LI scientist lauded again for research

For the third year in a row, a Stony Brook University scientist is the recipient of a prestigious award, the White House said Monday.

Lilianne Mujica-Parodi, 39, who is pursuing an unusual line of research that partially grew out of studies into chaos theory, is one of 94 investigators named by President Barack Obama as a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

The award is considered the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their careers.

Mujica-Parodi heads the university's laboratory for the study of emotion and cognition.

"This is a great honor and I am really thrilled," Mujica-Parodi said Monday, shortly after discovering she is a recipient.

The award recipients will attend two ceremonies in Washington next month -- one at the National Science Foundation on Oct. 13 and a separate meeting with the president at the White House the next day.

"It is inspiring to see the innovative work being done by these scientists and engineers as they ramp up their careers -- careers that I know will be not only personally rewarding but also invaluable to the Nation," Obama said in a statement Monday.

Among the findings emerging from Mujica-Parodi's laboratory is how conditions in unrelated biological systems can point to something awry.

She has found, for instance, that in patients with mental illness there is a tendency toward a lower heart rate. "We really don't think schizophrenia is causing the low heart rate variability," Mujica-Parodi said. But the heart activity that was found in repeated studies opened a new pathway to understanding the brain in disease, she said.

Her area of pursuit is called integrated systems, an emerging field that unifies and integrates many disciplines, from physics to economics to heart function and schizophrenia.

She has also put special emphasis on studying the nature of stress and how it affects countless cellular connections in the brain.

Mujica-Parodi is the mother of three and is married to Stony Brook physicist Helmut Strey. Their oldest son, Shmuel, is spending the school term conducting research in his mother's laboratory.