Eight faculty members from Stony Brook University have been named State University of New York (SUNY) Distinguished Faculty for 2025. The appointments were made by the SUNY Board of Trustees and recognized at a ceremony on October 9 at the Sunwood Estate.
The honored professors include Ramana Davuluri, Victoriano Roncero-López, Christopher Sellers, Kenneth Shroyer, and Wei Zhao as Distinguished Professors. Additional honorees are Patricia Coyle, Lori Repetti, and Thomas Weinacht.
According to SUNY guidelines, the Distinguished Professorship is awarded to faculty who have achieved national or international prominence in their fields through significant research or artistic contributions. The Distinguished Service Professorship recognizes those with notable service to the university and broader community. The Distinguished Teaching Professorship honors sustained excellence in teaching at graduate, undergraduate, or professional levels.
Patricia Coyle is known for her expertise in nervous system immune-mediated and infectious disorders, particularly multiple sclerosis (MS). She has contributed to research on Lyme disease and neuroimmunology and has held leadership roles in organizations such as the American Academy of Neurology and National MS Society. “She has served as an adviser to the Food and Drug Administration and the Institute of Medicine.”
Ramana Davuluri specializes in Molecular Data Science with a focus on computational genomics. He developed “DNABERT,” a genomic large language model released in 2021 that predicts allele-specific activity based on local nucleotide sequence context. “Building on DNABERT’s success, his group is developing informatics methods to calculate genome-wide mutational scores…and integrate other biomedical data…to improve prognosis and cancer outcome prediction.”
Lori Repetti completed her PhD at UCLA and previously chaired Stony Brook’s Linguistics Department. Her work centers on Romance linguistics, Italian dialects, phonotactics in Mandarin consonant clusters, field research across Europe funded by major agencies like the National Science Foundation, editorial board membership for scholarly journals, and advisory roles within linguistic organizations.
Victoriano Roncero-López is a professor specializing in Spanish Golden Age Literature whose studies cover humanist issues and historiography. He edits academic journals including La Perinola: Revista de Investigación Quevediana.
Christopher Sellers researches environmental history with attention to occupational health hazards in industrial settings both within the United States and globally. His books include Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and the Rise of Environmentalism in 20th-Century America.
Kenneth Shroyer is noted for innovations improving tumor classification accuracy using cytopathology techniques; he pioneered DNP labeling of nucleic acid probes among other methods relevant to pathology diagnostics.
Thomas Weinacht’s physics research involves quantum control using ultrafast spectroscopy; he develops new instruments for following molecular dynamics on femtosecond timescales.
Wei Zhao focuses on optimizing digital imaging detectors used for mammography; her work aims at improved imaging performance while reducing radiation dose exposure during medical scans.
