Nearly 100 proteins will launch with the SpaceX-3 rocket March 16 and travel to the International Space Station to demonstrate the benefits of microgravity on protein crystallization, in a study led by Lawrence DeLucas, O.D., Ph.D., and his team at UAB's Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering.

UAB researchers will work with community partners in Black Belt counties to reach diabetics in denial and use personal stories and coaching to demonstrate that their lives can be full if they take their medication as prescribed.

The deadline for submissions for the seventh annual UAB Expo has been extended to March 21. The event, open to all undergraduates, showcases the research and creative scholarly work produced by students in UAB programs ranging from science and technology to art and filmmaking.

UAB is one of 32 clinical sites of the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, a large-scale study that will study individuals with genetic mutations associated with Parkinson’s disease to identify and validate biomarkers that aid in diagnosis and treatment.

UABTeach will prepare students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics to enter careers in secondary education by enabling them to earn a teaching certificate without adding time or expense to their four-year degree program.

UAB is among the few heart centers in the United States to use a new minimally invasive method to unblock chronic total occlusions for the treatment of refractory chest pain. The new treatment may help prevent qualifying patients from needing bypass surgery, which is more invasive and involves a longer recovery time.

Abstracts relevant to transplant immunology or protective immunity are being accepted until March 1 for the annual symposium hosted jointly by UAB and Emory University. Send abstracts and register for the March 21 conference by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Download PDF for details.

In "Positive," Michael S. Saag, M.D., offers a behind-the-scenes story of the AIDS epidemic and "how, by people pulling together for a common cause, we converted HIV from a near-certain death sentence into a chronic, manageable condition." Saag, director of the UAB's Center for AIDS Research, also shines a light on dysfunctions of the U.S. health-care system and proposes remedies drawn from his distinguished medical career.

UAB's annual research update on rheumatoid arthritis will be held March 19. Professor V. Michael Holers, M.D., of University of Colorado, Denver, will deliver the keynote at noon. General sessions begin at 1:30 p.m., and poster sessions follow at 5 p.m. To present a poster, send a one-page abstract by 5 p.m. March 14 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Details online.

UAB full-time faculty may apply for funding for research, teaching and service-related projects. This year, separate funds are available to support three additional grants in the area of women’s health and sex differences. Junior faculty are encouraged to apply. Get the application and guidelines at www.uab.edu/facultysenate.

Two days before Christmas, a Monroeville teenager became the first Alabamian to receive the world’s only subcutaneous implantable defibrillator to protect against sudden cardiac arrest. Today, 14-year-old Christian Quarles is back in school and on the A-B honor roll.

Cancer Resource is a free smartphone app that identifies more than 500 valuable community services for people battling cancer in North Central Alabama. Users can search by location, service and target audience to identify nearby support groups, wig shops, learning centers and more.

The idea that sex sells is generally accepted as fact. The idea that the sex of cells is important to biomedical research is not as well-known, but an editorial co-written by Associate Professor Cathy Fuller, Ph.D., suggests that gender matters.

Graduate Entrepreneurship Awards help bridge academic research and industry and provide students with mentors to guide them while developing their early-stage technologies. Meet two winners pursuing vastly different research in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The American Heart Association issued its first guidelines for preventing strokes in women, which consider hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other sex-related factors. “Men are physiologically different from women, so preventive tips cannot be one-size-fits-all,” explained UAB Professor Virginia Howard, Ph.D., co-author of the new scientific statement published in the AHA journal Stroke. The guidelines report stroke risks unique to women and provide scientifically based recommendations on how best to treat them.

The arctic blast that shutdown the Southeast did not deter the UAB transplant team from performing 16 operations to continue the largest non-directed donor chain ever performed at a single center in the Southeast.

UAB Pastoral Care hosts several groups each month for cancer patients and family members who want to share with those on a similar journey. They meet the first and third Tuesdays and the first Wednesday of the month/ Direct questions to Chaplain Kelsey Blankenship at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 801-7050.

