James J. Cimino, M.D., will lead UAB's new Informatics Institute, which was established in June 2014. Cimino, who previously was the chief of the Laboratory for Informatics Development at the NIH Clinical Center and a senior scientist at the National Library of Medicine, is a national leader in the field of biomedical informatics and co-editor of the most influential textbook on the subject.

During the past few years, technological innovations have opened up an entirely new way to approach scientific questions. Data-driven research starts with massive information sets — the genomic profiles of thousands of patients, for example, or millions of spam emails — and then searches for emerging patterns in that data. In the latest issue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s "Business Horizon Quarterly", UAB President Ray Watts, M.D., explains the way data-driven research at UAB is being applied to find novel treatments for disease, create new products and businesses and train the next generation of innovation-savvy students.

Iryna Mazhak, Ph.D., a Fulbright Visiting Scholar from Ukraine, is developing a medical sociology course and textbook materials during her nine months at UAB. No such course or textbook exists in her homeland, she says. 

Participate in a brief, large-scale survey of Internet users that will help UAB researchers design strong authentication systems for securing information privacy.

A UAB-led team is one of 24 to receive an inaugural NIH Innovation Corps grant that will enable them to develop a much better understanding of the commercial landscape for a vascular graft technology and significantly refine its plan for bringing it to market.

Nine researchers are halfway to the prize money for their winning entries in the annual Creativity is a Decision Awards. To collect prize money, winners must submit their proposal to an extramural sponsoring authority by Nov. 5.

Narayana Sthanam, Ph.D., professor of structural biology, is working to discover how GBS escapes the mother’s natural defense systems in hopes that knowledge will lead to a therapeutic intervention. His research is funded by a $1 million R01 grant from the NIH/NIAID.

If successful, the drug would be a significant clinical breakthrough for reducing pre-term births and infant mortality.

Gregory Friedman, M.D., is working to combat medulloblastoma — the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor — using genetically altered viruses that kill cancer cells and leave normal cells untouched.