CARMEN PULIAFITO
Team: UM Hurricanes
Stats: 51, head of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute; consistently rated tops or second nationally.
Claim to fame: An M.D., M.B.A. and pioneering researcher; founding director of the New England Eye Center at Tufts; founder of the Lasik Institute, a non-profit educational organization.
Inducements: $5 million to improve facilities and hire more researchers. "The way to be positioned as a world leader is to aggressively build."
Off the field: World-class stamp collector; offered free eye surgery to umpires after blown calls against his Boston Red Sox in the '99 playoffs.
Nearsighted? "That's the only explanation I have," he said at the time.
UM TEAMMATES
Slyvester Comprehensive Cancer Center scientific director, hematology/oncology chief Dr. Joseph Rosenblatt ... Dr. David Lubarsky, M.B.A. in anesthesiology ... James H. Wyche, new College of Arts & Sciences dean, a cellular biology expert ... ocean researcher Dennis Hansell ... strategic management specialist Yadong Luo ... Haresh Gurnani, supply chain management ... Keisure Hirano, econometrics ... political scientist Benjamin Bishin.
University of Central Florida
GRAHAM WORTHY
Team: UCF Knights
Stats: 45, biology and marine mammalogy professor; native of England, raised in Canada.
Claim to fame: Internationally known marine mammals expert researching manatees, bottlenose dolphins, seals and sea lions.
Formerly played for: Texas A&M.
Inducements: $130,000 salary, two lab techs, financial support for grad students, $200,000 in startup expenses; assurance that Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute would raise $12 million for a research base in Brevard. "It was an offer Texas A&M couldn't compete with."
Off the field: Three dogs and genealogy.
University of Central Florida
PETER HANCOCK
Team: UCF Knights
Stats: 49, psychology professor and Institute of Simulation and Training professor.
Claim to fame: Human factors, turning "human machine antagonism into human-machine symmetry."
Formerly played for: University of Minnesota.
Inducements: $128,581 salary, lots of colleagues in his "human factors" discipline. "I was very impressed the president of the university not only knew about human factors but had a vision of where he wanted it to fit in the university. That was a big
persuader for me."
UCF TEAMMATES
Environmental economist J. Walter Milon, who has 25 grants in the last 22 years ... Shin-Tson Wu, School of Optics, holder of the patent on Game Boy liquid crystal displays, inventor of a liquid crystal lens for eyeglasses ... sports ethics and management expert Richard Lapchick ... Gour-Tsyh "George" Yeh, watershed expert, formerly from Penn State and Oak Ridge National Laboratory ... computer scientist Dan C. Marinescu, chief architect of a system used in experiments leading to the discovery of superheavy elements ... sociologist Jim Wright, working on using ultraviolet light to remove airborne bacteria and viruses from the air in public buildings.
University of South Florida
LOUIS MARTIN-VEGA
Team: USF Bulls
Stats: 54, dean, College of Engineering.
Claim to fame: Oversaw a $414-million budget at the National Science Foundation as director of the design, manufacture and industrial innovation division; the Lehigh University engineering department he ran ranked in the top 20 by U.S. News & World Report and 15th by the National Research Council in Ph.D.-granting programs in industrial engineering.
Formerly played for: The NSF and Lehigh.
Inducements: $200,000 salary; chance to build USF's engineering college by adding 30 professors.
USF TEAMMATES
Neonatologist Dr. Robert D. Christensen, pediatrics chief, funded by the NIH for 15 years ... Michael Fountain, director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, holder of 40 U.S. and foreign patents ... epidemiologist and biostatistician Dr. Heather Stockwell, former U.S. Department of Energy director of science and acting deputy assistant secretary for health studies ... chemical engineering professor Babu Joseph ... Bill J. Baker, chemistry ... geologist Charles B. Connor, former principal scientist for the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses ... Georgios Stylianides, biomechanics.
Florida State University
JOHN SCHOLZ
Team: FSU Seminoles
Stats: 57, political science.
Claim to fame: Specialist in collective-action problems -situations where success occurs only if multiple actors, governments and agencies work together, as in pollution control; received a $200,000 grant this spring - the topic: Is federal regulation more effective in areas where local governments successfully coordinate action on water pollutions?
Formerly played for: SUNY at Stony Brook.
Inducements: $140,000 salary and a $40,000 grant; a promise to hire a couple more faculty in public policy and collective-action problems.
Off the field: Canoeing, tennis, birding.
FSU TEAMMATES
Biologist David Swofford, Smithsonian expert in bioinformatics (using DNA information to guess at evolution) ... actress and Academy Award nominee Jane Alexander and her husband, director Edwin Sherin, School of Theatre ... Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler, English Department ... management expert Gerald R. Ferris ... communication disorders researcher Leonard L. LaPointe ... famed ballerina Suzanne Farrell, dance.
Florida A&M University
JACQUELYN ANDERSON BOLDEN
Team: FAMU RATTLERS
Stats: 52, director of the division of occupational therapy, where she is charged with founding a master's program.
Claim to fame: A Ph.D. in sociology, Bolden created for the American Occupational Therapy Association the rating scale used to grade students in field work. She's also an expert in the history of minority contributions to occupational therapy.
Formerly played for: Tufts University in Boston.
Inducements: Recruitment of two more faculty members and an opportunity to move closer to her mother in Alabama.
FAMU TEAMMATES
Mark Harwell, environmental sciences, former director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Analyses at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at UM ... statistical mechanics and quantum chemist Elijah Johnson, environmental sciences ... Robert L. Thomas, College of Pharmacy, former interim dean at Xavier University.
University of Florida
JOSE FORTES
Team: UF GATORS
Stats: 47, native of Portugal; professor, BellSouth eminent scholar and director of the advanced computing and information systems laboratory.
Claim to fame: Hired after a three-year search; former director of microelectronics systems architecture for the National Science Foundation; has received funding from the Office of Naval Research, IBM and General Electric.
Formerly played for: Purdue University, 18 years.
Inducements: $165,000 salary; establish a research program with his new Advanced Computing and Information Systems lab; two additional faculty hires; quality of life.
UF TEAMMATES
Psychologist Michael Marsiske, College of Medicine/Institute on Aging ... pain researcher Ann Horgas, College of Nursing/ Department of Adult and Elderly Nursing ... stroke rehabilitation researcher Pamela Duncan, health professions ... geneticist Douglas Soltis, botany ... geneticist Pamela Soltis, curator, Florida Museum of Natural History ... anthropologist David Daegling, Yale expert in human evolution ... astronomer Frederick Hamon, winner of the National Science Foundation Career Award ... chemist George Cristou ... Pramod P. Khargonekar, engineering dean.