* Amid the education noise about charters, vouchers, Florida Standards and Bright Futures scholarships, it was refreshingly old school to learn that Hillsborough County leads the state in the number of National Merit Scholar semifinalists. It still resonates. According to the school district, this county had 67 semifinalists, with King High School having the most with 20. Fewer than 1 percent of the nation’s students achieve this distinction.
*OK, so this didn’t get the coverage that a football upset of Wisconsin on Saturday would, but it’s still a big deal. According to the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine, USF’s graduate program in entrepreneurship education ranks 13th overall in the country. This is now the eighth consecutive year that the USF Center for Entrepreneurship has made the Top 25. Go, Bulls.
* He’s hardly a household name, but USF Health Professor Shyam Mohapatra, a career research scientist at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital, has been named as an inaugural inductee into the Florida Inventors Hall of Fame. Other members include the iconic likes of Thomas Edison, John Gorrie (the father of air conditioning) and (Gatorade developer) Robert Cade.
Dr. Mohapatra developed cell-targeted nanoparticles that can deliver drugs, genes and peptides to regulate immune response to inflammatory diseases. His work has contributed to innovations in the treatment of cancers, asthma, viral infections and traumatic brain injury. Congratulations and thank you.