Ytori - Spring 2017

SPRING 2017 • VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1

THE MAGAZINE FOR THE UNIVERSITY of FLORIDA COLLEGE of LIBERAL ARTS and SCIENCES

You always have a choice.

As I learned during my liberal arts education, any symbol can have ‌ two versions, a positive and a negative. You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality.

Try it and see. — MARGARET ATWOOD, AUTHOR

George Whiteside

Cover: “Spirit Bear” is one of 17 photos taken and donated by Dr. Howard Sheridan ’65 that are displayed in the new Joseph Hernandez Hall.

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CONSERVATION CLUES

Theoretical ecologist and evolutionary biologist Bob Holt asks, “Whodunit?” as he tries to figure out why some species lead perilous lives. — By Rachel Wayne

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Howard Sheridan

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CORNER OF BUCKMAN DRIVE AND UNIVERSITY AVENUE

UF’s newest building, Joseph Hernandez Hall, will take UF Chemistry into the 22nd century. — By Gigi Marino

Above: Fred Ward ’57, M’59 as seen by his wife, Charlotte ’59, with whom he shared six decades of creativity, children, and adventure.

Charlotte Ward

QUESTION

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Crab Love in the Garbage Patch

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Biased? Who? Me?

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Right Time, Right Place

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Shifting Gears

DISCOVER

24

Meet Joe Hernandez

CONNECT

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Rivers, Roads, and Gunmen

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Ytori is the Spanish variation of the Timucua word for alligator.

From The Dean Welcome to the second issue of Ytori! We are still receiving comments and questions about our first issue, most frequently about the name of the magazine. Ytori and its variant itori are the Spanish renderings of the Timucua word for alligator.

The Timucua inhabited North Florida for centuries before the arrival of Europeans.

During the concept stage, we considered and rejected dozens of possible magazine names. We wanted a unique, memorable name that resonates with our state, university, and, most particularly, our college. Some names were much better than others — one that surfaced briefly, Jacma, a tongue-in-cheek acronym for “just another college magazine,” shows just how far out some suggestions were. Inevitably and appropriately, they all ended up on the cutting-room floor.

A suggestion that we consider a word from the language of the Timucua led us to one of the few scholars in the world who know the language, Professor of Anthropology Aaron Broadwell. With his help, we quickly identified Ytori as an ideal candidate, as it captures our university’s symbol, the 6 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

history of the state and its native peoples, and the role of the Spanish in Florida. All of these are reflective of our broad mission to teach and study nature, society, and humanity.

In this issue on page 41, we learn more about Professor Broadwell, the Timucua, and the alligator in Florida.

Even as we are going to press with this issue, we are preparing for the fall issue of the magazine, which will come out around the time the university will be announcing its new fundraising campaign. As part of this effort, we in the college are also gearing up for an exciting five-year campaign to increase resources for our students, our faculty, and the important work they do every day. Stay tuned!

With best regards,

David E. Richardson Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

UF Photography — Eric Zamora

ALLIGATORS AND ETYMOLOGY

Betsy Hansen Brzezinski

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uring his academic career in physics, Professor Emeritus James Dufty “was fortunate to do pencil and paper research,” which he says made him very mobile. He traveled the world as often as he could.

Dufty has collaborated with scientists in every European country, as well as in India, Korea, and Mexico.

Dufty’s greatest joy was mentoring PhD and postdoctoral fellows. “I appreciated being able to share intellectual, cultural, and cross-cultural ideas,” he says. “Early on, I decided to support education. It’s rewarding to foster and enhance advanced research, particularly with an international component.”

To achieve that goal, Dufty has made the University of Florida Department of Physics a beneficiary in his will, and he is able to disperse part of the endowment annually. “I’m grateful that the university allows this flexibility.”

To learn more about how you also can make a difference, contact the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Office of Advancement at 352-294-1971 or alumni@clas.ufl.edu.

U N I V E R S I T Y of F L O R I D A

Thesis

CRAB LOVE IN THE GARBAGE PATCH I’m a commensalist.

What’s your sign?

By Rachel Wayne

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ceanic crabs find love in strange places, including in the pocket above a sea turtle’s tail and on floating plastic debris. JOSEPH PFALLER PHD ’16 and MICHAEL GIL PHD ’15 have led several complementary projects that culminated in an intriguing finding: crabs exhibit different mating behavior when living tucked below the carapace of a loggerhead turtle than in a nest of plastic.

Pfaller and Gil’s findings provide support for a new ecological model of symbiosis — when different species live together — that incorporates spatial factors.

Oceanic crabs (Planes minutus) are weak swimmers, yet live far from shore. They must seek shelter for mating, feeding, and long-distance travel. Loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta), which have a worldwide range, provide an appropriate host for the crabs. The crabs do not harm the turtle, but the turtle does not benefit from their presence. This type of symbiotic relationship is called commensalism; however, not all P. minutus are commensalists. What’s remarkable about the arrangement is that when it occurs, the crabs adopt a particular mating behavior — monogamy. Because the pocket above the turtle’s tail is small, mating pairs of crabs can monopolize this refuge space and, thus, the rest of the turtle’s body. Since this private island home provides ample mating and feeding opportunities, risking life and limb to leave such a posh setup to seek other mates becomes less desirable.

between species? Typically, symbiosis, which most people learned from college biology classes, is a close interaction of two different creatures’ behavior and growth. An ecological relationship in which one species relies upon the other is called obligate symbiosis. However, Pfaller notes that because the crabs aren’t entirely reliant upon their “roomie,” this relationship could be considered facultative, not obligate. Facultative symbiosis is an intermediate step between living alone and living an obligate lifestyle, and “might lead to the evolution of obligate symbiosis,” he explains.

Pfaller and Gil published a paper in the Sept. 21, 2016, issue of Biology Letters using data on sea turtles from Pfaller’s and others’ previous research to compare the occurrence of male–female crab pairs in loggerheads’ carapace pockets with that of other biomes, in particular, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As the name suggests, it is a massive collection of oceanic debris, comprising mostly plastic items, and is perhaps as vast as 270,000 square miles, swirling in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

“Think inverted whirlpool,” says Gil. The Garbage Patch also provides refuge for a number of creatures. The paper analyzes data collected for a 2012 project with the Sea Education Association, in which Gil traveled the Pacific aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans from San Diego to Honolulu on a course through the center of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. “To sample plastic debris that crossed our path, we would bring the debris on board,” says Gil. “I would carefully count and remove all organisms, including crabs, from the plastic surface using chisels.”

Although the Garbage Patch is not the cohesive mass of plastic one might imagine, the role of floating plastic debris cannot be understated. Gil’s research, published in Scientific Reports on Jan. 27, 2016, focused on the barnacle

The discovery gives insight into the evolution of biomes, the collection of organisms bound by a common physical place. If that physical place is part of a larger organism, such as a turtle’s body, it’s an “epibiome,” or “biome on top of a biome.” In the epibiome, what different relationships emerge 8 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

Scripps Institution of Oceanography/UC San Diego

“ H UMANS AFFECT ECOSYSTEMS THAT WE, AS A SOCIETY, HAVE COME TO RELY HEAVILY UPON. I THINK THIS IS AMONG THE MOST PRESSING RESEARCH TOPICS OF OUR TIME.”

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch comprises clumps of floating debris, mostly plastics.

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Joseph Pfaller

Oceanic crabs find a happy home in the tails of loggerhead turtles.

colonies that grew on the debris, and his findings from the barnacle study further confirm that some species’ physiology affects the spatial relations, and indirectly, another species’ behavior. “Anatomy is the key,” agrees Pfaller. The barnacles provide structural integrity and refuge areas. When those areas are of similar size, and therefore defensibility, to the pocket above a turtle’s tail, crabs exhibit the same monogamous behavior as they do on loggerheads. This pattern suggests that crabs may better use their energy to pursue multiple mating partners if they’re in an amorphous biome rather than defending refuge. Defending the small pocket of the turtle — the epibiome — is considerably easier, so the pursuit of multiple partners isn’t worth losing the refuge.

Pfaller and Gil’s work supports the expansion of ecological theory to address “what we don’t know about, which is the ecological characteristics that drive mating strategies,” says Pfaller. “Our findings suggest that symbiosis could drive the evolution of specific mating strategies in animals,” says Gil. Moreover, both projects highlight the complex effects of human activity on wildlife behavior, says Gil. While humans’

relationship to the environment may take many forms, it’s not always commensalist: “Humans affect ecosystems that we, as a society, have come to rely heavily upon,” he says. “I think this is among the most pressing research topics of our time.” Before his barnacle research, Gil studied a different type of oceanic pollution: runoff. His dissertation examined nutrient pollution in coral reefs. Runoff from farms and septic tanks, as well as combustion emissions, releases excessive nitrogen and phosphorus into aquatic environments. Much like when you don’t clean your fish tank, algae blooms and, in the ocean, saps coral reefs.

Pfaller says the crabs project is an extension of his lifelong interest in sea turtle research. When he was a teenager, he began volunteering with the Caretta Research Project. The Savannah, Ga.-based endeavor, now in its 45th year, is “one of the longest-running sea turtle research projects in the world,” says Pfaller. His 19 years with Caretta as volunteer and eventual intern have culminated in his current role as research director of the project. “I’ve been a biologist since I could walk,” he says. “There’s really no other job path that I ever could imagine.” q YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 9

John S. Dykes

Conservation Clues Extinction detective Bob Holt tracks down the likely culprits behind ecological crises.

By Rachel Wayne

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cological modeling. Saving the world. The two go hand-in-hand for theoretical ecologist and evolutionary biologist Bob Holt, who recently joined a team of nine scientists to describe how conservation models must be designed with consideration of climate change. Holt has studied everything from rodents and prairie plants to ticks and anthrax, but his main focus has been on theoretical and conceptual contributions to understanding complex ecological systems. Holt has a background in physics that, he says, supports both strong quantitative training and a powerful example of science providing “unifying principles to tie together disparate phenomena.” Thus, he is primed to examine the interactions

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of forces and the emergence of order from chaos — the two primary tenets of both ecology and physics.

Holt is a sort of extinction detective, looking past first appearances and easy whodunits to understand the Rube Goldberg machine behind an ecological crisis. Here are some examples of mysteries solved by Holt or his colleagues. Ȫ The Santa Cruz island fox (Urocyon littoralis) of California’s Channel Islands was near extinction.

WHODUNIT? The bald eagle population had declined due to DDT exposure, allowing their competitors, golden eagles, to move in. The golden eagles began eating abundant feral pigs after settling on the island, and also incidentally preyed

Q UESTI ON upon the endemic fox. The Nature Conservancy exterminated the feral pigs, the golden eagles stopped visiting, and the fox has rebounded. This phenomenon of one prey species indirectly harming another, via their shared predator, is called “apparent competition.” Ȫ The young of great tit birds in the Netherlands weren’t faring as well as great tit nestlings in the United Kingdom.

WHODUNIT? The great tit bird (Parus major) of the British Isles will lay eggs earlier in warmer springs, and their primary prey, caterpillars, hatch earlier in warmer springs.

Great tit birds in the Netherlands, however, do not change their egg-laying behavior, so their young won’t have the fresh supply of caterpillars. This is an example of how climate change affects species’ reproduction and, moreover, demonstrates how the populations of the same species are affected by their geographic location. Ȫ In parts of the Pacific coastline, mussel populations dropped to zero, hurting the health of intertidal ecosystems.

WHODUNIT? The ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) of the Pacific Ocean. The ochre sea star is a keystone species: It has a disproportionately large effect on its ecosystem. With rising ocean temperature, the stars eat more and, in some areas, can devastate populations of mussels. That zeroing out also has an economic impact on humans, who eat the mussels.

