FIU Research 2025 Spring Issue

Game-changing treatment

Eleven-year-old Hayden Thomas enjoys playing tennis with his sister Madilynn. He can even serve the ball, thanks in part to a novel exercise program incorporating use of a bodypowered 3D-printed prosthetic hand. Designed to help patients better manage everyday tasks, the program offers hope for more convenient, cost effective therapy options for children with congenital upper limb deficiencies. Hayden’s mom, physical therapist Amanda Thomas in the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences, and her Doctor of Physical Therapy students created the at-home program in which Hayden’s strength, range of motion and coordination improved markedly. His 3D-printed hand was created at FIU’s Miami Beach Urban Studios, and the pattern for the adult-sized hand was modified with assistance from university biomedical engineers. Thomas’s study has received global interest since its publication in the Journal of Hand Therapy.

Why do insects behave so bizarrely around light at night?

As part of FIU’s global research collaborations, an international team provided a new explanation for a millennia-old mystery A combination of motion capture tech and high-speed cameras revealed an important clue: In flight, insects keep their back turned toward the light source. According to the data, published in Nature Communications, this is because they evolved to rely on the brightest thing they see (the sky) to know which way is “up” and maintain control in the air. Artificial light at night throws these instincts for a loop and insects get trapped in an exhausting cycle trying to stay orientated — a futile effort that causes clumsy maneuvers and occasional crashes directly into the light. This study received national and international coverage, appearing in The New York Times, CNN, Scientific American, The Guardian and more.

Samuel Fabian

EXPERIENCE IMPACT

LAST FALL, FIU COMPLETED ITS LATEST STRATEGIC PLAN: EXPERIENCE IMPACT 2030 . The process necessitated that we evaluate honestly our current state and our desired destination. It required a cleareyed assessment of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges, not only internally but in our community, region and beyond. Much like the last strategic plan, we knew this one must be relevant and position FIU and our students for long-term success. We knew that our next strategic plan must provide direction for the university community to move forward with clarity. As this stunning photo illustrates, moths lose their bearings around artificial light at night. Confusion reigns. We needed to make sure there was no confusion among our FIU community about where we were headed and how we were going to get there.

Experience Impact 2030 is focused on expanding our accomplishments in student success, research excellence, national and international recognition, continued recognition as a leading Hispanic-Serving Institution, leadership in arts and culture, and dozens of leading initiatives addressing great challenges facing our global community. It presents an opportunity to continue our momentum and strategically redefine the role and impact of the public research university.

As part of this 18-month collaboration that involved university leaders, faculty and staff, students, alumni and community leaders, FIU identified three strategic areas of research focus: Environment & Environmental Resilience, Health, and Technology & Innovation.

This issue is filled with the important work of our researchers and students tackling critical issues in these focus areas and beyond. We highlight the work of a marine ecologist whose decades of research around predator-prey interactions and the ecological importance of sharks has yielded greater understanding of the role of these creatures in the ocean’s ecosystem. We offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse into a cancer researcher’s lab, in the process gaining a sense of what drives her and the members of her team. And we introduce our readers to some of the climate tech innovations being developed by our faculty and students.

We hope you enjoy these articles and this publication. Please be sure to visit researchmag.fiu.edu for videos and additional information that accompanies many of these stories.

Elizabeth M. Béjar Provost Executive Vice President Chief Operating Officer

Email: bejare@fiu.edu

Andrés G. Gil

Senior Vice President, Research

and

Economic Development

Dean, University Graduate School

Professor, Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work

Email: gila@fiu.edu

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY AND OFFICE OF RESEARCH & ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Kenneth A. Jessell

President

Elizabeth M. Béjar

Provost, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Andrés G. Gil

Senior Vice President for Research and Economic Development

Dean of the University Graduate School

William T. Anderson

Associate Vice President for Research

Tonja Moore

Associate Vice President for Research Strategic Planning and Operations

Luis Salas

Associate Vice President for Research

Robert Gutierrez

Associate Vice President for Research

David Driesbach

Assistant Vice President for Research

Emily Gresham

Assistant Vice President for Research

IN FOCUS

REDEFINING CANCER TREATMENT

Hundreds of FDA-approved drugs tested directly on a patient’s tumor sample. Could this be a gamechanger for cancer management?

SHARKS MATTER

Decades of research reveals the many roles of sharks in keeping oceans healthy. What scientists learned may surprise you.

TECH TO PROTECT

Human ingenuity and creativity are helping ensure a more resilient future.

20 INVESTING IN GROWTH

Baptist Health and FIU join forces to elevate care, address the doctor shortage and boost medical research.

26 IN MY VIEW: Hortensia Amaro

The U.S. spends trillions annually on health care yet performs poorly in key health indicators. What’s driving America’s health disadvantage?

30 POPULATION HEALTH

A new initiative addresses the myriad factors that influence health outcomes.

42 Q&A: Selcuk Uluagac Stopping the next cyberattack.

58 TECH HUB INFOGRAPHIC Resilient infrastructure.

Photos: Brandon A. Güell

Deadly naïveté

Behold the slough crayfish (Procambarus fallax). Petite enough to fit in the palm of a hand, these freshwater crustaceans were once abundant in the Everglades and a plentiful food source for wading birds. But populations have plummeted 99% in the last decade. Invasive Asian swamp eels are the prime culprit behind the disappearances.

Institute of Environment postdoctoral researcher and wildlife photographer Brandon A. Güell wants to understand why slough crayfish — who expertly evolved to fight, freeze or flee for survival — have become such easy prey. With video and timelapse photography, he documents neverbefore-seen predator-prey interactions in the lab. Most concerning: Crayfish act unusually nonchalant around the eels. They don’t use anti-predator tactics, like freezing or hiding, as they would to escape native predators. Güell says this is a sign of prey naïveté, the idea native species fail to “recognize” invasive predators as a threat because they didn’t coevolve and this could explain why the eels have the upper hand not just against the crayfish but potentially other species.

RESEARCH ROUND UP

WATER POLLUTION

Flower power

Nutrient pollution can cause algal blooms that lower oxygen levels in the water and create “dead zones” where aquatic life cannot survive.

RAIN WASHES phosphorus, nitrogen and other chemicals from farms, lawns and even septic tanks into lakes, rivers, bays and other marine ecosystems Flowers may help remove some of these harmful pollutants from the water.

Inspired by traditional floating farm practices such as the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida’s tree island settlements, Institute of Environment researchers Jazmin Locke-Rodriguez and Krishnaswamy Jayachandran grew flowers on inexpensive mats designed to float on the water’s surface (as shown above).

Large marigolds were most successful at filtering pollutants, removing 52% more phosphorus and 33% more nitrogen than would naturally be removed from the water. Locke-Rodriguez is exploring ways to bring this research to market and scale up floating farms in South Florida. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation funded this research.

NATIONAL SECURITY

Data making a difference

AU.S. SOUTHERN Command (SOUTHCOM) official was on a mission to locate illegal fishing vessels in Latin America. So, he used FIU’s Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported Fishing (IUUF) dashboard, successfully honing in on specific vessels that “went dark” or turned off systems that transmit a ship’s position — an indicator of illegal activity.

This is an example of the real-world impact resulting from a series of Department of Defense-funded dashboards created by the Security Research Hub — part of the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy. Drawing from over 400 data sets, each dashboard highlights different Latin American and Caribbean security issues. Current dashboards track China’s activities in Latin America and the Caribbean; arms seizures and thefts across Latin America; kidnappings in Haiti and more.

To date, the dashboards have been used as a valuable resource for students, researchers, policymakers, journalists and more.

Scent is composed of volatile organic compounds present in gases emitted from our skin.

FORENSICS

How

your body odor reveals who you are

PICTURE IT: A law enforcement officer at a crime scene collecting a scent sample in the hope it will match back to a suspect. This could be the future of forensics. For the first time, a person’s biological sex was confirmed by their hand odor in the lab with 96% accuracy. Kenneth G. Furton, executive director of the Global Forensic and Justice Center, and a team of researchers studied hand odor

samples from 60 volunteers. Volatile organic compounds, VOCs — chemicals responsible for an individual’s scent — were examined using a combination of instruments commonly found in forensic toxicology and chemistry labs, such as gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, and a machine learning model. This novel approach demonstrates odor may hold important clues to help investigators build stronger cases and bring justice to victims.

Leland Lazarus (left), associate director of national security policy, and Bruce Vitor (right), director of research and operations, run the Security Research Hub.

Production and consumption are major contributors of greenhouse gas emissions that fuel global warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

SUSTAINABILITY

Advertising Consumerism Climate change

DON’T BUY THIS JACKET. That was the message of clothing brand Patagonia’s Black Friday ad.

Unconventional, especially on a day when the goal is to encourage shopping. This kind of unconventionality might be what our planet’s future needs, though, according to communication scholar David Park’s research.

Park, a professor in the College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts, has studied the connection between mass communication and climate change. Through close examinations, he’s uncovered how advertising, including digital and social media ads, as well as the news media benefit from overconsumption and perpetuate the ongoing climate crisis. In his book Media Reform and the Climate Emergency: Rethinking Communication in the Struggle for a Sustainable Future, Park lays out a new path rooted in sustainability for these industries that helps address and mitigate climate change rather than perpetuate the problem.

Antiretroviral medicines that keep the virus from replicating cannot effectively cross the blood-brain barrier, and so the brain becomes a repository for HIV.

CBD may help HIV-infected brain cells

AFTER HIV hijacks immune cells in the bloodstream, it breaks through the heavily guarded blood-brain barrier and targets the brain’s immune cells. These cells then enter a hibernation period. Neuroinflammation can reactivate them, perpetuating a vicious cycle where HIV spreads out of the brain and into the body’s bloodstream.

CBD’s anti-inflammatory effects may stop this process. Adriana Yndart Arias, a doctoral student in the Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work, made this discovery in the lab of recently retired Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine distinguished professor Madhavan Nair. She tested CBD on HIV-infected

microglia cells, searching for specific markers that exposed whether the cells would activate. CBD-treated cells not only reduced the numbers of inflammatory molecules but also kept infected cells dormant. This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health

FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine recently retired researcher Nair (left) and doctoral student Yndart Arias (right) in the lab.

— Adriana Yndart Arias

CRIMINOLOGY

Where there’s gold, there’s violence

ILLEGAL GOLD mining has ravaged the Amazon, wreaking havoc on the environment and contaminating waterways.

Conservation crime scientist Stephen Pires and criminology professor Rob Guerette from the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs are connecting the dots to find out if it has also led to a rise in murders in the region. With prices skyrocketing, gold has become a lucrative business — even surpassing the price of cocaine. Criminal organizations and illegally armed groups want to control production. Although it’s well known illegally armed groups are willing to fight and kill for access to precious resources, there’s been few studies to make a clear connection. Pires’s data is the first to show that areas with greater amounts of gold mining and coca production are directly associated with homicide hot spots in Colombia.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Matchmaking for proteins

SUCCESSFUL

MATCHMAKING with protein molecules is like other kinds of matchmaking: The two must click for it to work. Except for proteins — the estimated 200 million molecular building blocks of life — it’s complicated. But knowing which two or more proteins best bond is critically important to designing new medications and vaccines. That’s why researchers created a machine learning model that outperforms similar state-of-the-art software to predict how protein molecules will join.

Their AI-based method, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, uses biological and structural information to score the strength of the bond.

The team included Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences Professor Giri Narasimhan and his doctoral student Vitalii Stebliankin, along with Associate Director of the Biomolecular Sciences Institute Prem Chapagain and molecular biologist Kalai Mathee.

Circle below: Two proteins bonding–the coronavirus spike protein head (top) and a human protein hACE2 (bottom). Credit: Prem Chapagain

BIODIVERSITY

The most imperiled vertebrates

on Earth

NEARLY 41% of amphibians are threatened with extinction, according to a recent global assessment of the world’s amphibian population published in Nature. Institute of Environment biologist Alessandro Catenazzi — an expert in frog ecology and conservation — was one of the primary researchers on this collaborative project evaluating the status of 8,011 species of amphibians. In greatest decline: salamanders. Frogs, toads and newts throughout the Neotropics, extending from South Florida and Caribbean islands to Central and South America, are also of particular concern. Since 1980, at least 37 species have gone extinct, with the primary culprits disease and habitat loss. Climate change is also quickly emerging as a major threat, attributing to 39% of population declines since 2004.

INNOVATION

Aging tech

DURING THE pandemic, older adults relied a lot on technology to stay connected to friends and family. Does this necessarily mean they might be more receptive to agetech (short for aging techbology) intended to improve quality of life for older adults worldwide? College of Business researchers wanted to find out. Pouyan Esmaeil Zadeh, an associate professor in information systems and business analytics, led two separate studies focused on older adults’ perceptions on two types of agetech: companion robots and smart toilets. Most participants held positive views. However, they also expressed significant concerns regarding privacy, cost and ease of use. These insights are important because they reveal what might be standing in the way of older adults embracing and using these new tools.

65

Number of previously unknown species Catenazzi has helped identify and name throughout his career like A. moropukaqumir (shown above).

