and other infectious diseases in Madagascar.

Medical researchers in Madagascar are trained by the global consortium on how to load DNA on the portable sequencer.

Beyond performing DNA sequencing on samples submitted to the nation reference laboratory for TB, the team partnered with TB clinics in the country to evaluate the ability to perform these analyses outside the labs or “in the field”.

“We have trained 22 scientists to perform DNA sequencing using the MinION platform,” said Simon Grandjean Lapierre, Research Coordinator from Stony Brook University, a member of the global consortium and of Stony Brook’s Global Health Institute.  “Our long term goal, as part of our broader TB strategy, is to increase capacity and work on methods development so that DNA sequencing can become part of routine TB diagnosis and surveillance in Madagascar.”

As part of a larger study funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Academy of Medical Sciences and NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre the team of researchers aim to develop more capacity for DNA sequencing and use this tool prospectively to identify TB drug resistance, better understand the dynamics of TB transmission in Madagascar and evaluate impact on public health.

Read more: https://news.stonybrook.edu/homespotlight/international-scientific-team-brings-portable-dna-sequencing-to-madagascar/