Developing ecological modeling greatly benefits from a robust understanding of math, which Holt imported from his physics education. “Often in biology, students don’t know much mathematics before starting,” says Holt. “Mathematics is like a language. It’s easier to learn when you’re young.”

BECAUSE GLOBAL WARMING IS MORE THAN A SIMPLE, STEADY INCREASE IN TEMPERATURE, AND INCLUDES ANOMALIES SUCH AS DROUGHTS, HEATWAVES, AND EXCESSIVE RAINFALL, ITS IMPACT ON SPECIES OR ECOSYSTEMS AS A WHOLE CAN BE QUITE VARIABLE. As a physics major, Holt regularly took biology courses as electives for fun and met several professors of ecology, including his undergraduate mentor, Robert H. MacArthur, a seminal theorist in the fields of population and island ecology. Holt accompanied him on his last field trip before MacArthur’s death in 1972. In ecology, Holt found an exciting balance between lab work and fieldwork. “I liked that I

wouldn’t be stuck in front of a lab or computer. I could be outside,” he says. The lab work he does is primarily “mathematical and computational modeling,” and this methodology can be paired with climate modeling to provide guidance for conservation efforts. A paper published in Science in 2016 emerged from a working group at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig, Germany, that met to discuss modeling for species distribution and range limits that change as the climate does.

In the paper, Holt and his team propose an international consortium of scientists to bring their respective disciplines together to build a more comprehensive portrait of climate change as it affects ecosystems and the flora and fauna within. The consortium wants to collect biological data that would help scientists and policymakers collaborate on effective conservation measures. The data would be flowed into a comprehensive knowledge base about metabolic, reproductive, and behavioral aspects of species that alternate with warmer or cooler climates. Because global warming is more than a simple, steady increase in temperature, and includes anomalies such as droughts, heatwaves, and excessive rainfall, its impact on species or ecosystems as a whole can be quite variable. The team proposes that these mechanisms be integrated into models that can predict the wide-ranging effects of climate change and guide conservation efforts.

Holt has had some experience in these matters. Since 1984, he has directed a long-term ecological experiment — which is rare, he says — to measure fragmentation and secondary succession of Kansas farmland. Secondary succession entails new flora and fauna recovering in an area, say after agricultural land is abandoned. Such changes in vegetation can have important implications for conservation. Close to the University of Florida campus, the scrub jay is a notable example. As the only endemic bird of Florida, the scrub jay is sensitive to the increased development, wetter summers, and warmer winters that have led to habitat loss.

Scrub jays are ill-adapted to the thicker, predator-heavy woodlands in the North, where they are driven. Conservation efforts include controlled burns to preserve the scrub habitat that give the jays their name.

Holt’s concern for the jay and other endangered species has its roots in his childhood as a self-described boy naturalist. “I’ve been a keen birder since I was 10 years old,” says Holt. While his education in physics encourages the pursuit of universal laws, “biology, particularly ecology and evolution, revels in diversity,” he says. In birdwatching, “you’re not looking for the universal bird, you’re looking at how the cardinal is different from the chickadee is different from the tody is different from the duck is different from the owl. That diversity is part of the joy of engaging with the natural world.” q YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 11

More Than Skin Deep Racism is real and stress is not just “all in your head.”

With genetics-based medicine came the compelling desire to boil every health issue down to one’s DNA, with issues such as hypertension and anxiety falling into an ambiguous field straddling the medical-chart columns for “family history” and “lifestyle.”

“I encountered that medical students here at UF were learning about the supposed genetic basis for racial inequalities in disease. Having been trained as an anthropologist as an undergrad, this seemed crazy to me,” says Lance Gravlee, professor of anthropology. “I had sort of taken for granted that those ideas about race and genes were something of the 19th century, that we had dispensed with that.”

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People with darker skin tones may indeed be more likely to have issues with anxiety and high blood pressure, but genetic makeup cannot explain all, which is where Gravlee and fellow professor of anthropology Connie Mulligan come in.

They study the effects of racial discrimination and genetics on personal health and aim to find a more complete answer, which lies in the complexities of genetics and its health effects in an environment structured by racism.

In anthropology’s origins during the 18th century, naturalists developed methods of anthropometry that were designed to classify humans by their race, usually by the size and proportions of their skulls. Modern and ancient skeletons were analyzed through an ever-shifting model of human

Stuart Briers

By Rachel Wayne

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This special perspective allowed Mulligan and Gravlee to complete their groundbreaking project, one that defied that false dichotomy by blending ethnographic and geneticist methodologies. evolution that meshed with an imperialist spectrum of “primitive” to “civilized” — methods later debunked. However, the notion that one’s skin and blood could fully explain their life and health persisted. After the inception of the Human Genome Project in the mid-1980s, the tendency to conceptualize race and ethnicity — and related health risks — through genetic analysis became popular. These “predictions” seemed to corroborate many health professionals’ observations that certain health conditions were pervasive among people of color. The anthropometric model had been replaced by the ostensibly more scientific, but ultimately restrictive, genome model. Yet the question remained: Was it all in their genes? Of course, it’s more complicated than that.

Meanwhile, anthropologists aimed to “decolonize” their field and shed the racist and imperialist assumptions of their armchair predecessors, which for some meant firmly embracing anthropology’s role as a social science. “In principle, most researchers understand that we need to pay attention to both the genetic and the socio-environmental, but it’s difficult to do that kind of work,” says Gravlee.

Possibly exacerbating the difficulty is Western society’s false dichotomy between the mind and the body, as well as the rift between “social studies” and medicine and their respective data sets. “We can sidestep that because we are operating from an anthropological point of view,” says Gravlee. “We understand biology and culture because we have a common language.”

This special perspective allowed Mulligan and Gravlee to complete their groundbreaking project, one that defied that false dichotomy by blending ethnographic and geneticist methodologies. Their paper, published in PLOS ONE in 2016, explained that being subjected to racism, even secondhand, was a predictor of hypertension. They identified eight variants in five genes linked to blood pressure regulation, then added sociocultural data to test for associations. When they did, they found a new set of associations with genes known to be linked to depression and anxiety. “Including socio-

cultural variables opened a new window in biology that we couldn’t see until we took seriously the relevance of those variables,” says Gravlee.

Their findings show that the overemphasis on genetics excluded a valuable line of inquiry. After the Human Genome Project’s completion, genetic determinists expected full answers to all health problems but were left with a concept of “missing heritability,” says Mulligan. If it’s all in the genes, why do some members of a family suffer from heart disease while others don’t? The explanation first requires an understanding of the difference between one’s genes and how those genes are expressed. A genotype is the total set of genes an organism has, while a phenotype is the observed behavior and physical characteristics of that organism. For example, flamingos’ genes do not call for them to be pink; they are pink because they eat mostly carotene-rich shrimp. Gene expression, and therefore phenotype, varies based on several factors, including the environment, which for humans includes the sociocultural realm. “Hypertension is a complex phenotype, like cancer or mental health, yet nobody studies them in that way,” says Mulligan.

Gravlee adds, “Many people who defend race [as a scientific reality] use examples such as a sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, and cystic fibrosis,” which are associated with people of African, Hebrew, and Northern European descent, respectively, “but those are single-gene disorders.” For complex phenotypes, the answer lies in the field of epigenetics.

Interactions among genetic and environmental factors produce epigenetic effects on phenotypes. “Epi-,” a prefix meaning “on top of,” refers to variations in genetic expression that are linked to environmental changes or time. While a person’s “DNA,” as commonly called, or more precisely their genotype, does not change throughout their life, how their cells read those genes does. DNA methylation affects gene expression as a normal epigenetic effect; decreases in DNA methylation have been linked to stress, by inhibiting expression of genes that code for protein receptors for

“ Including sociocultural variables opened a new window in biology that we couldn’t see until we took seriously the relevance of those variables,” says Gravlee.

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Stuart Briers

cortisol. Thus, stress in one’s environment can change their cells’ behavior and have a direct effect on health.

Mulligan’s background in genetics primed her to move into the anthropology of violence and health disparities.

“I was tired of looking through the microscope at yeast,” she says. “I love being able to talk to my study organism.”

She has progressively immersed herself in the genetics of health since beginning her career in the hard sciences, finally finding intellectual satisfaction at UF. “Coming into the anthropology department struck me as the biggest sandbox I could play in.” Helping her was Gravlee, who had seen his and others’ colleagues operate under the assumptions that people of color, including those of African or Hebrew descent, were predisposed to certain diseases, and set out to test those assumptions. Gravlee hypothesized that the epidemiology of health disparities had genetic factors; Mulligan hypothesized that the genetics of health included

the sociocultural realm. “I like anthropology because I can take the broadest possible perspective on health and what to me is a more accurate — more true — answer in what is driving health and disease,” says Mulligan. Beginning with a meta-analysis of Gravlee’s research in Puerto Rico on the relationship between blood pressure variation and perceived skin color, they turned the theoretical into findings. There were indeed interactions between genetic and socio-environmental factors, particularly with regard to racial disparities.

They directed their attention toward Tallahassee, where Gravlee had been collecting stories of racial discrimination and using social network analysis to study health disparities since 2007. He and Mulligan “envisioned building on those stories to try to develop better measures of the kinds of racism-related stressors that people encountered and see the extent to which we could account for variation in blood pressure,” he says. They chose to continue Gravlee’s study of hypertension because it has long been considered a disease toward which people of African descent are predisposed. Most people understand that stress can cause heart problems, but Mulligan and Gravlee have delved into a type of stress that can be much harder, both socially and politically, to unpack: the stress of racial discrimination. Even asking people to talk about it isn’t cut and dried. “Reports of perceived stress are not good predictors of health outcomes,” says Gravlee.

Gravlee describes his approach as “community-based participatory research.” The project is guided by a steering committee composed of people interested in health equity, the contemporary crux of Tallahassee’s long-running civil rights movement. This situation called for rewriting the Institutional Review Board protocols, which typically require a pre-approved set of questions written by the researcher. However, with their approach, “we were liaisons between community members and the research institution,” says Gravlee. “They are partners, not just participants.” The 100-question survey emerged from conversations with these partners, who guided the researchers in what to ask. This unusual arrangement threw the IRB for a temporary loop, but certainly supports the decolonization of anthropology and demonstrates the potential of oral history and participant-generated research questions to alleviate social inequity.

Their findings don’t leave much opportunity for researchers in any discipline to hide behind genetic determinism or enforce the divide between biology and culture.

“We often equate biology and genes and then regard the environment as something else, something extraneous. People want it to be nature versus nurture,” remarks Gravlee. “Our results suggest that we need a little more nuance.” q

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Adobe Stock

Biased? Who? Me? Professor of Psychology and Executive Director of Project Implicit Kate Ratliff says many people do not recognize their own bias.

By Rachel Wayne

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veryone’s a little bit racist,” sang puppets in the 2003 Off-Broadway musical Avenue Q. Offensive humor aside, the long-running Project Implicit at Harvard suggests the lyric is truer than we might like to admit. “In the U.S., people know that stereotyping is morally wrong, but may not recognize their own bias,” says Kate Ratliff, a UF psychology professor who has worked on the project since she was a PhD student at the University of Virginia. In an impressive line of succession, her advisor, Brian Nosek, his advisor in turn, Tony Greenwald, and his “grand-advisor” Mahzarin Banaji founded Project Implicit in 1998. Ratliff now serves as the executive director of the project.

The project uses a series of exercises called Implicit Association Tests (IATs), which work by having participants correctly label photos in a progression of alternating images and text. The test measures even miniscule delays in response when participants see a word that they may not immediately associate with the image presented to them, for example, “science” with a photo of a woman. There are currently 14 IATs available on the Project Implicit website,

through which the team has access to a global participant pool, and all marginalized populations, including ethnic minorities and persons of disability, are represented in the tests. Participants can test their bias on almost every element of the sociodemographic spectrum, and the IAT then gives them feedback, at which point people who consider themselves educated and enlightened might find unexpected results. “The more people are surprised, the more it violates what they think about themselves — and the more defensive they get,” says Ratliff.