Alessandro Catenazzi in the field.

Decreased sound tolerance screening tool

Awareness is the first step in getting interventions to help quality of life.

— Tana Carson

CHEWING OR silverware scraping against a plate can really annoy some people. But for children with decreased sound tolerance (DST), especially children with autism, certain sounds can be too loud, scary or even viscerally painful — triggers to be avoided. Today, few valid screening tools exist for children that can identify different DST conditions, like hyperacusis and misophonia. So FIU occupational and speech therapists with expertise in autism spectrum disorders created one that provides early identification for autistic and

non-autistic children. Published in the International Journal of Audiology, the questionnaire has already been translated into several languages and is currently being used by audiologists, psychologists and therapists in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Turkey and Sri Lanka.

Tana Carson and Angela Medina from the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences collaborated with statistician Yuxi Qiu from the College of Arts, Sciences & Education, on this project.

LAW

Passing the bar

PASS THE BAR examination, become a licensed attorney. Sounds simple enough. However, since 2011 bar passage rates at U.S. law schools have plummeted, leaving schools scrambling to roll out preparation programs. However, there’s not much guidance on what actually helps get students ready for the test.

Raul Ruiz, director of FIU’s Bar Preparation Program, examined the theory, design, implementation and evaluation of what makes successful prep programs. He found LSAT and GPA aren’t reliable crystal balls. Instead, programs must focus on active learning that fosters the skillset it takes to be a lawyer — cognitive skills (thinking, reasoning, reading, learning, attention span and memory) and especially noncognitive or “soft skills” (behavior and mindset, like being open to experiences and putting in the effort).

87%

of FIU law graduates have passed the bar exam on their first attempt — the highest passage rate of any Florida law school — since 2015.

Tana Carson (left) and Angela Medina (right).

ALZHEIMER’S

Break on through

THE HERBERT Wertheim College of Medicine and Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute are using non-invasive, low intensityfocused ultrasound that could revolutionize care for Alzheimer’s patients.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) precisely guides ultrasound waves to disrupt the blood-brain barrier and disturb clumps of beta-amyloid protein plaques that block communication between brain cells, leading to cognitive decline. High-intensity ultrasound technology has offered promise for Parkinson’s patients. The hope is similar results will be seen with low-intensity ultrasound in Alzheimer’s patients.

Dr. Patricia Junquera, chair of psychiatry and behavioral health, and Dr. Michael McDermott, chief of the neuroscience division and chief medical executive of Baptist’s Miami Neuroscience Institute, are co-PIs of this FDA-approved clinical trial, part of the Florida Brain State Program in collaboration with Insightec.

84%

of car brands share drivers’ personal data, according to a report by the Mozilla Foundation.

CYBERSECURITY

Your car is watching you

MODERN CARS present a potential privacy nightmare.

Many are equipped with advanced sensors and cameras that track where you go and capture your face, voice and fingerprint. This personal information can then be stored on cloud servers to help AI algorithms “teach” cars how to keep drivers safe.

Hadi Amini, a cybersecurity researcher in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences, investigates new tools to protect drivers’ privacy. He’s searching for ways cars can analyze data but only send suggestions — not the actual data — to the server. Amini also leads investigations into AI as part of the U.S. Department of Transportation-funded National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency that aims to safeguard transportation systems from cyberattacks.

Physician honored for service to NAM and NASEM AWARD

DR. MARTÍN-JOSÉ SEPÚLVEDA , distinguished university professor at the Office of Research and Economic Development, received the Walsh McDermott Medal from the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The award recognizes a member for distinguished service to the NAM and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine over an extended period. He was elected to NAM in 2014.

Sepúlveda is chair of the NAM’s Section 12 on Health Services Administration, Research, Education and Policy and the Section 12 Membership Committee. He is also a member of the Culture of Health Program Advisory Committee.

Sepúlveda’s expertise lies in creating innovative approaches to individual and population health, health benefits, and workforce and health systems performance. During his more than threedecade career at IBM, he led health and health care process innovations that delivered cost avoidance of more than $1.7 billion.

Children

born prematurely are often at increased risk for poor executive functioning

CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Benefits of bilingualism

CENTER FOR Children and Families research shows speaking more than one language can be beneficial for children born prematurely, as an early intervention strategy to help strengthen preterm-born children’s executive functioning (cognitive processes that include paying attention, planning, memory, decisionmaking and carrying out a task, among others).

The study, led by doctoral student Caroline Gillenson, followed a small group of children, ages 6 to 7, who were born preterm (before 35 weeks) and were either monolingual or spoke English and Spanish. The bilingual group performed better on a cognitive test to measure executive function. Compared to monolingual children, they showed better organization, accuracy and response time — all important skills for academic success.

Melissa Baralt, one of the study’s authors, and her daughter.

Dr. Martín-José Sepúlveda

WILLIAM E. PELHAM JR 1948 – 2023

He transformed how we think about ADHD treatment and improved lives worldwide

WILLIAM E. PELHAM JR.

spent his life transforming the lives of countless children and their families across the world. He passed away in October 2023.

For over four decades, the world-renowned child psychologist never stopped challenging popular assumptions or conducting evidence-based research.

Pelham entered the field in the ’70s, when the mysteries of ADHD were still being unraveled and by the ’90s medications like Ritalin were being widely used. But could other interventions like behavioral therapy help them before they were given medication? That’s what Pelham devoted his life to finding out. Study after study, he began forming a new ADHD treatment approach where behavior therapy, including training for parents, was the first line of treatment. This led to new clinical guidelines issued by the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics that recommends Pelham’s findings and is the foundation of today’s standard ADHD treatment.

Over his career, Pelham authored nearly 500 peer-reviewed publications, received more than $100 million in grants and collaborated on many more grants as a co-investigator. Among his many awards, Pelham was recognized by the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Science of Clinical Psychology.

Pelham also founded the Summer Treatment Program, a nationally acclaimed comprehensive summer camp program for children with ADHD and related behavioral, emotional and learning challenges. The program has helped thousands of children and their families and has been implemented across the U.S. and Japan.

After joining FIU in 2010, Pelham established the Center for Children and Families. Under his leadership, the center evolved into what is now a world class clinical research center considered one of the largest in the U.S. conducting research on child mental health. Today, the team of 400 researchers, staff and volunteers carry on Pelham’s vision and the center’s mission of advancing the well-being of children and families through research, clinical programs and community engagement.

He was a role model in how to serve the public with science. The impact of his work and the legacy of knowledge he leaves behind will serve the field for many, many years to come. The field of clinical child psychology is a better place because he was a part of it. — Yo Jackson

Board-certified clinical child psychologist

President, Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, Division 53 of the American Psychological Association

Associate Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network, Penn State

Cell photos credit: Parkinson’s Disease Research Lab in the FIU Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work

Take out the trash

The dopamine neuron in the cell model pictured here was full of trash. Autophagy, the built-in cellular house cleaning system, wasn’t working as it should to dispose of damaged, misfolded proteins. Too much alpha-synuclein had accumulated. This is the problem protein involved in Parkinson’s disease that clumps together, disrupts cell-to-cell communication and triggers neuronal death.

Kim Tieu and researchers in his lab had doused cells with different concentrations of manganese (exposure to high levels is a risk factor for developing Parkinson’slike neurological symptoms). Even small amounts impaired autophagy, according to the study’s results published in Molecular Neurodegeneration — suggesting chronic exposure could contribute to neurodegeneration. Then they made a discovery with clinical implications: A partial block of dynamin- related protein-1 (Drp1) coaxed the cell’s clean-up process to take out the trash again, regardless of manganese exposure.

With funding from a $6.6 million National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Revolutionizing Innovative, Visionary Environmental Health Research (RIVER) grant, Tieu’s lab is collaborating with Scripps Research to identify FDAapproved compounds that target Drp1 for new Parkinson’s therapies. They’re currently testing these drugs.

INVESTING IN GROWTH

A planned 100,000-square-foot medical center reflects the promise and purpose of a transformative alliance between the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and Baptist Health. The collaboration is already reshaping health care in South Florida, the Sunshine State’s most populous region.

AN ALLIANCE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS

IDEAL PARTNERS

Baptist is the largest not-for-profit health care organization in the region with 12 hospitals, more than 28,000 employees and more than 200 outpatient and urgent care facilities across four counties. For years it has led clinical rotations for FIU medical students in 40 specialties and subspecialties. Now it will become a statutory teaching hospital with the goal of attracting highly specialized physicians to lead groundbreaking research and clinical innovation.

FIU students, including those in other health programs, will benefit from the increased research as well as from a collaboration with the Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health. The alliance will also streamline residency training and reduce redundancies. Programs beginning in 2025 include internal medicine and neurology – specialty areas where Florida is experiencing a current supply/demand deficit – as well as diagnostic radiology.

Teaching hospitals carry a host of positives for the region in which they are located, among them greater retention of the physician residents they train. And when physicians attend medical school and complete a residency in the same city, the numbers jump even higher. Nearly 80% of those who complete medical school

and residency in the same city settle there, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

“This collaboration is a testament to our shared commitment to pioneering healthcare solutions,” says Dr. Jack Ziffer, Baptist Health executive vice president and chief clinical officer, “creating a culture of continuous learning and innovation, and providing compassionate, highest-quality care for our community.”

In a move addressing Florida’s projected physician shortfall of nearly 18,000 by 2035 – the fifth largest projected shortage in the United States – the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and Baptist Health joined forces in 2023 to establish an Academic Medical Center Enterprise. The alliance is expanding physician training, research and patient care in South Florida. It will be a transformative partnership for the college of medicine, for FIU, for Baptist and really, for the community an d we will measure our impact in the number of lives we tou ch.

FIU’s status as a top-tier (Carnegie R1) research university promises continuous, high-level investigations between the two institutions. Teaching hospitals by their nature encourage physicians to find innovative solutions to medical problems, and studies show that patients treated at academic medical centers have better outcomes.

Priority research areas include pulmonary vascular disease, environmental sciences and toxicology, drug discovery and nanotherapeutics, immunology and neurological disorders, and translational glycobiology.

— Dr. Juan Cendan Dean, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

A CAMPUS CLINICAL BUILDING

Just as the Florida Legislature nearly two decades ago supported establishing the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, it applauded the alliance with Baptist by appropriating $100 million in initial funding for the campus building that will serve as a foundation for much of what’s ahead. Completion is expected in 2028.

The new medical center will cater to those in nearby neighborhoods seeking primary and specialty clinical health services and provide opportunities for interdisciplinary health science education for the university’s academic programs in not just medicine but nursing, social work, public health and the allied health sciences.

FIU President Kenneth A. Jessell emphasizes the significance of the partnership in raising health care standards. “There is a great deal of excitement around this collaboration because it elevates the work both FIU and Baptist are doing. We are creating a rich ecosystem that will result in some of the best health care in the nation.”

Investing in Growth

TOP SPECIALIST IN ROBOTIC CARDIAC SURGERY JOINS FIU-BAPTIST TEAM

As part of their strategic alliance, FIU and Baptist Health have committed to recruiting top-tier talent in a variety of fields. Recently, internationally renowned Dr. Makoto Hashimoto was appointed director of robotic cardiac surgery at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Previously, he served as director of the Center of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery and Robotic Cardiac Surgery at Sapporo Heart Center in Japan.

Hashimoto specializes in robotic and minimally invasive cardiac procedures, which he will perform at Baptist Health Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute. Such alternatives to traditional open-heart surgery expose patients to significantly lower risk of infection and other side effects to allow for a faster, easier recovery. Conditions he treats include coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease, cardiac arrhythmia and adult congenital cardiac disease.

A recognized innovator, Hashimoto is further distinguished for having taught robotic surgery to physicians at hospitals throughout his homeland, promoting safety and efficiency in the use of the powerful, next-generation medicine. He will bring his wide experience of guiding others to both his new clinical practice and educational responsibilities. Colleagues and students will also benefit from his experience as the former head of one of Japan’s largest heart programs.

Born in Finland and raised in Japan, Hashimoto welcomes his relocation halfway around the world. “I really love the international atmosphere of Florida,” he says, “and it is an honor to be able to contribute to patients here.”

Dr. Makoto Hashimoto Director of robotic cardiac surgery at the FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

Historic signing, from left: Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine Dean and Senior Vice President for Health Affairs Dr. Juan C. Cendan, FIU President Kenneth A. Jessell, and Baptist Health President and CEO Bo Boulenger make it official.

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT’S POSSIBLE

Sounds of a sick heart

CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE moves in stealth. Years pass with no visible signs. Once chest pain, fatigue or other physical symptoms set in, the heart has already been overworked and damaged. Warning signs of an unhealthy heart, though, can lurk — not so quietly — in its many complex sounds. This invention “listens” for changes, providing a way to pinpoint markers of heart failure based on the frequency and durations of sounds in a cardiac cycle. Paired with an algorithm, it could open the door to more accessible, low-cost diagnostics for routine doctor’s visits or at-home style tests for earlier detection, diagnosis and better treatment outcomes. The inventors of this patent are working with Dr. Tom Nguyen from Baptist Health’s Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute to begin clinical studies related to this work.

