Community Outreach

THE MIAMI PROJECT BELIEVES IN WORKING WITH OUR LOCAL COMMUNITY TO DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT STRATEGIES THAT CAN POTENTIALLY TREAT PARALYSIS.

The Office of Education and Outreach at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis continues its quest to engage any and all who share in The Miami Project’s mission to understand, care for, and eventually cure paralysis from neurotrauma and other causes. This year, the Office maintained core programming while also expanding into new communities and realms.

The 2024 South Florida BrainBee, a neuroscience competition for teens hosted by the Office, draws young talent with a distinct curiosity for the central nervous system. This year’s winner, Archith Venkat, demonstrated an exceptional grasp of neuroscience and earned the opportunity to advance to the BrainBee’s national-level competition. The Office once again hosted its popular BrainFair exhibit at the Miami-Dade County Public Schools’ STEAM Expo. The BrainFair remains a valuable collaborative touchstone for local neuroscientists at Florida International University, Barry University, and St. Thomas University to come together via the Office and inspire younger generations to study neuro-related topics.

The Miami Project’s ongoing partnership with Shake-A-Leg Miami (SALM) was expanded upon through University of Miami’s flagship Innovation, Technology, and Design (ITD) program. David McMillan, Ph.D., co-taught, with Kirsten Schwarz, the experiential project-based course Design Challenge 5 & 6: Iterate and Prototype (ITD256). The class centered around the theme of disability and aquatic technologies, and developed projects on this topic in partnership with Royal Caribbean Cruises and Shake-A-Leg Miami. Students worked closely with these partners to address real-world design challenges using design thinking paradigm. Each partner organization defined a unique design challenge specific to their disability maritime needs. With existing accessibility rapport on their boats, Royal Caribbean put forth a project not on their cruise ships but on their private island. Once on the water, Royal had already implemented an array of accessibility solutions that give them a great reputation in the disability community and made them a perfect co-partner alongside SALM’s aquatic disability beat. But once on their island, patrons were facing challenges participating in all then tropical activities that are at the core of what imagined in a Caribbean vacation. On SALM’s side, the organization was recently gifted 68-ft houseboat that was in the process of being made accessible to align with their mission and cater to their long-standing community of people living with disability.

The design challenge included a wheelchair lift to access the top deck, and a mixed-use event space for a list of educational, social, and developmental programming will be enacted by SALM. As summarized by Dr. McMillan, “I could not be more thrilled to be educating a group of talented undergraduate students, in a unique program, by way of outreach to organizations that have a proven history of providing accessible services to the disability community.”

Riding the wave of excitement for Neuralink’s PRIME trial, the Office has been facilitating the robust recruitment efforts for this study while fielding inquiries from interested parties involving the burgeoning topic of implanted brain computer interface (iBCI). Along with the high content recruitment needs, Dr. McMillan delivered intramural and extramural presentations to interested neuroscience undergraduates, medical students, therapists and residents, and many other educational stakeholders in The Miami Project’s network. Along with conducting the PRIME trial,the broad audience wrapped up in excitement about iBCI offers an education and outreach opportunity to invite new stakeholders to join us on “team neuro.”

The Office facilitated TMP’s ninth open house, the first since the pandemic and the first including the new facilities at Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at UHealth/Jackson Memorial. The open house welcomed the paralysis community for a day of research updates, laboratory tours, and hands-on demonstrations. Attendees enjoyed
information on innovations in neuromodulation, robotics, and drug discovery, including an update from Dr. Hassan Al-Ali on the exciting Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network (BPM) for Small Molecule federal award that he leads for development of a drug for restoring the damaged central nervous system. After morning lectures, attendees, including some who traveled from out of state to participate, transitioned to the Lynn Rehabilitation Center to directly interact with scientists in the growing laboratories in the new state-of-the-art hospital.

Educationally, 2024 marked another successful year of the enry G. Steinbrenner Scholar Program, and the 2025 cohort has been selected. The Miami Project welcomes Lauren Bickel, Selene Cabrera, Aashi Chhabra, Adriana Guerra, Hai Anh Le, Benjamin McCulley, Evdokia Pechlivanidou, Hunter Rosenzweig, Lauren Spencer, and Gabriel Barros to the Steinbrenner Program and the Office looks forward to stewarding the Scholars through the immersive, competitive, funded, research-driven summer internship.

If you would prefer to complete the form later, please visit our homepage and click on the “Register now” tab on the top of the page. A huge and earnest thank you to all participants, both past and present, for volunteering to be in on-site studies and remote surveys!

If you have any questions or would like to contact our Education department, please email us at mpinfo@med.miami.edu or call us at 305-243-7108.