Miami Law’s Tenants’ Rights Clinic Director Jeffrey Hearne was recently named among Florida’s Legal Elite, a prestigious recognition given to only the top 2 percent of government and nonprofit attorneys in the state.

As stated in the eighth annual issue of Florida’s Legal Elite, a special publication of Florida Trend, the winners had to “exemplify a standard of excellence in their profession.” The magazine also named Miami Law as one of the top two law schools with the most honorees.

The Tenants’ Rights Clinic is designed to allow students to represent a client from the beginning of a case until its completion and primarily involves clients being evicted from public and subsidized housing, receiving Section 8 terminations, and having their affordable housing applications denied.

“I am extremely honored to be included in this group of attorneys and have my work representing low-income tenants be recognized by my peers,” Hearne said.

Miami Law offers several strong public service clinic options for students in addition to Hearne’s Tenants’ Rights Clinic. These opportunities include the Bankruptcy Assistance Clinic, Capital Defense Project, Children and Youth Law Clinic, Community Lawyering Clinic, Federal Appellate Clinic, Health and Elder Law Clinic, Human Rights Clinic, Immigration Clinic, and the Miami Innocence Project.

V. Ramamurthy, professor of chemistry and chair of the Department of Chemistry, has been named a 2011 American Chemical Society Fellow. The American Chemical Society is the world’s largest scientific society. The fellows program was created to recognize “achievements and contributions to science, the profession and the society.” Ramamurthy’s research focuses on bio-inspired supramolecular photochemistry.

The Oceans and Human Health Center at UM’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science recently celebrated the first five years of its National Science Foundation grant, hosting a poster session at which students in the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program showcased the diversity of research programs at the University.

Matthew Phillips, above, a marine science and biology major, displayed his research poster on Enterococci, a form of bacteria commonly associated with sewage and found in South Florida beach sediment. Phillips studied eight beaches, finding significantly higher levels of the bacteria in the sand above high tide, which would indicate an onshore source of contamination.

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Margaret A. Pericak-Vance received the 2011 Alzheimer’s Association Bengt Winblad Lifetime Achievement Award at a July 17 ceremony.

A leading geneticist at the Miller School of Medicine has been honored for her extraordinary lifelong contribution to Alzheimer’s disease research at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Paris.

The 2011 Alzheimer’s Association Bengt Winblad Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Margaret A. Pericak-Vance, director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics and the Dr. John T. Macdonald Foundation Professor of Human Genomics, during a ceremony at the opening of the Alzheimer’s Association’s annual meeting on July 17.

“I am truly honored and humbled that the Alzheimer’s Association has chosen me for this award,” Pericak-Vance said. “The Alzheimer’s Association has played a pivotal role in supporting efforts to find new ways to treat and prevent this devastating disorder. I feel privileged to have played a part.” Read the full story