US Patent No. 11,771,378

Systems and Methods Quantifying Duration of Heart Sounds

Inventors include Joshua Hutcheson, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Valentina Dargam, a recent doctoral graduate from the Hutcheson Cardiovascular Matrix Remodeling Lab.

Made with support from the National Science Foundation Hutcheson’s lab is also supported by funding from the Florida Heart Research Foundation and the National Institutes of Health

Joshua Hutcheson and Valentina Dargam

Blocking the malaria parasite

CURRENT ANTIMALARIALS have a dilemma. They help kill the later stage malaria parasite but don’t completely prevent human-to-mosquito transmission, meaning a mosquito can bite a person still recovering, pick up the parasite, then infect other people days later. Arsinothricin (AST) can be a promising lead compound for new multi-stage antimalarial drugs to address this problem. In the lab, researchers showed AST targeted Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for most malaria deaths worldwide in human cells, blocking transmission and ending the malaria lifecycle — key to one day eradicating the deadly disease.

US Patent No. 11,877,996

Arsinothricin as a multi-stage antimalarial

Inventors include a team from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and College of Arts, Sciences & Education: Barry Rosen, distinguished university professor; Jun Li, associate professor of biological sciences; Guodong Niu, research assistant professor; Masafumi Yoshinaga, associate professor, Kennesaw State University.

Made with government support from the National Institutes of Health.

Compounds from the antifungal natamycin were shown in the lab to stop cancer from repairing damage to its DNA.

New directions for treating prostate cancer

PROSTATE CANCER remains the second most frequently diagnosed cancer among men. No efficient therapy is available for the treatment of resistant prostate cancer. Using a novel drug screening procedure, researchers found new methods for treating and reducing the recurrence of prostate cancer.

US Patent No. 11,839,621

Treatments of prostate cancer

Arsinothricin targeted Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite responsible for most malaria deaths worldwide in human cells

Compounds from already FDA-approved drugs, such as antifungal natamycin, were shown in the lab to stop cancer from repairing damage to its DNA — a process, in cancer, that helps bad cells thrive and multiply — without affecting normal cells. As a result, the rapid spread of cancer cells slowed.

Inventors include a team from the Biomolecular Sciences Institute and Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine: Yuk-Ching Tse-Dinh, distinguished university professor and founding director of the Biomolecular Sciences Institute, and Yuan Liu, associate professor.

The United States spends trillions annually on health care yet performs poorly in key health indicators. Hortensia Amaro, distinguished university professor and senior scholar for community health at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine and Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work, explores factors driving the American health disadvantage in this issue’s “In My View” editorial. She is a member of FIU’s Population Health Initiative executive council.

A member of the National Academy of Medicine, Amaro’s scholarship has advanced the understanding of gender and ethno-racial inequities in substance use disorders and co-occuring disorders treatment, HIV prevention and other urgent public health challenges. Prior to FIU, Amaro was an assistant vice provost and the first top-ranking Latina administrator at the University of Southern California, where she was also Dean’s Professor of public health and social work.

IN MY VIEW

BY HORTENSIA AMARO

AMERICA, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Despite spending more on health care than other wealthy nations, the United States ranks near the bottom of health indicators. One factor driving U.S. health care costs is high demand for expensive medical services that could have been mitigated with basic preventive efforts. Remarkably, these well-documented phenomena have primarily yielded astounding silence, and inaction at the policy level, from political leaders and government agencies responsible for improving the health of Americans. Authoritative reports by leading experts have provided ample evidence on the factors known to contribute to the American health disadvantage and high health care costs –enough to design and implement a national action plan to improve Americans’ health. While many factors are at play, improving

and strengthening the public health system through prevention and population-level policies and programs is key to improving the health of Americans. Simultaneously, investments in research and strategic solutions are needed to advance knowledge about the dynamics of the American health disadvantage. We can’t afford to wait to implement decisive policy action and research initiatives.

Numerous studies consistently show Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. This finding holds across age and income groups. The U.S. health disadvantage is not new; it has been growing for decades. It extends to a broad range of conditions including adverse birth outcomes, maternal mortality, injuries

The Role of Institutions of Higher Education

Universities in the U.S. have an important role to play in addressing American health disadvantage. Here are a few strategies for academic leaders to consider:

1

ADOPT THE WHO HEALTH IN ALL POLICIES

Adopt the WHO Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach by considering how internal policies may affect the health and wellbeing of students, staff, faculty and local communities.

2

FOSTER INTERDISCIPLINARY TRAINING

Foster interdisciplinary training and collaboration of faculty and students to understand and investigate interdisciplinary solutions to the American health disadvantage and its upstream contributors, and to evaluate the intended and unintended effects of policies on health.

3

UPSCALE AND MODERNIZE TRAINING

Upscale and modernize training for the current and future public health workforce, and energize research on population health and health policy and the economic, educational and social factors that contribute to health inequities.

and homicides, adolescent pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS, drug-related mortality, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and disability. The COVID-19 pandemic further widened the gap between America and comparable nations.

Yet, we spend much more. In 2022, the U.S. spent an average of $12,555 per capita on health care compared to an average of $6,651 in other wealthy countries. Additionally, in 2022, U.S. health care spending grew 4.1%, reaching $4.5 trillion or $13,493 per person. As a share of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, spending on health care accounted for 17.3%, yet the U.S. public health system continues to be grossly underfunded, accounting for about 3% of the total government expenditures on health.

disadvantage is likely related to multiple factors (e.g., problems with the health care system; a fragmented, under-funded and under-appreciated public health sector; economic conditions; individual behaviors; physical and social environment).

Given evidence demonstrating that more investments in public health have led to decreased use of medical services and sound return on investment for major chronic diseases, a clear path forward is to strengthen the U.S. public health system.

A growing body of literature is available to inform design and implementation of a robust national action plan to improve America’s health and health system. The 2013 landmark report by the National Academies, The U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, concluded that the U.S. health

The report called for research on the effects of policies, their variations over time across high-income countries, and the extent to which policy differences explain the U.S. health disadvantage. Regarding the cost of medical care, several studies have suggested that major contributors include administrative burdens and waste, drug costs, and wages for physicians and nurses. The cost of prescription drugs, which are significantly higher in the U.S. than other high-income countries, is a major factor and the focus of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which enables Medicare to negotiate some drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. A 2023 report by the Council on Health Care Spending and Value provided a road map for action with recommendations in four areas: administrative streamlining, price regulation and supports for competition, spending growth targets, and value-based programs. These recommendations should be implemented with corresponding adjustments for differing contributory factors found across U.S. regions and states.

Perhaps more fundamental to addressing the American health disadvantage is aligning policies with the consensus that the health of populations is largely influenced by factors other than health care.

inadequate national response to these problems despite numerous authoritative reports, spanning more than two decades, calling for action and specifying paths for such action.

There is overwhelming evidence that social determinants of health (e.g., education, income, food security, housing, neighborhood and environmental factors) shape living conditions and consequently health. Greater investment in addressing these factors is arguably a critical distinction between the U.S. and comparable countries.

The World Health Organization proposed the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach for cross-sector collaboration to consider the health impact of all policies. Steven Woolf, an internationally renowned expert on population health, asserts that new policies that target the social determinants of health are needed. He and other experts agree that lack of action to correct the trajectory of American health disadvantage will threaten our workforce, economy, businesses, and defense capabilities. Data corroborate these consequences of American health disadvantage: (1) CDC estimates that productivity losses linked to health-related absenteeism cost employers $225.8 billion annually, and (2) a 2022 Department of Defense report to Congress noted that 71% of Americans between the ages of 17-24 are ineligible for military service due to obesity, mental and other health conditions, or substance abuse. I am astounded and perplexed by our country’s

Where to Start?

START EARLY. One wellagreed upon international goal is to improve child health, which has implications for children’s outcomes on numerous life domains, but also for their adult health, well-being and productivity. A key factor affecting health throughout the lifespan is education, and early education is particularly critical. Compared to other wealthy nations, the U.S. spends much less of its gross domestic product on early childhood education and day care. However, there is some good news: Access, affordability and quality of early childhood education and day care have recently risen in visibility in the U.S. policy agenda. However, policy initiatives have yet to be realized sufficiently to meet the needs of American families. Lack of access to day care and early education also has negative implications for the workforce and for business. Improving access to day care and early education is an effective approach for addressing two recognized drivers of health: education and income.

START UPSTREAM. A second agreedupon international goal is to reduce poverty, especially among children and their families. Improving the safety net (e.g., via social welfare and income-

support benefits) is known to improve health and student performance in childhood and earnings and some health indicators throughout the lifespan. The 2021 expanded U.S. child tax credit is an example of a policy that helped reduce child poverty from 9.7% to 5.2%, the lowest rate ever. However, once the child tax credit expired, improvement in the child poverty rate was lost. Experts agree that a combination of strategies are needed.

The 2019 National Academies report, A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty, set forth 10 recommendations for modifications in existing programs in the U.S. In 2021, the Center for American Progress reiterated and supplemented many of the Academies’ recommendations.

Last fall, The Commonwealth Fund released a report, Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System. In it, this independent research group compared the health system performance of 10 countries, including the United States, to “glean insights for U.S. improvement.” Its conclusion? “The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its health care sector.”

The path forward for America is clear; a roadmap exists. But until political leaders and government agencies responsible for improving the health of Americans acknowledge that health is most importantly created by life/living conditions rather than health care services, our country’s performance in key health indicators will continue to lag behind that of other high-income countries.

TACKLING GLOBAL HEALTH CHALLENGES

ACOMPLEX INTERCONNECTEDNESS EXISTS

between everything on Earth. Ripple effects reverberate back and forth between people and the places they call home. But there’s still so much that remains unknown about how countless forces — like deadly record-breaking heat, sea level rise, hurricanes, diseases and epidemics, economic insecurity and more — come together to have a hand in what happens to us. Not only how long we live, but how well we live. FIU’s recently launched Population Health Initiative wants to start answering some of these complicated questions.

Rooted in team science, researchers from across different disciplines will collaborate on projects to address health at the societal level in South Florida.

Location is certainly one of the advantages of FIU’s initiative, since what happens here could foreshadow what unfolds in other parts of the world. In fact, the goal is to develop upstream solutions, like communityand system-level interventions, that can then be implemented by local, regional, global and private stakeholders to improve outcomes for all.

Partnerships with other institutions, like the University of Washington (UW), helped build this new model at FIU and will continue to be an active part of the process.

FIU continues to work with the UW Population Health Initiative to explore opportunities for partnership in population health-related research and training.

“With this new initiative, FIU is stepping up as a critical leader in this space, not only through scholarly expertise but through [their] capacity as a top public research university to convene and analyze collective effort,” said UW President Ana Mari Cauce at the launch of the Population Health Initiative at FIU in Washington, D.C. “The power of our partnership is truly amazing, and I’m so excited about what we’re going to do together.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by the Population Health Initiative team at FIU. In a world in flux, facing rapid changes and countless challenges, there’s too much at stake. They are ready to get to work and help people across South Florida and beyond lead better, healthier lives.

We are enthusiastic about supporting and fostering high quality cross-disciplinary research among faculty that addresses the most persistent and emerging population health challenges in areas such as climate variability and environmental/community resilience, infectious and chronic diseases, health economics and more.

— Mariana Sanchez Director, Population Health Initiative

RESEARCH PROJECTS

AT A GLANCE

DISPARITY IN DISASTER VULNERABILITY, DYNAMIC INEQUALITY, POPULATION HEALTH AND CLIMATE RESILIENCE

Investigators: Pallab Mozumder (principal investigator), professor, Institute of Environment; Indranil Sengupta, professor, Institute of Environment; Shahnawaz Rafi, research assistant professor, Institute of Environment; and Nafisa Halim, research assistant professor, Boston University.

Hurricanes have a disproportionate impact on socially and economically vulnerable communities. Analyzing household survey data from recent major hurricanes, this project will use machine learning along with other models to develop a disparity in disaster vulnerability index to help inform policy decisions and strategies to reduce impacts on underprivileged groups after major climate events.

AI-ENABLED SIMULATION MODELING FOR ADDRESSING POPULATION HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF SEA LEVEL RISE IN MIAMI

Investigators: Byomkesh Talukder (principal investigator), assistant professor, Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work; Ananda Mondal, assistant professor, Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences; Rajiv Chowdhury, chair and professor, Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work; Levente Juhász, research assistant professor and assistant director, Geographic Information Systems Center; Jayantha Obeysekera, director of the Sea Level Solutions Center, Institute of Environment; and Shimon Wdowinski, professor, Institute of Environment.

Growing evidence suggests sea level rise is linked to health risks like water and vector-borne diseases, respiratory issues and more. This study aims to create an AI-based simulation that integrates demographic, socioeconomic and environmental data to identify the health impacts of sea level rise in Miami and offer policymakers and community leaders data to develop adaptation strategies. This project offers a scalable model for improving health outcomes in other coastal regions.

