Eight faculty members from Stony Brook University have been appointed as State University of New York (SUNY) Distinguished Faculty for 2025. The SUNY Board of Trustees announced the appointments, and the honorees were recognized at a ceremony held on October 9 at the Sunwood Estate.
The list of honorees includes Ramana Davuluri from Biomedical Informatics, Victoriano Roncero-López from Hispanic Languages and Literatures, Christopher Sellers from History, Kenneth Shroyer from Pathology, and Wei Zhao from Radiology as Distinguished Professors. The criteria for this rank include national or international prominence in their fields and significant contributions to research, scholarship, or artistic achievement.
Additional distinctions among SUNY’s ranks are awarded for service and teaching. The Distinguished Service Professorship is given to those with a record of sustained service to the campus, university, community, state, or nation. The Distinguished Teaching Professorship recognizes consistent excellence in teaching at various academic levels over multiple years.
Patricia Coyle was honored for her expertise in nervous system immune-mediated and infectious disorders. Her work focuses on patient care and research related to Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Lyme disease, therapeutics, neuroimmunology, and gender issues. Coyle has served in leadership roles with several neurological organizations and advisory positions with federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration.
Ramana Davuluri was recognized for his leadership in Molecular Data Science. His research centers on computational analysis of genomic regions using machine learning techniques. Notably, he developed DNABERT—a genomic large language model released in 2021—which predicts allele-specific activity based on nucleotide sequences.
Lori Repetti received recognition for her work in Romance Linguistics. She has researched the history and phonology of Romance languages—particularly Italian—and contributed to projects funded by organizations like the National Science Foundation.
Victoriano Roncero-López specializes in Spanish Golden Age Literature with a focus on humanist issues and historiography. He has edited critical works and belongs to research teams such as GRISO while also serving as editor of scholarly journals.
Christopher Sellers is noted for his historical research into environmental health, industrial hazards, cities, suburbs, and environmental movements in the United States compared globally. He is an author of several books including "Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in 20th-Century America."
Kenneth Shroyer was acknowledged for innovations in pathology—particularly gynecologic oncology—and methods improving tumor classification accuracy. His ongoing research explores biomarkers relevant to cancer prognosis.
Thomas Weinacht’s work centers on quantum control and time-resolved spectroscopy within Physics and Astronomy. His group develops new instruments to study molecular dynamics using ultrafast light fields.
Wei Zhao’s research investigates imaging performance optimization for digital mammography detectors made from amorphous selenium—a technology important for improving medical imaging quality at lower radiation doses.
These appointments reflect Stony Brook University’s representation among SUNY’s most distinguished faculty across diverse disciplines.