Stony Brook Leads Regional Vision of ‘Silicon Island’

Regional leaders gathered to examine quantum technology, AI, biotech, entrepreneurship and the infrastructure needed to make Long Island a global innovation hub

At the inaugural Long Island Tech & Innovation Summit on June 11, leaders from research, higher education, business, government and entrepreneurship gathered around a shared proposition: Long Island has the talent, research strength and institutional partnerships to become one of the nation's defining centers of technology and innovation.

For the State University of New York at Stony Brook, that proposition was more than aspirational. Throughout the summit, Stony Brook emerged as a central force in the region's innovation future, particularly through its leadership in quantum information science, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, energy and translational research.

Held at the Long Island Marriott and hosted by Accelerate Long Island, the event also marked the organization's 15th anniversary. Accelerate Long Island was founded to connect the region's major research institutions with entrepreneurs, investors and commercialization resources. Speakers throughout the day returned to that founding idea, emphasizing that Long Island's next era of economic growth will depend on collaboration across universities, laboratories, startups, investors and industry partners.

That theme was especially clear during the panel "At the Helm of Innovation: Guiding Long Island's Global Research Future," moderated by Stacey Sikes, acting CEO of the Long Island Association and chair of Accelerate Long Island. The panel featured Stony Brook President Andrea Goldsmith alongside Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory President and CEO Bruce Stillman, Hofstra University President Susan Poser and New York Institute of Technology President Jerry Balentine.

Goldsmith framed Long Island's opportunity through a phrase that has quickly become part of the regional conversation: "Silicon Island."

President Goldsmith framed Long Island's opportunity through a phrase that has quickly become part of the regional conversation: "Silicon Island."

"I talked about that a bit in my inauguration, and I think this terminology of Silicon Island has caught on," Goldsmith said. "To me, the opportunity for Long Island to really become the fastest growing tech hub, New York State to become the fastest growing tech hub in the country, was obvious."

Goldsmith pointed to a convergence of factors that give Long Island a rare advantage. New York City continues to attract young technology talent, she said, but the space and cost requirements of hard technology companies make it difficult for many of them to grow in the city. Long Island, with its proximity to New York City and its concentration of research institutions, offers a natural home for companies working in areas such as quantum technology, biotechnology, clean energy, robotics, advanced manufacturing and applied AI.

"You can't build hard tech in New York City," Goldsmith said. "It's too expensive. You can't even get the space, even if price is not an object. And so where are those hard tech companies going to go? To Long Island is the obvious place."

The comparison to Silicon Valley, Goldsmith noted, is not about recreating another region. It is about understanding how research, industry, talent and investment can reinforce one another over time. When Silicon Valley began developing around Stanford decades ago, it was not yet a global technology center. It became one because university research, entrepreneurship and industry growth developed together.

Long Island, Goldsmith said, already has an extraordinary foundation.

"We have all the raw ingredients," she said. "We've got Cold Spring Harbor, we have Brookhaven, we have incredible universities. And it's not just the research universities. Hofstra, NYIT, the community colleges and the comprehensives also create the employees for these big companies."

Stony Brook's role in that future is especially significant. Goldsmith highlighted the university's research enterprise as a source of discoveries that can become the basis for new companies, new industries and new jobs. She also emphasized that Long Island's innovation future must include both research excellence and workforce development.

"Stony Brook, of course, as the number one public university in New York, has a lot of the research that's going to create the seeds of innovation for these companies," Goldsmith said. "But innovation can come from anywhere, and I think we have more raw ingredients right here on Long Island than anywhere else in the country to really create a thriving ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship."

Much of the summit focused on one of Stony Brook's most visible areas of leadership: quantum information science.

Goldsmith discussed New York State's $300 million investment in a new quantum initiative centered at Stony Brook and described the significance of the quantum network already running across Long Island through a partnership between Stony Brook and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

"It's so exciting to have the world's first quantum network actually running across Long Island," Goldsmith said. "We have five nodes that are sending quantum bits under you at this moment."

Goldsmith compared the moment to the early internet, which began with initial nodes in California before expanding across the country. The quantum internet, she said, is beginning on Long Island.

"That's an incredible bragging right of Long Island, to say that we started the quantum internet," Goldsmith said.

She explained that quantum communication uses the properties of entangled photons to transmit information with extraordinary security. That capability could have major implications for fields such as finance, healthcare, medicine and any area where data security is critical. Quantum networking could also enable distributed quantum computing by linking quantum computers together, creating the potential to solve problems beyond the reach of any single machine.

But Goldsmith stressed that Stony Brook's quantum work is not only about research. It is also about education and workforce development.

"We have launched the Quantum Institute, which is not just about the research, it's also about education," she said. "We actually have an education program that goes into the high schools because it's never too soon to excite young people about science, and quantum science is exciting."