FIU IN DC: A PLATFORM FOR RESEARCH LEADERSHIP

FIU’s center in Washington, D.C., located on Capitol Hill, promotes the university’s research through the convening of panels with national speakers, teaching sessions that gather decisionmakers, researchers and students in one place, and personalized, one-onone exchanges.

National research conferences: The center provides a platform for faculty to convene national thought leaders from across all sectors to share the latest findings, discuss potential solutions to urgent problems and find opportunities for collaboration. In the last year alone, more than 65 programs took place covering issues such as infrastructure, population health, climate technology and more.

The Talent Lab: Focused on providing real-world experience to aspiring leaders, the center offers a full complement of opportunities, among them multi-day fly-in seminars around specific themes and policy-related issues that involve over 600 students a year. Selected students working in campus laboratories receive training as “research advocates” who meet with lawmakers and their representatives, both in D.C. and in South Florida, to introduce some of the university’s most promising projects. Journalism students run their D.C. news bureau out of the center, and a comprehensive internship/career network serves both students and young alumni.

Research showcase: Product prototypes on exhibit and patent literature represent work that offers the potential for commercialization. An interactive digital display provides a “big picture” view of work in arenas such as the environment. Proprietary environmental monitoring systems and other devices used by researchers working in South Florida and around the globe are available for viewing.

Learn more about FIU in DC

Researcher Tiffany Troxler with partners from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Everglades Foundation during a national coastal restoration conference hosted at FIU in DC.

Redefi n ing personalized cancer treatment

BY ANGELA NICOLETTI

“ALRIGHT, IT’S GOING TO BE A LATE NIGHT,” Diana Azzam tells her research group. The call has just come in from the clinical trial coordinator at nearby Nicklaus Children’s Hospital with an update: A four-year-old girl with metastatic osteosarcoma was soon scheduled to undergo a lung biopsy. Azzam’s lab can expect to receive the sample within hours.

Go time. All hands on deck. Palpable energy sweeps across the room — excitement intermingled with a deep sense of responsibility. Everyone knows what they need to do. And they do it. Workstations are painstakingly prepped, organized. Dinner orders, placed; hunger an unnecessary distraction to the work ahead. Anxiously, Azzam’s team waits.

“Receiving a sample brings so many emotions,” Azzam admits. “We always remember there’s a person behind it, someone we may be able to help, so we’re filled with excitement and hope.”

DAY 1 5:34 PM Received sample

DAY 1 7:25 PM Preparing sample

DAY 2 10:48 AM Testing drugs

GOLDEN EVENING LIGHT fills the lab’s floor-to-ceiling windows as the courier arrives with a small white box weighing no more than a few pounds, unassuming if not for the fluorescent reddish orange biohazard warning label adhered to the side. The outside world shrinks, pales in comparison to what’s nestled inside: one test tube containing the freshly collected tissue sample, one vial of blood.

Thanks to a combination of advanced technology, this is all Azzam’s team needs from a patient to pinpoint which drugs will work against their cancer and provide those recommendations to the patient’s physician. From start to finish, the process takes a little under a week. When it comes to controlling diseases that masterfully shapeshift and spread to stay alive, every second counts.

CANCER IS ANCIENT It predates us, making an appearance in the prehistoric fossil record (one victim: a plant-eating Centrosaurus dinosaur that walked Earth about 76 million years ago). In humans, the earliest mention of cancer — a tumor of the breast — was recorded in Egypt around 3000 B.C.E. by the writer of the Edwin Smith Papyrus.

Scientists now understand more about cancer today than ever before in history. Every discovery, however, contains a multitude of mysteries about its true nature. For starters, cancer is not one single disease. There’s hundreds of types and subtypes. And because every person is different, so too, is every person’s cancer. How to keep up?

Hope has come from precision medicine. Commonly used techniques, like genomics, unlock insights into cancer’s biology and

evolutionary nature by sifting through a tumor’s DNA sequence to find mutations and target those abnormal changes with certain medications. But what if no actionable mutations are found? Recent data suggests only around 10% of adults have benefited from therapies guided by genomics alone. The percentage is suspected to be less in children.

That’s why Azzam uses a unique functional precision medicine approach. It combines genetic testing with the power of highly sophisticated ex-vivo drug screening (the “functional” part). A library of hundreds of FDA-approved cancer and non-cancer drugs are tested in the lab on living cells derived from a patient’s tumor. The goal: make a killer match. Or in Azzam’s words, find the “right drug for the right person at the right time.”

Take, for example, the four-year-old girl with metastatic osteosarcoma. Azzam’s team originally processed a sample from the bone cancer tissue in her right arm after it was amputated to stop the cancer from spreading further. Recommendations for treatment options were returned. Three weeks later, they received the subsequent lung biopsy. Totally different recommendations came back.

THE ENTIRE PROCESS may sound simple and straightforward enough. Minus one major, important detail. The success of the entire endeavor is riding on a culture model that mimics the complex tumor environment in the body. Without an accurate point of comparison, assays will produce futile results. What works in the lab will not work on the patient.

Generally speaking, a tumor exists as part of a larger ecosystem. Various other cells — like immune cells and fibroblasts (connective tissue cells) — nestle around it. This surrounding environment directly influences and supports tumor progression. Considering this critical interplay and its impact on treatment, Azzam’s team struck upon a way to grow better representations: a model that’s a mixture of cell populations, including those found in the tumor environment.

Results, so far, have been nothing short of astonishing. Nature Medicine published findings from the team’s first-of-its-kind clinical trial that examined the impact of functional precision medicine guided treatments for a small group of 25 pediatric patients with hard-to-treat, relapsed blood and solid tumor cancers. Genomic profiling identified actionable mutations in 5% of the children. Drug sensitivity tests turned up recommendations for all of them. Of those who received guided treatments, 83%

Functional precision medicine

Results from the team’s groundbreaking study were featured on the cover of Nature Medicine.

showed improved outcomes in response and survival over the course of the study.

except they aren’t widely sharing their discoveries in academic or medical journals.

“The take home message is we can use this approach to direct the next line of cancer therapy for children and adults,” says Azzam, who oversees the Center for Advancing Personalized Cancer Treatments at the FIU Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work. “This is feasible. It works.”

Today, Azzam’s group is among a handful scattered across the globe demonstrating that functional precision medicine can work in the real world. Recently, she’s been hearing from other scientists doing similar work with equally amazing outcomes,

“Please publish,” Azzam advises. “We can’t do this on our own. We need others to publish and together we will move the field forward.”

WHAT HAPPENED

AFTER the study landed on Nature Medicine’s April cover can best be described as a whirlwind. News media across the globe picked it up. Invitations to conferences followed. Doctors reached out, encouraged by the data. Even Neil, the FedEx driver who makes frequent deliveries to the lab, knows what’s at stake — on one occasion, going out of his way to ensure a sample could be delivered to the team on time.

The overwhelming response has certainly come as a surprise. More than anything, it “reinforced that we’re genuinely making a

difference in children’s lives,” says Arlet M. Acanda de la Rocha, a research assistant professor in Azzam’s lab who handled and processed the initial samples from the first clinical trial. “And saving them.”

Acanda de la Rocha is referring to Patient 13, a case involving a boy with acute myeloid leukemia. His doctors enrolled him in Azzam’s clinical trial and implemented the recommendations. First, to remove an unnecessary toxic medication from his chemotherapy regime. And also remove steroids that weren’t working as intended in his system, instead making his cancer cells grow exponentially. Within 33 days, Patient 13 reached remission. Two years later, he’s still cancer-free.

No wonder the work stays close to Acanda de la Rocha’s heart. Although her current focus is searching for new therapeutic targets for glioblastoma, the deadliest

PATIENT 13 YEARS LATER

Dr. Azzam with patient

Learn more about Patient 13

form of brain cancer, she drops what she’s doing to help with the growing number of patient samples from Azzam’s ongoing clinical trials for both adults and children. It’s another chance at helping another person. And another chance to show the exciting possibilities functional precision medicine holds for the future of oncology, especially to physicians who may still be on the fence about it.

DR. JORGE MANRIQUE-SUCCAR , a surgeon specializing in orthopedic oncology at Cleveland Clinic Florida, provides perspective on the hesitancy: “As doctors and surgeons, we’re used to doing things by the book” — following standard of care, the well-studied, statistically proven regime that benefits many people — because “you can be blamed for doing the wrong thing even if your intention is always doing the right thing for your patients.”

other medical issues, never smoked or anything, and here they are with metastatic sarcoma.” Some of these patients are currently enrolled in the clinical trial for adults with all types of relapsed cancers.

Immediately after Azzam approached Manrique-Succar about partnering on this study, he wanted to be a part of it.

Each day, on average, he sees around 30 patients in the clinic and may operate on only 6 or so. Research widens the impact he can have on people, especially “this kind of practice-changing research that can truly impact patient care,” he says. “I think this approach to individualized treatment is a gamechanger for cancer management. It makes sense, there’s logic to it and we’re using proven medications.”

I think this approach to individualized treatment is a game changer for cancer management. It makes sense, there’s logic to it and we’re using proven medications.

— Dr. Jorge Manrique-Succar

cells. Chemotherapy, radiation, you name it — frustratingly, they survive it. As a postdoctoral researcher, she joined a wellestablished drug discovery team with the goal of developing new drugs to take out these therapy-resistant cells. Surrounded by state-of-the-art high-throughput screening technology, a question popped into Azzam’s head: Is this available to people with cancer or in a clinical setting? “The answer was no. It shocked me,” she remembers. “I told myself, ‘Okay, I need to learn everything I can and try to bring these technologies closer to cancer patients.’”

That happened in 2016 when Azzam started her lab at FIU. Funding from the Florida Department of Health - Live Like Bella Pediatric Cancer Research Initiative got the first groundbreaking clinical trial, in collaboration with Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, off the ground. A $2 million appropriation from the State of Florida helped acquire the robotic drug testing equipment. Ebony Coats, Azzam’s lab manager, nicknamed it “Optimus” after the beloved, brave and wise Transformers hero. Appropriately fitting, considering all it does to help. “It’s basically a member of our team,” she smiles.

Manrique-Succar faces the brutal realities of cancer every day. He treats sarcomas, rare types of cancers that develop in bone, cartilage, tendons and more. Sometimes he’ll successfully remove a tumor, a procedure that can require amputation of an arm or leg. It’ll look like the patient is in the clear. Months later, cancer returns elsewhere in the body and there’s fewer treatment options available. “It’s just unfair You have a patient who doesn’t have any

Manrique-Succar, like Azzam, imagines the potentially greater benefits for newly diagnosed patients — a treatment of first choice not last resort. “Obviously, what I’d like is that we can do this testing at the very beginning, as soon as the tumor is found,” he says.

AZZAM NEVER SET OUT TO TREAT cancer in this manner. Initially, she was studying therapy-resistant cancer stem

Coats wears many hats. Her main job is ensuring everything with the samples runs smoothly. She explains the process as if she could do it in her sleep: Before cells ever meet a single drug inside of the workstation, the tissue sample is bathed in special enzymes. Large chunks of a tumor are not necessary. Amazingly, stringy and delicate tissue from a non-surgical fine needle biopsy will do, which makes testing widely accessible to more patients.

Prepared cell culture models are stored in the incubator at a familiar-to-them 98.6° F. Coats continuously checks to make sure the cells are “happy, healthy and unstressed,” growing like they would in the body, before giving them the greenlight for testing. Then, they get added to a plate with more than 380 separate wells; drugs to another. Optimus sandwiches them together: cells on top, facing the drugs down below. The transducer shoots out a small burst of sound, causing an imperceivable 2.5 nanoliter drug droplet to leap up into the cell plate. Within three to four hours, a full drug library can be tested.

AZZAM’S LAB ONCE RECEIVED about two to three samples a month. They are up to that same number each

week. Soon, there will be more. The lab is set to become the first dedicated to functional cancer drug testing in Florida. Most important, testing will be open to people outside of Azzam’s current clinical trials.

It can’t happen soon enough. Pleas for help from cancer patients and their families fill Azzam’s inbox daily, seeking enrollment in her trials. There’s been hundreds. Every story is different, but each one breaks her heart because all Azzam and her team want is to be there for people who need them. No matter the hour or day. No matter the obstacle or distance. “We owe this to them. They’re counting on us to keep pushing this forward.”

Azzam’s lab tests hundreds of different medications on a patient’s own cancer cells before administering treatment — tailoring therapies that are most likely to selectively kill tumors while minimizing toxic effects.

FUNCTIONAL PRECISION MEDICINE TO REDUCE HEALTH DISPARITIES IN CANCER

Pharmaceutical drugs work at the molecular level, targeting specific cells. The problem is people’s genetic variations all come down to the level of proteins: DNA differences control protein functions, and as a result, dictate drug efficacy. As Azzam’s research illustrates, this is why some drugs work well for some people but can be ineffective for others.

To further investigate this gene-drug link, Azzam also heads a National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities funded project — as part of FIU’s Research Center in Minority Institutions (RCMI) — to use functional precision medicine to not only expand treatment options for minority pediatric cancer patients but also identify unique biomarkers common across different groups that can be targeted with specific FDA-approved drugs.

