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Xerox Picks LIU Alumnus Steve Bandrowczak to Be New President and COO

The next president and chief operations officer of Xerox is LIU alumnus Steve Bandrowczak.

LIU alumnus Steve Bandrowczak (Post ’88, BS) has just been appointed president and chief operations officer of Xerox. He will also serve as a member of the company’s Executive Committee, starting June 25, 2018.

Bandrowczak, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from LIU, will be responsible for developing and executing a global operations strategy in the company’s business support functions, including product and service delivery, customer billing, information technology, global procurement and real estate.

“Xerox is an iconic brand with a legacy of innovative technologies,” said Bandrowczak in a press release announcing his new appointment. “Joining the company at this time affords me the opportunity to help shape the next iteration of a global leader.”

“Steve brings a track record of growing businesses and enhancing competitiveness through a combination of innovation, technology and operational rigor,” said John Visentin, Xerox vice chairman and chief executive officer. “His breadth of experience across the product and service delivery chain will be essential to generating value for our shareholders and building more effective and efficient ways to serve our customers.”

Bandrowczak joins Xerox from Alight Solutions, where he was the chief operating officer and chief information officer, responsible for the company’s global supply chain, shared services, product development, transformation office, accounts payable, I/T strategy and operations, enterprise risk management and real estate.

Before coming to Alight Solutions, Bandrowczak was the president of Telecommunication Media and Technology at Sutherland Global Services. He previously served as the senior vice president for Global Business Services at Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, where he reportedly transformed its 16,000-employee shared service organization into a highly efficient operation with a focus on automation, business intelligence and labor optimization.

During his career, Bandrowczak has held senior leadership positions for various multi-billion-dollar global companies, including Avaya, Nortel, Lenovo, DHL and Avnet.

BSE Global and LIU Break Ground on Reimagined LIU Brooklyn Paramount Theatre

Leadership from LIU, BSE Global, and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams held a packed press conference to announce the kickoff to renovations of the LIU Brooklyn Paramount Theatre.

Revival of Legendary Theatre Underway
Click Here to See Brooklyn News 12 Report on the Event

Executives from BSE Global and Long Island University were joined by Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams in a groundbreaking ceremony for the renovation of the LIU Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, located at the intersection of Flatbush and Dekalb Avenues in Downtown Brooklyn.

The renovation and operation of LIU Brooklyn Paramount Theatre will be overseen by BSE Global, the same team behind Barclays Center and NYCB LIVE, home of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum. H3 is the architect of record, and Shawmut will be managing the construction.

The renovation will revive the 90-year old venue by retaining and restoring many of its existing features, while modernizing the space to meet today’s standards. The entrance will be moved back to the theatre’s original corner location at Flatbush and Dekalb Avenues; a loge level balcony and box office will be reestablished; and updates will be made to the lighting, restrooms, and sound systems, among many other aesthetic upgrades.

The renovation is expected to create 200 construction jobs, and nearly 100 additional positions at the completed venue.

BSE Global will be responsible for programming the venue, which will be home to a wide range of events. While the theatre’s main focus will be revitalizing its legendary music roots, it will also host a mix of family entertainment, comedy, sporting events, special events, and private programs for LIU students. The 3,000-person capacity venue will house a flexible seating configuration that will accommodate primarily general admission-style setups, with the opportunity also to do seated floor events.

In addition, the revamped venue will provide a variety of opportunities for LIU Brooklyn students to gain hands-on industry experience, including internships, work-study programs, part-time jobs, and more. Below is an architectural rendering of what the refurbished facility may look like once its transformation is completed.

CENTER STAGE VIEW - credit H3.jpg

“I am excited to take the next step with the renovation of this historic venue,” said Brett Yormark, CEO of BSE Global. “The addition of Paramount to BSE Global’s venue pipeline, which includes Barclays Center, NYCB LIVE, and Webster Hall, enables us to connect with artists at all points in their career. Paramount will also offer a greater array of entertainment options for Brooklyn and provide employment opportunities for students and those in the surrounding area.”

“The refurbishment of the LIU Paramount Theater is a major milestone in the history of Long Island University,” Long Island University President Dr. Kimberly Cline said. “It brings our commitment to the arts-and our role in the arts community-to an entirely new level for our students, faculty, and alumni, and solidifies our role as a major cultural driver in Brooklyn. There is no better place in the world to learn about the arts than Brooklyn, and there is no University that is more committed to combining great academics taught by world-class faculty, with experiential learning and hands-on opportunities for students.”