Yet that surprise is a core part of Project Implicit’s mission. Implicit bias is, after all, hidden, and the revelation of bias is the first step toward unlearning it. The next step is to investigate how society perpetuates and enforces those biases. Before coming to UF, Ratliff worked at Tilberg University in the Netherlands. She observed that Dutch people were forthright about their prejudices, even in an apparently egalitarian society boasting comprehensive laws prohibiting discrimination and protecting individual freedom. Perhaps that’s why, suggests Ratliff, the Dutch don’t need to pretend theirs is a post-racial society.

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Global Studies

The Geographers: Professors Gregory Glass and Jason K. Blackburn use telemetry, remote image sensing, and geographic information services data to predict outbreaks of non-viral pathogens.

MALARIA Protozoan. Common throughout tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. Around 200 million cases annually.

Mortality rate varies widely depending on location, comorbidity, and demographic.

Glass uses spatial and climate data to study environmental changes that affect the populations of animals, ticks, and mosquitoes in Florida and around the world. He also collects data on blood testing, insecticides, and other intervention measures to examine their effectiveness.

ANTHRAX Bacterium. Common throughout Central and South America and southern Europe. 2,000 cases annually. Threat of weaponization. Mortality rate for intestinal infections is 25 to 75 percent; for respiratory, 50 to 80 percent.

Blackburn directs the Spatial Epidemiology & Ecology Research Lab (SEER Lab) and studies how Bacillus anthracis causes anthrax outbreaks among wildlife, livestock, and humans by modeling the pathogen’s ecological niche and transmission mechanisms. To do so, SEER Lab combines GPS technology to track animals, such as elk and bison, and laboratory work to study environmental conditions that promote B. anthracis spore persistence. Blackburn works with UF ecologists Jose Miguel Ponciano and Robert Holt (see pp. 10–11) in an NIH-funded project to study environmental reservoirs and anthrax transmission.

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The Biologists: Professor Derek Cummings and research assistant Kyra Grantz use statistical analysis of sociodemographic data to monitor and predict the spread of disease.

DENGUE Flavivirus. Endemic to Puerto Rico, common throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia. 50 – 528 million cases annually. Mortality rate is 1 percent.

Cummings has worked on risk models of the new dengue vaccine, called CYD-TDV and trademarked Dengvaxia. People experiencing their second natural dengue infection have a higher risk of severe symptoms than those with their first infection. After two infections, however, the risk of severity decreases. Because the vaccine imitates a natural infection, it works best in areas where people have already been exposed to the virus. Given the dangers associated with vaccinating someone who has never been exposed to dengue virus, Cummings recommends a point-of-care screening tool that could identify those who have been infected in the past.

INFLUENZA RNA virus. Worldwide, occurs in annual outbreaks, with rare pandemics. 3 to 5 million cases annually. Mortality rate is 1.5 percent.

In 1918, an unusually deadly flu swept the world, claiming 50 to 100 million lives in a pandemic often called the Spanish flu. Grantz studies how sociodemographic markers and urban infrastructure affected the spread of the flu in Chicago in that terrifying year. Analyzing 100-year-old data collected by the U.S. Census and the Chicago Department of Health, she’s found that mortality rates increased with illiteracy and unemployment and decreased with homeownership. She developed a technique to model the spread of infectious disease and found that increased likelihood of mortality can be determined on a meter-by-meter basis.

This finding suggests that neighborhood-level outbreaks are a vulnerable point in epidemic control.

Alex Wild

Liberal Arts and Sciences investigators at UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute are here to rid the world of dangerous microbes, wielding state-of-the-art technology with their scientific toolkits of electronic tracking, computer analysis, and petri dishes!

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Extracurricular

CREATING A DORMROOM BUSINESS

By Terri Peterson ALINDA SAINTVAL ’19 is a zoology and visual arts studies major, who has parlayed her passion and talent for art into an enterprise painting personalized backpacks.

HOW DID THE BACKPACK BUSINESS BEGIN? Completely by accident. I was new to campus, didn’t know anybody, and wanted a way to express myself. I will paint anything. I painted an empty iced-tea can for fun and looked at my backpack and thought, why not? My cousin’s girlfriend saw my backpack and asked if I would make her one too. Another friend convinced me to post my work on social media. I never thought it would go anywhere, then suddenly I had 10,000 likes, 1,000 shares, and requests from other people for bags of their own.

DO YOU STICK TO ONE THEME, OR WILL YOU PAINT A CUSTOMER’S REQUEST? Most of my art has an African American theme to it because that’s what I’m interested in, but I will paint whatever inspires me at the moment. I do commissions of all kinds, as long as I know exactly what the customer has in mind.

WHY DO YOUR BACKPACKS RESONATE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS? People are drawn to backpacks because they’re a portable means of expression. You’re not going to carry a framed painting around, but you can take your backpack anywhere and make a statement. I’ve been told that my work is inspiring, or helpful. It makes people feel better and gives them a push to do something of their own. Thanks to this feedback, I named my line “Duende,” which means, “The ability to deeply move a person through art.”

WILL YOU GROW THIS BUSINESS WHEN YOU GRADUATE? Robert Landry

I’m reluctant to call this a business. It’s more of a paid hobby. My intention after graduation is to enter the zoology program at Santa Fe College, which has a teaching zoo. I will get hands-on work with animals.

Alinda Saintval ’19 incorporates African American art into her designs.

WHAT WILL YOU TAKE FORWARD? If there’s one piece of advice I would give another student, or could go back in time and tell myself, it’s to take the chance.

Yes, something you try might not work out. But then again, it might. I’ve learned that that’s the beauty of it all.

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Corner of Buckman Drive and University Avenue Joseph Hernandez Hall, the university’s new chemistry/chemical biology building, is a testament to science, technology, and tenacity.

By Gigi Marino Photography by Betsy Hansen Brzezinski

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DI S COVER THE FIRST TIME FORMER UF PRESIDENT BERNIE MACHEN visited the chemistry labs on campus, he was appalled. He himself had been a chemistry major at Vanderbilt in the 1960s and didn’t see much of a difference between those mid-20th-century spaces he used as an undergraduate and those he was viewing in the 21st century in Leigh Hall.

“Chemistry has a huge presence on this campus,” he says.

“We have a big, diverse graduate program that is punching all the right buttons. Chemistry is one of our star departments, and they were suffering from poor resources to deliver their mission.”

Machen made it his mission to upgrade the facilities. In 2009, architectural plans for a new building were drawn, and underground utilities infrastructure had been laid. “The problem was,” says Machen, “we were in this darned recession. Construction was shutting down everywhere.” Indeed, construction on the chemistry building halted in 2010.

In 2012, Machen announced he planned to retire the following year. UF had hired a firm that was conducting a national search when Governor Rick Scott phoned Machen late one night asking what it would take for him to stay on as UF’s president. “I didn’t think he was serious,” says Machen. “When I knew that he was, the first thing I asked for was faculty funding. We had cut faculty and staff, and no one was getting raises. I had one chip left for negotiation. I asked for the chemistry building to get back on track. UF had committed substantial funding to the project but needed the state to provide the rest, and the agreement was set.”

The official groundbreaking ceremony for the new building took place October 10, 2014, just two months before Machen retired. “The groundbreaking was very important for me.

Yes, it’s just a building, but it’s more than that. It shows that we care about the arts and sciences, which have taken a lot of guff,” he says. “Chemistry is a symbol for what a 21st-century land-grant university should be. Even on our own campus, people don’t realize what a good chemistry department we have. This is a celebration, not just of a building but of a department, not just for what we’ve done, but for what we’re going to do.”

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“ C HEMICAL BIOLOGY IS A NEW FIELD THAT REQUIRES VERY SPECIALIZED RESEARCH SPACES — CLEAN ROOMS, AUTOCLAVES, COLD ROOMS, ROOMS FOR DEALING WITH RADIOACTIVE MATERIALS. WE’VE HAD PROFESSORS WAITING FOR FACILITIES LIKE THIS FOR 10 YEARS.” — BILL DOLBIER

The new chemistry/chemical biology building has more than twice the number of fume hoods than Leigh Hall, which will allow for more ample lab time and more flexibility in scheduling.

The striking new building, Joseph Hernandez Hall, sits on the corner of Buckman Drive and University Avenue as if it always should have been there. Dave Richardson, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and former chair of the chemistry department, has called it “magnificent” and “marvelous.” He says, “We are going to have an amazing space for our students to learn, for our researchers to broach new frontiers in chemical research.”

Covering 111,552 square feet, the building consists of six levels, with four being used for teaching and research, and has the capacity to support 650 people at any one time (the entire fifth floor is storage and mechanical space). The ground floor holds undergraduate general chemistry labs that can house 250 students at one time, and it is these labs that will have the greatest use. Because general chemistry and organic chemistry are required courses for a large number of majors across the university, 8,000 undergraduates a year, including more than half of the freshman class, will use the new facilities. Currently, Leigh Hall’s general chemistry labs are bursting at the seams with labs scheduled five days a week, from morning until night, and this has been the case for the last decade.

Bill Dolbier, professor and chair of the chemistry department, says the new labs “will give students a tremendously favorable impression of the campus. Right now, we don’t show them the undergraduate general chemistry and organic 20 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

chemistry labs and just hope they don’t notice them. The new labs are going to blow them away.”

Dolbier credits the building committee, particularly thenchair Dan Talham; professor Phil Brucat; John Flowers, chemistry director of operations; Dwight Bailey, manager of departmental IT; and Tammy Davidson, undergraduate coordinator and director of organic chemistry laboratories, with ensuring that the labs have the latest IT, instrumentation, equipment, and storage space, providing flexibility, maneuverability, and environment optimal for both learning and collaborating. There are 700 cubbies outfitted with beakers, test tubes, and pipettes specifically for undergraduate use.

The building contains 134 fume hoods and 128 mini-fume hoods, appropriately called “hoodies.” These glass enclosures ventilate noxious and volatile chemicals, dust, and particulate matter. There also are nearly three dozen snorkel fume hoods that allow for benchtop ventilation. The paucity of fume hoods in Leigh Hall (66) was a major reason labs were overbooked.

According to the senior project manager Frank Javaheri, the ground-floor labs contain a sophisticated AV system “capable of starting, stopping, broadcasting, and switching live, experimental video with instrument data streams to a single or to many displays, allowing instructors to enhance the collaborative learning environment by sharing teaching moments in real time with the class or specific groups of

DI S COVER students.” This system uses 60 percent less energy than conventional lab computers.

Javaheri, who’s been working on this building since it was first discussed, is a numbers man. He will tell you that 6,777 yards of concrete have been poured into the new construction. “That’s enough to build a four-foot sidewalk from the building to Micanopy and back,” he says. (Micanopy is roughly 13 miles from campus.) Structural and non-structural metals? 165.25 tons. Number of bricks? 380,000.

Vinyl tiles? 42,480 (deemed “green,” of course). Javaheri is particularly proud of the fact that LED lighting has been used throughout the building, and he anticipates LEED Gold (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for building certification conferred by the US Green Building Council. A total of 643 people have put in nearly 41 years’ worth of work (357,867 hours, to be exact) to make the dedication happen on April 21, 2017.

While there are many stakeholders in the new building, the one thing that is absolutely true is that this new space is student-centered. There are few administrative offices, and even the chemistry chair will not have an office there.

Undergraduate organic chemistry will have its home on the

second floor with room for 120 students at a time. Dolbier points out that the new facilities allow for new curricula, which are being developed by the new undergraduate director of general chemistry, Melanie Viege. Together, she and Davidson will implement the new curriculum for the general chemistry and organic chemistry laboratories.