“I’m particularly pleased that we will be providing our functional precision medicine approach to children with cancers that come from minority populations,” says Azzam. “These patients often don’t have access to these clinical trials.”

FIU-RCMI is focused on world-class, community-partnered health disparities research and training. Since its inception, the center has supported, trained and mentored dozens of post-doctoral fellows, junior faculty and other earlystage investigators.

Ebony Coats, Azzam’s lab manager.

Promising new drug candidate for Alzheimer’s

Kyung Bo Kim Professor, Center for Translational Science; Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

I feel like I’m in a new frontier of Alzheimer’s research — investigating immunoproteasome’s role in Alzheimer’s progression. Now we’re even closer to a drug that could be used in combination with other drugs to help patients and that’s so exciting.”

— Kyung Bo Kim

AMYLOID PLAQUES ARE A MAJOR focus of Alzheimer’s research and drug development efforts worldwide. But there’s another less understood hallmark of the disease, suspected to play an underlying role in its progression: chronic neuroinflammation. Could blocking these inflammatory waves ward off cognitive impairment? Through a promising new Alzheimer’s treatment discovery, Kyung Bo Kim has found an answer: Yes.

Kim targeted the proteasome, the cellular process responsible for round-the-clock removal of specific proteins compromising cell survival. He previously helped create drugs that interfere with this process in cancer cells to destroy them, including FDA-approved anti-cancer medication carfilzomib. This time, Kim turned his attention to immunoproteasome, a special proteasome found in immune cells, and tied to inflammatory responses. Unusually high levels have been detected in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

With funding from the National Institute on Aging, Kim identified immunoproteasome inhibitor compounds that controlled inflammation. When tested on Alzheimer’s mouse models, cognitive function improved regardless of amyloid plaque buildup — an encouraging sign this treatment could benefit those at any stage of Alzheimer’s. Next up: the investigational new drug enabling study, a crucial step before applying for clinical trials. Kim’s exploring how these same compounds could stop other diseases. So far, they’ve proven highly effective at stopping age-related macular degeneration, a cause of blindness.

Optimizing sleep health to improve mental health

A ROTTEN NIGHT’S REST makes anyone moody. For kids, sleep problems can be a more serious precursor to anxiety and depression. As a researcher and clinician who helps adolescents struggling with these disorders, Dana McMakin wants to know if worrying at bedtime interferes with the brain’s routine ability to process and permanently store emotional memories during sleep. And if this, in turn, causes difficulty regulating emotions. To find out, she’s taking an up-close look inside anxious kids’ sleeping brains.

At Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, McMakin’s leading a National Institute of Mental Health-funded project with FIU neuroscientist Aaron Mattfeld that’s following 200 kids with anxiety from 9-13 to 18 years of age. A combination of questionnaires, MRI scans and polysomnography — gold-standard technology that measures brain waves, eye movements and breathing — is providing a detailed picture into how exactly stress alters sleep physiology (i.e. REM sleep neurophysiology). Physiological differences are already emerging in the data.

This data is critical to pinpointing the right interventions. McMakin’s also getting a new collaboration off the ground with Harvard and University of Pittsburgh researchers. The NIMH-supported Pediatric Precision Sleep Network aims to identify sleep “fingerprints” that could predict mental health risks during this pivotal developmental period and develop screening tools for primary care providers.

Dana McMakin Professor, College of Arts, Sciences & Education, Center for Children and Families; Licensed clinical psychologist, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital

Of all the things that put you at risk for mental health problems — trauma, genetics, family environment — there’s a lot that’s hard to change. But sleep? It’s easy to modify. If we can find out what’s going on physiologically that impacts sleep, then we can pinpoint how and when to intervene.

— Dana McMakin

3D-printed bone reconstruction for pediatric cancer patients

Anamika Prasad Associate Professor, College of Engineering & Computing

My dream is to revolutionize pediatric osteosarcoma treatment and have more engineers sitting with doctors in a hospital, working together to design efficient, affordable solutions for patients.

— Anamika Prasad

DOCTORS SHARED THE CHALLENGES of helping their young patients with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, with Anamika Prasad. In the majority of cases, treatment requires a highly complicated surgery to remove sections of tumor-riddled bone. Implants made of metal or other sturdy manmade materials can be a good replacement option for adults. But not kids with still-growing bones. Securing a limb could stunt its growth, resulting in one arm or leg becoming shorter than the other.

Leveraging her background in materials science and civil engineering, Prasad is on a mission to find innovative solutions. She’s developing a unique ‘scaffold’ implant design adapted to children’s unique needs. Similar to temporary scaffolding that supports construction workers, these 3D-printed structures made of FDA-approved material will provide places for bone cells to cling and climb on, so they can build bone over time.

Prasad works closely with Dr. Juan Prettel, chief of musculoskeletal oncology surgery at Baptist Health, on this research. With support from the Casey DeSantis Florida Cancer Innovation Fund through the Florida Department of Health, they received a big boost to develop a cost-effective, streamlined framework. To get started, Prasad will use patient image data to generate the individualized, made-to-fit 3D designs on a computer.

Memories + history in music

MUSIC HOLDS AS MUCH HISTORY as any written record or document in an archive. That’s especially true of fújì — a popular genre hailing from Saheed Aderinto’s native Nigeria. More than the danceable drumbeats distinguishing its unique sound, fújì carries the memories of millions of Yoruba people. It is the way they see the world, a way of life.

As a leading social and cultural historian of modern Nigeria, Aderinto brings this important musical tradition to those who may have never even heard the word “fújì.”

He’s traveled to Lagos, Ibadan and other cities, visiting libraries, museums and universities to interview different fújì artists. Everything he learned, Aderinto shared in realtime with his deeply engaged audience on social media — part of his commitment to make research accessible to all people. It also went into his forthcoming book Fúji: An African Popular Culture. But he’s not stopping there.

The 2023 Dan David Prize winner, recognized for his outstanding contributions to history, continues to bridge the knowledge gap by venturing into what he calls a totally “different world” of visual storytelling. Aderinto directed and produced a multi-part documentary. It documents fújì’s emergence in the 1970s during Nigeria’s cultural and artistic revolution, the artists who defined its sound and performances that influenced other genres from hip-hip to gospel.

Saheed Aderinto

Professor, Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs

2023 Dan David Prize Winner

I am doing this research for a community of artists whose stories have been historically neglected and want their experiences to be communicated in a sophisticated and respectful form.

— Saheed Aderinto

Selcuk Uluagac

Cybersecurity researcher Selcuk Uluagac is an eminent scholar chaired professor in the Knight School of Computing and Information Sciences. He’s an expert in cybersecurity and privacy, focusing on malware, ransomware, Internet of Things, smart systems and more. As director of the Cyber-Physical Systems Security Lab, Uluagac collaborates with Google, Microsoft and other industry leaders to advance research and prepare the next generation of cyberwarriors to take on the rising threat of increasingly sophisticated, profit-driven cybercriminals.

Q & A

What’s one of the most concerning cyber threats today?

RANSOMWARE IS the No. 1 arms race between hackers and cybersecurity experts today. This type of malicious software holds sensitive personal data hostage in exchange for payment. Nearly every U.S. organization has been targeted: Fortune 500 companies, banks, governments, hospitals, insurance companies, schools. One recent breach led to a backlog in filling people’s prescriptions. It’s totally paralyzing. That’s why companies end up paying. In 2023, the payouts hit $1.1 billion.

Can ransomware attacks be combatted?

BAD GUYS will always find a way to get into your system. Hackers have everything in their arsenal to attack any system. Imagine you can lock all the doors and windows in your house. Does that really guarantee someone can’t break in? No, but being in this field for 15 years as an active researcher in cybersecurity topics, I’ve seen firsthand that the best way to prevent attacks is education and knowledge. If you learn to think like a hacker, you stay one step ahead. When you understand how things fall apart and break, you become a better defender.

How do you help students ‘think like a hacker in your lab? ’

MY LAB has every operating system and smart device imaginable. Working hands-on with this tech, students learn how different companies approach security. Undergrad student Paulina Acosta Cevallos had never touched an Apple computer before she joined my lab. Today she works at Apple as a software engineer. Other students have been hired by Amazon, Google, Sandia National Labs, the Department of Homeland Security and more.

What has your recent research uncovered about potential new types of ransomware?

MODERN WEB browsers are almost operating systems themselves, capable of running software programs and encrypting files. Our study showed these capabilities, combined with the browser’s access to host a computer’s files — including ones in the cloud, shared folders and external drives via the File System Access API — make it possible for hackers to create new types of browser-based ransomware. We also outlined defense approaches at different levels (browser, file system and user) to mitigate this ransomware and communicated with the developers who’ve expressed support for our work and interest in our approaches.

Can

smartphones also make us vulnerable to hackers?

YES, INDEED, in a new study supported by Google’s ASPIRE Program, we looked at the security of older Android phones. Data was collected from around the world to understand how security updates are pushed onto these phones. In some countries, phones are getting updates 30 days later than other places, putting them even at an increased risk against hackers. Google has been extremely interested in our results and they shared our findings internally with their vendor partners. That’s always our goal: Demonstrate how a system is vulnerable to attacks to help build better systems with security and privacy in mind.

What’s next?

I WAS RECENTLY named a program director of the National Science Foundation’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program. I’ll be using my expertise to help manage a diverse portfolio of projects and guide decisions on new directions for cybersecurity and privacy research projects. I’m so honored to represent FIU in this role.

If people want HEALTHY OCEANS , we need HEALTHY SHARK

POPULATIONS

A DOLPHIN WAS NESTLED IN A DEEPWATER HOLE HIDDEN WITHIN THE SHALLOW WATERS OF SHARK BAY, AUSTRALIA. RICHARD CONNOR, ONE OF THE WORLD’S TOP DOLPHIN RESEARCHERS, SPIED IT FROM HIS BOAT AS HE HEADED FOR SHORE AFTER A DAY OF GATHERING DATA FOR HIS VOCALIZATION RESEARCH. ASSISTING HIM WAS A 20-YEAR-OLD MIKE HEITHAUS, THEN AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT AT OBERLIN COLLEGE AND WELL BEFORE HIS DAYS

AS EXECUTIVE DEAN OF FIU’S COLLEGE OF ARTS, SCIENCES & EDUCATION. IT WAS 1994.

BY JOANN ADKINS

HEITHAUS AND CONNOR had met the year before at the biannual Marine Mammal Conference, where Connor was presenting his latest research. Heithaus recognized him from a dolphin documentary he had watched during a college class and approached. Connor recalls his enthusiasm.

“He came up and talked to me, asked if I needed any help out there,” Connor said. “He was positive and energetic. I thought sure, why not. We only talked a few minutes, but when it came time to plan for the next season, I reached out. He was on my boat that summer.”

In Shark Bay, the dolphin in the deepwater was not doing anything unusual, but Connor recalls Heithaus’s observation: “I think it feels safer there than in the shallows.”

Heithaus returned the following year, taking the helm of one of Connor’s research boats. Perhaps it was the large shark bite scar on the dolphin they named Wow. Maybe it was that dolphin the year before, hiding from sharks in the safety of the deepwater. For certain, there

were conversations about sharks with Connor and Larry Dill, another marine scientist who spent time in Shark Bay.

BY 1997, HEITHAUS WAS

THINKING ABOUT SHARKS.

Thirty years since that first Shark Bay summer, Heithaus has amassed a portfolio of work that has changed the world’s understanding of sharks and their roles in keeping oceans healthy. This includes 20+ years working in Shark Bay, producing the most detailed study on the ecological role of sharks in the world, and Global FinPrint, an ambitious worldwide effort to survey the world’s shark and ray populations.

Now, Heithaus and 29 other scientists from around the world have published a review of the ecological importance of sharks in

Mike Heithaus, Shark Bay 1994

National Geographic/Tristan Goodley

Science. Heithaus Lab post-doctoral researchers Simon Dedman and Jerry Moxley — both co-lead authors of the study — helped assemble findings from more than 100 studies to produce the comprehensive assessment that reveals sharks can be supreme architects of ocean health — from top-down and bottom-up. Many of the studies included were led by Heithaus and his close collaborators. Some of the others built upon his work. The research offers a wide range of insight into shark roles and conservation opportunities. The main takeaway is pretty simple:

If people want healthy oceans, we need healthy shark populations in many of our marine ecosystems.

— Michael Heithaus

According to the research, this means shark conservation must go beyond simply protecting shark populations —

IT MUST PRIORITIZE PROTECTING THE ECOLOGICAL ROLES OF SHARKS

The largest sharks of many of the biggest species, such as tiger sharks and great whites, play an oversized role in healthy oceans, but they are often the most affected by fishing. The big sharks help maintain balance by what they eat and who they scare. Sometimes their sheer size is enough to scare away prey. Think of the dolphin avoiding the shallows of Shark Bay. For other prey, like turtles and dugongs (sea cows), this fear factor could scare them away and keep them from over-consuming seagrass and other plant life needed for healthy oceans.

