Miller School students and faculty may want to brush up on their Italian, in light of an alliance being formulated with the medical school at the University of Pisa in Italy.

"We're talking about having an international affiliation between our medical schools," says Laurence B. Gardner, M.D., professor of medicine and executive dean for education and policy at the Miller School.

"This will present an opportunity for the University of Pisa's most advanced and brightest residents to come to the Miller School and spend up to a year in the specialty in which they have been trained in Italy," Gardner adds.

University of Pisa residents may begin arriving as soon as July, or as late as October 2010, Gardner says. The following year, Miller School medical students may be able to spend a one-month elective abroad at the University of Pisa, as part of a two-way exchange.

While white and Hispanic individuals are being diagnosed with melanoma more frequently in recent years, Hispanic and black patients continue to have advanced skin cancer at diagnosis, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Those findings were made by a team of researchers from the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, led by Shasa Hu, M.D., assistant professor of dermatology and cutaneous surgery and Robert Kirsner, M.D., Steifel Laboratories Professor and vice chairman of the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery.

The Miller School Security Department would like to thank the medical center employees who donated toys to its 2009 Holiday Toy Drive.