UM News

Nick and Mark Buoniconti, both UM trustees, will host the 30th Annual Great Sports Legends Dinner on October 6.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (September 25, 2015) — Thirty years after NFL Hall of Famer Nick Buoniconti promised his newly paralyzed son, Marc, they would see a cure for spinal cord injuries one day, father and son are ever-closer to that goal, thanks in large part to the 30th Annual Great Sports Legends Dinner they’ll host next week in New York City.

Over the past 29 years, the Sports Legends Dinners have inspired and entertained to raise incalculable awareness and more than $100 million for groundbreaking spinal cord injury research at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.

NBC News icon Tom Brokaw will emcee the high-profile event at the Waldorf Astoria on Tuesday, October 6, when more than 1,300 celebrities and notables from entertainment, sports, and media will mark the 30th anniversary by recognizing a who’s who of sports legends and two couples who have used their talents to make a difference. This year, legends Jorge Posada, Karl Malone, Ray Lewis, John Stockton, Michelle Kwan, Victor Espinoza, Jennifer Capriati, and Chip Ganassi will be honored along with Gloria and Emilio Estefan, who will receive The Buoniconti Fund Inspiration Award, and Orianne and Phil Collins, who will receive the Humanitarian Award.

“Today there is tangible evidence through our groundbreaking clinical trials that a cure for paralysis is within our grasp,” said Nick Buoniconti, founder of The Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis who founded The Miami Project at the Miller School of Medicine with Barth A. Green, professor and chair of neurological surgery, after Marc’s 1985 college football injury. “We are honored that so many legendary athletes and influential figures continue to help us stand up for those who cannot.”

Featuring live performances by The Beach Boys and Pointer Sisters, this year’s dinner is expected to raise millions more for The Miami Project’s research programs. The impressive roster of honorees join 300 other athletes and heroes who, over the past three decades, have been honored for raising awareness about injuries that paralyze millions worldwide and for raising funds for The Buoniconti Fund and The Miami Project. The world’s most comprehensive spinal cord injury research center, The Miami Project now stands at its most promising juncture.

More than 300 strong, Miami Project researchers, scientists, clinicians, and support staff are conducting or participating in more than eighteen clinical trials for spinal cord and brain injuries, and have more than a dozen clinical research studies underway, including the first FDA-approved Schwann cell transplantation trial, which is changing the spinal cord injury field and setting an important foundation for future Miami Project cell replacement therapies.

As Nick Buoniconti says, “For 30 years The Miami Project has provided real hope to those living with paralysis, and now that hope is turning into reality.”

UM News

Celebrating the Stamps Scholarships are, from left, front row, Alyssa Mena, Marissa Takaki, Dominick Metro, and Antonio Urrutia, and, from left, back row, Senior Vice Provost William Scott Green, Joseph Shomar, Hailey Mody, President Julio Frenk, Natalie Miller, and Frost School Dean Shelly Berg.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (September 25, 2015) – The University of Miami recently welcomed eight new Stamps Scholars from across the country for the 2015-2016 academic year. The Stamps Scholarships, which provide full cost of attendance plus extensive enrichment opportunities to outstanding academic achievers and talented students, are funded by the generosity of Penny and E. Roe Stamps, through the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation, and UM.

“Ensuring that academically deserving students from diverse backgrounds have access to a world-class education at the University of Miami is central to our mission,” said UM President Julio Frenk. “I am honored that the Stamps family has partnered with us to provide our Stamps Scholars with the brightest of academic futures.”

The Stamps Family Charitable Foundation partners with visionary colleges and universities, including UM, to award multi-year scholarships to select students from a wide array of disciplines. The Stamps Scholarships are UM’s most selective and prestigious scholarly awards, and this year’s recipients include three Stamps Leadership Scholars and five Frost School of Music Stamps Music Scholars.

“Penny and I could not be more proud of our partnership with the University of Miami,” noted E. Roe Stamps, who founded the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation along with his wife Penny. “For nine years we have witnessed outstanding students with big dreams become Stamps Scholars at UM and it is very gratifying to see this year’s recipients talk about the foundation for success they expect to build in college. We look forward to watching these scholars achieve great things in life and their profession, thanks to their UM education and experience.”

“The University of Miami is very grateful to Roe and Penny Stamps for their incredible generosity and commitment to higher education,” said Thomas J. LeBlanc, UM executive vice president and provost. “Stamps Scholarships attract some of the most exceptional students in the country and provide the support necessary for these outstanding students to realize their highest aspirations.”

Throwing up the U with President Frenk, David Grossman, of Nashua, New Hampshire, plans to study physics and philosophy on his Stamps Scholarship.

