Our Stories

Amy Clement and her research group of students and faculty at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science are using technology to battle climate change and bridge the gap between science and policy.

At the University of Miami School of Architecture, faculty members like Germane Barnes are working across disciplines to find the answers to our common questions. Barnes first arrived in South Florida after being invited to play a pivotal role in the revitalization of the Opa-Locka neighborhood in Miami-Dade County.


When Creed Petit was just a toddler, his parents noticed that he wasn’t hitting childhood milestones. He was seen by a number of doctors, but it was Dr. Byron Lam, a neuro-ophthalmologist and gene therapy expert at the niversity of Miami’s No. 1-ranked Bascom Palmer Institute, who diagnosed Petit with Leber Congential Amaurosis, a blinding disease caused by a genetic mutation.


In 2014, Donna Lee Robinson was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She visited a number of specialists across the state and each told her that her tumor was inoperable.


Professor Jorge Hernandez and his University of Miami students spent time in Santiago de Cuba, helping restore colonial churches throughout the community. Years of neglect and exposure to the elements had caused extensive damage to the churches, but Hernandez and his students documented the buildings and advised the community on restoration strategies.

Darlene Holland was teaching middle school science when she decided she needed to learn to code to teach her students about the changes happening in STEM fields. Holland signed up for a University of Miami coding boot camp and started learning how to design apps.



University of Miami professors Carie Penabad and Adib Cure, in the School of Architecture, and Christopher Mader and Tim Norris, in the Center for Computational Science, and their student researchers are taking a new approach to mapping informal cities.

Marcelo Bezos serves as the director of Energy Management Systems for the University of Miami’s health system, UHealth. Recently, Bezos and his team determined that the cooling towers that help power UHealth could use well water instead of the precious and scarce drinking water they had been using.