PAST SPECIAL EVENTS

Barbara H. Gottfried

Barbara H. Gottfried moved to Setauket in the 1980s and ultimately settled in Old Field in 1986. She attended nursing school at Mt. Sinai Hospital School of Nursing. Her nursing career took her to New York University Medical Center where she ran the dialysis unit, as well as obtaining a BSN and Masters Degrees.

Barbara is dedicated to the community where she lives and currently serves on several Long Island Museum committees, is on the Board of Trustees for the Three Village Historical Society, and is a member of OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) at Stony Brook University. She enjoys travelling, including two expeditions to Antarctica, learning how to play Mah Jongg, and spending as much time as possible with her two grandkids and their parents in Charleston, her family, as well as her wonderful friends here.

Barbara has a daughter, Katharine, who resides in Charleston. Katharine is the owner of YoBurrito Cantina Fresca, which recently closed after 25 years in business. They were known for their burritos (made and sold 2 million!), their mason jar margs, as well as the wonderful and loyal staff. It was a Charleston landmark, and one of Charlestonians’ favorite places to eat, drink or just hang.

Zach Gottfried, her late son, was the founder and owner of Island Riders, a water sports business that offered all forms of water sports lessons/equipment/rentals. He was an accomplished, avid waterman and kiteboarder long before it became popular. He expanded the business to two locations on Long Island.

Sam Aronson

Sam Aronson earned an A.B. in physics from Columbia University in 1964 and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1968. From 1968 to 1977, he held research and academic positions at the University of Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies and the University of Wisconsin. His research career has focused on experimental elementary particle physics and nuclear physics.

Sam joined Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in 1978, where he was appointed deputy chair of the Physics Department in 1988. From 1991 to 2001, he served as the director of the PHENIX detector project during the construction of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, before becoming chair of Physics in 2001. He became Associate Laboratory Director for Nuclear and Particle Physics in 2005 and Laboratory Director and President of Brookhaven Science Associates in 2006. He served as Director there until December 2012.

Sam is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a member and past Chair of the DOE National Laboratory Directors Council and has served as a member of the NYS Governor’s Industry-Higher Education Task Force and on national review boards in Canada, Sweden, and Germany. Sam was a board member of the Stony Brook Foundation, the Long Island Association, Accelerate Long Island, the New York State Smart Grid Consortium, the Stony Brook University Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center, the Long Island High Technology Incubator, the Clean Energy Business Incubator Program, and the Governor’s Regional Economic Development Council for Long Island. In 2012, he was inducted into the Long Island Technology Hall of Fame and named Lab Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium. In July 2012, he was elected to the presidential line of the American Physical Society (APS), serving as the APS President in 2015.