The Stamps Leadership Scholarship is an elite academic award that provides driven and talented scholars opportunities for professional and leadership development in the fields of research, policy, technology, business, industry, government, health care, and education. Stamps Leadership Scholars are eligible to receive funding for study abroad, undergraduate research, internships, conferences, and leadership development opportunities.

This year’s incoming Stamps Leadership Scholars and their areas of interest are David Grossman, of Nashua, New Hampshire, philosophy and physics; Hailey Mody, of Duluth, Georgia, Spanish; and Joseph Shomar, Miami, Florida, mathematics.

“This scholarship provided me with a great opportunity to attend the school of my dreams,” said Mody. “I have learned that with hard work and determination anything is possible, and I’m excited to take those traits into my future as a Stamps Leadership Scholar.”

The talented young artists who make up the Stamps Music Ensembles benefit from a unique transformative academic and musical experience. In addition to performing with large ensembles of the Frost School of Music, Stamps Music Scholars also represent the Frost School when they perform at special functions throughout the community.

The incoming Frost School of Music Stamps Music Scholars are Alyssa Mena, Hialeah, Florida; Dominick Metro, Winter Park, Florida; Natalie Miller, Watauga, Texas; Marissa Takaki, Glenview, Illinois; and Antonio Urrutia, Miami, Florida. As instrumental performance majors, the freshmen scholars will make up the Stamps Woodwind Quintet. The Stamps Distinguished Ensembles also include the Stamps String Quartet, Stamps Brass Quintet, and Stamps Jazz Quintet.

“I am beyond grateful and lucky to be part of such an exciting and enriching music program,” said Takaki, who plays bassoon. “The opportunities granted to the Stamps Woodwind Quintet surpass anyone’s idea of a college experience. It is a privilege and an honor to be a part of the Stamps Chamber Music Program.”

Beginning in 2006 at their alma maters, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Penny and E. Roe Stamps created merit scholarship programs for undergraduates. The Stamps Family Charitable Foundation expanded its reach with similar programs at the University of Miami in 2009, and in 2010 at Barry University, Caltech, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and UCLA. Since then, the list has grown to 43 academic institutions, including the University of Chicago, University of Notre Dame, University of Virginia, Wake Forest University and Washington University in St. Louis.

Penny and E. Roe Stamps served as campaign vice chairs for Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami. Roe is a member of UM’s Board of Trustees and the Visiting Committee at the Frost School of Music, and also recently served on the Presidential Search Committee.

UM News

President Julio Frenk is continuing his ambitious listening exercise, visiting schools, colleges, and other constituencies.

University of Miami President Julio Frenk meets with faculty at the Rosenstiel School on September 25.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (September 25, 2015) — As promised during the recent Town Hall, University of Miami President Julio Frenk is continuing his ambitious listening exercise initiative, visiting schools and colleges, talking with faculty, staff, and students, and meeting with other constituencies for their valuable insights, comments, and thoughtful recommendations about the University and its future.

On Friday, September 25, Frenk was at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, where he met with faculty following a brief tour of the Virginia Key-based campus. A number of other visits are planned over the next several months, and the UM community is encouraged to attend those meetings and share their thoughts on a special website created to let people weigh in with some of their ideas and concerns. The site is http://miami.edu/listen.

Frenk’s two-hour stay at the marine school came two weeks after he hosted a Town Hall at the BankUnited Center on September 10, the first public event of his presidency. It was there that he unveiled the ambitious listening exercise and invited faculty, staff, students, and others to share their aspirations and hopes for the U with him.

During the Town Hall, Frenk also detailed his four major aspirations for the University: the pursuit of excellence in multiple areas, including academics, service, the arts, athletics, and administration; achieving relevance in helping to solve the world’s most pressing problems; becoming a model for values such as diversity and tolerance; and becoming what he called “a force of integration across the Americas,” or specifically taking advantage of UM’s geographic location in greater Miami as a gateway to the world.

By Marie Guma-Diaz
UM News

This complex structure illustrates the Goldilocks effect, the ‘just right’ structure that emerges when a system containing light and matter (like the universe), develops neither too fast nor too slow.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (September 22, 2015) – Just as in the well-known children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, something good happens when things are done in moderation, rather than in extremes. Now, a new study has translated “not too hot or too cold, just right” to the quantum world and the generation of quantum entanglement – the binding within and between matter and light – and suggests that the universe started “neither too fast nor too slow.”