Brooklyn Paramount operated from 1928-1962 as a live performance venue and was the first theatre in the world designed to show talking movies. The Rococo-style ceiling and wall trimmings that still remain once served as a grand accompaniment to many celebrated performances by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Bing Crosby, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry. After closing its doors, the theatre became part of LIU Brooklyn’s campus and served as a multi-purpose space for students, staff and guests. For many years it was the home court of the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds basketball team. To mark the new beginning, the scoreboard was ceremonially lowered to the floor as the guests watched approvingly. Soon a magnificently renovated Paramount will rise again.

 

LIU Professor Emeritus Dr. Rocks Is a Hit as First Scientist on a Topps Baseball Card

In a lab at Pell Hall, Dr. Lawrence Rocks and St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Paul DeJong set up their experiment.

LIU Professor Emeritus Dr. Lawrence Rocks has just become the first scientist to be named on a Topps Baseball card–and the Major League is abuzz with the news.

In a lab experiment conducted at the Post campus last winter, Dr. Rocks had teamed up with St. Louis Cardinals’ shortstop Paul DeJong, who majored in biochemistry at Illinois State University, to test the old adage that a baseball travels further the hotter it gets. The results weren’t quite what they expected.

“If you heat a baseball to a very high temperature, it  gets mushy, and if you chill it, it gets brittle,” Dr. Rocks explained the results to Jim Hayes, a Fox Sports reporter who covers the Cardinals. “The in-between is where it’s very flexible. At 75 degrees it’s best. But the baseball has multiple layers so the inside temperature is never the skin temperature.”

Dr. Rocks, an LIU Chemistry professor who authored the landmark book, “The Energy Crisis,” in 1972, worked closely with Congress to create the Department of Energy. His son, Burton Rocks, is DeJong’s sports agent.

“Paul was interested in my father’s life—having read a lot about him,” explained Burton Rocks, “and he wanted to one day be his lab assistant.”

Just released the second week of June, the new 2018 Topps Futures Stars baseball card describes DeJong as a “lifelong science ‘nut’ ”  who “spent time in the offseason applying his avocation to his profession. He worked with world-renowned scientist Dr. Lawrence Rocks to study the effects of heat on a baseball.”

A spokeswoman for Topps, Susan Lulgjuraj, confirmed that it’s the first time a scientist has been named on the back of a flagship card. “Generations of baseball fans have used cards to learn math through statistics, reading and just general fun,” she added. “We are thrilled to help spread the world and inspire curious minds to explore.”

Dr. Rocks saw his lab experiment with DeJong as a chance to score educationally with young baseball fans.

“In addition to research I’m working on with sports chemistry and analytics,” Dr. Rocks explained, “I wanted to convey to children the nature of experimentation in the method called ‘science,’ as I believe science is not a subject but rather a method. We wanted to inspire young people everywhere that they can do science. All it takes is curiosity, imagination and objectivity with results.”

Seated in a dugout with the young shortstop recently, the 84-year-old esteemed scientist was asked by a reporter how DeJong handled himself in Pell Hall.

“He was great,” Dr. Rocks told Fox Sports. “He made friends with everybody—from the chairman of the department all the way across the board to the lab assistants and the girls watching him—he was terrific and very careful in the observations.”

“We thought that it was an experiment where we could really control the variables with just looking at heat,” DeJong, 24, told the reporter, “and it turned out we got some really decent conclusions from it—and I got to wear a lab coat, so all good news.”

In the lab, the two men dropped a baseball from the height of 50 centimeters to measure how high it bounces depending on its temperature. The experimenters found a surprising bell curve with their results. The baseball has a sweet spot when the temperature ranges between 68 degrees and 78 degrees, but once it reaches over 80 degrees, its bounce starts to decline significantly.

“As you increase temperature, the elastomers get a little mushy,” Dr. Rocks told CBS News last fall.

DeJong made his major league debut on May 28, 2017, at Coors Field against the Colorado Rockies when he hit a home run on his first swing. Later in the season against the Mets, he racked up three doubles and a home run, setting both a Cardinals shortstop and a number eight hitter record with four extra-base hits in one game. The New York Post headlined DeJong’s exploits with a touch of irony: “Meet the newest Mets-killer, whom they nearly drafted.” DeJong signed with the Cardinals in 2015.

“Reimagining Constructs” Kicks Off Summer Exhibition at Steinberg Museum of Art

Cheryl Molnar's "Rollercoaster," oil painted collage and vintage magazine on wood panel (2015), is on display now at Sternberg Museum of Art.

