100 talents for our next Endowed academic chairs help the University of Miami attract, retain, and recognize excellence in research, scholarship, policy, practice, and artistic creation. Thanks to donor generosity, we are nearly three-quarters of the way to our goal of funding 100 new endowed chairs by 2025. • An endowed chair is one of the highest academic honors an institution can bestow. Endowed chairs enable scholars to advance groundbreaking research, make life-changing discoveries, and contribute innovative solutions to society’s most daunting challenges—now and in the future. • Featured are five distinguished faculty members named to endowed chairs in the 2021-22 academic year.
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UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
Ved Chirayath, the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth Sciences
Gregor Eberli, the Robert N. Ginsburg Endowed Chair in Marine Geosciences
Ved Chirayath, an award-winning researcher and associate professor in the department of ocean sciences, was named the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth Sciences at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
Professor Robert Nathan Ginsburg devoted nearly half a century to teaching marine geology at the Rosenstiel School. Before he passed away in 2017, Ginsburg honored his life’s work by establishing an endowment to enable future scientists and researchers to illuminate discoveries in marine geology.
Chirayath works at the intersection of earth sciences, astrophysics, aeronautics, engineering, and optics. His research focuses on inventing, developing, and testing sensing technologies for studying the natural world. The G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation is a longtime benefactor of the Rosenstiel School, having also supported the Marine Technology and Life Sciences Seawater Research building, the Helicopter Observation Platform, and various other climate-related research projects.
Gregor Eberli, the director of the Rosenstiel School’s Comparative Sedimentology Laboratory and professor in the department of marine geosciences, will further his mentor’s legacy as the Robert N. Ginsburg Endowed Chair in Marine Geosciences. “With this endowment, [Ginsburg] sort of looks after me in his afterlife, and I’m so grateful to him for that,” Eberli said.