By studying a system that couples matter and light together, like the universe itself, researchers have now found that crossing a quantum phase transition at intermediate speeds generates the richest, most complex structure. Such structure resembles “defects” in an otherwise smooth and empty space. The findings are published in Physical Review, the American Physical Society’s main journal.

“Our findings suggest that the universe was ‘cooked’ at just the right speeds,” said Neil Johnson, professor of physics at the University of Miami’s College of Arts & Sciences and one of the authors of the study. “Our paper provides a simple model that can be realized in a lab on a chip, to explore how such defect structure develops as the speed of cooking changes.”

The big mystery concerning the origin of the universe is how the star clusters, planetary systems, galaxies, and other objects that we now see managed to evolve out of nothing. There is a widespread belief within the scientific community that the birth of structure in the universe lies in the crossing of a quantum phase transition and that the faster the transition is crossed, the more structure it generates. The current findings contradict that belief.

The study sheds new light on how to generate, control, and manipulate quantum entanglement, since the defects contain clusters of quantum entanglement of all sizes. The findings hold the key to a new generation of futuristic technologies—in particular, ultrafast quantum computing, ultrasafe quantum cryptography, high-precision quantum metrology, and even the quantum teleportation of information.

“Quantum entanglement is like the ‘bitcoin’ that funds the universe in terms of interactions and information,” Johnson said. “It is the magic sauce that connects together all objects in the universe, including light and matter.”

In the everyday world, a substance can undergo a phase transition at different temperatures; for example, water will turn to ice or steam when sufficiently cold or hot. But in the quantum world, the system can undergo a phase transition at absolute zero temperature, simply by changing the amount of interaction between the light and matter. This phase transition generates quantum entanglement in the process.

Johnson likes to compare the emergence of highly entangled light-matter structures, as the quantum phase transition is crossed, with the way lumps of porridge appear out of “nothing,” when you heat up milk and oats.

“If you cross the transition at the right speed (cook at right speed), the structures (lumps) that appear are far more complex – more ‘tasty’ – than when crossing fast or slow,” said Johnson. “Since it is a quantum phase transition that is being crossed, the structures that appear contain clumps of quantum entanglement.”

The results of the study, titled “Enhanced dynamic light-matter entanglement from driving neither too fast nor too slow,” are robust for a wide range of system sizes, and the effect is realizable using existing experimental setups under realistic conditions. O.L. Acevedo, from Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, is first author of the study. Other co-authors from Universidad de los Andes are L. Quiroga and F. J. Rodriguez.

“Understanding quantum entanglement in light-matter systems is arguably the fundamental problem in physics,” Johnson said.

The current paper opens up a novel line of investigation in this area. In addition, it provides a unique opportunity to design and build new nanostructure systems that harness and manipulate quantum entanglement effects. The researchers are now looking at specifying the precise conditions that experimentalists will need in order to see the enhanced quantum entanglement effect that they predict.

UM News

New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haim, who has written and spoken extensively about overparenting, gives advice to parents during a UM Family Weekend talk.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (September 24, 2015) – As dean of freshman at Stanford University during the early 2000s, Julie Lythcott-Haims noticed a disturbing trend: more and more parents, determined to play a role in the day-to-day existence of their college-enrolled children, were coming to campus and not wanting to leave.

The trend set off alarm bells for Lythcott-Haims, who felt such overparenting was causing kids to become “existentially impotent.” Students, she said, “didn’t seem to be able to plan and see things through on their own. They lacked a familiarity with themselves. They had great résumés, but couldn’t tell you how they had accomplished it.”

Lythcott-Haims left Stanford three years ago to pursue an M.F.A. in poetry, but her compassion for young people lived on, inspiring her to write How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success, a New York Times bestseller that cautions against helicopter parenting that keeps children from growing up.

On September 18 during a University of Miami Family Weekend 2015 talk, she discussed many of the pitfalls of overparenting, telling a roomful of visiting mothers and fathers gathered inside the Shalala Student Center’s grand ballroom that while a certain amount of parental assistance can be good, too much can be harmful.

“The concern is that will these young men and women be able to fend for themselves one day,” said Lythcott-Haims during a sit-down conversation with UM Vice President for Student Affairs Pat Whitely. “Many weren’t fending at Stanford. Mom and dad were calling to help with roommate problems and grades, and to wake up their kids.

“When it’s time to hand off the mantle of leadership to the next generation,” she continued, “we want to know that they’ve got what it takes.”

She gave the parents some advice, telling them not to argue with every coach and referee and to allow their children to advocate for themselves.

“When they call home with a problem, listen and care, but ask, ‘How do you think you’re going to handle it?’ ” advised the former Stanford dean. “Leave them with the impression that it’s theirs to handle.”