Thomas J. leBlanc becomes UM’s Chief Academic Officer
Provost Shares Program for Growth

n experimental computer scientist by training, new University of Miami Executive Vice President and Provost Thomas J. LeBlanc is a programming whiz. But it was his academic programming at the University of Rochester that commanded the attention of UM President Donna E. Shalala and the provost search committee.

As vice provost and the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the Faculty for the College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering at Rochester, LeBlanc led vast strides in interdisciplinary collaboration, intellectual property development, and undergraduate recruitment and retention. He began his career there as assistant professor of computer science in 1983 after earning a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A longtime weekend warrior on the ice, LeBlanc is willing to hang up his hockey skates in exchange for his more Florida-friendly pastime of golf. His post at the University of Miami, he says, is worth the sacrifice.

“Higher education is an incredibly stable and somewhat conservative industry,” LeBlanc says. “The opportunity to make a major impact on an institution doesn’t come along all that often.”

Major impact, LeBlanc explains, will come from learning the University’s greatest strengths and “finding points of leverage.” LeBlanc helped leverage the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics and medical center into a national force in medical imaging by creating a new program in biomedical optics. “I believe the same kinds of opportunities exist in Miami,” he says, noting ties already being formed between the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and programs on the Coral Gables campus. “The Rosenstiel School is similar to Rochester’s Institute of Optics, in that both programs are unique and very distinguished.”

As the University of Miami’s chief academic and budget officer, LeBlanc oversees 12 schools and colleges, research administration, student admissions, research funding, and expenditures. He replaces Luis Glaser, who stepped down after 19 years but remains at the University to teach and serve as special assistant to President Shalala. LeBlanc and his wife, Anne Marie, have two sons, Brian, a student at Rice University, and David, a student at the University of Rochester.

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Forum Showcases Student Inventiveness
Creations and Innovations

ou nab the last available parking space at the mall on a dark and rainy day, but at the end of your shopping spree you can’t find your car. No matter how incessantly you press the button, your keyless remote fails to cue that familiar chirp. If you had the Cellular Car Access program invented by recent University of Miami graduates Christopher Jones, Jason Yim, and Michael Vigo, you could call your car on your cell phone and tell it to turn on its lights, unlock the doors, start the engine, warm the seats, and play your favorite tunes. The program operates through cell phone menu commands, similar to voice mail.

Jones, Yim, and Vigo debuted their invention at the University’s ninth annual Citizens Board Research and Creativity Forum, held in April at the University Center. Completing their senior year at the time, the young engineers were among more than 160 undergraduate and graduate students who presented their work at the juried competition. Students enter their research in categories ranging from art to biomedical science and receive feedback and cash awards from faculty judges. The forum is not only great practice for presenting and defending their work at a poster session, it can be a venue to network with potential mentors and funding sources.

“These students are raising the benchmark,” says Jim Fatzinger, B.B.A. ’94, M.B.A. ’01, director of the event and director of enrollment at the Graduate School, which sponsored the forum with the University of Miami Citizens Board, Pew Institute for Ocean Science, and other University and corporate entities. “Many of the undergraduate posters are very competitive, even with the posters at the graduate level.”

Software company Adobe selected fourth-year biology and chemistry major Sanjeev Sirpal and Frost School of Music graduate student David Friddle for its Adobe Innovation award. Sirpal earned two awards: one for a study of the gene products expressed when male hamsters are exposed to female chemical signals, and another for a study of a novel drug-delivery vehicle. Friddle won for his “good-faith attempt” to restore original musical elements that had been erased from Franz Liszt’s oratorio, “Christus.”

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Halleran a Natural Selection as Arts and Sciences Dean

ichael R. Halleran is an expert on Euripides, the Greek tragedian who in the 5th century B.C. coined the phrase “Leave no stone unturned.” It’s a mantra Halleran takes to heart in his new role as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“The single most important thing for me will be to learn about this University, and you learn by listening and by asking questions,” says Halleran, who previously served as divisional dean of arts and humanities and a professor of classics at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Among his signature initiatives at Washington were the creation of the College of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media and the re-creation of the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, both of which foster collaborative research and discourse among multiple disciplines.

