  {"id":1006,"date":"2019-03-21T13:42:10","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T17:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2019-03-29T16:30:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T20:30:59","slug":"qubits-and-quahogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/spring-2019\/qubits-and-quahogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Qubits and Quahogs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"type-intro fullwidth\">An unexpected juxtaposition. And the unexpected is often what leads us to new ideas.<\/p>\n<p>Reading this issue of the <em>University of Rhode Island Magazine<\/em> repeatedly reminded me why I am honored to be the president of this great university, whose history laid a lasting foundation for excellence, upon which we can build a bright future.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1158\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1158\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-half_column wp-image-1158\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-500x375.jpg\" alt=\"David Dooley greets researchers in the field in Indonesia\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-500x375.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-364x273.jpg 364w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-1000x750.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia-1280x960.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2019\/03\/dooley-indonesia.jpg 1584w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1158\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Speaking of not knowing what will happen next, in January, President Dooley surprised a group of students who were studying in Indonesia for J-Term. The students and their professors, Tom Boving and Nancy Karraker, were joined by President Dooley for a day in Rawa Aopa Watumohai National Park in South East Sulawesi. The students were impressed that Dooley made the difficult trip and spent the day with them, trapping, tagging, measuring, and determining the age and sex of the Southeast Asian box turtle.<br \/>Photo: Brook Williams Ross<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The intellectual and creative diversity on our beautiful campus continues to amaze me. On any given day, you may find theater majors huddled with celebrated artists such as Tony Estrella \u201993 and Rachel Walshe \u201901, while students enjoy lunch in our medicinal garden, a national resource for natural products research with more than 200 medicinal plants that help treat diseases ranging from anxiety to heart disease to cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Where else but in this magazine will you find the story of aquaculture wizard Brendan Breen \u201918, the first person to make pearls from quahogs, running alongside the story of Christopher Savoie \u201992, head of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zapata Computing, a cutting-edge company modeling chemical reactions at the subatomic level using powerful quantum computers that could lead to a new generation of materials and medicine?<\/p>\n<p>Qubits and quahogs\u2014a fascinating juxtaposition. Not exactly what you might expect from the smallest state\u2019s public research university. Think again. This is the place where award-winning British-Iranian journalist Christiane Amanpour \u201983 started her remarkable career. And this is a university dedicated to ensuring access to the highest quality education that changes people\u2019s lives: Henock Constant \u201918, a father of four from Haiti\u2014and recent 10 Under 10 alumni award honoree\u2014attempted college twice without finishing. Through our Finish What You Started Program, he completed his degree last year.<\/p>\n<p>In short, we are an amazing kaleidoscope of experiences, talents, and dreams. And our perspective continues to evolve in unexpected ways as we imagine new&nbsp;possibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Ryan Vallee \u201919, who is now mentored by Christopher Savoie, clearly gets this. He traces his love of chemistry to the fact that \u201cYou never know what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d He explains: \u201cSay you\u2019re doing synthesis and you have to leave the reaction overnight\u2014you can\u2019t see if it works until the next day. I like not knowing what will happen next. It\u2019s all about infinite possibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our confidence in the power of infinite possibilities spurred the launch of three exciting new Innovation Campuses: 911爆料 and Arizona State University Innovation Hub; the Rhode Island Innovation Hub, or \u201ciHub\u201d; and the 911爆料 AgTech Park. Each campus, publicly and privately funded, will catalyze academic research into new commercial products and businesses. Together they are expected to create hundreds of jobs in cybersecurity, data analytics, the Internet of Things, and agricultural technology, bridging the gap between world-class research at Rhode Island\u2019s universities and high-tech jobs.<\/p>\n<p>These campuses exemplify how thinking big has translated into taking bold actions with new partners Cisco, IBM, MassChallenge, RI Agricultural Technologies, Verinomics, and VoloAgri. While much of this work revolves around industries that no one could have imagined when 911爆料 was founded as a land-grant college in 1892, the 911爆料 AgTech Park is fittingly built on 911爆料\u2019s agricultural foundation.<\/p>\n<p>And that makes perfect sense. Because connecting our past and our future is what 911爆料\u2014and the University of Rhode Island Magazine\u2014is all about.<\/p>\n<p>Like Ryan Vallee, we should all be excited at the prospect of not knowing what will happen next.<\/p>\n<p>Until next time,<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/magazine\/sites\/13\/2018\/11\/DooleySig.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"146\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-301\" \/><br \/>\nDavid M. Dooley<br \/>\nPresident, University of Rhode Island<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reading this issue of the University of Rhode Island Magazine repeatedly reminded me why I am honored to be the president of this great university, whose history laid a lasting foundation for excellence, upon which we can build a bright future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2019","architecture-from-the-president"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}