With four buildings devoted to chemistry — in addition to the new building, Leigh Hall, and Sisler Hall, there is the Chemistry Laboratory Building — Dolbier says the department is committed to fostering creativity and innovation across all of its programs. Says Dolbier, “We intend to create an undergraduate program that others will want to emulate.

We will be national leaders.”

UF Chemistry’s graduate programs also will get quite a boost with the new building. The third and fourth floors are dedicated to graduate research. The third floor is specifically designed for research in the area of chemical biology, and the fourth floor contains labs for research in synthetic organic chemistry, along with separate conference rooms. Dolbier notes that recent UF hiring initiatives have specifically contributed to two areas in chemistry: smart polymer nanomedicine and chemical innovations in cancer research.

“Chemical biology is a new field that requires very specialized research spaces — clean rooms, autoclaves,

The new building contains nearly three dozen snorkel hoods. One is pictured below.

Students have access to twice the amount of space that the old facilities offered.

As part of Florida’s Art in State Buildings program, UF contracted with UK artist Tony Stallard to create “Fullerene,” based on the structure of a “bucky ball,” or a carbon-60 molecule.

cold rooms, rooms for dealing with radioactive materials,” says Dolbier. “We’ve had professors waiting for facilities like this for 10 years.”

Zhongwu Guo, who was recently hired as the Steven M. and Rebecca J. Scott Professor, does research in a relatively new field called glycoimmunology, which in its very simplest terms aims to create disease markers and cancer drugs from carbohydrates. Says Dolbier, “Everyone we hire within the cancer initiative will do research that is highly collaborative and translational. The new building has a tremendous impact on our ability to hire top people.”

Indeed, Guo was attracted to the opportunities the research spaces offer and was one of the first people to move in. He says, “The new building, which offers combined stateof-the-art spaces for chemical and biological studies, should be a perfect fit for and will significantly benefit the interdisciplinary research program of my lab.”

Aaron Aponick, associate professor of chemistry, has been at UF since 2006, and has been involved with the discussion of the new building since the very beginning. Aponick is a synthetic organic chemist, and his research group will occupy labs on the fourth floor. He, like other researchers in the building, will reap the rewards of having modern, pristine research space; however, the benefits exceed sheer functionality, he says.

“There’s a lot to be said for students from different research groups interacting and intermingling,” says Aponick. “At the 22 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

graduate level, having a cadre of people exchanging ideas is invaluable. You’re no longer compartmentalized. At this point in your education, the more you see and think about, the better your education. You broaden your knowledge base.”

ASHLEY ERB ’17 is an undergraduate research and teaching assistant in Aponick’s group who has been admitted into UF’s graduate program. She says she loves the history of the older buildings — Leigh Hall was built in 1926 and Sisler Hall in 1966 — but is excited about the opportunities that the new building will provide for both teaching and research. “The new equipment in the teaching labs is way more advanced,” she says. “Although, one of the greatest impacts is going to be on undergraduates who’ve had a hard time getting into a research lab. You don’t know how to do research until you actually get into the lab and do it. Clearly, this opens new avenues for UF Chemistry.”

Graduate coordinator BEN SMITH PHD’77 remembers Leigh Hall in its original state, before it was renovated in 1992. “There was no air conditioning, no temperature control, power issues, which was problematic for large lasers. I did not realize it at the time, but they were not stateof-the-art labs.” By contrast, Smith will now be recruiting graduate students to work in labs he says “are the best in the country. The building committee did a great job of looking at what modern chemistry labs need and put it there.” He also notes that 20 years ago, having infrared spectrometers and NMRs (nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers) in teaching labs “was unheard of.” Smith believes the new facility is going to be a great recruitment tool. “That we have four large buildings dedicated to chemical sciences, all next to each other, makes a fabulous impression,” he says.

“Hernandez Hall is just stunning. It’s beautifully designed, very well built, and will last a long time.”

Javaheri, the numbers man, says that the final cost of the building is $66.6 million. The university contributed $24 million, and the state provided the remainder. A number of generous donors also contributed to the building. “One of the huge gifts that has momentum-building benefits comes from Joseph Hernandez, who gave a $10 million endowment,” says Dolbier, “which will build and enhance our programs, both graduate and undergraduate, in the department.”

Joseph Hernandez Hall is named in honor of him, and the endowment that will benefit this generation and beyond.

“In terms of the impact of the endowment on the Department of Chemistry, these are rare and exceptional opportunities that only a few programs get to have, where their future can be improved and enhanced through a gift that can keep giving to the students, to the research, and to the scholarly enterprise of the department,” says Dean

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FINALLY, A BIG, BEAUTIFUL PLACE WHERE CHEMISTRY AND CHEMICAL BIOLOGY CAN DANCE IN THE MOONLIGHT, MAKING MOLECULES THAT MIGHT ONE DAY STOP CANCER AND OTHER DEADLY DISEASES IN THEIR TRACKS. Richardson. “When the world demands a new kind of technology, a new chemistry, a new approach to solving problems, UF Chemistry will be ready to invest and move forward. This is what the income from the endowment can bring.”

As a student, JOE HERNANDEZ ’96, MS’98, MBA’98 knew early on that he wanted to be a medical scientist (see profile on p. 24). His passion and curiosity were recognized, encouraged, and nurtured at UF. For the last 20 years, Hernandez has worked in the pharmaceutical and biotech world, creating a number of startups. Says Richardson, “Joe has a probing, questioning mind. He believes you always have to educate yourself.”

“I’ve been inspired to give to UF. There’s an absolute link between chemistry and its importance to my work,” says Hernandez. “The flexibility to jump from chemistry to neuroanatomy in attaining knowledge was very attractive to me.

I don’t like rigidity. My endeavors were well suited for the liberal arts and sciences.”

UF President Kent Fuchs says, “Joe’s investment in UF’s chemistry department will touch the lives of thousands of students each year. It will also enable faculty to be more

effective educators while achieving even greater excellence in research.”

Dean Richardson has been at the helm of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences since 2015, but has been a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry since 1983. Dolbier, who has witnessed the department’s fine years and lean years much longer, says, “Hernandez Hall is the culmination of the efforts of all of the chemistry chairs from the 1980s. It’s been a dream to find funding for such a building — an asset that cannot be overemphasized. It will enable us to move forward by building our faculty, attracting top grad students, and allowing our programs remaining in the other three buildings to expand research and move chemistry faculty from the Quantum Theory Project into the chemistry complex.”

Townes R. Leigh, the namesake of Leigh Hall and the man who brought pharmacy to UF way back in the roaring ’20s, would be pleased to know what’s in store for the new era at UF. Finally, a big, beautiful place where chemistry and chemical biology can dance in the moonlight, making molecules that might one day stop cancer and other deadly diseases in their tracks. q

The photo below may look like a mirror image but is actually rows and rows of lab desks in the undergraduate general chemistry lab, a welcome sight for professors and students alike.

STRONG PILLARS The namesake of Joseph Hernandez Hall says chemistry and biology support the foundation of his career in science.

By Gigi Marino

24 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

Joseph Hernandez ’96, MS'98, MBA'98

the human genome. He returned to the East Coast to work for Digene, a molecular diagnostic company that developed the test for human papillomavirus, which Hernandez says, “changed the landscape for cervical cancer.” Self-described as being “attention deficit,” Hernandez has begun five biotech start-ups. His companies are involved with creating therapies for a number of conditions, including osteoarthritis and ovarian cancer. “We’re especially interested in the next generation of cancer drugs, immuno-oncology,” he says.

Even as an undergraduate, Hernandez was driven by the desire “to create something great.” As someone who is in constant motion, he is on a path that also is constantly changing as new technologies are created. Life extension, for instance, fascinates him. “Pioneers and researchers are constantly pushing the envelope of what’s possible,” he says, “and that wouldn’t be possible without chemistry and biology. Both are equally important pillars in what we do in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology world.”

In giving to UF Chemistry, Hernandez says he is grateful to the university. “I look forward to making an impact on students the way an impact was made on me by professors who believed in me and gave me the opportunity to go from being a dishwasher to doing experiments in the lab.”

Robert Landry

JOE HERNANDEZ ’96, MS’98, MBA’98 almost didn’t attend UF, although he is glad he did. He’d been accepted to Emory University and was planning to attend when his father’s health took a turn for the worse. The senior Hernandez had been a political prisoner in Cuba sentenced to seven years in jail, where he developed encephalitis. Of the eight inmates he was jailed with, he was the only one to leave prison alive, although he spent six months in a coma, and his motor skills were permanently affected. As Hernandez explains, his father was disabled and not seen as a value or threat to Cuban society.

The family immigrated to the United States in the 1980s.

He remembers the day his family left. He was seven. “I had just gotten a new red bicycle, and I was trying to put it in the car,” he says. “My father told me I couldn’t take it. We lived in an old Spanish-style home surrounded by hedges.

I remember hiding the bike there. My father said we would come back later to get it.”

Hernandez never returned to Cuba. “America is my country,” he says. “It gave me opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Hernandez comes from a family of physicians. Though his own father was a businessman, he has many uncles and cousins who are doctors, which may explain why he gravitated so naturally to science and medicine. Early in his undergraduate career, Hernandez took a job as a dishwasher in the lab of David Muir, professor of pediatrics and neuroscience. “Dr. Muir noticed my analytical skills and really invested in me.

He exposed me to research, and that’s when I had the drive and interest to focus on neuroscience.” He became an interdisciplinary studies major. By the year’s end, Hernandez went from being a bottle-washer to being a published co-author on a paper about the regeneration of axons in spinal cords.

This pattern of being interested in a subject, becoming completely immersed in it, then making a rapid rise within the discipline, business, or company culture is one Hernandez repeats over and over. After receiving two masters’ degrees — one in business and the other in microbiology and molecular genetics — the same year, Hernandez worked for Merck, learning everything he could about drug creation, production, and regulation. He then moved to Silicon Valley, where he got the “start-up bug” and became a marketer at Affymetrix, which was involved in sequencing

DI S COVER

WE HAVE GREAT CHEMISTRY UF chemistry graduates go on to start businesses, invent molecules, become doctors, and change people’s lives. Meet 10 of them now.

FRED THURSTON ’76, DDS’79 Making People Smile In his junior year of high school, Fred Thurston made two goals for his career: to make people smile and to be self-employed. For him, the obvious choice to meet both goals, the first one truly, was dentistry. As a pre-dental student at UF, Thurston took a chemistry class with Professor William Dolbier.

“I loved his class,” says Thurston. Dolbier became his mentor, recommending him for dental school and, three decades later, for the Leadership Board of the UF Chemistry Department. Thurston accepted and continues to promote an education in chemistry. “When you go to college and doctoral school, you find out that learning is a lifetime experience.”

Thurston graduated in 1976 with a BS in chemistry and a doctorate of dental medicine in 1979. “A degree in chemistry opens up so many doors,” he says. “I did not realize how many fields it could propel your career toward.” Still, Thurston kept his goal of going into business for himself. “You start the 80-hour weeks to work 40 hours,” he says. “You invest a lot of time to be successful on your own.” The investment certainly has paid off. In 1980, Thurston opened his private practice, Thurston Comprehensive Dental Center in Auburndale, Fla. Appropriately for a chemistry alumnus-owned business, the clinic has a state-of-the-art laboratory producing dental implants and prides itself on a patient-centered approach.

People notice and appreciate the attention to detail. On Google, where Thurston receives rave reviews, one patient wrote, “I never thought in my lifetime that I would say, ‘I had fun at the dentist’s office.’ I have put off going to the dentist for several years due to my fear of the pain. Now I can’t wait for my next visit. This will be my ‘dentist family’ from now on.”