An intriguing new exhibition at Steinberg Museum of Art explores how artists use structures to understand their surroundings—both natural and man-made.

Called “Reimaging Constructs and Surroundings,” the exhibit features the work of Darlene Charneco, Heejung Cho, Ana Golici, Cheryl Molnar, Jason Paradis and Winn Rea, who is a faculty member of the Art Department at LIU Post. All the artists have Long Island roots, stretching from the Hamptons to Brooklyn. Two are currently working on international exhibitions—one in Romania, which has become a hotspot for contemporary European art collectors, and the other in South Korea.

The guest curator for this exhibition is Dawn Lee, who is art curator of the Omni Gallery in Uniondale.  She is also an artist, professor and chair of the art department at St. Joseph’s College, and coordinator of the artist-in-residency program at Fire Island National Seashore. When she puts an exhibit together, Lee says what she enjoys most is seeing how the artists interpret things like nature, spirituality, personal experiences, social issues and aesthetic concerns and flesh out these concepts in different ways.

“With this collection of artwork I believe that I was able to include a group of artists who explore meaningful aspects of their environment and experiences including responses to natural, manmade, and personal spaces in which they find value,” Lee said. “I hope the viewers are able to enter these spaces and discover qualities that correspond with their own lives and reveal new perspectives.”

As the program’s statement explains, the works now on view at Sternberg Museum of Art  “reflect the innate human need to establish order from the interwoven aspects of our complex existence.”

Here’s a closer look at the artists included in this free exhibit, which runs until July 27, 2018. On Sunday, July 15, there will be a special reception at the museum from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Darlene Charneco utilizes techniques seen in mapping to look at how people forge their own networks to create a continually expanding community, and to enlighten how human existence is a trace of connections.

Heejung Cho is interested in how the understanding of our environment can be a personal experience. She focuses on objects of familiarity and how these structures and our emotions attached to them are continually evolving, ultimately becoming an “architectural abstraction over time.” Her brick wall pieces provide dynamism, repetition, uniformity of construction.

 Ana Golici explores a boundary of human understanding, the natural environment. By enlarging select elements, and her choice in layering materials, Golici illuminates the complexity yet fragility of the interconnecting web of structures that make up the whole of an organism, such as coral or an insect wing.

Cheryl Molnar juxtaposes the natural with architectural features in a collage process of fragmentation and reassembly that mimics the alteration of natural landscapes by human development.

Jason Paradis deconstructs an experience of the night skies with relation to self and concept of time. Creating a framework through lines, planes, and found materials, Paradis explores the voids and connections of a space vast and beyond.

Winn Rea reinterprets the landscape through an aerial perspective provided by maps. Among her understanding of the topography of the land, she inserts the viewpoint of one’s experience in their immediate surroundings with suggestions of the foliage and shadows of natural elements.

Normal summer hours for the museum are Monday through Friday, from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The gallery is located on the ground floor of the Palmer Library building on the LIU Post campus. For more information, call 516-299-4073, or go to liu.edu/museum.

LIU Global Institute Chair Steve Israel Pens Daily News Op-Ed

In the aftermath of the historic meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, LIU Global Institute Chairman Steve Israel, along with (ret.) Major General Robert Scales, who served as commandant of the U.S. Army War College and as a field artillery battalion commander in South Korea, co-authored an Op-Ed that ran June 13 in the New York Daily News urging the United States to continue our country’s important training exercises with South Korea because it is essential to combating a possible invasion from North Korea.

“These exercises must proceed,” they write. “Not in a flashy or provocative way, but in a way that makes clear to the North that any potential invasion will be met by an unstoppable phalanx of American fighting power that the North has no hope of defeating.”

The article, headlined “Why U.S.-South Korea war games must continue,”  offers in-depth analysis and questions the concessions made by President Trump in his recent summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

Read more here.

LIU Post’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program Continues to Lead the Way in Putting Research Into Practice

Dr. Eva Feindler, director of LIU Post's Psy.D. program, shares a smile with her LIU Post students Anisha Patel, center, and Nini Slochowsky at the recent SEPI conference.

Long Island University was well represented at the 34th meeting of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) held in New York City on June 2, 2018. Several alumni, current graduate students and faculty from the Clinical Psychology Program at LIU Post participated  in the event.

