Worlds of Physics
April 8, 7:30 PM

Radioactive Isotopes in Medicine

Eszter Boros
Associate Professor, Dept. of Chemistry, Dept. of Pharmacology, and Dept. of Radiology
Stony Brook University

Abstract: Radioactivity gets often a bad rep. Most of us think of harmful, irreversible tissue damage and radiation sickness first, and foremost as a result of radioactive fallout from damaged or malfunctioning nuclear power plants. However, radioactive isotopes play a very important role in the diagnosis and treatment of disease in medicine. This talk will discuss how radioactive isotopes are made, captured and utilized in hospitals by radiologists around the world.

Bio: Eszter Boros obtained her B.Sc. (2006) and her M.Sc. (2007) at the University of Zurich and her Ph.D. (2011) in Chemistry from the University of British Columbia. She was a postdoctoral fellow (2011-2015) and later instructor (2015-2017) in Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In August 2017, Boros joined the Chemistry Department at SBU as an assistant professor; she also holds appointments with the departments of Pharmacology and Radiology at Stony Brook Medicine. Boros has been named a Moore foundation Inventor Fellow, a Sloan Foundation Research Fellow, and is the winner of the 2021 Discovery Prize. At Stony Brook, Prof. Boros and her team develop means to capture radioactive isotopes of metal ions and employ them for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

The talk will be presented in-person in ESS 001 with Zoom simulcast. To sign up for the email list to receive Zoom links, please use the link below.

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Living World
April 15, 7:30 PM

Mountains as Biodiversity Hotspots through time: Integrating fossils with  tectonics and climate

Tara M. Smiley
Assistant Professor
Department of Ecology and Evolution
Stony Brook University

Abstract: Mountains across the globe are biodiversity hotspots for many different groups of plants and animals; however, the deep-time relationship between mountain building and biodiversity remains elusive and requires integration across disciplines in geosciences, paleontology, and biology. When and how did these hotspots form? What role do landscape and climate dynamics play in eco-evolutionary processes? Using modern and fossil records, our lab investigates how the biodiversity of mammals has been influenced by geological processes that shape mountain landscapes and generate topographic and climatic gradients. In this presentation, I will share research exploring the diversification history and faunal structure of mammals in the Basin and Range Province of western North America over the past ~25 million years, highlighting the role of tectonic extension and warming during the Miocene Climate Optimum. I will also share new collaborative work that includes researchers from Stony Brook University and the Turkana Basin Institute and extends these questions to landscape change and mammal evolution in the East African Rift of Kenya.

Bio: Tara Smiley is an assistant professor in the Ecology and Evolution Department at Stony Brook University. She is also affiliated with the Turkana Basin Institute. With a background in biology and geology, Prof. Smiley is interested in integrating environmental change with biological pattern and process today and through deep time, focusing primarily on mammalian faunas. Prof. Smiley holds a BS from the University of Washington, where she got her start in paleobiology and gained a love for field and museum-based research. She was an Environmental Peace Corps Volunteer in Madagascar and Tanzania from 2008-2010 and finished her PhD in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan in 2016. Following her PhD, Tara was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University and the Stable Isotope Ecology Fellow at the Environmental Resilience Institute at Indiana University.

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