That educational mission extends from K-12 outreach to undergraduate, master's and doctoral programs. Goldsmith said Stony Brook aims to be the leading university in the country for quantum information science and to help Long Island become known nationally and globally as a center for quantum talent and innovation.

Physics Professor Eden Figueroa, director of the Stony Brook Quantum Institute, discussed bringing together quantum computing, quantum networking, AI systems and industry partners in ways that can help scale technology beyond the laboratory.

The day's final panel, "The Infrastructure of Innovation: Institutions, Quantum, Deep Tech & Energy," expanded on that theme. Eden Figueroa, director of the Stony Brook Quantum Institute, professor of physics at Stony Brook and joint appointee at Brookhaven National Laboratory, described plans connected to the state's quantum investment, including a new quantum building on Stony Brook's campus and a broader quantum innovation environment designed to connect research with industry.

Figueroa said the initiative is expected to bring together quantum computing, quantum networking, AI systems and industry partners in ways that can help scale the technology beyond the laboratory.

"What they now are creating is two things," Figueroa said. "The Stony Brook Quantum Institute that is going to look into training the new generation of scientists and also young professors and new groups that then will provide all the new knowledge necessary to grow this industry."

He also described a growing need to make Long Island's technology strengths more visible. The region, he said, has talent and infrastructure that many people outside the area do not yet recognize, including dense fiber networks, data centers and research assets that can support new work in quantum networking and advanced computation.

The summit also highlighted biotechnology and AI as major areas of regional strength. During a fireside chat with Dan Lloyd, program director of Accelerate Long Island, Maria Luisa Pineda, CEO and co-founder of Envisagenics, described how AI and cloud computing are changing what is possible in biotechnology.

Pineda, whose company emerged from research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said Envisagenics was built around a bold idea: using data and machine learning to develop therapeutics. At the time, she said, many people thought the concept was unrealistic.

"I mean, we were going to use data to cure people," Pineda said.

She described how the pace of genomic analysis has changed dramatically. What once could take eight to 14 weeks to analyze for a single patient genome can now be done at far greater scale using cloud-based platforms.

"We can analyze 2,000 patients in an hour or less than an hour," Pineda said. "So when people are like, is it really making a difference, what we can do and the insights and the acceleration, it's unmeasurable."

Her remarks connected directly to one of the summit's central questions: How can Long Island make sure discoveries become companies, and how can the region keep those companies here?

Goldsmith addressed that question by pointing to collaboration, entrepreneurship training and a stronger regional identity. She said Long Island needs to make it easier for students, faculty, researchers and entrepreneurs to see company creation as a viable path.

"I think that working together, the collaboration, pooling our resources to say, how do we take the young people that are here now and the not-so-young people and give them the idea that they can start a company and make it relatively easy," Goldsmith said. "It's very hard to start a company and it's very hard to make a company successful. But this notion of pitch days and courses and advisors, I think there's more we could do there."

She also said Long Island must tell a more compelling story about itself.

"As someone who's new to Long Island, this is a wonderful place," Goldsmith said. "A place to live, to raise a family, to build a company. People don't know that."

That message ran throughout the summit. Speakers described Long Island not as an extension of New York City, but as a region with its own research capacity, startup potential, educational pipeline and quality of life. They also acknowledged challenges, including the need for more wet lab space, more startup infrastructure, stronger access to capital and greater support for companies that need room to test, build and scale.

A recent $30 million state investment through the Long Island regional economic development competition was discussed as one step toward addressing those needs. The funding is intended to support a manufacturing hub that can help companies working in physical technology, including defense, aerospace, energy and advanced manufacturing, move from research and prototype to commercialization.

For Goldsmith, the region's momentum is clear.

"This is a new day," she said. "The state is investing heavily. We have outstanding universities. Stony Brook is growing tremendously. We plan to double our research, at the request of the governor. The other universities and national labs are doing so as well."

The task now, she said, is to harness that momentum and make it as easy as possible for entrepreneurs to build here.

As the summit looked ahead to the next 15 years, panelists were asked what Long Island should be known for in 2041. Goldsmith returned to the idea of Silicon Island, describing a future in which the region becomes "the fastest growing, most vibrant technology hub in the country."

Stillman added that Stony Brook's leadership in quantum technology could be transformative for the region.

"I think this quantum initiative that Stony Brook is really truly leading is going to be huge," Stillman said. "I don't think you can underestimate how big this thing is going to be. I think it's going to just change everything."

For Stony Brook, the summit underscored a role that extends beyond campus: driving discovery, educating the next generation, building partnerships and helping shape Long Island's identity as a global center for research and innovation.

Goldsmith described that work as a series of building blocks, each one strengthening the region's story.

"Every brick that we lay in doing that, quantum, AI, biotech, finance, is creating the story of Long Island as the fastest-growing technology hub in the country," she said.

- Stephen Pallas