“Dentistry is being able to help people with their general health — their smile, their self-esteem,” Thurston says.

JOY MENDEZ PHD’99 Developing Cancer Drugs JOY MENDEZ PHD’99 recalls some quality mother–daughter time she had in high school: sharing chemistry notes. “At the time I was taking high school chemistry, it just so happened that my mom was taking first-year university chemistry,” she says. “When I had questions, she and I would talk about it.” Those family study sessions paid off.

While her mother began doing medical coding for a large surgical practice, Mendez followed her passion for chemistry throughout her education and excelled at it, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1994 and from UF’s graduate chemistry program in 1999. A fellowship with a venture capital firm investing in pharmaceutical development sparked her interest in the field. Now, after more than 15 years working in drug research and development, Mendez is the head of marketing at Bavarian Nordic, a Danish oncological pharmaceuticals company that uses live-virus vaccines to treat cancer.

As an international executive, she’s had to navigate the journey from childhood passion to academic humility. “I had a really excellent high school chemistry teacher who inspired me and encouraged me, since she could see I showed quite a bit more interest in the science than the other kids in the class,” she says. When she arrived at UF for graduate work, herself a mother at that time, she found another excellent teacher who had a different approach. “My professor, Dave Richardson, really challenged me, and it was to make me better,” she says. “It served me well because since then, I have never had a position that did not come with high expectations and high pressure, and I have always been able to manage them successfully.”

Indeed, Mendez has excelled in a pressure-cooker industry.

She has served as director on multiple cancer treatment drug development projects in the U.S., Germany, Spain, and, of course, Denmark, always with the competitive and quickly shifting market in mind. Leading these projects required her to draw connections among disciplines, learn new languages — German, Spanish, and Danish — and sales skills, and, most of all, say “yes.” Describing her achievements, Mendez says she’s learned to stay up to date on the science and embrace “every interesting opportunity to learn and try something new.” She adds, “These competencies were fostered at UF, and I am so pleased that I made the choice to go there.”

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 25

UF Photography — Bernard Brzezinski

THE SOUND OF TURLINGTON PLAZA Each day, thousands of students are treated with the music of lyrical bells. The lovely sound comes from Century Tower, which was built in 1953 and features a 58,000-pound carillon that comprises 61 bells with a five-octave range. The carillon is one of only four in Florida and 200 in North America.

GENE INMAN PHD’82

MARILYN BLACK M’71

Computers and Chemistry

Toxicity and Health

GENE INMAN recalls when computers weren’t an everyday part of STEM education and research. When he began at UF in 1978, the university had a centralized computing system.

In the nascent age of the personal computer, Inman sought to integrate computer science with chemistry. It was a natural progression for Inman, who double majored in mathematics and chemistry at a small private liberal arts college in Winona Lake, Ind. “In high school in the ’70s, there wasn’t the focus on the sciences or STEM there is now. But science and math — that was my interest in high school, driven by a couple of teachers I had.”

Inman found a home at UF, under the guidance of Professor Jim Winefordner, who graduated 169 PhD students in chemistry over his career at UF. “I knew I wanted to be a chemist, but not what type,” says Inman.

Winefordner led Inman toward analytical chemistry, while Inman supplemented his studies with a bachelor’s degree worth of computer science courses. “My research was on a computer-controlled lab instrument, so that combined my interests,” he says.

After completing his PhD in 1982, Inman began a three-decade career commercializing products at the pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly and Company in Indianapolis, Ind. Beyond his industrial contributions, Inman worked hard to change the culture at Lilly by taking risks and recruiting new people. He sees his interdisciplinary, risk-taking philosophy reflected in that of one of his heroes, Steve Spurrier, who he says emphasized recruiting good people and re-envisioning the status quo to bring teams to a higher level. It worked. “By the time I retired, I was promoted to vice-president level. Up until that time, there had never been an analytical chemist promoted to VP. Now that I’ve retired, they’ve phased it out,” he says.

Inman has recently returned to Gainesville and continues to support UF, having recruited more than a dozen PhD candidates while at Lilly. He currently serves as the chair of the Leadership Board for the UF Chemistry Department, with his philosophy of “thinking different.” He mentions Spurrier’s signature visor, donned when most coaches wore caps. “In Florida, it’s cooler,” he observes dryly.

If you’re sick of housework or your job makes you crazy, it might be something in the air.

So learned MARILYN BLACK, who studied why office workers were mysteriously becoming sick in the 1980s.

Her research at the Georgia Institute of Technology revealed what is now more widely known: cleaning, insulation, and filtration materials give off emissions that contribute to headaches, nausea, and pain — the symptoms of “sick building syndrome.”

Environmentally-friendly buildings are increasingly common throughout the U.S. Among the many standards for “green” buildings is GREENGUARD, which Black spearheaded after more than 20 years consulting on human-safe products. “There are more than 40,000 products in the marketplace now that are GREENGUARD certified,” she says. GREENGUARD’s parent company was Air Quality Sciences, which Black started in 1989 to provide manufacturers scientific guidance on product safety. In 2001, Black switched to the nonprofit sector and founded the GREENGUARD Environmental Institute to set standards for acceptable chemical emissions and establish a public registry of products that meet those standards.

Black credits her entrepreneurial success in part to the mentorship of UF Professor Jim Winefordner, a highly regarded analytical chemist. “Winefordner let you have your own space and apply your research and education to match up with your passion,” she says. Culminating her efforts to reduce people’s exposure to toxic chemicals in artificial environments, Black and her team developed environmental chamber technology: stainless steel containment devices to study chemical emissions’ effects vis-à-vis factors in building maintenance, such as temperature and humidity. The technology is the basis for GREENGUARD. After years of studying the exposure effects of lead, acid rain, and Agent Orange, among others, Black now works as a senior advisor for Underwriters Laboratory, an organization devoted to safety science in countries around the world. She has also launched the Khaos Foundation to enable the wellbeing of children and protection from environmental threats. “It’s fulfilling to see that a lot of what I’ve done is applied to make safer environments for my four children and others’,” she says.

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DI S COVER

THOMAS BARTON PHD’67

ROBERT KINCART ’72

The Accidental Chemist

Chemistry Was Inevitable

THOMAS BARTON did not intend to study chemistry. He didn’t like it in high school, where music took up much of his time. When he began college, prepared to study voice and clarinet, his advisor recommended Chemistry 117 for his science credit. “What about Chemistry 101?” asked Barton. Retelling the story, Barton assumes a condescendingly sweet tone: “‘That’s for students who are good at science.’ And I said, ‘Well then, I’m taking Chemistry 101!’ Next thing I knew, I had a PhD.” Barton had gotten hooked on chemistry and completed his bachelor’s in 1962. After a cold winter holiday in Texas, he threw out his applications for schools in the north and applied to the University of Florida. He kept his musicality alive through his friendship with ROBERT GRUBBS ’63, M’65 (see p. 30), who talked him into learning the ukulele.

However, it was new faculty member Merle Battiste who helped Barton find his lifelong calling: teaching and research in organosilicon chemistry.

Barton talks about his years at UF with fondness, especially for his mentor. “I worked with a man I very much admired and had a deep friendship with. He is now departed,” he says.

(Battiste passed away in 2009.) Battiste had arrived at UF with an NSF grant but no students. The department chair had allowed him one research associate, and he fortuitously chose Barton from a long list of incoming students.

Battiste wrote Barton a letter of recommendation to teach at Iowa State. After an anxiety-inducing waiting period, “He called and told them, ‘You guys better act quick or you’re gonna lose Barton!’” recalls Barton. “Turns out they’d put the letter in the wrong stack.” Mistake corrected, Barton taught and did research there for the rest of his career. He served as director of the research consortium at the US Department of Energy-run Ames Laboratory for 18 years. In 1982, he became the youngest winner of the prestigious Frederick Stanley Kipping Award; more than 30 years later, he became president of the American Chemical Society. However, at 66, he came back to Iowa State solely to teach for five years, which he says were “amongst the best five years of my life.”

Having learned from Battiste what it meant to be a mentor, Barton bonded with those students. Looking back on UF and Battiste, he finds he is “happy, honored, and proud that I was able to conduct my graduate studies there.”

For ROB KINCART, a career in chemistry was almost inevitable. “My parents bought me a chemistry set when I was seven or eight years old,” he says. “I grew up in the space age with a good chemistry teacher.” After graduation, Kincart began working at Glidden–Durkee as a research chemist. When faced with the choice to advance his career by pursuing a PhD or moving into management, Kincart embraced his business skill set and chose the latter.

In 1980, he started a company offering services to ensure compliance with environmental regulations. His chemistry degree provided him a technical background in a business environment, giving him a unique set of entrepreneurial skills. He was able to sell his first company within seven years and, in 1987, launched A–C–T Environmental & Infrastructure, which offers consulting, engineering, and field services to help companies ensure compliance with environmental regulations and manage their risk. A large part of his daily work entails hazmat training, and for his contributions in Polk County, he was named an honorary Fire Chief. A wearer of many hats besides hard ones, Kincart also co-founded a wireless telephone provider, American Communications, Inc., in 1995, and five years later, jumped into real estate by founding The Kincart Group.

Kincart credits his wife, Laurel, as the pragmatist who keeps things in perspective. Accordingly, A-C-T has won Florida Trend’s Best Place to Work award and was listed in UF’s Gator100, which recognizes fast-growing businesses.

Kincart is pleased to work with his children, MICHAEL KINCART ’05, ROBERT KINCART JR., and JENNIFER KINCART JONSSON ’00, M’01, who all also attended UF. “We bleed orange and blue,” he says. He is proud to be a Bull Gator.

In 2005, the Department of Chemistry honored him with the Outstanding Alumni Award and offered him a position on the Leadership Board. He accepted, seeing “an opportunity to show students the necessity of STEM education.” The opportunity is welcome in a time he feels that “we’ve fallen down in chemistry. The U.S. is not doing a great job with women in the sciences.” In serving on the board and helping to recruit students, he is proud to support the dreams of others. “It’s nice to be able to come full circle,” he says.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 29

DR. KATHY FIELDS ’79

Nobly Nobel

Skin Care for All

A two-time Gator, ROBERT GRUBBS ’63, M’65, switched from agricultural sciences to organic chemistry as an undergraduate and hasn’t looked back his entire career.

His discovery of ruthenium-based catalysts led to his expansion of olefin metathesis, an organic reaction that can create unique compounds with applications in plastics, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and, bringing it full circle, agriculture. The eponymous catalysts are available through Grubbs’ startup company, Materia. His accomplishments represent a major advancement in metathesis. Indeed, Grubbs and his team received the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work.

Grubbs arrived at UF from a town in rural Kentucky called Possum Trot, having done a fair amount of farm work and expecting a very different professional path. “I was lucky to meet Merle Battiste, who introduced me to organic chemistry and supported me throughout my career,” he says. Late Professor of Organic Chemistry Merle Battiste, known at UF for his mentorship and creative qualities, convinced Grubbs to switch from agricultural sciences to chemistry, sparking his interest in catalysts of chemical reactions. Grubbs found himself in a stimulating program full of young scientists, including his soon-to-be friend THOMAS BARTON PHD’67, also a protégé of Battiste (see end note on opposite page).

After receiving his master’s degree, Grubbs pursued a PhD at Columbia University and began working in the emerging field of organometallic chemistry. Adding metal to his purview turned out to be lucrative. In 1992, building on the work of his colleagues Yves Chauvin and Richard Schrock, who shared the Nobel Prize with him, Grubbs discovered that a catalyst containing the metal ruthenium was able to break carbon double bonds without disturbing the rest of the molecule, allowing materials to adopt new properties while reducing the potential for pollution. This discovery launched a new phase in the practical application of metathesis.

