2009 NETWORKING® MAGAZINE’S DAVID AWARD HONOREE.

DR. YACOV SHAMASH

Vice President for Economic Development;
Dean, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Stony Brook University

Since coming to Stony Brook University in 1992, Dr. Yacov Shamash has played a major role in transforming business and industry and building the local economy by taking the lead in establishing Long Island as a national center for the convergence of technologies. His influence has secured lasting relationships among business, industry and academia.
As Director of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University in 1989, Shamash was instrumental in creating the Center for Design of Analog-Digital Integrated Circuits (CDADIC), as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NFS) Industry-University Cooperative Research Center program. CDADIC brought together 15 companies and two universities supported by federal funding. “Government can act as a catalyst, and its funding is critical,” says Shamash. “It helps companies to see the benefit of working with academia.”
“In my mind,” Shamash continues, “the Center solidified the importance of university-industry collaborations.” Under his leadership, Stony Brook became the fourth university to join the CDADIC. Using the same model Shamash formulated at Washington State, Stony Brook now has two NSF centers: the Center for Cyber Security in the Computer Science Department and a recently established center focusing on biofuels.
“We are seeing many more multi-disciplinary, multi-faculty, multi-university collaborations with business and industry,” notes Shamash. “That’s the way to go.” He adds that the collaborations often provide a “boost” when proposals for funding are submitted to NSF, the National Institutes of Health or the Defense Department.
In 1994, Shamash and Stony Brook University jointly developed the Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence (SPIR) with SUNY’s Buffalo and Binghamton Universities, sharing resources to assist industry around the state to compete more effectively. “With defense diversification and the downsizing of Grumman, SPIR enabled Stony Brook to help companies develop new products and modify their technology,” notes Shamash. Over the years, SPIR has worked with nearly 400 companies on over 2,000 projects, creating or retaining well over 11,000 jobs.
In his capacity as Stony Brook’s Vice President for Economic Development since 2000, Shamash supervises the University’s three incubators, which house 30 to 40 tenant companies—the Long Island High Technology Incubator, established in 1990 and focusing on biotechnology; the Stony Brook Software Incubator, established in 1998, with the support of Computer Associates, and the more recent Calverton Business Incubator, which focuses on environment, energy, sustainability, agriculture and aquaculture.
In 2003, Shamash worked with then Governor George Pataki and New York industry to obtain Stony Brook’s designation as a Center for Excellence, one of only five in the State. The Center of Excellence In Wireless Internet and Information Technology (CEWIT) conducts first-class interdisciplinary research in the emerging, critical technologies of the Information Age.
Shamash is co-vice chair of the Advisory Board of Stony Brook’s Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC), a partnership with National Grid USA. The AERTC building is designed to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council’s Platinum LEED rating. Along with CEWIT, AERTC will anchor Stony Brook’s Research and Development Park, which Shamash calls “an incredible shot-in-the-arm in supporting economic development on Long Island.”
“AERTC consists of a slew of centers within the Energy Center,” says Shamash, “focusing on photovoltaics and battery cells, collaborating with Brookhaven Labs and Farmingdale State College faculty on biofuels and hydrogen cells, and engaging in major activities in computational modeling and simulation of energy systems.” He adds, “On Long Island, we have huge energy related activities, including small companies working on minimizing the power consumption in data centers,” which use 6% of the country’s electricity for power, heating and cooling.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Shamash was appointed chair of a SUNY systemwide Homeland Defense Infrastructure Task Force. The task force raised the visibility of various special training programs for emergency responders at the system’s Community Colleges and activities in the areas of health and disease taking place primarily at the Stony Brook, Buffalo and Downstate Medical campuses. At Stony Brook, electrical engineering projects resulted in the areas of infrastructure sensor systems and the detection of radioactive materials.
As Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Shamash oversees the Engineering 2010 initiative to grow the College’s research program and building the quality of students. The College has a proposal in Albany to create a civil engineering program, the “first” on Long Island. The College is the recipient of an NSF Alliance for Minority Participation Award, a multi-million-dollar program comprised of 18 universities and colleges across the state, many on Long Island, and designed to bring minority students into science and engineering.
“I am most proud that Stony Brook has worked well with people in academia and industry on a number of joint programs,” says Shamash. “We play the role of a regional, national and international academic institution. That’s how you build a great university.”
Shamash is a resource for the receipt of grant funding, has authored more than 130 publications, and serves as a member of the University President’s “Kitchen Cabinet.” A highly respected engineer, he is a Fellow of the IEEE, the organization that developed the 802.11 standards for wireless LAN computer communications. He is a founding member of LISTnet, and served on the Boards of the Hauppauge Industrial Association, LIFT, and several science and technology companies. He currently serves on the boards of United Way of Long Island, the Blood Drive of Long Island and the Ward Melville Heritage Organization in his home community of Stony Brook.
Born in Iraq and schooled in England, Shamash received his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. in Engineering at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. An avid reader, he was a post-doctoral Fellow and then a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University before coming to the United States in 1976 as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. As a faculty member at Florida Atlantic University in the early 1980s, he began building business-university relationships. He and his wife Linda, an Iranian native, have been married for 32 years, and have a son Aharon and daughter Hela.

NETWORKING® January 2009