The UAB Heersink School of Medicine Office of Research introduces new faculty for Summer and Fall 2022. Please join Heersink School of Medicine and the Office of Research in welcoming these new faculty.

The Marnix E. Heersink Institute for Biomedical Innovation has launched a program for health care professionals who want to optimize their group's quality, access, and solutions through creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. To achieve this goal, the institute has partnered with UAB Medicine to offer the Healthcare Innovation Academy.

Ava Michl was traversing her new collegiate world through freshman year at the University of Alabama at Birmingham when she was rocked by an unexpected Type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Up to that point in her life, Michl had no idea she had diabetes.

Department of Psychology Associate Professor Michael Sloane, Ph.D., grew up in the rolling countryside of Ireland, where processed foods were far from a dietary staple– everything was farm to table. His family grew all their own vegetables and fruits, raised chickens for eggs, and bought meat from a neighboring farmer or fresh cuts from the town butcher. So, when he came over to the U.S. to complete his doctoral work at Northwestern University in 1979, Sloane was plunged into a consumer market that was riddled with highly processed and sugary food choices.

The year was 1997. Department of Medicine Communications Director Carolyn Walsh was traveling on i459 when things did not feel quite right. She was fighting to stay awake at the wheel, noticing bouts of drowsiness on and off. Before she could pull over, Walsh was in a car accident.

The Marnix E. Heersink Institute for Biomedical Innovation recently elected its 2022-2023 cohort for the Heersink Innovation Fellows Program. Nine applicants from various disciplines at UAB were accepted into the program to apply the entrepreneurial mindset to their discipline and academic area.


The annual White Coat Ceremony marks a pivotal moment in every future physician’s life—a moment when dreams become a reality. The white coat symbolizes duty, hard work, and the excitement of what lies ahead. For one medical student at this year’s ceremony, the tradition held even more meaning, one rooted in a three-generation legacy.

Alan T. Tita, M.D., Ph.D., Mary Heersink Endowed Chair of Global Health and associate dean for Global and Women's Health, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine. The Academy specifically praised Tita as “an innovative and impactful perinatal epidemiologist and clinical trialist.”

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