In the six years since its creation, the center has parlayed an initial investment of $140,000 from the UAB School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Southern Research Institute into nearly $10 million in extramural research funding, which has helped recruit new faculty and produce new knowledge in treating lung injury.

Professor Michael Saag, M.D., and colleagues created HCVguidelines.org, to ensure recommendations can be updated as soon as new data emerge and new therapies are approved. Hepatitis C virus is the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Experimental tools for determining how, when and why particular tissue or organ molecules act in the body were not sophisticated enough to determine exactly where they are produced or where they accumulate to function. Until now. The UAB-created matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization imaging mass spectrometry, or MALDI-IMS, has implications in critical research initiatives for many diseases, including cancer, chronic inflammatory autoimmune diseases and age-related degenerative diseases.

Graduate Entrepreneurship Awards help bridge academic research and industry and provide students with mentors to guide them while developing their early-stage technologies. Meet two winners pursuing vastly different research in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Online College Database ranked UAB No. 5 among the top universities for teacher education in Alabama based on graduation rates for 2012. Notably, the UAB School of Education offered the lowest tuition among the top five.

UAB selected among top 50 schools for advancing females students in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

Ryder, a student in the University Honors Program, is a double major in biology and anthropology with minors in Middle Eastern studies and chemistry.

Two students spent the summer mapping storm drains as part of a partnership project with the Jefferson County Health Department

Vattoth is a scientist in UAB’s Comprehensive Neuroscience Center.

A partnership between UAB and BBVA Compass takes students to Spain and back for career training.

Since 1979, the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship by the National Sea Grant College Program has provided educational experience to students who have an interest in ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources, as well as in the national policy decisions affecting those resources.

UAB adds Biomedical Sciences as a major; will train professionals in processes and methods for diagnosing, analyzing and treating diseases.

El-Baz has spent long career investigating the field of remote sensing, particularly on arid lands

Forums have focused on identifying UAB's strengths and how they can be leveraged to improve student learning

The UAB biotechnology graduate program trains students in the science and business aspects of the field

UAB is Alabama’s first university to employ the total TAH license giving unlimited use of MATLAB in both teaching and research activities.

Science & Technology Honors students organized the regional arm of Science Olympiad where high-school students competed for prizes.

If social media devices are sufficient to fuel a small insurrection and resurrect the career of an elderly Hollywood actress, surely they can advance business goals.

Toastmasters International is a non-profit organization recognized as a world leader in helping people become more competent and comfortable in front of an audience.

The UAB Master of Engineering degree track in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management (ASEM) will be offered online; its curriculum is based in experiential learning and peer-to-peer interaction.

Welcome to Tim Cook’s innovative online Japanese 101 course, a joint production of the departments of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Communication Studies, Education and Theatre.

Some 61 percent of the state's industry-sponsored clinical trials are being conducted in Birmingham, home to UAB, according to a report that hails the quantity and the cutting-edge nature of the work.

Fast, inexpensive gene sequencing needed to make possible personalized medicine.

UAB has joined the Clinton Global Initiative University Network; the Office of Service Learning plans to provide training, resources for student innovators.

Physician assistant students to use MedSnap’s mobile app to verify patient meds and prevent dangerous interactions.

The NSF will support a UAB/BBA collaboration through a $600,000 award — the first Partnership for Innovation grant ever given in Alabama.

UAB launches Malcovery; new company detects cyber threats, neutralizes attacks, minimizes losses for groups in danger of malware attackers.

UAB class designed to produce marketable solutions now; engineering and business students collaborate to commercialize product creations.

Inaugural awards given to identify, recognize and celebrate the success of UAB graduates

The learning curve for entrepreneurs is sharp, especially if you’ve never fancied yourself a business magnate.

Editor’s Note: Many stranded employees, with the help of students and good neighbors, kept services going in this city within the city. Media Relations Specialist Tyler Greer is one of many members of the Marketing and Public Relations team who have been camped at UAB since Tuesday’s snowfall. He wrote this insider’s view.

UAB’s Alys Stephens Performing Arts Center has received a National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Fast-Track grant to support a public performance and outreach programs conducted through ArtPlay.

