With UM President Donna E. Shalala looking on, Executive Vice President and Provost Thomas J. LeBlanc presents former School of Architecture Dean Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk with a glass vase in recognition of her Malcolm Matheson Distinguished Professorship in Architecture. The presentation, held September 20 at UM’s Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center, was part of a ceremony to honor Plater-Zyberk, who stepped down as dean in July after serving nearly two decades in that capacity. She intends to focus on the built-environment adaptation to climate change in South Florida as well as teach with an “agenda of exploration and research to share with students,” she said.

A NASA MODIS satellite image taken on September 14 shows a cloud of dust carried by strong winds from sources in the Western Sahara. The trade winds transport the dust westward to the United States, the Caribbean, and South America. Photo credit: NASA.

Dust clouds originating from the African Sahara can travel thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, affecting air quality and climatic conditions in the United States and the Caribbean, a University of Miami researcher and others have found.

In a recent study, Joseph Prospero, professor emeritus at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and collaborators at the University of Houston and Arizona State University found that the average air concentrations of inhalable particles more than doubled during a major Saharan dust intrusion in Houston, Texas. Read the full story

The University of Miami Brain Endowment Bank will receive up to $8 million from a National Institutes of Health contract to centralize its research resources and advance studies of brain diseases in the United States.

The award, lasting up to eight years, underscores the growing importance of studying neurological and psychiatric disorders and the significant national standing of the Miller School program, led by Deborah C. Mash, professor of neurology and molecular and cellular pharmacology.

The new initiative, a joint effort of the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, aims to improve the support of brain banks, facilitate access to tissue by researchers, and better educate the public about the need for donated tissue for research.

“The Miller School of Medicine is really poised to do this, because our Brain Bank has always believed in providing tissue specimens to medical researchers nationwide to support academic missions and America’s engine of discovery,” said Mash.

Established in 1987, the Brain Endowment Bank is one of the largest in the U.S., with a biorepository of more than 2,000 brains and an additional 500 living donors who have registered to donate their brains upon their death.

With the award comes major changes to how brain banks are funded and operated. The Miller School’s Brain Endowment Bank will be one of five NIH Brain and Tissue Repositories that which will establish best practice protocols and quality standards for acquiring, processing, and storing collected tissue donated for research. The repositories also will coordinate the effort to provide tissues to qualified scientists and doctors.

The goal is to advance research in the brain diseases that affect millions of Americans, including neurological disorders (Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and traumatic brain injury), neurodevelopmental disorders (autism and related brain disorders) and neuropsychiatric or mental health disorders (schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder).

While studies are advancing new discoveries, there are too few brains donated to support the research.

Mash credits Pascal J. Goldschmidt, dean of the Miller School of Medicine and senior vice president for medical affairs, for his leadership and support in recognizing the importance of establishing a tissue donation program to support this new NIH mission. “Thanks to Dean Goldschmidt, we have a state-of-art location at the UM Life Science & Technology Park that allows us to work closely with organ donation programs and our collaborators at the UM Tissue Bank,” said Mash.

The Miami Brain Bank was well positioned to be a national NIH-funded biorepository because of its work with the University of Miami Tissue Bank, led by H. Thomas Temple, professor and vice chair of orthopaedics. Brain and tissue banks are required to support genetic studies, biomarker discovery, and new medication development.

The Brain Endowment Bank and Tissue Bank programs have had wide outreach over the years supporting the wishes of donors and their families to advance medical research as their final gift.

“This award recognizes the talent and years of expertise we have in the brain tissue collection and preservation field,” said Goldschmidt. “Research in the neurosciences will continue to be a top priority, and the Miller School is clearly leading the way with the unique expertise of the Brain Bank’s director, Deborah Mash.”

Said Mash, “For the first time, we have the tools to study the brain using modern genomic and high throughput technology. We can ask the complex questions and we’ll be able to get brain donors to support the new mission of research targeted to brain diseases that affect millions of children and adults.”

Amy Ferguson with her father, Jack, at Kiawah Island, South Carolina.

When Jack Ferguson joins his daughter, Amy C. Ferguson, for the University of Miami-Georgia Tech game on October 5, it will mark a special moment for the two football fans. Read the full story

Photograph of a dense aggregation of hydromedusa Solmaris rhodoloma found off the coast of Southern California, October 2010, taken using the In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System (ISIIS) on board the NOAA R/V Bell M. Shimada. Each medusa is about 2 cm long. Photo credit: Bob Cowen / University of Miami & Oregon State University.

A new online citizen science project called Plankton Portal provides a user experience like none other—exploring the open ocean from the comfort of your own home. Anyone will be able to virtually dive hundreds of feet deep and observe the undisturbed ocean and myriad animals that inhabit the Earth’s last frontier.

Researchers from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science collaborated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and developers at Zooniverse.org on the site. Read the full story