As with any emerging field, there were obstacles, including funding challenges and heavy competition, but through time management and, inspired by Battiste, a consortium of students, Grubbs has come out ahead. He has been at the California Institute of Technology, where he serves as the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry, since 1978.

DR. KATHY FIELDS began her studies at Northwestern University but transferred to UF, where her late twin, KENNETH ’79, and sister CONNIE ’77 studied. She was intent on mastering the pre-med curriculum, spending long hours in the lab for a neurobiochemistry degree and, along the way, developing an interest in formulations. While at UF, an advisor once told her, “Marry a doctor because you’ll never get into med school.” He was wrong — fortunately for millions around the world whose lives are better because of her medical expertise.

She and Ken attended med school at the University of Miami, which she says represented their happiest years together. She went on to a dermatology residency at Stanford University, where she met Dr. Katie Rodan.

Rodan observed that a lot of adults had acne. “Everyone believed you’re not supposed to get breakouts after 21,” says Fields. “We realized that the 3 percent of adults cited in the literature either all lived in San Francisco, or the number was way off.”

She continues, “Concurrently, HMO gatekeeper medicine arrived in the early ’90s. Access to care for acne was often denied. The emotional and physical scars could be devastating.” They saw a huge need and were compelled to create an over-the-counter regimen that worked. “We were in a unique position,” says Fields. “We understood physiology, we understood the chemistry, and we also wanted luxury skin care.” Together, they created Proactiv, still the leading OTC acne medication. “This was a paradigm shift for the treatment of acne,” says Fields. “Tens of millions have benefitted worldwide over the past 22 years.”

In 2008, the doctors launched a second company to tackle sensitive skin, sun damage, and aging: Rodan + Fields. Their goal is to give people the best skin of their lives and the confidence and self-esteem that comes with it. “We have enjoyed tremendous satisfaction empowering others to live well in their skin,” says Fields.

Rodan + Fields is now the No. 1 skin care brand in the U.S., with more than 200,000 consultants selling the products and millions of customers. The journey has been extraordinary and difficult. “Overnight success took years,” says Fields.

“Good thing I paid attention in organic chemistry.

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Erika McConnell

ROBERT GRUBBS ’63, M’65

DI S COVER

A.R. RAVISHANKARA PHD’75

NANCY CREWS ’70

Science: 1. Greenhouse Effect: 0.

Chemistry for Industry and Engineering

Chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were banned by the 1987 Montreal Protocol to mitigate their impact on the greenhouse effect and indoor air quality. UF chemistry alumnus A.R. RAVISHANKARA PHD’75 played an instrumental role in this accomplishment with an early paper he published about the harmful effects of CFCs. The phasing out of CFCs allowed a new contender for the top destroyer of the ozone layer: nitrous oxide, which is produced by agriculture and industry. Ravishankara turned his attention to this new threat, working with his colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to develop a chemical model for nitrous oxide’s ozone-depleting potential. In 2009, they announced that the effects of nitrous oxide could be even more destructive in 40 years than the pre-Montreal level of CFCs. Once again, Ravishankara provided the scientific backing to encourage regulation of ozone-depleting gases. Even so, Ravishankara embraces a kind of academic humility, noting that it’s taken several decades of environmental science to address the problem of ozone depletion — and the fight is not over. It also requires an interdisciplinary approach. “There is so much fundamental chemistry and physics in [environmental issues],” he says. As a double major in those two disciplines, he certainly set off from a strong place, with generous intellectual support from his UF thesis advisor, Professor of Chemistry Robert Hanrahan.

He arrived at UF for graduate studies in 1971 and says he found that Hanrahan and his other professors were fully invested in their students’ development. They championed research done well and for a purpose — a concept called Pasteur’s quadrant. “Louis Pasteur said, ‘There is no such thing as applied science, only the application of science,’” he says. “Research and teaching are extremely coupled.”

However, he says there’s always more to learn. “I learned more from teaching than my students did,” he observes.

He keeps that in mind as he mentors his own students at Colorado State University.

That philosophy of lifelong learning keeps Ravishankara on his toes, ready to stand on the front lines of the battle against ozone-depleting gases. “I’m very grateful for the education I got at Florida,” says Ravishankara. “It really was instrumental in being able to do many things that I did.”

NANCY P. CREWS ’70 was a psychology major who discovered chemistry through a core curriculum introductory class at UF. Spurred by a thirst for knowledge, she appreciated the combination of science and mathematics in the field. She began shaping her expertise in analytical chemistry under the guidance of Professor Jim Winefordner (who also mentored GENE INMAN PHD’82, p. 28, and MARILYN BLACK M’71, p. 28). “He always made his classes very interesting and fun,” she remembers.

“He challenged you while giving you reasons for how things worked.” She graduated in 1970 with her bachelor’s in chemistry and went on to earn a PhD at Virginia Tech in 1975.

She used her chemistry know-how with Eastman Kodak, working in both marketing and R&D for their reprographics products. “I was working in the [corporate] research lab, then transitioned to the business side, which afforded me the ability to learn and explore new opportunities,” she says.

Her inquisitiveness coupled with her STEM education and marketing experience served her well. “Because I liked to learn new things and had both business and technical education, I was able to get a business off the ground,” she says.

That business is Custom Manufacturing and Engineering, which produces test equipment and power products.

Previously, she worked for Lockheed Martin, which contracted with the U.S. Department of Energy in nuclear weapons research. As the project tapered off upon the end of the Cold War, Crews found herself in “the right place at the right time” to launch her own business.

MAGNIFICENT MENTORS Professor Emeritus James D. Winefordner arrived at UF in 1959 and expanded the university's analytical chemistry, which ranked in the top five in the nation for 30 years.

Professor Emeritus Robert Hanrahan also arrived at UF in 1959 and taught for more than four decades, chairing the physical chemistry division from 1977 to 1986. Merle Battiste arrived at UF in 1962 and quickly became a mentor to UF’s organic chemistry students. The Petra Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry was renamed in memory of his mentorship efforts and contributions to the department.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 31

Photography by Dr. Howard Sheridan

The Imposter – Fort Myers, Florida

On the Prowl – Sabi Sand Game Reserve, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa

CON N ECT DR. HOWARD SHERIDAN ’65 has taken thousands of nature photographs, some of which required travel by plane, by boat, and by boot, but many also happened serendipitously. Sheridan has donated 17 photos to the new Joseph Hernandez Hall, where they are on permanent display.

Sauna Break – Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Food Fight – Rausu, Menashi District, Nemuro Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan

High Alert – Madison Mountain Range, Montana

Is This My Best Side? – South Georgia, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Southern Atlantic Ocean

Beauty Spa – Joshinetsu Kogen National Park, Yamanouchi, Nagano Prefecture, Japan

Gentle Giant – Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Bubble Netting Whales – Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada

Lyon Duong

Chemistry alumnus DR. HOWARD SHERIDAN ’65 received his MD from Tulane Medical School in 1969. He practiced interventional and diagnostic radiology in Fort Myers, Fla. In 1981, he established Fort Myers Radiology Regional Center and Radiation Therapy Services, Inc. (RTSI). He has served as chair of RTSI and 21st Century Oncology. In 1997, he founded Edison National Bank and is chairman of Edison Bancshares, Inc. His love of fishing and diving as a young boy led to an interest in underwater photography. After retiring in 2004, he began to concentrate seriously on wildlife photography, traveling from Alaska to Antarctica to photograph animals in their natural habitat. His award-winning images have been published in many magazines, including National Geographic.

Dr. Sheridan and his wife, journalism alumna BRENDA ’65, are actively involved environmental conservationists. They hope his photography will inspire others to protect and conserve our planet’s wildlife and habitat.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 35

Personal Essay

RIVERS, ROADS, AND GUNMEN Two researchers search for the elusive logging frontier in the Amazonian wilds.

T

By Robert Walker

he ferry threads the labyrinth of islets leading to the Xingu River, with the Amazonian town, São Felix do Xingu, now 10 minutes behind. I stand at the bow breathing the morning mists. Eugenio Arima, my Brazilian colleague and an assistant professor at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, hangs back in our pickup, saving his energy for the 100-mile drive to Vila Central, the only settlement in a rather wild part of Amazonia. Our objective is to find the logging frontier so that we can understand the process of forest fragmentation that takes place when loggers build roads to access valuable timber. Such fragmentation, bad enough in its own right, is what paves the way to human occupation and a total conversion to agriculture. That we find the frontier is essential to

36 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

the successful conclusion of our research project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). We’ve been searching for the past two summers but without luck. It’s now or never.

This morning when we left Hotel Jacaré at 5 a.m., Chico, the owner, settled our accounts, asking, “So where you going?”

“Vila Central,” Eugenio said.

“You can’t go there!”

At this, Chico told us how the owner of the Vila’s gas station, a fellow named Paulo Texeira, had recently killed someone in a bar fight. To get even, the victim’s brother hired two gunmen, pistoleiros, but Texeira’s bodyguards got the drop on them. This threw fuel on the fire, with the aggrieved brother promising reward money, thereby sparking a Kill Bill convergence of pistoleiros on Vila Central.

Done with his story, Chico asked, “You really need to go?” to which I responded, “It’s our job.”

“OK, but I’d hate to lose your business.”

CON N ECT EUGENIO BUMPS THE PICKUP OVER THE RUTTED dirt road.

We’ve seen nothing but pastures. No logging or even people to talk to about it. But two and a half hours after the ferry crossing, the forest rises on either side. The road now passes through a series of ravines, their low spots swampy with thickets of açai, and huge burití palm trees rising like totem poles from black pools. Beside a wall of vegetation where the terrain has flattened, Eugenio stops to back up, pointing out the picada, a dirt track cutting through the roadside forest.

“What do you think?” he asks.

We haven’t seen a soul, much less a sawmill, and need intelligence. “Sure,” I say.

The picada widens on entering, and a canopy folds over us. But we soon reach a slash field still smoking in places.

The lonely wattle and daub shelter stands in harsh sunlight a hundred yards away. We park in shade and climb out, setting off for the crude dwelling with map tubes and backpacks.

Upon nearing it, we stop and Eugenio claps. After an old woman and teenage girl emerge from the dark entrance, we

approach. Wrinkles cleave the old woman’s face like knife cuts in putty, and the teenage girl holds a baby boy with bug bites on every square inch of his naked body. The girl invites us in, and the old woman, who’s been watching the distance, giggles. We sit down in the stifling space against sacks of rice, sharing the hardpan floor with chickens. A sheet partitions us from the bowels of the humble dwelling.

Eugenio takes a satellite image from the map tube and spreads it out, then queries the girl, “Do you know about satellites?”

She squats beside him, and brings her finger down to the slash field, plainly visible on the image.

“So, have you ever sold wood?” Eugenio asks her.

“We’ve not even sold one log,” claims a voice from behind the sheet.

This startles us, but Eugenio plods on, “Then how’d you build the road in?”

The sheet ripples, and an old man staggers out, coughing. He wears raggedy shorts, and tropical light has

— Sunrise on Xingu River

Eugenio Arima

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 37

Eugenio Arima

Once outside, we turn for a final good-bye, surprised to see our hosts lined up in front of their shack, Señora Silva de Bom Jesus with an outsized smile. Señor Jorge, perfectly calm now, asks, “But what about lunch?”

“We have to get to Vila Central.” Eugenio looks at his watch.

“Vila Central!” Jorge shouts, as if he’s just now aware of us.

“Only pistoleiros go there.”

“How do you know this?” I ask, beginning to worry about Chico’s warning, which I’d dismissed.

“Pistoleiros!” Jorge jabs at us. “Go. Go!”

I’VE BEEN DRIVING FOR AN HOUR. The forest thins, and when a small store appears beside an abandoned pasture, I pull to the front and park. Inside, a middle-aged man stands behind a plank counter, while a middle-aged woman sits to the side, writing in a notebook. We pay for soft drinks, and drink them with lust.