Other roles of sharks (of a variety of sizes) include: moving nutrients that fertilize the base of the food web; serving as scratching posts for fish to remove parasites; and even small sharks serving as food for other species of sharks and killer whales. That means a variety of sharks are needed in ecosystems, yet their many and diverse contributions to ocean health are under threat from overfishing, climate change, habitat loss, energy mining, shipping activities and more.

SHARKS ARE IN TROUBLE

As global temperatures increase, some sharks are heading into new areas where they can find the temperatures they thrive in. In addition, with the expansion of blue economy industries like aquaculture and tourism, people’s encounters with sharks will likely increase. Finding a balance that protects the sharks most needed for healthy oceans is hitting a critical point.

“When we look around the world, we see that sharks can play lots of different roles in ecosystems – and some of them are really important,” Heithaus said. “That means we need to maintain a diversity of sharks in our oceans as well as a wide range of sizes of sharks. It also means we need to be rebuilding heavily depleted populations and managing for how sharks will function in oceans that are changing due to human uses and climate change.”

71% of shark abundance has plummeted for oceanic species in the past 50 years.

63% of the five most common reef shark species have been depleted and sharks are no longer performing viable ecological roles on at least 20% of reefs worldwide.

<2% of protected areas adequately protect shark species.

Globally, only 1 catch limit exists for sharks in regional fisheries management organizations.

Mike Heithaus in the field tagging a shark.

“This study verifies what we’ve long suspected – sharks are critical to ocean health,” said Lee Crockett, executive director of the Shark Conservation Fund, which funded the study. “This landmark study serves as confirmation that marine conservationists, philanthropists, policymakers, and the public alike need to recognize that sharks are keystone species that have a now-proven significant effect on marine environments.”

As the research puts a spotlight on the critical importance of sharks, the researchers also offer suggestions that could aid in protecting and restoring sharks’ functional roles. These include national and international policies to increase spatial measures like Marine Protected Areas. They also recommend fisheries management measures like catch/size limits and limitations on gear that is particularly harmful to sharks like gillnets and longlines.

The publication of this research is a full-circle moment for Heithaus and what started with a chance introduction to the pristine waters of Shark Bay.

“In those early days, we talked about the sharks a lot,” Connor said. “Our group had always been saying, the ecology of Shark Bay is incredible. More people should be here studying the other animals.”

Today, Heithaus continues to expand his shark research, including collaborative efforts to fill data gaps. When he joined FIU as a faculty member in 2003, he was the lone shark researcher.

NOW, FIU HAS ASSEMBLED ONE OF THE LARGEST UNIVERSITY SHARK TEAMS IN THE COUNTRY.

It includes several researchers who co-authored the review in Science — Yannis Papastamatiou, Simon Dedman and Jerry Moxley. Along with marine ecology, they’re also studying shark behavior. Other members of the FIU shark team include: Diego Cardeñosa

HEITHAUS LAB

Mike Heithaus, researchers in his lab and collaborators across the world leverage cutting-edge technologies, like drones and animal-borne cameras, to unravel the mysterious lives of hard-to-study predators and their prey. Their work past and present has taken them around the world.

and Mark Bond who are working on policy and conservation; Kevin Boswell, a fisheries and acoustics technology expert; and Yuying Zhang, a fisheries expert who is currently working on methods of sampling for shark populations. The team’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, Batchelor Foundation, National Geographic and others. FIU has been recognized as one of the top universities in the world for impact on life below water for these combined efforts along with other initiatives in marine science.

French Polynesia

French Frigate Shoals

British Columbia

Washington State

Gulf of Mexico

Bahamas

French West Indies Brazil

Caribbean, including Dominican Republic Colombia Florida (Keys, Florida Bay, West Palm, Rookery Bay, Shark River)

Recife Fernando de Noronha

Mike ended up doing what we always hoped would be done. He did community ecology. That was so essential and desperately needed.

— Richard Connor

Ever a favorite meal for sharks, the dolphins have not been forgotten. Heithaus and Connor have reunited, this time at FIU. After 24 years at the University of Massachusetts, Connor has joined the faculty at FIU as he continues to study the dolphins of Shark Bay. He and Heithaus are planning to further their work in the World Heritage Site.

“When I was ready to start my Ph.D., I had three options — study stream fish and fish genetics, primates in Uganda or return to Shark Bay,” Heithaus said. “The one thing everyone seemed to agree on was that Shark Bay was risky. It would be starting from scratch, doing something that hadn’t been done before. I decided to go the risky route. With all that we’ve learned about sharks since, I think I made the right decision.”

A lot of what we’ve learned and the strides we’ve made are all because of our collaborations across the globe. There are tons of exciting projects on the horizon and more important work to do.

— Michael Heithaus

French Scattered Islands

Shark Bay Australia Madagascar Tanzania

A scientist for the marginalized

Marianna K. Baum

Distinguished University Professor, Robert Stempel College of Public Health & Social Work

Research helps inform the people who make the decisions. Public health policy depends on it.

— Marianna K. Baum

MARIANNA K. BAUM HAS FUNNELED three decades of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health toward building the scientific community’s understanding of the health challenges and consequences faced by those on society’s edge.

For the past eight years, she has followed more than 1,500 individuals who experience food and housing insecurity and often suffer with substance use disorder, HIV or both. She has followed an additional 4,000 members of underserved minority communities to track their uptake of COVID testing and vaccination.

Inside Baum’s research clinic just north of downtown Miami, graduate students and staff interview study participants about their access to care and the social risk factors each faces. Her research has included studying the mechanism of liver disease and the effects of depression on inflammation, insomnia and diabetes. She has shown that poor quality of life increases cognitive impairment and that nutrient supplementation benefits those living with HIV.

Baum’s work has been shared in hundreds of publications and at international forums. She insists that society must care for every segment of its population and tirelessly pursues data to educate leaders in a position to improve the lot of those most often ignored and forgotten.

Genetic engineering + wildlife law

THE RETURN OF THE LONG-EXTINCT wooly mammoth or dodo bird may sound like a storyline straight out of science fiction. It’s not. Several deextinction projects all share an ambitious aim to resurrect disappeared species. Impossible to create an exact clone of these long-gone creatures, scientists instead modify the DNA of living animals to resemble extinct ones. This same technique is also used in last-ditch conservation interventions for imperiled animals, like modifying the genes of coral to withstand warmer oceans.

The new science marches forward. The law can’t keep up. Wildlife conservationist turned legal scholar Alex Erwin constructs the legal framework to begin to establish guidance and parameters around when genetic engineering would actually prove beneficial — not wasting time, resources, money and effort. For example, genetic tinkering might help an animal facing a deadly virus or plague, not necessarily one facing habitat destruction.

At the intersection of law and science, Erwin’s nationally recognized scholarship focuses on the intersection between science and wildlife law. His recent work determined genetic engineering would be covered by the Endangered Species Act and that the existing law would provide regulatory oversight and authority to federal agencies. His article on the topic was selected for presentation at the prestigious Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

Assistant Professor, College of Law

Megan A. Fairlie Professor of the Year

Genetic engineering is the next step and future of conservation to recover biodiversity when traditional methods won’t work. That’s why it’s the perfect time to think about law and policy.

— A lex Erwin

Alex Erwin

Quest for lifesaving perfume

Matthew DeGennaro Director, Biomolecular Sciences Institute College of Arts, Sciences & Education

Understanding how mosquitoes find humans can allow us to build a nextgeneration repellant. We can make an impact, not only in our community, but across the world.

— Matthew DeGennaro

MOSQUITOES ARE THE DEADLIEST animals on the planet, killing hundreds of thousands of people every year through the spread of disease. Neurogeneticist Matthew DeGennaro is on the hunt for a lifesaving perfume.

He’s the first scientist to make a mutant mosquito — a game-changing tool in researching mosquito behavior. Secured in his Tropical Genetics Lab, DeGennaro relies on his mutants to help answer globally critical questions like how mosquitoes find people. Because he can’t ask a mosquito, he removes a single gene to create a mutant and then observes its behavior. In 2019, DeGennaro unleashed a new era in mosquito prevention research when he, with the help of his students, identified the olfactory receptor mosquitoes rely on to detect people. His focus has now shifted to finding a scent to disrupt that receptor.

DeGennaro’s research has provided other key insights including what goes into a mosquito’s decision of where to lay eggs and natural odors that could keep mosquitoes at bay. The research has been supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and U.S. Department of Defense. DeGennaro has been an investigator of the CDC-sponsored Southeastern Center of Excellence in Vector-borne Disease since its inception. His growing understanding of mosquito behavior could someday help end the global scourge of mosquito-borne diseases.

Speech pathology

CHELSEA SOMMER WANTS EVERY CHILD born with cleft palate to receive the care they deserve. The bilingual speech-language pathologist knows it can be challenging to obtain treatment for this complex congenital difference that is associated with speech development problems, even after surgery. Roughly 70% of children with cleft palate require speech therapy, however, there are some regions in the world with a shortage of speech therapists.

A professor and craniofacial speech therapist at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, Sommer knows a child who cannot be understood might be less likely to speak and be spoken to. Addressing the gap in care, she has been part of the development of a structured virtual cleft speech mentorship program with Smile Train for speech practitioners of all skill levels. Additionally, Sommer has traveled to Peru for the past three years to volunteer with the FACES Foundation, providing speech assessment and treatment to children with cleft palate.

In other research, Sommer and colleagues at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital are examining the validity of artificial intelligence in assessing hypernasality in patients with velopharyngeal dysfunction (VPD) – which occurs in about 20-30% of children with cleft palate after their palate repair. Sommer and her colleagues are investigating whether artificial intelligence could aid health care practitioners in making a diagnosis.

Chelsea L. Sommer Assistant Professor, Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences

The ability to communicate and to be understood is a basic human right. My life’s mission is to ensure comprehensive cleft palate care for every child who needs it.

— Chelse a L. Sommer

BY ANGELA NICOLETTI

EXTREME WEATHER EVENTS, like hurricanes, flooding and heatwaves, devastated cities and towns across the country in 2024. Add in the threat of sea level rise along with the global demands for energy that shows no signs of abating, and the gravity of the current situation raises many questions: Are we ready for what’s next? And how can we prepare?

FIU — named Florida’s University of Distinction for Environmental Resilience — is helping lead the charge to safeguard our communities, livelihoods and future of our planet. Researchers don’t only live in America’s ‘ground zero’ for climate-related risks. They’re also at the center of finding innovative, realistic solutions to address those challenges. Collective action and collaboration between ecologists, engineers, architects and other scientists has resulted in scalable, resiliencepromoting technologies that monitor and clean up imperiled ecosystems, strengthen critical infrastructure, boost the viability of sustainable power sources and ensure a more resilient world for centuries to come.

Release the Robots

FIVE DECADES of nuclear energy research and weapons development — spanning from WWII to the end of the Cold War — left behind a toxic environmental legacy. Clean up became its own “priority mission,” explains Inés Triay, interim dean of the College of Engineering & Computing and executive director of the Applied Research Center (ARC).

To date, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) has deactivated, decommissioned, decontaminated and deconstructed over 90 sites — many under Triay’s leadership as assistant secretary for DOE-EM. Only 15 remain. According to some estimates, it could take another 90 years to dispose of the rest of the millions of gallons of radioactive bomb-making waste, demolish contaminated buildings and finish remediating soil and groundwater.

FIU scientists are sending in their robotic systems to help DOE with this massive undertaking. No two are alike. All are built to trek into radioactive environments so humans stay out of harm’s way.

Leonel Lagos, principal investigator of the DOE-FIU Cooperative Agreement who oversees the Applied Robotics and Remote Systems Lab, explains each system is designed to be “plug and play,” or meticulously programmed to meet DOE needs. For instance, Boston Dynamics’s “Spot” — the bright yellow, agile, four-legged robot — can already open doors and bypass obstacles. To take those skills to the next level, ARC researchers retrofitted Spot for inspections and data collection tasks by strapping on sophisticated sensors to measure radiation, as well as high quality LiDAR that uses lasers to 3D map and model large areas.

The ARC team also builds many robots from the ground up. Like one with heavy-duty wheels meant to cart around tools, including drills and cutters, to collect samples and make repairs. Or the “wall crawler” that, as its name suggests, can climb vertically to apply spray coatings to radiologically contaminated surfaces. Other crawlers — downright miniscule in comparison to their counterparts — squeeze into the tightest of spaces and have already gone underground to check for leaks at the DOE’s Hanford site where buried tanks contain 56 million gallons of radioactive waste.

Robots roam the land and even help manage and monitor coastal ecosystems like Miami’s Biscayne Bay.

When a fish kill happened in August 2020, Todd Crowl — director of the Institute of Environment — quickly assembled a team of marine biologists, ecologists, chemists and computer scientists who deployed buoys and autonomous vessels equipped with special sensors that measure temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll and more.

The data soon painted the full picture of what was happening: Too-hot water temperatures coupled with significant nutrient pollution had caused oxygen levels to plummet.

Fast-forward four years. The bay’s health remains in flux. Fish kills have become a common occurrence. And FIU’s robotics continue to patrol the waters. Any tell-tale signs of trouble and the autonomous vessels are rounded up.