Under the title, “Herding Cats: Practice-Research Collaboration in Psychology Training Clinics,” LIU Post’s Psy.D. program director Dr. Eva Feindler chaired a panel discussion that examined the Practice-Research Network consortium with clinical psychology faculty from LIU Brooklyn, Adelphi University and Yeshiva University. Dr. Feindler and LIU Post Prof. Tom Demaria focused on the similarities and differences of four psychology training clinics.

LIU Brooklyn Professors Dr. Kevin Meehan and Dr. Lisa Samstag addressed the question: Is it possible to integrate research measures into sessions without creating a clinical imposition for novice therapists?

Five current LIU graduate students plus one student on an clinical internship were joined by Dr. Linnea Mavrides (LIU ’08, PsyD) for a lively discussion moderated by Dr. Feindler on the topic, “What is it like to ‘grow up’ in a dual/duel orientation program?” First-year graduate students Alison Rumelt and William Rung talked about “New Beginnings: Entering into this ‘split’ family.” Stefanie Iwaniciw, now in her third year, presented “Stuck in the Middle: The Theoretical Orientation Crisis,” while Anisha Patel and Nini Slochowsky, in their fourth year, spoke about “Growing Up in a Divided World.” Kristin Ullrich, an intern at Fairmount Behavioral Health System, an affiliate of Friends Hospital in Philadelphia, discussed “Impacts in the Real World: Being on an internship after living with dueling orientations.”

Looking back, Dr. Mavrides gave what she called “A 10-Year Retrospective: Origins of My Professional Development.”

“My experience at LIU-Post gave me excellent exposure to both CBT and psychodynamic practices,” Dr. Mavrides said, “but it took becoming a professional in my own right to figure out how to get those two lenses to work together in the service of my patients.”

Lastly, Dr. Karen Starr, another graduate from the LIU Post Clinical Psychology Program, gave a psychoanalytic clinical case presentation that was followed by commentary from Dr. Feindler, who provided cognitive behavioral therapy’s perspective.

“This is a great demonstration of our faculty, students and alumni connecting with  the field of clinical psychology as well as with LIU and the program,” explained Eva Feindler, Ph.D., director of LIU Post’s clinical psychology doctoral program. “Traditionally, Psy.D. programs are not known for being heavily research-focused—most are more clinically focused—but ours uniquely leans more toward research with a strong clinical component.”

For more information about the Psy.D. Program, go to http://www.liu.edu/post/psyd. If you are a prospective clinical psychology doctoral student and want to find out how you can get involved in clinical research in the program, you can contact pamela.gustafson@liu.edu for more information.

The Pioneer Wins Four Prizes at Press Club of Long Island’s 2018 Media Awards

Contributing to The Pioneer’s prowess are (from left) Editor-in-Chief Caroline Ryan, Arts & Entertainment Editor Ashley Bowden and News Editor Jada Butler, shown here in the newsroom on the Post campus in the spring of 2018.

The Pioneer, the student-run newspaper which has been informing the LIU Post campus community for more than 60 years, racked up four prestigious prizes at the Press Club of Long Island’s 2018 Media Awards ceremony held at the Woodbury Country Club on June 7.

In the most coveted category, Best College Newspaper, The Pioneer won second place, marking a major accomplishment for the dedicated staff who usually have to battle Hofstra, Adelphi and Stony Brook for top recognition.

Not this time, as the results clearly show.

Assistant Features Editor Anand Venigalla clinched first place for Best Narrative Feature Story for his poignant article headlined “Professor David Hinchliffe Creatively Explores His Recovery From Childhood Abuse.”

“Looking back,” he reportedly told Anand, “I was somewhat like an emotional prisoner—trapped in a dysfunctional home in which no love was expressed to me.”

Here’s the link.

Arts & Entertainment Editor Ashley Bowden won second place for Best Narrative Feature Story on Fritzlyn Hector, a profoundly talented performer who became the newest full-time faculty member at LIU Post’s dance department.

A 17-year veteran of STOMP, the electrifying stage show that blends dance, music and theater, Hector told Ashley, “Post appeals to the diversity of the arts. I feel honored to be part of that process.”

Here’s the link to that story.

Starting this fall semester, Ashley will become co-editor-in-chief of The Pioneer with Jada Butler, currently the news editor, who won second place in the Best College Newspaper Reporter category.

Attending the awards dinner were Caroline Ryan, who was the editor-in-chief for two years and just graduated this spring; Alecia Sexton, the layout editor; and Anand, who brought along some of his family members.

