Miami-Dade commissioners approve $10 million for College of Medicine

Commissioners in Miami-Dade County have voted to approve $10 million for an ambulatory care facility at the College of Medicine.

“The ambulatory care center will be an important component of what will be the only public medical school in South Florida, a new type of medical school, dedicated to training a new generation of doctors with a commitment to serving the community,” said College of Medicine Dean John Rock.

The $10 million comes from the Building Better Communities General Obligation Bonds (GOB), approved by voters to construct and improve healthcare facilities to promote accessibility to quality health care services. The money will help build an ambulatory care center, part of the new College of Medicine at University Park. The center will consist of an ambulatory surgery center and an outpatient diagnostic center, open to the entire community for diagnosis, treatment and care.

The vote augments the College of Medicine’s recent community partnership.

This fall, the College of Medicine signed affiliation and operational agreements with Jackson Health System and Mount Sinai Medical Center and other partnerships with local hospitals are in the works. In addition, the Florida Department of Health has agreed to move its Miami-Dade headquarters to UP in 2010.

Another community component of the College of Medicine will be a first-of-its-kind neighborhood Medicine and Society program, which will send medical students and their counterparts in social work, nursing and public health into targeted neighborhoods.

The county’s funds represent critical economic development support for the College of Medicine. Once fully established, the College of Medicine is expected to contribute millions to the state coffers every year and have a billion-dollar economic impact on Miami-Dade County, bringing thousands of new jobs to the area. For more information, visit http://medicine.fiu.edu.

The Festival of the Trees is now on display

The School of Architecture is presenting the 21st Annual Festival of the Trees to benefit its Interior Design Endowed Scholarship Fund.

The exhibition is currently on display in the lobby of One Brickell Square (801 Brickell Ave., Downtown Miami), where it will remain throughout December. Admission is free and open to the public.

The Festival of the Trees is an exhibition of ingenious creations of holiday trees by local, national and international architects and designers.

For more information, call 305-348-6648.

FIU names dean of Arts and Sciences

Kenneth Furton, professor of chemistry, has been appointed dean of the College of Arts and Sciences effective Dec. 20. Furton has served as an associate dean in the College since 2001 with initial responsibility for budget and facilities and subsequently with additional responsibility for research.

Furton, who has spent his entire professorial career at FIU, received a bachelor of science in forensic science from the University of Central Florida in 1983 and a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from Wayne State University in 1986. He completed post-doctoral studies at the University of Wales, Swansea, U.K., in 1988, where he was a lecturer and senior research associate.

Since becoming a faculty member at FIU he has directed the research of more than 100 undergraduate and graduate students, authored or co-authored more than 100 publications and has received more than $3.5 million in external research support. His research program has focused on forensic science and separation science with much of his recent work focused on studying the chemical basis of detector dog alerts to forensic specimens.

Furton takes over from Mark Szuchman, a professor of history, who has been serving as interim dean of Arts and Sciences since 2005.

FIU names new director of LACC

Cristina Eguizábal, a respected political scientist who has run Ford Foundation programs in Latin America for more than a decade, has joined FIU as the new director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC).

“Dr. Eguizábal has the knowledge and the relationships throughout the region to keep LACC at the forefront of Latin American studies,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Ronald Berkman. “I look forward to having her join the dynamic LACC team.”

Eguizábal, the third director of LACC in its 28-year history and the first hired from outside the university, plans to boost the Center’s work in Mexico and Brazil, the region’s two largest countries and economies, by collaborating with institutions and establishing research projects in those nations.

“First of all, I want to continue doing the good work LACC has been doing,” Eguizábal said. “I also see LACC as a place that can be the linkage between Latin American institutions and institutions in the United States that are interested in Latin America. One of the things that attracted me to LACC was the high reputation and image it has among Latin American institutions. I want to build on those relationships.”

Eguizábal was chosen after an international search to replace outgoing director Eduardo Gamarra, who will return to full-time teaching and research after a one-year sabbatical.

For the past 12 years, she has worked for the Ford Foundation where she ran programs in Mexico and Central America. She has a Ph.D. in Latin American studies from the University of Paris-Sorbonne Nouvelle, was director of graduate programs in political science at the University of Costa Rica and also previously taught at FIU, the University of Miami, the University of Bordeaux and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences.

FIU to lead $2.3 million NSF project

FIU has received a $2.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) program, to advance global partnership in information technology research, innovation and education.

“We are very excited about receiving this very competitive grant. It recognizes both the competitiveness of our faculty and student research and our leadership and innovation in international and industry partnerships,” said the project’s principal investigator, Computing and Information Sciences Dean Yi Deng.

“This partnership, with the support from NSF, will not only help to advance the state-of-the-art computing research [that we do], but also make a major impact in further enhancing the quality and competitiveness of our students, particularly Hispanic students in computer science.”

Building on its successful experience in international collaboration, the School of Computing and Information Science will launch the five-year program, which will support travel abroad for computer science faculty and students to do collaborative research at top universities in Argentina, China, France, India, Japan and Mexico, as well as in world renowned IBM International Research Labs and the supercomputing center in Barcelona, Spain, to create a “global living laboratory for cyber-infrastructure application enablement.”

The project was one of 20 selected by the PIRE from more than 500 proposals submitted by the nation’s major research universities. For more information, visit http://pire.fiu.edu.

College of Medicine gets $5 million gift

The College of Medicine has received a $5 million gift from North Dade Medical Foundation. The gift is eligible for state matching funds, making its total impact a $10 million endowment to fund scholarships for medical students and the first endowed chairs of the College of Medicine.

“We are delighted to announce this generous gift because it addresses our top priorities in the College of Medicine: to recruit the very best faculty and attract talented students,” FIU President Modesto A. Maidique said. “This endowment provides an avenue to attract the best students from South Florida to our College of Medicine.”

The North Dade Medical Foundation FIU College of Medicine Endowment Fund will provide merit-based scholarships for medical students who are Miami-Dade or Broward County residents. Scholarships from this fund will be available in perpetuity, starting in 2009, when the College of Medicine is expected to admit its inaugural class.

The $5 million in matching funds will be used to establish chairs in the College of Medicine. Endowed chairs help attract star faculty to the program.

“For us it is very rewarding to know that our gift will make a difference in medical education for generations to come,” said North Dade Medical Foundation Chair Dr. George Daviglus. “It is our hope that these scholarships will provide opportunities for excellent doctors and that the professors who hold these chairs will be devoted to their profession and dedicated to educating outstanding doctors for our community.”