Author: iharrell

Free First Thursday Sunny Days at the Art Museum, June 3

You can now enjoy FREE admission to NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale on the first Thursday of every month from 11 AM to 5 PM during Free First Thursday Sunny Days, beginning June 3.

Exhibitions now on view: The World of Anna Sui; Eric N. Mack: Lemme Walk Across the Room; Iké Udé: Select Portraits; I Paint My Reality: Surrealism in Latin America; Transitions and Transformations; and William J. Glackens from Pencil to Paint.

To view NSU Art Museum’s new health and safety guidelines click here.

Sunny Days is presented by AutoNation.

Air Show Camera Crew May Have Damaged Sea Oat Sanctuary

Air show camera crew

Sea oats

Two years ago, Fort Lauderdale used a $5,000 dune grant from Broward County to plant 6,500 sea oats along a five-block section of State Road A1A in front of Hugh Taylor Birch State Park. The weekend of May 8-9, this protected area was trampled by several TV cameramen and reporters covering the Fort Lauderdale Air Show.

Halmos College of Arts and Sciences environmental faculty member J. Matthew Hoch, Ph.D. was interviewed by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel about the potential damage to the sea oats.

“Even if the stems are not damaged, you can still damage the root network,” he said. “I think a lot of people do ignorantly walk on them and think they are not going to do any harm. Maybe the [camera crews] thought that getting a shot from a certain angle outweighed protecting the sea oats.”

An onlooker took pictures all day on Saturday of camera crews standing on the roped-off sand dunes potentially damaging the protected plants. Sea oats are protected under regulations of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). Their seeds cannot be collected without a permit and the plants cannot be cut back or removed. It was unknown if the air show incident damaged the sea oats. If it did, the damage might not be visible.

A Fort Lauderdale official said the city plans to send an expert out to check on whether the sea oats were damaged. Hoch stated that, “New sea oats can be planted but it takes them about two years to get back to where they can do what they need to do with shoreline protection.”

Alumna Thanks NSU for Helping Her Find the Right Career Path

Safiyah Muhammad

This May, Safiyah Muhammad graduated with her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Graduating from NSU’s Halmos Colleges of Arts and Sciences in 2016 with a chemistry major, Muhammad’s Ph.D. thesis was entitled, “Cobalt Catalyst for Parahydrogen Induced Hyperpolarization of Olefins.” She has accepted a job at Dow.

Safiyah says her time here at NSU was foundational.

“I am truly grateful that I had the opportunity to attend Nova Southeastern University; the Trustee Scholarship that I received allowed me to complete my coursework without any financial stress. It was during my time at NSU that I attended my first chemistry course and fell in love with it. The structure of the classes at NSU really allowed me to fully immerse myself in the material I was studying and to get to know the faculty,” she said. “Without the amazing mentoring of the faculty members, I never would have switched my major from marine biology to chemistry, nor would I have known about the opportunities that are available to chemists after completion of their degree. I owe a great deal of my success to my time at NSU and will forever be proud to call NSU my Alma Mater. Fins up!”

NSU University School Students Earn Top Awards

Student Officers: Kennedy C. (CEO), Alana G. (CMO), Madison D. (CFO), Alexis E. (CSO), Michael P. (CSCO) – Christian C. (CO)

NSU University School is proud to congratulate our exceptional ClippedNotes team for being recognized as the 2021 Junior Achievement of South Florida Company of the Year! Our innovative student entrepreneurs swept the regional competition at the JA Fellows Spark Tank Finale, earning 1st place in categories including: Best Commercial, Best Stage Presentation, Best Annual Report, and Best JAF Interview. Congratulations on all your hard work and remarkable achievements, Sharks!

To watch the award presentation, visit https://youtu.be/j4vWeMYFd6Y.

Interested in purchasing a clip-on whiteboard attachment for your laptop? Head over to the ClippedNotes website to get yours today: www.clippednotes.com.

Alumnae Projects Put Marine Bacteria Under the Microscope

We are familiar with the catch phrases “Light my fire” and “Fins up.”  They now fit very well with two new NSU publications in the scientific journal Frontiers of Marine Science and Frontiers of Microbiology, respectively.

The papers were written by two HCAS alumni: Rachael Storo (formerly Karns) and Alexis Berger. The papers focus on their master’s theses and are published in peer reviewed journals with the guidance of their mentor, HCAS biology Professor Jose (Joe) Lopez, Ph.D.

The two projects share a commonality with their focus on marine microbial symbionts, which represent the beneficial or neutral bacteria that live with or on most eukaryotes (multicellular organisms).  For example, some bacterial symbionts help digest food in the guts many animals, or procure nitrogen for plants.

Using the latest molecular genetics and statistical tools, Storo investigated the composition of bacteria at four different anatomical locales (gills, teeth, skin, cloaca) from five different shark species found in South Florida waters (nurse, lemon, sandbar, Caribbean reef, and tiger). Her findings showed that the teeth microbiota may have been the most distinct communities across the different locales. The data can provide useful bacterial identification for shark bites (as well as bytes) in the future.

In a completely different animal system but no less charismatic, Berger aimed to test the hypothesis that bacterial symbionts generated light for the pelagic (floating) invertebrate called “pyrosomes”. These tunicate animals were aptly named because they can light up the oceans with their self-generated bioluminescence. This phenomenon of glowing can be a fairly common trait among organisms living at depth. The recently completed DEEPEND project assisted in the collection of pyrosomes in blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Halmos’ Top Biology Students Reflect on Their Honors

This spring, five of the highest academically performing biology students from the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences orally presented the highlights of their honors in Major Portfolio to a large Zoom audience of faculty and many of their peers. The students reflected on their journeys as Sharks.

In addition to maintaining a minimum 3.8 GPA, each student also was required to complete four 4000 level didactic elective courses and a major research project in an independent study, internship or practicum course.

The research project titles included: Development of “Sharkavir:”  A New Hypothetical Inhibitor for HIV-1 Protease (Feza Abbas); Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Healthcare Research and Management (Stephanie Autore); Synthesis of Metal-Binding Polymers for Water Purification using  Reversible Addition-Fragmentation Chain-Transer Polymerization (Sneha Polam); Periodically Disturbing the Spatial Structure of a Microbial Community Composed of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus Determines its Composition (Brandon Toscan); and The effect of stress on the transcriptomes of circulating immune cells in patients with Gulf War Illness (Kyle Hansotia).

Fischler Shows Some Love with Alumni ‘Shark Attack’

Katie Peacock, assistant director of alumni engagement at NSU’s Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice, celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week with a “Shark Attack.”

Peacock visited, six schools, Margate Elementary, Quiet Waters Elementary, Seminole Middle School, Coconut Creek High School, Nova Blanche Forman Elementary, and Park Lakes Elementary and surprised 60 alumni with caramel apples and a NSU swag bag.

Do you have a teacher or colleague you want to surprise? Send an e-card or special educator keychain to them while supporting NSU’s Fischler Academy, clicking here.

The Fischler Academy is an experiential, project-driven, mastery-based program combining cutting-edge teaching pedagogies in a highly personalized learning environment.

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