The Pioneer’s faculty adviser Carolyn Schurr Levin said the accomplishment was a group effort.

“I’m proud of the winners and the entire Pioneer staff for the hard work and dedication they showed throughout the year,” said Prof. Levin. “It’s not the award that matters—it’s the value that they provide to the campus community in keeping it informed. Looking ahead, we’re hoping that a lot of students join the staff in the fall and continue the good work for the next school year.”

The Pioneer’s press office is located on the second floor of Hillwood Commons on the LIU Post campus. To get more information about The Pioneer, click here.

 

Philanthropist T. Denny Sanford Donates $100 Million to Anti-Bullying Program in Partnership with LIU

T. Denny Sanford looks on appreciatively as teacher Meryl Cooper leads her students at Long Island's William S. Covert Elementary School in an exercise from the Sanford Harmony program. (Photo courtesy: LIU)

Sanford Harmony, an ambitious and innovative national program to reduce bullying and promote greater tolerance, received a transformative gift when billionaire philanthropist T. Denny Sanford came to New York and announced that he was donating $100 million to further its goals.

Created in 2014 by the Sanford Education Center at National University, the program is a research-based social and emotional learning project designed to promote positive peer interactions and relationships among all students through lessons and group activities that encourage communication, collaboration and mutual respect.

Currently Sanford Harmony is impacting more than 200,000 students in the New York area through its regional partnership with Long Island University. All told, more than 1 million students from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade are involved.

The South Dakota native was welcomed at the William S. Covert Elementary School in Rockville Centre, one of the first schools to implement the program, by Dr. Kimberly R. Cline, President of Long Island University, the Northeast regional partner for Sanford Harmony.

“As we see more and more corrosive effects of bullying and school violence on our children in our society, the need for Sanford Harmony is greater than ever,” said Dr. Cline in a story reported by Newsday. She was joined by local educators as well as officials including Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and representatives for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran.

“It really creates harmony among the kids,” Sanford told the Associated Press in a related story. “But as I said, the long-term goal is harmony among adults. Preventative medicine is the purpose of the whole program.”

Sanford was the guest speaker at LIU Post’s commencement ceremony in 2017.

The donation to the National University System, a network of nonprofit educational institutions, is the largest in its history and comes a year after Sanford gave the group $28 million.

According to Newsday, Dr. Michael Cunningham, Chancellor of the National University System, said that the additional money will be distributed on a per-capita basis across the country. So far 31 school districts in New York City and 22 on Long Island are participating. The goal is to reach 20 million students nationwide by 2023.

LIU Post Graduate Audrey Ney Gets Her First Role Off Broadway

Audrey Ney lights up the room in the Off-Broadway production of "Lewis & Tolkien: Of Wardrobes and Rings." (Photo courtesy Rising Images)

Taking the long view, Audrey Ney no doubt saw it coming. In many ways, the recent musical theater graduate (LIU Post ’17, BFA) has been preparing for her breakthrough role in “Lewis & Tolkien: Of Wardrobes and Rings”—now running Off Broadway at The Black Box Theater through June 14—since she was a little girl growing up in Nashville, Tenn. That’s when she surprised her mother by memorizing C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” and performing the classic children’s fantasy tale to her heart’s content—and her mother’s consternation.

“My mother finally said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you better start performing this for other people!’ ” recalled Audrey with a laugh.

Another moment in this narrative arc came in her fifth grade talent show when Audrey enacted the key moment in the book when Lucy—the youngest of the four intrepid Pevensie children—goes through the magical wardrobe and meets Tumnus, a mischievous faun, in the wintry woods of Narnia who, after some persuasion, decides not to take her to the wicked queen but instead to make her a cup of tea at his cozy home. Showing her theatrical versatility even then, Audrey played Lucy, Tumnus and the Narrator.

And so here she is on stage in the Rising Image production written by David Payne and directed by Marc Whitmore at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture on 18 Bleecker Street. Playing an American barmaid named Hattie, Audrey says she’s “a bright light” in the Rabbit Room at The Eagle and Child pub in Oxford, England, where C.S. Lewis (David Payne) and J.R.R. Tolkien (Gordon Tett) had once been just two members of the Inklings writers’ club. Now, many years later, they return as two towering figures of 20th century English literature who’d had a serious falling out after Narnia rubbed up against Middle Earth.

“They disagreed on a lot of things but they still had a very deep friendship,” Audrey explains. “I think it’s a really important play today because so many friendships are breaking up because people aren’t really listening to each other.”

