Long Island universities spending $2.5M or more on research named by prestigious Carnegie group

A humble plant that grows on Hofstra University’s arboretum campus could one day save the lives of people experiencing heart attacks.

Nicholas Merna, an associate professor of bioengineering at Hofstra, is leading federally funded research on ways to turn the leatherleaf viburnum’s tough leaves into tiny blood vessels that could be used in heart bypass operations.

The material appears to perform well in rats, and human studies could begin in three to four years, he said.

“We spent over a year comparing different leaves,” Merna said of the work he and his students are performing. “Most leaves, including spinach, would fail, and you can’t have that happen in something like a vascular graft. It has to be very strong.”

Funded by a $395,000 National Institutes of Health grant, Merna’s research is the kind of potentially groundbreaking work that has propelled the Hempstead university for the first time into the world of research universities designated as “R2,” the second-highest level in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The designation indicates that a school invests at least $5 million in research and awards at least 20 doctoral degrees each year.

Hofstra, which awarded 95 doctorates and spent $10.4 million on research last year, was one of five Long Island universities included on the most recent Carnegie list of research institutions, released Feb. 13. New classifications are announced every three years, relying on federal data.

The highest level, R1, means a school spends at least $50 million and awards at least 70 doctorates a year. Stony Brook University has been R1 since 1987, according to the American Council on Education, which publishes the classifications with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Long Island University, which has a Brookville campus, has been R2 since 2021. The university invests $18 million a year in research on health care, artificial intelligence and other topics, according to LIU.

The council also created a new classification this year — Research Colleges and Universities — for schools that spend at least $2.5 million a year on research.

Touro University, which has a Central Islip campus, and New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, both qualified as RCUs this year. NYIT aims to qualify for R2 status by 2028, according to Jared Littman, vice provost for research.

If the designations sound wonky, that’s because they are. “The terminology is a little bit inside baseball, right?” Hofstra’s provost, Charles Riordan, said.

Serious business

But the Carnegie honors are serious business to schools. “What it really signifies is, based on objective measures, the quality, the breadth and the impact of research and doctoral education at a university,” Riordan said.

A high-status classification can help attract talented faculty and students, along with funding and industry partners, said Sara Gast, deputy executive director of the classifications.

The designation “represents a key part of their mission,” Gast said.

Even for those who don’t know what a school’s Carnegie classification is, the honor is “a recognition” of a school’s strong research program, said Angel Pineda, a professor of mathematics at Hofstra who is doing NIH-funded research on ways to make MRI imaging faster and therefore more accessible and affordable.

Hofstra’s support for interdisciplinary research was one of the reasons Pineda joined the faculty last year, he said. “It’s the things that they did to get the designation, you know, that makes them more competitive.”

Maura McDermott is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in 2012, she has also covered real estate and the business of health care.