“Where you going?” the man asks, although it should be obvious. Vila Central lies three miles ahead.

“Vila Central.”

“You know what’s happening there?”

“Yes,” Eugenio says. “We’re researchers, though.”

burned the freckles on his shoulders into fat, cancerous moles. “I am Jorge Silva de Bom Jesus, from Maranhão.”

We stand to shake his sweaty hand as he shuffles in our direction. Eugenio says, “You’ve come a long way, to the Amazon.”

“We arrived 20 years ago and built this house, as God is my witness. We came when there was nothing but forest, jaguars, malaria.” Jorge pauses to swat a fly.

“Señor Jorge, we’re from the university.” Eugenio explains.

“Could we ask a few questions?”

“My wife was beaten down by our life in Maranhão, a terra de besta-fera [Satan’s land].” Jorge’s eyes glisten.

Eugenio tries to get to the subject. “Señor Jorge, the land here. Does it belong to loggers?”

For a moment, Jorge appears lost in thought, but then he begins to tremble. “You want to know who owns our land?”

Eugenio tries to soothe him. “We didn’t mean to disturb you, Señor Jorge.”

“You want to know who owns our land.” Jorge glares at us as he flings his boney arm.

There’s nothing to be learned here, not to mention we’ve agitated the head of the house. Eugenio and I thank everyone for their time, then grab our belongings and exit through the hole in the wattle.

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Robert Walker

Walker talks to a key informant in São Felix do Xingu.

A one-truck ferry crossing on a nameless waterway in Amazonia.

CON N ECT

Eugenio Arima

EUGENIO SHOUTS, “MACAWS,” then swerves off the road and hits the breaks. We climb from the pickup, near a cluster of giant burití palms rising high over scummy water, one of the swamps we passed on the way in. Husky squawks draw my attention to the tip of a rotting tree that’s lost its fronds. A blue macaw stands there, its chest feathers a burst of yellow against the watery sky. Another bird clings to the bark with claws and beak, inching to the summit. As they squawk excitedly no more than 50 yards away, other macaws fly from the background forest, coming to their evening roost.

Eugenio goes for his camera as I do mine, and we start shooting pictures of the birds individually and in multiples, climbing up and down the palm trees, buzzing so close we can practically touch them. After half an hour, I lower my camera, and see that Eugenio has also finished. We climb into the pickup, and I can’t help but notice that my colleague is smiling.

We make the last ferry to São Felix do Xingu, and head for Hotel Jacaré. Chico is so happy we’ve returned alive that we get the promotional rate. q

A friendly dog stares down the road towards Vila Central.

Robert Walker

The man shakes his head. “The best pistoleiros don’t look like pistoleiros. You’re dead-ringers for what he’s probably worried about, researcher-pistoleiros.”

Eugenio changes the subject. “Are there sawmills?”

“Yeah. They’ve had a run on coffins.”

As we turn to take our leave, the woman says, “Suppose you don’t get killed today, so what? Vão queimar archivo [They won’t leave witnesses].”

We drive off, but in a moment I downshift and pull over.

After watching the vultures wheel through the gray-blue sky, I say, “Maybe we should put this off.”

Eugenio shakes his head. “Filho da puta [Son-of-a-bitch]!”

“We’ll come back next summer.”

“There isn’t a next summer.”

Indeed, this is the last year of the project, but there’s a way to buy time. “NSF gives no-cost extensions. One year, no questions asked.”

This doesn’t fully satisfy Eugenio. “You’re not an assistant professor.”

Up for tenure and promotion at UT, he has a point, but I try to reassure him. “Eugenio, the university doesn’t expect you to die for research.”

The air in the pickup compresses. At last, Eugenio says, “Turn around, but let me drive. I need to do something.”

Macaws at play.

Robert Walker is Professor of Geography and Latin American Studies and adjunct faculty at the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, Brazil. An environmental scientist with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, Walker has conducted research in the Amazonian frontier for more than 20 years, with support from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 39

Entrepreneurs and Innovators

THE DENNYS — First Magnitude Brewing Company literature planted a seed and desire to learn more and get better. The skills I learned as an English major helped out a lot — critical thinking, writing, and understanding and interpreting the writing of others. From 1999 to 2016, I worked at Normandeau Associates, an environmental consulting company and, in 2015, my husband and I opened First Magnitude Brewing Company with two of our friends. Both of these roles are entrepreneurial, and success is closely tied to communicating and connecting with people. Over the years, I have honed my ability to tell the story of our company and our brand and I feel this is rooted in the education I had in my undergraduate classes.

WHAT IS THE FAVORITE PART OF YOUR JOB?

CHRISTINE DENNY ’94 English, with Minors in Education and Anthropology M’00 Forest Resources and Conservation JOHN DENNY ’92 Psychology PhD’12 Higher Education Administration WE TALKED TO CHRISTINE ABOUT THEIR CRAFT BREWERY AND EVENT SPACE.

HOW HAS YOUR DEGREE IN ENGLISH IMPACTED YOUR ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL CAREERS? My awkward class presentations, early attempts at writing a coherent report, and struggles to best understand complex 40 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

WHAT’S GREAT ABOUT GAINESVILLE FOR YOUR BUSINESS AND YOUR FAMILY? Someone once told me that every town has its “currency.”

In some, it’s who your family is, in others, it’s what your work is. In Gainesville, it’s what your story is. We moved back here in 1999 and tell each other regularly that we can’t imagine a better place to live. Our kids are growing up in a town with so much to offer. We love it here, and we love that Gainesville has accepted our brewery into the community and are making it part of the story of this town.

Robert Landry

John and Christine Denny named their brewery in honor of Florida’s springs.

I love that every day has so much diversity. First Magnitude is always alive with activity, from the large-scale production work of the brewing, canning, and bottling that my husband, John, leads to the energy of our taproom and the fun of live music and special events. I’m lucky enough to be able to cross-pollinate my background in environmental science and water resources with the mission and vision of the brewery.

A core part of our brewery’s mission is to celebrate springs and engage people in efforts to protect them. The name First Magnitude refers to Florida’s springs. North central Florida has the highest concentration of freshwater springs in the world. Those that are the most powerful, pushing out over 100 cubic feet of water per second, are called first-magnitude springs. We want people to come and enjoy great beer with their friends, and while they’re at it, look at Floridafocused artwork on our walls, participate in one of our events, such as the 7.2 K Springs Run (72 degrees Fahrenheit is the constant temperature of spring water), or ask about the reason behind some of our beer names. Maybe we’ll help create a spark to care about the springs, too.

CON N ECT

Lyon Duong

Professor of Anthropology Aaron Broadwell with a rare Timucua artifact representing one of the varieties of St. Johns Check Stamped ceramics. Recovered from a site in Citrus County, Florida, this piece is housed in the Florida Museum of Natural History.

Native Tongue This magazine’s name, Ytori, a Spanish variant of the word itori, has a long and Gatored Florida history.

By Rachel Wayne Perhaps it’s something in the water, but alligator worship goes way back in north central Florida. As in seven centuries back, or more. Aaron Broadwell, the Elling Eide Professor of Anthropology at UF, is one of the few experts on the Timucua, an indigenous group who occupied Florida until the early 18th century. The last speakers of Timucua likely died around 1780, but Broadwell is dedicated to preserving their language — and keeping the ancient gator tradition alive.

Sixteenth-century French explorers were the first Europeans to have seen alligators, says Broadwell, and engravings from the period show that they apparently saw impressive displays of Timucua taking down an alligator, or itori, as they called it (sound familiar?). The alligator had a multifaceted role in Timucua culture. Much as contemporary Floridians enjoy the occasional fried gator tail, the Timucua also appreciated the tasty, nutrient-rich meat of the reptile. However, the alligator also held a symbolic position in the culture, as seen in the usage of the word for grandfather: “itori.”

Broadwell has completed a dictionary of the Timucua language, an endeavor previously undertaken only by amateur linguists. As an extinct language not spoken for

more than 200 years and with no extant related languages, Timucua is a challenging project in language documentation. Broadwell doesn’t shy away from a challenge; in fact, he’s always been willing to work from scratch. “I didn’t want to add footnotes to others’ work,” he says, explaining why he didn’t focus on better-known languages. “I wanted to write the grammar myself.”

He has had some practice, having begun writing grammars and dictionaries as a bright 12-year-old. Bosotrian was a language of his own invention. Years later, he taught courses on invented languages, a ripening field for professional linguists who have developed or expanded languages such as Dothraki on Game of Thrones, Heptapod in Arrival, or, of course, Klingon on Star Trek. Broadwell feels an affinity with Klingon’s inventor, linguist Marc Okrand, who also had training in Native language documentation.

Broadwell attributes his interest in Southeastern Native tongues in particular to his early life as a precocious junior linguist in South Carolina. Although he studied Semitic languages as an undergrad at Harvard, he immersed himself in Choctaw for his dissertation at UCLA and wrote a dictionary of Choctaw for the tribal council. He is currently working with the Seminole tribe to develop a dictionary of Creek. Meanwhile, he keeps the Gator spirit alive in the anthropology department by leading a Timucua language research group with a select group of students.

So, does he enjoy alligator as much as the Timucua did?

“I won’t eat tongue, because that’s the token of my culture as a linguist,” jokes Broadwell. It’s a bit of an issue at Cuban restaurants, he says. Thankfully, itori is in plentiful supply, symbolically and literally, in Gainesville.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 41

A Thousand Words The love story of CHARLOTTE ’59 and FRED WARD ’57, M’59 covers six decades of discovery and curiosity.

Photography by the late Fred Ward Moving from the sweltering heat and rural atmosphere of Huntsville, Ala., to balmy Miami in 1948 proved auspicious for 13-year-old FRED WARD. Perhaps it was the cross-cultural exchange of multicultural South Florida or the larger world connected by letters and packages delivered by his postal-worker father that made the young boy dream big. Whatever the impetus, his Coral Gables High School debate teacher saw his genius and had an inkling that lending him a camera and a darkroom to capture the world would serve his dreams. His gift was prescient: From the printing of that first photograph in the school newspaper, Fred achieved immediate success.

Charlotte with Fred on NatGeo assignment to photograph the new Rockefeller Resort, Little Dix Bay on Virgin Gorda, 1965.

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CON N ECT Two years into college, while on a summer stint at the Miami Daily News, Fred got an assignment to photograph a graduating Gables classmate, CHARLOTTE MAYES. The spark was vivid as the two recognized each other’s talents.

They went on their first date her first night at UF and married three years later. Reminiscent of his serendipitous photographic debut, Fred earned his way through college on the staff of the Alligator, the Orange Peel, and the Seminole.

While Charlotte finished her BA and her teaching certificate, Fred completed his BA in political science and Chinese history and his Master’s in journalism and communication.

In a postmodern era of sociopolitical turmoil, he began to realize his potential to reveal truths through silent stories.

“ EVERYTHING ABOUT FRED WAS REMARKABLE. HE USED HIS RELENTLESS DRIVE, VAST CURIOSITY, AND CREATIVE POTENTIAL TO REVEAL A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD. BEFITTING A MOVIE HERO, HOW I WISH THAT WE COULD MAKE A FRED WARD SEQUEL.”

Elvis Presley at mic singing to adoring teens on his first national tour, Olympia Theater, Miami, Fla., August 1956.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 43

As if his camera were an extension of his body, Fred excelled in a UF photography class. The semester after taking the first course, the administration asked him to teach it. He and Charlotte spent their downtime at Ginnie Springs, where he set his sights on learning to dive. Postwar scuba and the rudimentary Jacques Cousteau Aqua-Lung inspired Fred to commission a custom-built Plexiglas® casing for his camera.

Then, true to form, he jumped feet first into the 72-degree crystal-clear water to expand his photographic prowess.