Coming soon:

The Robotics and Autonomous Systems Laboratory for Coastal Conservation and Restoration. This hub for marine robotics research will be the only facility of its kind at a university. It was made possible through a $9 million congressional appropriation from the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST).

Data scientists like Gregory Murad Reis give them directions to their destinations. An expert in marine robotics, he writes the complex code, or roadmap, that tells the vessels where to go and, importantly, how to return with their priceless treasure troves of data. Reis and his computer science students create software technology and visualization tools, like dashboards and color-coded maps, to make this important water quality data accessible and easily understandable for policymakers and the public.

Leonel Lagos with students Maria Sotolongo and Carlos Rios in FIU’s Applied Robotics and Remote Systems Lab.

Computer science students Monica Burbano and Valerie Benedit operate an autonomous surface robot in Biscayne Bay.

Lessons from Nature

ARCHITECTS THINK a lot about the fate of coastal cities. With rising seas, will they become the next Atlantis?

Thomas Spiegelhalter asks a different question. What could be the new standard for climate-resilient architecture? An expert in carbon-neutral energy building and resilient city planning, Spiegelhalter heads up a research group that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to design climate-resilient cities. His team’s innovative concepts include floating buildings, structures elevated on stilts, as well as adaptable hybrids that can be above, on or below the water.

“We’re designing to withstand not only the immediate impacts of hurricanes but also long-term challenges like coastal erosion and rising seas,” says Spiegelhalter.

At first glance, the designs may seem familiar. Deeply rooted in biomimicry, they draw inspiration from the natural world. For example, some of the generative designs use tension and compression structures

modeled after the flexibility of trees, allowing buildings to bend and sway in hurricane-force winds without breaking.

“Nature is a great teacher,” agrees Sara Pezeshk. “As architects, we’re usually only designing for people, but if we look at and learn from nature, we can better design for the planet and that’s important for our survival.”

Pezeshk is the principal investigator of an NSF-funded project that, with a new concept she calls Ecoblox, is transforming existing seawalls into something both beautiful and beneficial to the environment.

Far from ordinary rectangular concrete blocks, Pezeshk’s artful modular system is inspired by coral’s intricate patterns and textures — designed to nurture biodiversity and enhance marine ecosystems. Each delicate fold and crevice is algorithmically shaped using computational codes, integrated with data from scientific journals — for example, the exact crevice sizes oysters prefer for habitat — to script and generate the ideal, most inviting homes for these essential filter-feeder species. Designs are then fabricated using cutting-edge robotic 3D printing to be attached seamlessly to existing seawalls.

Pezeshk points out that future possibilities for Ecoblox are seemingly endless. She’s working on variations that are currently in development, including a SMARTE tile (Sensing and Monitoring for Aquatic Restoration, Tracking, and Evaluation) equipped with sensors that can monitor vital water quality parameters such as salinity, oxygen and pH levels, temperature, as well as other vital data.

Sara Pezeshk and Shahin Vassigh — director of FIU’s Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab — recently received new support from the EPA to further this work, and soon Ecoblox will be installed at several sites in Biscayne Bay for field testing.

Sara Pezeshk with one of her Ecoblox in FIU’s Robotics and Digital Fabrication Lab.

Introducing South Florida’s ClimateReady Tech Hub Bolstering Infrastructure

CONVENTIONAL CONCRETE may be strong. But ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) is five times stronger. “Just applying a shell of UHPC around a structure, like a bridge column, adds to its total strength and makes it almost maintenance free for life,” explains Atorod Azizinamini, director of infrastructure, research and innovation at FIU and a leading bridge engineering expert who holds a patent for this UHPC shell framework concept.

Made with a mix of durable materials like steel fibers and very fine sand (rather than standard aggregate like rocks or gravel) it’s become an ideal candidate for the 40,000+ U.S. bridges and other aging infrastructure in need of repair or maintenance. Another benefit: UHPC is saltwater resistant, making it perfectly suited for coastal structures prone to damaging corrosion.

Azizinamini — along with the team he leads at the USDOT-funded Innovative Bridge Technologies/Accelerated Bridge Construction University Transportation Center (IBT/ABC-UTC) — currently explores new ways to maximize the advantages of UHPC through additive construction.

One technique involves robotic equipment to create site-specific, 3D-printed structural pieces for retrofitting or reinforcement.

Another is the use of UHPC in conjunction with pneumatic or “shotcrete” spraying.

With funding from the U.S. Army Corps and IBT/ABC-UTC, Azizinamini developed an open source, cost-effective sprayable UHPC. It has a lower carbon footprint and life cycle cost while reducing application time and labor. In collaboration with the Northern Virginia District of the Virginia Department of Transportation, FIU’s UHPC was recently used for the first time to repair a bridge in the U.S.

Then-U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Alejandra Y. Castillo visited FIU to make the nationwide announcement about funding for the South Florida ClimateReady Tech Hub.

SOUTH FLORIDA was selected to be the home of the nation’s climate-ready tech hub. It aims to advance sustainable and resilient infrastructure while scaling up the production and delivery of critical technologies that will strengthen America’s clean energy transition and national security. Of the $19 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, $10 million will go to FIU to support:

• TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND MATURATION Accelerate the readiness and expand deployment of cement technologies like FIU’s Ultra High Performance Concrete.

• CLIMATE READY INFRASTRUCTURE INNOVATION CENTER Over the next five years, services and mentorship will be provided to at least 60 infrastructure innovation startups and small businesses.

• INDUSTRY CODES AND STANDARDS

FIU’s Wall of Wind (WoW), the only life-size test facility at a U.S. university capable of generating Category 5 winds, has led to improved codes and safer buildings. Now, NSF-funding will support the design of a new facility to test construction against 200 mph winds, combined with a water basin to simulate storm surge and wave action. All of this will help researchers continue to provide expertise and input for the improvement of building codes and standards, work on policies to incorporate new materials and technologies, as well as give regulators guidance on which standards to enforce and recommendations to streamline the approval process.

Take a closer look at how FIU is leading this effort in the infographic on pg. 58.

Above: UHPC is made of a mix of durable materials, including steel fibers. Right: Azizinamini applying UHPC.

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

THE SOUTH FLORIDA CLIMATEREADY TECH HUB is led by Miami-Dade County and includes Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach counties and over 40 research and small business partners throughout the region. Funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, this program will develop, commercialize and scale tech focused on sustainable and climate resilient infrastructure. FIU is leveraging its deep expertise and world-class research facilities to lead the infrastructure component of this effort in safeguarding our coastal cities and beyond.

CO MMERCIALIZATION HUB

The Climate Ready Infrastructure Innovation Center will provide services and mentorship to startups and small businesses focused on climate-ready infrastructure.

S USTAINABLE CONCRETE

With Titan America and Carbon Limit, FIU is advancing low-carbon cement technologies, like ultra-high performance concrete, to enhance durability, reduce concrete emissions and in some cases, turn concrete into a carbon-absorbing sponge.

Designed to attach to existing seawalls, Ecoblox was invented to enhance marine biodiversity and mitigate water pollution in coastal areas.

S MARTER SEAWALLS

WALL OF WIND

Capable of generating Category 5 winds, this facility has contributed to Florida’s leading position in building codes for hurricanes. It will be used by Tech Hub partners to test new materials and innovative products in development.

A DDITIVE MANUFACTURING

With over $25 million in funding from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, FIU’s Cold Spray and Rapid Deposition Lab advances techniques in the repair, design and durability of high-performance materials with applications for commercial aviation, automobiles and more.

S OLAR INNOVATION

Supported by FPL/NextEra, the AI-based microgrid advances research into a resilient energy future in the face of natural disasters.

E NVIRONMENTAL ROBOTICS

Researchers design and deploy buoys and autonomous vessels to identify and trace emerging contaminants in coastal environments.

SALTWATER INTRUSION TESTING

Federal support from Congress and NOAA is launching a network of monitoring wells to study the impact of saltwater intrusion on the foundations of coastal buildings.

*For representational purposes only. Rendering not to scale.

Charging Up

LAPTOPS, SMART PHONES and watches, electric vehicles have all evolved dramatically in the last few decades. The batteries that power them? Not so much. At this point, lithium-ion is decades old technology. Batteries have essentially become “the bottleneck in technology,” explains Bilal El-Zahab who leads FIU’s Battery Research Laboratory. Cheaper, more powerful, smaller alternatives are needed.

Introduced to ionic materials as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, El-Zahab has spent over a decade working on beyond lithium-ion battery technologies, such as solid-state, lithiumsulfur and lithium-air batteries. Part of this research involves how palladium and platinum can be used as catalysts to improve cycling

charge capacity, giving batteries a boost in performance and a longer lifespan.

One resulting innovation is a patented lithium sulfur battery that packs more energy into the same amount of space and weight. “Instead of using a 1,000-pound EV battery, you could have one that’s 500 pounds and get the same driving range,” El-Zahab says. “Or you could keep the battery the same size, replace it with our cells and get double the range. For example, a Tesla Model 3 gets 320 miles on a full charge, so that could become 640 miles, at least.”

Currently, it’s rigorously being pushed to its limits in a third-party lab — an important step before commercialization.

Lion Battery Technologies has provided over $4 million in research and development support for El-Zahab’s battery work.

El-Zahab and postdoctoral scientist Aqsa Nazir check on the hundreds of batteries that are being tested in the FIU Battery Research Laboratory.

New energy generation and storage solutions Grid revolution

BATTERY ENERGY storage systems and renewable energy must “work together hand in hand,” says Daniela Radu, who researches nanomaterials for the next generation of solar cells at FIU. “That’s how you get to energy zero.”

This seamless integration is the goal of the Center of Excellence for Integrated Renewable Energy and Energy Storage. Established with a $10 million investment from the Department of Defense (DoD), FIU leads this multi-year project — that includes collaborators from Pennsylvania State University — to find new energy solutions that support DoD’s strategic commitment to making climate resilience a national security priority.

“If you look at traditional solar panels, the first thing that comes to mind is they’re very heavy,” says Radu, the project’s principal investigator. “Soldiers carry a lot in the field, so imagine having to carry heavy solar panels and batteries on top of it. We’re aiming to create lightweight, foldable, portable alternatives.”

Additionally, the researchers want to incorporate Earth crust elements that are more readily available in the U.S., like copper, while maximizing power conversion efficiency by capitalizing not just on photons in sunlight but any light source, including indoor light bulbs.

All of this will connect to a microgrid. Unlike the traditional power grid that’s interconnected and delivers electricity to many homes or businesses, a microgrid acts independently or in “island” mode — especially important for soldiers often stationed in remote areas.

MICROGRID TECHNOLOGY is uniquely capable of protecting the reliability of our energy supply in the wake of extreme weather events such as wildfires and hurricanes.

As part of a decades-long effort to advance renewable energy technologies, FIU — in partnership with Florida Power & Light Company (FPL) — conducts ground-breaking research on the AI-based renewable microgrid installed at the university’s engineering center. The microgrid, installed by FPL in 2020, pairs reliability with clean energy production and leverages an on-site 1.1MW AC solar panel array to generate renewable power, as well as a 9MW/3MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system with the equivalent energy capacity to power over 440 homes for up to three hours.

“This research can help pave the road for providing local and global communities with increased resiliency for riding through extreme weather and power grid events,” says Arif Sarwat, principal investigator of the FIU-FPL microgrid and director of FIU’s Energy, Power and Sustainability-Intelligence research group.

In addition to the solar and battery storage-based microgrid, researchers at FIU leverage the Proactive Analytics and Data Oriented Research on Availability and Security (PANDORAS) Lab, which serves as a virtual distribution system control room and is interconnected to a real-time simulation lab. There, faculty and students in Sarwat’s research group use high-end computer systems to conduct research and simulations using smart grid, weather and telecommunications data.

Daniela Radu leads the DoD-funded Center of Excellence for Integrated Renewable Energy and Energy Storage.

The EPA can’t make decisive decisions without data like we’re collecting. It’s exciting I can use chemistry to solve environment problems like PFAS pollution.

— Olutobi “Daniel” Ogunbiyi

Tracking “Forever Chemicals”

Olutobi “Daniel” Ogunbiyi

DEGREE:

Ph.D. candidate, chemistry and biochemistry

COLLEGE:

College of Arts, Sciences & Education

UNDERGRADUATE

EXPERIENCE:

University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria

FUN FACT:

Graphic design, digital illustration and painting are his top ways to de-stress

PFAS HAVE INFILTRATED the environment. This group of thousands of different toxic manmade “forever chemicals” get into the water, soil, air, and stick around for long time, posing health risks to both humans and wildlife. The EPA warned even low levels of exposure can be dangerous, later setting strict near-zero limits for PFAS in drinking water.

There’s been few studies on the distribution and occurrence of PFAS in South Florida. Olutobi “Daniel” Ogunbiyi is changing that. Working alongside FIU chemist Natalia Quinete, Ogunbiyi’s multifold research project uses the power of high-resolution mass spectrometry to expose the pervasiveness of PFAS pollution. He’s detected these contaminants in drinking water and Miami’s Biscayne Bay, where Ogunbiyi

also traced back how canals carry PFAS, including unregulated ones with unknown toxicity, into the bay. They’re even lurking in recreational fisheries — important to the state’s economy, since more than 4 million anglers spent $8 billion while fishing in Florida in 2023 contributing nearly $14 billion to the state’s economic output, according to the American Sportfishing Association. Ogunbiyi found black fin tuna and lobsters had low but still detectable PFAS levels, an indication the contaminants are accumulating through the food chain with unknown consequences.

