12 Stony Brook Students Honored with SUNY GREAT Award for Research Excellence

Twelve Stony Brook University graduate students have been named recipients of the 2025 SUNY Graduate Research Empowering and Accelerating Talent (GREAT) Award, joining 38 students across the SUNY system recognized for their cutting-edge research and national fellowship achievements.

Now in its fourth year, the SUNY GREAT Award provides $7,500 in flexible funding from the SUNY Office of Research and Economic Development to graduate students who have been recognized by prestigious federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Defense.

“Graduate student research is at the core of our mission as an AAU institution. Our fellowship applicants compete for some of the most prestigious awards in the country, and we are so proud to see SUNY acknowledge their effort, intelligence, and dedication to their chosen field,” said Celia Marshik, dean of The Graduate School and vice provost for Graduate and Professional Education

“The SUNY GREAT awards are an amazing recognition of the hard work it takes fellowship applicants to put together applications for competitive, merit-based awards and then achieve public status in those competitions,” said Ashley Staples, director of External Fellowships and Scholarly Development. “Many students have been encouraged to continue with their submission just knowing that SUNY has a program that will acknowledge their achievement at the system level.”

“SUNY is a nationwide leader when it comes to cutting-edge research in fields from healthcare to emerging technologies, and these awardees are stellar examples of what our students are capable of achieving,” said SUNY Chancellor John B. King Jr. “The great minds we help cultivate through the investments we make today will help ensure that New York State, and our entire nation and planet, are better off tomorrow and for generations to come.”

This year’s research projects span AI for environmental resilience, the science of taste, gravitational waves, antibiotic resistance and more. Among the SUNY-wide honorees, nearly 60 percent are women, about 30 percent come from historically underrepresented groups in science and academia, and more than one-third were the first in their families to earn a college degree.

Stony Brook’s 2025 SUNY GREAT Awardees:

Adebayo Braimah
Computer Science
Braimah’s research bridges deep learning and model explainability, working to make AI systems more transparent and trustworthy. By developing methods that clarify how complex models make decisions, his work addresses pressing challenges in accountability, aiming to support responsible deployment of AI in real-world settings.

 

Santiago Espinosa de los Reyes
Medical Scientist Training Program; Genetics
Espinosa de los Reyes investigates a promising vulnerability in a form of lung cancer marked by mutations in the KEAP1 gene. His work focuses on understanding how PRMT5 regulates NRF2, a protein critical to cancer cell survival. These insights could help pave the way for targeted therapies that exploit this weakness in tumor cells.

 

Brandon Feole
Marine and Atmospheric Sciences
Feole explores disease resistance in the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica. Using genomic tools, he examines how genetic differences and environmental stressors affect immune responses, with the goal of supporting oyster populations and understanding immunity in marine invertebrates.

 

Allison George
Neurobiology and Behavior; Neuroscience
George studies how the brain uses sensory cues — like smell — to form expectations about taste. Through behavioral and neural analysis, her work sheds light on how expectation influences perception and decision-making in food choices.

 

Ivy Huang
Physics and Astronomy
Huang investigates the ultrafast molecular dynamics behind biological and chemical processes. Her work seeks to reveal how matter behaves on the shortest timescales, providing insights into the foundations of life and light-driven chemistry.

 

Nicole Khusid
Physics and Astronomy
Khusid analyzes gravitational waves from black hole mergers to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Focusing on the “ringdown” phase — the final vibrations of a newly formed black hole — she uses advanced statistical techniques to probe the physics of extreme gravity and improve our understanding of the universe.

 

Benjamin Levine
Physics and Astronomy
Levine contributes to the Rubin Observatory’s upcoming sky survey by identifying and correcting measurement biases. His work will help improve the precision of cosmic data used to study dark matter, dark energy and the structure of the universe.

 

Ian Outhwaite
Pharmacological Sciences; Biochemistry and Structural Biology
Outhwaite is tackling drug resistance in cancer by studying how different mutations in the MET protein respond to targeted therapies. His research informs strategies to design drug combinations that remain effective even as tumors evolve.

 

Isabel Sakarin
Microbiology and Immunology
Sakarin studies the fluidity of the mycobacterial cell envelope — a key factor in antibiotic resistance. By developing a new live-cell imaging technique, she’s uncovering how differences in membrane properties affect bacterial growth and drug susceptibility, with implications for tuberculosis treatment.

 

Logan Swanson
Linguistics
Swanson designs learning algorithms that mimic human language acquisition using minimal data. His work could enable more efficient, transparent and accessible language technologies, particularly for under-resourced languages.

 

Jadyn Trayvick
Psychology (Clinical)
Trayvick uses brain imaging to explore the early neural markers that predict risk for psychiatric disorders. Her research aims to improve diagnosis and treatment by identifying common and unique features across mental health conditions.

 

Amy Wang
Social and Health Psychology
Wang investigates how people perceive whether research findings apply to their own lives. Her work aims to understand why some communities may distrust health research, offering insight into addressing health disparities through more inclusive science communication.