With no formal training and no weight belts, he and Charlotte stuffed rocks into their pockets to stay submerged. Afterward,

they frequently dived with friends from South Florida, Jerry and Idaz Greenberg, authors of an extensive series of underwater books and plastic wildlife cards. In 1990, Jerry and Fred raised an outcry in a National Geographic article, “The Coral Reefs Are Imperiled,” that led to designating 2,900 square nautical miles as the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

With Charlotte by his side, being a modern-day journalist proved profoundly satisfying. They both loved to write, and as a teacher and master communicator, Charlotte understood how to tell the stories. In many ways, their talents and personalities complemented each other. She was the Mulder

Liz Taylor at home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., with 1963 Andy Warhol painting in background, cover of Dossier Magazine, 1979.

Paul McCartney and John Lennon singing at mic on the Beatles' first U.S. tour, Washington, D.C., Uline Arena, Feb. 11, 1964.

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CON N ECT to his Scully, bright-eyed and optimistic whereas Fred questioned narratives and dug deep into the background, earning him the family nickname of “Indiana Jones.”

While still in his 20s, Fred started concentrating on long National Geographic assignments. A world map marking his travels grew to resemble a swath of pushpin art. Very like Dr. Jones, Fred delved into the hidden realm behind the illusions and booby traps. He examined many aspects of pop culture and its shadowy corners, discovering the brooding soul beneath the celebrity persona, capturing the quiet moments of world leaders and revealing the corruptive secrets of envi-

ronmental and urban decay. The quality of his work might have looked like a happy accident had he not repeated his artistic accuracy by recording hundreds of perfect moments on film. Charlotte always considered Fred’s gift for ferreting out the truth as something innate to his being.

In 1966, Fred and Charlotte’s first child, Kim, was born in the hospital. In yet another endeavor ahead of the trends, they located a doctor and nurse-midwives to support home birth for their next child, Christopher. They documented the experience and interviewed dozens of other like-minded couples. The project resulted in a photo-ethnographic trea-

Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis two days before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968; cover of the memorial Issue of Life Magazine, April 12, 1968.

Widowed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy with John Jr. and Caroline on White House steps waiting to join JFK's funeral procession. Cover of Life Magazine, Dec. 6, 1963.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 45

tise, The Home Birth Book. With the family gathered in their bedroom, Fred filmed the birth of their third child, Lolly, and received into his own hands their fourth, David.

Ingenuity and love of the big picture bordering on obsession played a part in Fred’s buying and flying his own helicopter. Sometimes he would remove the doors and man the controls with his knees to focus and shoot a coveted aerial. He flew over the desperately dry Sea of Grass for the January, 1972 NatGeo article “The Imperiled Everglades.” In the same year that he researched and created the NatGeo article “The Timeless Mystique of Emeralds,” Fred completed his graduate gemology certificate with the Gemological Institute of America in a record-setting 90 days.

After 28 years of NatGeo articles, Fred decided to concentrate on writing and photographing an eight-book series.

With Charlotte as editor and author, Gem Book Publishers continues to produce new editions and distribute worldwide.

Three days after turning 81, on July 19, 2016, with Charlotte by his side, Fred passed away in his home in Malibu, Calif. It had been 68 years since his pivotal move to Florida, 63 years since the Coral Gables High yearbook named him “Most Likely to Succeed,” and 58 years since marrying Charlotte. Looking back over the sweep of Fred’s life and accomplishments, she summed up her appreciation: “Everything about Fred was remarkable. He used his relentless drive, vast curiosity, and creative potential to reveal a rapidly changing world. Befitting a movie hero, how I wish that we could make a Fred Ward sequel.”

His vision across the pushpin map took a lifetime to realize—and what a life it was. q

Senator Robert Kennedy announcing his candidacy for the Presidency from the Caucus Room of the Old Senate office building, March 16, 1968.

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Martin Luther King Jr.’s 5,000-strong peaceful protest march of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., March 29, 1968.

FREDERICK N. WARD (1935–2016) was a prolific photojournalist whose work was printed in Time, Life, Newsweek, and National Geographic and is on display in the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, the International Center of Photography, and the Voyager spacecraft. He won multiple photography awards as well as Distinguished Alumnus of the College of Journalism and Communications and the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the University of Florida. He documented powerful, significant moments such as the Beatles’ first U.S. concert and Jackie Kennedy after JFK’s assassination, and he captured candid shots of prominent figures such as Cuban leader Fidel Castro, singer Elvis Presley on his first tour at the Olympia Theater in Miami, U.S. President Gerald Ford, and civil rights activists Martin Luther King

Jr. and Gloria Richardson. His work encompasses a wide range of environmental, ethnographic, nature, celebrity, and political photography in 131 countries over a span of 50 years.

Fred celebrated those keepers of the Fourth Estate who had mentored him in what he called “crusty, old-time” investigative journalism: special friends and worthies Hugh Cunningham, BUDDY DAVIS M’52, and Ralph Lowenstein; ED JOHNSON ’52, his friend, fraternity brother, and journalistic comrade; and whistleblower Louie Psihoyos, director of the documentary The Cove.

Near the end of his life, Fred’s brilliant mind suffered a silent killer, Alzheimer’s. Donations in Fred’s name may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association to support research on prevention and treatment of this devastating disease.

YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 47

Mike Boslet

Cindy LaRoe ’92 discovered that the focus required for painting helped her recover from a traumatic brain injury.

SHIFTING GEARS A physician’s traumatic brain injury ends her career as a doctor but not as a healer.

By Mike Boslet CINDY LAROE ’92 laughs as she recalls a moment during her first week at the University of Florida. A chemistry professor was concerned that she, being a community college transfer student, wouldn’t be prepared for the rigors of his course.

Take a remedial chem course first, he suggested.

LaRoe aced his class.

What the well-intentioned professor didn’t know was that LaRoe was highly motivated, in her mid-30s, married, and the mother of two young children. But more importantly, her arrival at UF was prompted by a late-in-life decision to become a doctor for personal reasons.

LaRoe’s firstborn, Zachary, had been diagnosed with cri du chat syndrome, a rare chromosomal abnormality that causes developmental disabilities. She wanted to know the science behind what had caused his condition.

“Having Zach with a chromosomal abnormality, I found my genetics class enlightening,” she says.“It was my favorite 48 | LIBERAL ARTS AND SCIENCES

class at UF. Just the fact that it explained a lot: genetics and mutations and how they occur.”

LaRoe went on to graduate with honors in zoology and earn a medical degree at the University of South Florida, followed by a surgical internship and an internal medicine residency in Gainesville.

At age 44, LaRoe began her medical career as an internist in Eustis, Fla., where she and her husband, KEN LAROE JD ’92, had grown up. Ken, a banking executive, had taken care of the kids with help from family while Cindy completed medical school and her hospital residency.

A few years into her new life, LaRoe answered an inner call to compete — both as a runner and cyclist. And so she did, claiming victories and setting records as a master class (female, age 50–54) cyclist.

In February 2011, LaRoe entered a regional cycling race she considered a tune-up. That day remains a blur to her,

CON N ECT but the long-term effects of the crash she endured are crystal clear.

Hospitalized, she was treated for a broken clavicle, frozen shoulder, and four broken ribs. Only later, while home recovering, did she notice the effects of a head injury — spells of blurred visions and memory lapses, the struggle to concentrate and focus. LaRoe had sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The diagnosis ended her careers as doctor and athlete.

“I could no longer practice medicine,” she says. “It is very painful to have to give up something you love doing.”

“ I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO PRACTICE MEDICINE ANYMORE, BUT I STILL WANT TO HELP PEOPLE HEAL.”

Cyclists still inspire LaRoe even though she no longer competes.

Mike Boslet

But LaRoe didn’t give up on herself or her dedication to helping people through medicine. She took up painting as therapy. It helped her focus and reduced pressure on her head. Out of her bold acrylic-on-canvas paintings came an idea to marry art and medicine as the impetus for a philanthropy that would benefit TBI research.

The Art of Medicine Foundation was born, with the bank her husband founded, First GREEN Bank, as the main sponsor of its fundraising galas. The event features artworks by physicians, including LaRoe, that are auctioned to raise money for TBI research and treatment. AoM’s inaugural event, in 2015, raised nearly $170,000. This year, the gala returns to Orlando on Oct. 20 to raise money for UF’s Trauma, Concussion, and Sports Neurology program.

“I may not be able to practice medicine anymore,” LaRoe says, “but I still want to help people heal.”

Go to theartofmedicinefoundation.org for more information.

Gator Good

CROSS-TRAINING FOR LIFE By day, DAVID HUNTER ’92 is Coldwell Banker’s commercial director for the east coast of Florida. Outside the office, “Favor Dave,” a nickname he earned at UF as a history major through his willingness to lend a hand, puts his extensive managerial background to work as an advisor and advocate for several philanthropic organizations.

Hunter’s nonprofit work began as a financial advisor for Amazon Vision Ministries (AVM), which runs medical mission trips into the Amazon basin. With a strong business background and self-described penchant for nonlinear thinking, Hunter helped AVM make better use of their funds, advising in their allocation, coordination, source search, and outreach.

After he was injured in a fall during a procedure at a local hospital, Hunter founded the Florida Patient Association, advocating that full medical record transparency and patient-oriented best-practices procedures be implemented. “Everyone has advocates on their sides — doctors, nurses, hospital administration — but the voice of the patient was getting lost.”

This involvement with the medical community led the Florida Institute of Technology’s College of Biomedical Engineering to invite him to join their board, monitoring patient-centric best practices in the development of hydrogel technology for drug delivery. He said yes. “I always say yes. You never know under what guise opportunity will David Hunter present itself.”

Hunter credits his studies at UF as the catalyst that reinforced his broad-minded approach to problem solving and learning. “I think the exposure I got at school to different cultures and philosophies basically cross-trained me at life.”

He further says, “I like to look at future possibilities and connect all the dots. It helps prevent me from getting stuck in present conditions and keep aiming for positive results.”

— Terri Peterson YTORI — SPRING 2017 | 49

Ytori Magazine

Errata

SPRING 2017 | VOL. 2, ISSUE 2 Ytori is published twice a year in the Fall and Spring by the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The name Ytori means alligator in the language of the Timucua, the native inhabitants of north central and northeastern Florida.

STAFF Dean: David E. Richardson Assistant VP of Development and Alumni Affairs: Ryan Marsh Editor-in-Chief: Gigi Marino Associate Editor: Rachel Wayne Proofreaders: Bruce Mastron, Kaitlin Sammon Director of Graphic Design: Scott Harper Graphic Designer: Amanda Jansen © 2017 by the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or duplicated without prior permission of the editor.

Ytori University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office, 2014 Turlington Hall PO Box 117300 | Gainesville FL 32611 Printed by Progress Printing, an FSC-certified printer in Willow Springs, NC

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Website: publications.clas.ufl.edu Facebook: facebook.com/UF.clas Twitter: UF_CLAS Instagram: UF_CLAS Mobile App: UF Liberal Arts and Sciences AN EQUAL ACCESS/EQUAL OPPORTUNITY UNIVERSITY

In the Fall 2016 issue of Ytori, the feature “Einstein Goes to the Movies,” p. 25, has an errant sentence. When discussing the concept of relative aging, the article reads, “… astronauts leaving Earth and approaching a black hole age in an hour what their families on Earth age in years.” The sentence should read, “… astronauts leaving Earth and approaching a black hole age in an hour while their families on Earth age in years.” To clarify, the gravitational pull of the black hole causes curvature in space-time and thus dilates time. For example, as in the film Interstellar, an astronaut near a black hole would experience only an hour’s passing while those on Earth experience seven years. Thanks to DONALD SOPER ’72, MS’74 for catching the error.

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