This data will help policy makers and regulatory agencies like the EPA develop guidelines for controlling and reducing PFAS.

Glycans and Cancer

MORE THAN 2 MILLION PEOPLE will be diagnosed with cancer in 2025. Some of those patients will experience refractory cancer – cancer that does not respond to initial treatment or becomes resistant during treatment. For some, the uncertainty of it all is as traumatic as the initial diagnosis.

Research assistant and McKnight Fellow Lee Seng Lau and her colleagues in the Dimitroff Lab are working to lessen that burden. Under the direction of Charles J. Dimitroff, a leader in glycobiology, work in the lab focuses on understanding how complex sugars or “glycans” regulate immune and cancer cell functions. Cancer cells learn to evade the body’s immune system attack through adaptive immune resistance. Lau studies how glycans aid cancer cells in bypassing this response

and how it affects current Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy. This therapy uses a patient’s immune cells, genetically engineering them in the lab to express a CAR molecule. Infused back into the patient’s body, the CAR molecules target cancer cells, recognizing and destroying cancerous cells within the body.

But CAR-T cell therapy isn’t without its issues. Lau is using her understanding of sugars to modify and improve the effectiveness of this therapy by extending the cells’ persistence and reducing severe side effects. Promising results have been experienced thus far in a collaboration with Baptist Hospital’s Dr. Manmeet Ahluwalia and Dr. Guenther Koehne.

Lee Seng Lau

DEGREE:

Ph.D. candidate, biomedical science

COLLEGE: Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine

UNDERGRADUATE

EXPERIENCE: Florida International University

FUN FACT: Lau is “pretty crafty” when it comes to arts and DIY projects

The idea that we can actually make a positive change in someone’s life is really important to me. It’s one of the reasons I wanted to conduct research that is translational.

— Lee Seng Lau

ONE OF the many ways FIU scholars and scientists share their knowledge with the public is by writing for the nonprofit, independent news organization The Conversation. Their evidence-based news articles are shared with major media outlets and translated into other languages — bridging the knowledge gap to bring research and fact-based analysis about world events to audiences far and wide.

5M+ views

on FIU scholars’ articles that have been republished by CNN, PBS, Scientific American, The Washington Post and other top national and international news outlets.

Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida

PHILLIP CARTER

Associate Professor and Sociolinguist College of Arts, Sciences & Education

With more than 1.5 million reads, Carter’s viral article that ended up everywhere from TikTok to the New York Times explores his research documenting Miami’s unique dialect — the result of a common phenomenon that’s happened across the world whenever two languages come into close contact.

Most people know that Old English is radically different from Modern English, or that English in London sounds different from English in New Delhi, New York City, Sydney and Cape Town, South Africa. But rarely do we pause to think about how these changes take place, or to ponder where dialects and words come from.

100+

academics, researchers, doctoral and postdoctoral students have written articles 150+

articles contributed by FIU authors

India and Vietnam are partnering with the US to counter China

LELAND LAZARUS

Associate Director of National Security

Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy

Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs

An expert on China-Latin America relations, Lazarus breaks down how the U.S.’s collaborative agreements with India and Vietnam may be a strategic move to counterbalance China’s growing global influence.

These actions are aimed at restraining China’s political, economic and military might, even if U.S. leaders don’t explicitly say that is their intention. Regardless of rhetoric, actions speak louder than words.

What exactly caused the explosion at a hospital in Gaza? Without an independent, credible investigation, it will be hard for everyone to agree

STEFAN SCHMITT

Forensic Scientist

Global Forensic Justice Center

Schmitt has investigated war crimes and mass grave sites in global conflicts throughout his career and describes what’s normally involved with investigating explosion sites like that at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17, 2023.

Just like blood spatter can be analyzed, so too can shrapnel or an explosive pattern. Patterns such as injuries on victims, or things like shrapnel, crater damage and burn pattern still tell us much about the type of weaponry used. Injury and blast patterns over a group of people or a damaged site aren’t easily manufactured or faked.

Since this article was published, Trucco has been called on several times for her expertise on this topic, most recently for the spicy chips challenge.

Teenage brains are drawn to popular social media challenges – here’s how parents can get their kids to think twice

ELISA TRUCCO

Associate Professor of Psychology College of Arts, Sciences & Education Center for Children and Families

Trucco tackles an escalating online problem with offline consequences: How social pressure on social media makes teens more likely to participate in popular challenges that can be dangerous and sometimes deadly.

Teens today may find it more difficult to resist social pressure. They not only have unlimited access to their peers and other influencers, but online social networks are also much larger, with teens following hundreds – sometimes thousands –of online users.

AI and the future of work

MARK FINLAYSON

Associate Professor of Computer Science College of Engineering & Computing Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences

Will artificial intelligence steal your job? Finlayson — who specializes in an area of AI called natural language processing — says while tools like ChatGPT will undoubtedly impact creative and knowledge workers, they will also present new opportunities for people willing to use them.

To conceive of what might happen, it is useful to recall the impact of the introduction of word processing programs in the early 1980s. Certain jobs like typist almost completely disappeared. But, on the upside, anyone with a personal computer was able to generate well-typeset documents with ease, broadly increasing productivity.

This article was selected for inclusion in the 2024 anthology The Conversation on Work

FACULTY NEWS

FIU researchers are innovators moving our R1 public research university ever-forward. These pages contain a sampling of their recent accolades:

MELISSA BARALT, associate professor of linguistics and Spanish, received the International Association of Task-Based Language Teaching Best Practitioner Award.

STEPHEN BLACK, director of the Center for Translational Science, has been appointed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to the state’s Biomedical Research Advisory Council.

ASA BLUCK, assistant professor of physics, was inducted as a member of Sigma Xi, the scientific research honor society of science and engineering.

CHARLIE BUSCEMI, clinical professor of graduate nursing, was a member of the inaugural class of fellows of the Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurses Society.

ALESSANDRO CATENAZZI, associate professor and conservation biologist, was named Half-Earth chair by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.

KEVIN CHANDLER, assistant professor of translational medicine, was named a 2024 Rising Star in Proteomics and Metabolomics by the Journal of Proteome Research.

RAJIV CHOWDHURY, chair and professor of global health, received the Faculty Leader in Global Health Innovation Award by the Velji Family Foundation and the Consortium of Universities for Global Health.

SUNDARARAJ IYENGAR, Ryder professor of computer science, was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Interpol Digital Forensics Expert Group Meeting in 2023. He also received an honorary doctorate of science from Poznan University of Technology in Poland.

KRISH JAYACHANDRAN, distinguished university professor in earth and environment, and ASSEFA MELESSE, professor in the Institute of Environment, were named Jefferson Science Fellows, joining a select group of scientists building capacity for science, technology and engineering expertise within the U.S. Department of State and U.S. AID.

JEREMY KISZKA, associate professor of biological sciences, was elected president of the Society for Marine Mammalogy.

JACEK KOLASINSKI, associate professor of visual arts, and ROBERTO ROVIRA, professor of landscape architecture, earned Place Art honorable mention awards from the Environmental Design Research Association and presented their research at the association’s 2023 conference.

ANGELA LAIRD, professor of physics, became a 2024 fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

CELINE LEBOEUF, associate professor of philosophy, received the

American Philosophical Association’s Best Op-Ed award in 2024.

JUDITH MANSILLA, associate teaching professor of history, became a fellow of the American Council for Learned Societies in 2024.

ANGELA MEDINA, associate professor in the department of communication sciences & disorders, was named Clinician of the Year by the Florida Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists.

NADINE MIKATI, clinical assistant professor of dietetics and nutrition, was selected as the Early Career Nutrition representative on the American Society for Nutrition Board of Directors.

MARILYS NEPOMECHIE, distinguished university professor of architecture, was elected national chancellor of the College of Distinguished Professors of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

EBRU OZER, professor of landscape architecture, was elevated to the national Council of Fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architecture in recognition of her service to the profession.

JENNIFER PRINTZ and TOM SCICLUNA, associate and assistant professor, respectively, in art + art history, won Oolite Arts Ellies Creator Awards in 2023.

JORGE RIERA DIAZ, associate professor in biomedical engineering, was inducted into the 2024 Class of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.

EUGENIO M. ROTHE, professor in psychiatry and behavioral health, became president of the American Academy of Psychodynamic Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis.

SABRINA SALES MARTINEZ, assistant professor of dietetics and nutrition, was appointed to the American Society of Nutrition Foundation Board of Trustees for 2023-2025.

SIGAL SEGEV, associate professor of advertising and public relations, was elected president of the American Academy of Advertising.

ELISA SILVA, associate professor of architecture, received a 2023 Afield Fellowship.

MARIA STEVENS, assistant dean for academic community programs and partnerships in the medical school, was inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society in recognition of her commitment to compassionate care.

BERRIN TANSEL, professor of civil and environmental engineering, was awarded the 2024 Frederick George Pohland Medal from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists.

JORGE VALDES, dean of the Nicole Wertheim College of Nursing & Health Sciences, became a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. Additionally, Valdes and ANN MILLER, clinical associate professor in the department of nurse anesthesiology, were inducted as fellows of the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

TRACEY WEILER, associate professor of human and molecular genetics, received the inaugural “Bright Light Award” from the Council of Faculty and Academic Societies.

LEADING INNOVATION

National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award

Congratulations to these FIU researchers who were honored with prestigious CAREER awards in 2023 and 2024:

• JANKI BHIMANI, assistant professor in the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences

• WIM COSYN, assistant professor in the Department of Physics

• ALEXANDRA COSO STRONG, assistant professor in the School of Universal Computing, Construction & Engineering Education

• STEPHEN SECULES, assistant professor in the School of Universal Computing, Construction & Engineering Education

National Academy of Inventors Class of 2023

In 2024, three assistant teaching professors in mechanical and materials engineering were named senior members of the National Academy of Inventors:

• AMBREEN NISAR, research assistant professor in the Cold Spray and Rapid Deposition Lab, focuses on manufacturing advanced structural ceramics and composites, particularly ultra-high temperature ceramics, known for superior thermo-mechanical performance. She explores unconventional processing techniques like high-entropy UHTCs, coatings, foams, fillerless joining, decorated carbon nanofibers and 3D printing.

• TANAJI PAUL, research assistant professor in the Cold Spray and Rapid Deposition Lab, focuses on the advanced manufacturing of metal matrix composites reinforced with 1D, 2D and 3D ceramic particles such as silicon carbide, tungsten disulfide and boron nitride nanotubes by casting, cold spray and directed energy deposition.

• TONY THOMAS, assistant teaching professor with a focus on manufacturing, design and finite element analysis. His research consists of additive manufacturing, computational mechanics and corrosion science, particularly pertaining to additively manufactured metal parts.

Splat!

You’re cruising down the highway. Splat! A bug hits the windshield. The goopy remains smear across the glass. Even a few swipes of the wipers are no match for the stuck-on mess.

In simple terms, this is exactly how cold spraying works, though the process is far more elegant. Sophisticated systems (like this VRC Raptor in the Cold Spray and Rapid Deposition Laboratory) blast microscopic powder particles onto surfaces at supersonic speeds. As the spray nozzle at the end of the robotic arm moves around, it builds layer-upon-layer of material. Unlike other types of manufacturing, there’s no melting involved in the process nor volatile fumes — making it a more environmentally friendly option for applying protective coatings or making repairs.

Supported by $22.9 million from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, FIU’s state-of-the-art lab gives researchers a place to push the boundaries of cold spray. To date, they’ve developed and patented dozens of new advanced materials, such as high-strength aluminum composites, that can be fabricated using this technology for applications in the aerospace, automotive and defense industries.

FIU BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Rogelio Tovar, Chair

Carlos A. Duart, Vice Chair

Noël C. Barengo

Dean C. Colson

Alan Gonzalez

Francis A. Hondal

Natasha Lowell

Yaffa Popack

T. Gene Prescott

Chanel T. Rowe

Marc D. Sarnoff

Alberto R. Taño

Francesca Casanova

THE FIU RESEARCH MAGAZINE

covers groundbreaking, innovative research at Florida International University and is conceived and produced annually by the Division of Strategic Communications, Government and External Affairs. Portions of this magazine may be reprinted with permission. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of FIU faculty or administration. Send correspondence to researchmag@fiu.edu and visit us at researchmag.fiu.edu.

© Copyright 2024 Florida International University.

STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS, GOVERNMENT AND EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

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Senior Vice President

Anthony Rionda

Associate Vice President

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Assistant Vice President and Editor-in-Chief

Angela Nicoletti MS ’19

Research Communicator and

Associate Editor

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Senior Graphic Designer

Illustrator

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Contributors

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Principal Photographer

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Senior Multimedia Producer

Photography and Videography

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