Halleran sees the arts and sciences as a necessary foundation for all types of undergraduate study. Most students, he acknowledges, will not graduate and become academics. “They will go on to run companies, invent things, become lawyers, doctors, and engineers.” Studying arts and sciences teaches them “the humanistic and natural components that make up our world.”

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Injection Objection

ur Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” which is why the seemingly humane method of lethal injection has eclipsed all other forms of execution. But in a recent article in UK medical journal The Lancet, researchers at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine report that anesthesia during executions may be inadequate.

Lethal injection generally consists of the sequential administration of sodium thiopental for anesthesia, pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis, and potassium chloride to stop the heart and cause death. Without anesthesia, the researchers conclude, the condemned person would experience suffocation and excruciating pain without being able to move or communicate that fact

.With Virginia attorney Jonathan Sheldon, UM researchers Leonidas Koniaris, M.D., Teresa Zimmers, and David Lubarsky, M.D., studied state execution records, sworn testimony of corrections officers, and autopsy toxicology reports from executions in various states.

“We found that 43 of 49 executed inmates had postmortem blood anesthesia levels below that required for surgery, while 21 of those inmates had levels that were consistent with awareness,” says Zimmers, research assistant professor of surgery who analyzed the data.

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PROJECT PREPARES FOR A POST-CASTRO CUBA
Change Agents

t’s an inevitable change that will transpire some 90 miles south of Key West—the emergence of a post-Castro era in Cuba. There are widely divergent theories regarding Cuba’s transition to open-market democracy, but the University’s Cuba Transition Project (CTP), established in 2002 with a $1 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), is the world’s only comprehensive repository on these matters. Jaime Suchlicki, director of the CTP and the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, says the project originated thanks to the support of former U.S. Senators Bob Graham and Connie Mack and current U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ed.D. ’05.

“We were unprepared for the changes in Eastern Europe, and we should be prepared for Cuba,” says Suchlicki. “We want the Cuban people, U.S. government officials, and the Cuban-American community to be ready for the issues and difficulties of transforming a totalitarian society.”

Since its launch, the CTP has published or is presently producing 40 research studies as well as articles on transition issues affecting Cuba and experiences of other nations. These studies, plus shorter electronic publications Cuba Focus and Cuba Facts, are mailed and e-mailed in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese to 9,500 government officials and academics in the United States, Cuba, and nations throughout Latin America and Europe. Seven databases provide information on an array of subjects, such as legal issues, treaties and accords, foreign investments, political prisoners, and organizational charts of the Cuban government.

“I take immense personal pride in the work the University of Miami has carried out with USAID funding to hasten the peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba and to help the U.S. government and the international community plan for assistance to a future transition government,” comments Adolfo Franco, USAID assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean. Franco recently presented the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies with an additional $1 million to continue the project. The funding, an amendment to an existing cooperative agreement between the USAID and the University, brings the total authorized amount to more than $3 million.

The CTP sponsors conferences worldwide on transition issues, including one last year with the American Red Cross of Greater Miami & The Keys, which resulted in the formation of an ongoing task force with the State of Florida, the federal government, and other organizations to facilitate the flow of any future humanitarian aid to Cuba.

“These studies and our programs don’t provide an answer on how Cuba should be restructured,” explains Georgina Lindskoog, coordinator of the CTP. “In other words, we show how it was done in Eastern Europe, how it was done in Nicaragua, how it was done in Chile—and we highlight the pros and cons of the models of transition.

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CoQ10 cream shows promise for skin and other cancers
Lotion Potion

ost people think of a topical cream as treatment for an angry rash, not for something as complex as cancer. But scientists at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine are working on a topical cream that could treat skin cancers and perhaps even rogue cells beneath the surface of the skin.

