“Addressing sleep apnea can not only improve individual health outcomes but also alleviate the strain on health care resources, leading to more efficient and effective health care delivery.”

— Christopher Kaufmann, Ph.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics, discussing a new study showing how patients with sleep apnea are more likely to require hospitalization for an ailment with U.S. News & World Report, June 4

“Medical digital twins are on the horizon, even though we are just at the dawn of this revolutionary new era. We should recall the history of aviation, where in the span of less than a century, we went from the first flight at Kitty Hawk to crossing the Atlantic in a Dreamliner jet, comfortably sipping champagne. But only a mere decade after the Wright Brothers’ maiden flight, aircraft design had advanced so rapidly that every major power in World War I deployed an air force. We are now at just such a moment of opportunity and competition.”

— Reinhard Laubenbacher, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Medicine, discussing how digital twins will lead the way to personalized medicine in an opinion piece for Scientific American, May 14

“If you know you’re going to be on the beach for a long time, mineral may be a better choice because you won’t have to worry about having to reapply it as much.”

— Abel Torres, M.D., chair of the Department of Dermatology, discussing the best sunscreen options with Time, May 9

“Under normal conditions, our clocks are aligned — they’re in the same time zone. Problems arise when our clocks are misaligned, so the brain clock thinks it’s here, and the liver and the pancreas think it’s something else.”

— Karyn Esser, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Physiology and Aging, discussing the best times to exercise based on circadian rhythms with NPR, March 29

“The use of AI to develop machine learning approaches to drug discovery for protein aggregation diseases like Parkinson’s has definitely arrived.”

— Michael S. Okun, M.D., the Adelaide Lackner Distinguished Professor of Neurology and director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health, discussing a study showing a new artificial intelligence-based strategy significantly sped up the identification of potential new drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease with Forbes, April 18

“To win the war on cancer, the immune system needs a better head start. We hope this approach gives the immune system the head start it needs to win the race against rapidly evolving tumors. By getting rapid responses from a single vaccine, the immune system can be rapidly reprogrammed to fight cancer.”

— Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor in the Lillian S. Wells Department of Neurosurgery, discussing a new mRNA cancer vaccine that helps the immune system fight deadly brain tumors with Medical News Today, May 7

“We’re facing a big, potentially dangerous situation. But we really don’t know.”

— Ira Longini, a professor in the Department of Biostatistics, discussing the possibility of a more harmful viral clade of mpox hitting the U.S. with NBC News, May 23

“The reality is more that the melanoma statistic represents our aging population, where Florida has a very high predominance of aging patients. Melanoma specifically relates to UVB radiation exposure, which is what causes sunburns. So, it takes only five sunburns in your lifetime to double your risk of melanoma.”

— Bently Doonan, M.D., a clinical assistant professor in the Division of Hematology & Oncology, discussing the risk of skin cancer with Florida Weekly, May 22