Audrey credits her LIU theater professors, Maria Porter, David Hugo and John Frazier, to name a few mentors, for helping her grow as an artist.

Thanks to Post Theater Company, she’s performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland in 2014 and at The World Congress hosted by the International University Theater Association in Manizales, Columbia, in 2016. Now with Rising Image as both the Tour Manager and “Hattie,” she’s helped bring this two-act play across the country and to the UK. When this show’s run is over, Audrey plans to head to Chicago, which has a very lively theater scene.

“LIU was amazing for me,” Audrey said. “Post Theater Company literally took me around the world and taught me that I can be a theatre artist (actor, writer, director, designer, etc.) and I do not have to box myself in or be defined as only one thing in order to be a part of creating something spectacular.”

For tickets to “Lewis & Tolkien: Of Wardrobes and Rings,” contact The Sheen Center at www.SheenCenter.org or by phone at 212-925-2812.

Conference on Black Holes, Supernovas and Neutron Stars at LIU Brooklyn Is an Astronomical Success

On May 24th and 25th, LIU Brooklyn hosted the 21st Eastern Gravity Meeting featuring presentations on black holes, neutron stars and related topics in astrophysics.

Leading researchers in the field discussed their latest studies, including LIU Brooklyn’s Michael Ramsey, a recent Brooklyn Honors College graduate with a triple-major in physics, biology and psychology. Speakers also included Ph.D. students as well as tenured professors and veteran scientists, some from as far away as Mexico and South Korea.

Ramsey presented his award-winning talk on “Energy Extraction From Black Holes by Cosmic Strings.” He considered his presentation, and the event as a whole, a success.

“This is a very prestigious event,” Ramsey said. “The fact that we were selected to host it shows we are making enormous strides to be in the spotlight with prestigious institutions.” The Physics department was just reintroduced in the fall semester, after a decades-long absence.

Ramsey won the Jim Kirby Prize in Physics, Geology and Astronomy at the national honor society Alpha Chi’s 2018 convention held April 5-7 in Portland, Oregon. He said the freedom to use scientific jargon, given the audience of experts, made the speech come easier the second time around.

“It’s almost overwhelming at first, but at the same time, it’s comforting,” Ramsey said. “You almost feel in your own element.”

Dr. Zachariah Etienne, whose talk on colliding neutron stars headlined the meeting, also believes the conference boosts LIU’s reputation. “I think it improves the visibility a great deal,” he said. “You get people coming in from all over the region, sometimes around world.”

Etienne’s speech captivated the diverse crowd of visitors, drawing questions throughout and a huddle of undergrads around him upon conclusion. The discourse resembled a small TED talk, or perhaps what one might expect on a Special Features DVD for Interstellar.

In addition to his role as a professor at West Virginia University, Etienne serves as a scientist for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration. In 2015, LIGO first detected gravitational waves. Then, on August 17, 2017, the team recorded a collision of neutron stars for the first time in human history. Etienne’s enthusiasm when describing the breakthrough was palpable and contagious.

“It’s absolutely beyond all belief,” he said. “A sugar cube of neutron star is as massive as Mount Everest, and we’re taking two of these guys more massive than the sun and just annihilating each other at almost the speed of light. It’s insane.”

Scientists now believe these collisions created most of the gold in our universe, according to Etienne. Hence the title of his speech: “When Neutron Stars Collide! Gravitational Waves, Gamma-Ray Bursts, and the Ring on Your Finger.”

Etienne recalled how a decade ago he would give a similar presentation on gravitational waves, only with a caveat. “We’re going to have to build instruments more sensitive than we’ve ever built in the history of humanity,” he would say. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do it.”

That was before LIGO. Now, with a mix of scientific amazement and boyish pride, he says, “We did it. We did it.”

Etienne is good friends with LIU Physics professor Steve Liebling, who served as the event’s emcee. The two met long before the discovery of gravitational waves. Liebling was happy that LIU got to host the Gravity Meeting because it drew undergraduates to the program.

“I think it’s good for our students,” Liebling said. “Our students get to see: physics is not some boring book they have to read. It’s cool stuff.”

While Etienne pointed out the benefit for students to get used to defending their work in public, he also thinks it’s good for scientists themselves.

“I always come back from conferences pretty motivated because there are people who really care about what I’m doing,” Etienne said. “Being able to give talks to experts in the field, getting feedback and building connections: it’s part and parcel to being a scientist.”

 

 

 

 

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