The key ingredient is ubiquinone, a potent antioxidant that occurs naturally in the body. Also called coen-zyme Q10 or CoQ10, the antioxidant has been studied since the 1980s, primarily as an agent for muscular fatigue, joint pain, cardiomyopathy, and Parkinson’s disease. But researchers at the Miller School are the first to “elucidate a specific cellular mechanism for CoQ10 that’s involved in cancer,” explains Niven R. Narain, director of Transdermal Delivery/ Cutaneous Cancer Research in the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery. In laboratory and animal studies, University researchers found that adding CoQ10 to breast and prostate cancer cells in vitro induced apoptosis, which is the natural programmed cell death that goes awry in the disease process. CoQ10 inhibited growth of the prostate cancer cells by 70 percent over 48 hours, and it inhibited the proliferation of breast cancer cells while providing a stabilizing effect on normal cells.

“It’s amazing that a benign compound, CoQ10, can cause the cancer cells to selectively kill themselves without harm to normal cells,” says S. L. Hsia, director of the Transdermal Delivery/Cutaneous Biology Laboratory and principal investigator of the studies.

Hsia has been working with CoQ10 for years and created a phospholipid-based cream that enables the antioxidant to penetrate skin cells as well as those in deeper tissue and surrounding blood and lymph vessels. In a recent study, Narain’s team applied CoQ10 cream for 30 days on melanomas in nude mice and observed a 55 percent reduction in tumor mass plus a profound reduction in tumor vasculature. Clinical trials on humans with skin cancer are set to begin this year.

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Bascom Palmer is Movin’ on Up

n a historic move that represents the University of Miami’s first major construction project outside Miami-Dade County, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute is opening a new facility in Palm Beach County that will triple the space available for its nationally known patient care, research, and educational programs.

Ranked the No. 1 eye hospital in the nation for two years in a row in surveys by U.S. News & World Report, Bascom Palmer has operated a 13,000-square-foot center in the county for the past nine years. But the new $17 million facility in Palm Beach Gardens will be one of the country’s largest academic ophthalmology centers, with a 35,000-square-foot patient care facility and an adjacent 10,000-square-foot surgical center on a seven-acre site.

The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the Palm Beaches will be a model for 21st-century ophthalmology centers, says Carmen A. Puliafito, M.D., chairman of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute. “It will allow us to see three times the number of patients, perform surgery in our own, custom-designed surgical center, and create a magnet for the best and brightest ophthalmologic health care specialists.”

In addition to clinical and surgical space, an education and conference center will serve local ophthalmologists and the public.

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Coach Katie Meier shoots for the top
Courting a National Presence

atie Meier is not your typical basketball coach. While stressing sound fundamentals such as tenacious defense, good ball-handling skills, and accurate passing in her coaching, Meier’s life and the other lessons she teaches her players extend far beyond the hardwood.

Just look at her office bookcase, where works by Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare sit next to books by legendary basketball coaches Rick Pitino and Mike Krzyzewski. Indeed, success off the court is just as important to Meier, who was named the University of Miami’s new women’s basketball head coach last April. She graduated cum laude from Duke University in 1989 with a degree in English literature and received a master’s degree in teaching English in 1990. At Duke, she also was a top player, earning Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Rookie of the Year honors in 1986 and team MVP and All-ACC honors in 1990 as a fifth-year senior.

The former head coach at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, Meier believes that her new post “can be a national championship job.

“With the strong emphasis on academics, along with the already strong background in athletics, UM has all the potential to become one of the nation’s elite programs,” says the Wheaton, Illinois native.

During her four-year tenure at UNC-Charlotte, Meier led the 49ers to three postseason berths and a combined overall record of 76-45. Before taking the Charlotte job, she was an assistant at Tulane for seven years, during which the Green Wave went to seven straight NCAA tournaments.

At the University of Miami, Meier knows what it will take to be successful: keep the local talent home. “Look at all the kids from Miami who were playing in the Final Four, and you understand that it’s just a matter of putting a fence around the city and making sure that everybody stays home,” she recently told the ACC Nation radio show.

Meier wants UM women’s basketball “to be the envy of every program in the nation. When people start becoming jealous of us, we’ll know we have made the big time, and that’s what we’re working for.”

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