UAB psychiatrist Tolu Aduroja maintains a close connection to his native Nigeria. Since 2011, he has returned to his hometown of Ibadan each fall to provide free health care through an organization he founded called Maternal Cords.

Through a UAB professor’s crowdsourcing efforts, volunteers are able to provide textbooks to visually impaired children in Bangladesh.

UAB Police Sgt. Bryan Fields is a master instructor who has trained bicycle officers throughout the Southeast.

UAB’s annual Give Kids a Smile event gets a year-round home in Shelby County.

The plight of the Antarctic-based Adelie penguin reveals much about the future of our planet, according to UAB University Professor Jim McClintock, Ph.D. The story of the seabird’s struggle to adjust to the warming climate is captured in “Ghost Rookeries,” a four-minute film produced by the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and narrated by actor Harrison Ford, who is on the foundation's board of advisers. The journey comes alive through the prose from McClintock’s book, “Lost Antarctica: Climate Change on the Antarctic Peninsula.”

Here’s a round-up of what UAB’s talented music, theatre and art and art history faculty are doing in Alabama and across the globe while on break from classes.

Additional funding has enabled Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology to provide more science learning opportunities to area schools

UAB School of Engineering’s Chris Waldron pitches plans to Vestavia City Council, hopes construction can begin in 2013

UAB Osteoporosis Prevention & Treatment Clinic impacting practice on broad scale

Actor, performer Ben Vereen lends help to project as community groups begin work to educate populace in overcoming fear of disease

A two-way exchange program will help the School of Nursing prepare health-care professionals to address disparities in care for people in Zambia, Malawi and the United States

UAB students have spent the better part of the past six months training Carver High School students in robotics to help them compete at the Alabama Robotics Competition.

Lynne Vining is a “dirt sailor,” a Navy nurse in Afghanistan who cares for fallen comrades.

UAB, the City of Birmingham, the YMCA of Greater Birmingham and the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation team to educate area citizens on diabetes management and prevention.

More than 150 area middle-school girls will come to campus April 21 for the second Girls in Science & Engineering Day.

A team of eight — six with UAB ties — that spent a week in Lanzhou, China, teaching physical therapy techniques to health-care providers.

PhUn week is an event  that invites its members to volunteer for outreach programs in K-12 classrooms.

The M3 Camp gives students from underserved communities the chance to learn high-level computing.

UAB is among the few heart centers in the United States to use a new minimally invasive method to unblock chronic total occlusions for the treatment of refractory chest pain. The new treatment may help prevent qualifying patients from needing bypass surgery, which is more invasive and involves a longer recovery time.

Two days before Christmas, a Monroeville teenager became the first Alabamian to receive the world’s only subcutaneous implantable defibrillator to protect against sudden cardiac arrest. Today, 14-year-old Christian Quarles is back in school and on the A-B honor roll.

The arctic blast that shutdown the Southeast did not deter the UAB transplant team from performing 16 operations to continue the largest non-directed donor chain ever performed at a single center in the Southeast.

UAB Pastoral Care hosts several groups each month for cancer patients and family members who want to share with those on a similar journey. They meet the first and third Tuesdays and the first Wednesday of the month/ Direct questions to Chaplain Kelsey Blankenship at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 801-7050.

The inappropriate use of antibiotics in emergency departments persists even as concerns about antibiotic resistance continue to mount, says a UAB study published online in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

UAB has launched UAB Weight Loss Medicine, the only program in the Southeast to offer a multidisciplinary, medical approach to weight management, to address a consistent rise in the regional rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

Home-based hospice practices for terminally ill, hospitalized patients could reduce suffering and improve end-of-life care, according to a UAB study published online Jan. 21 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

UAB is one of three locations in the nation — and the only one in the Southeast — able to offer paired exchange and incompatible kidney transplants as a single center. Learn more about the program and meet the team, donors and recipients who made it possible at www.uab.edu/news.

An interdisciplinary team from genetics, internal medicine, and other specialties aims to help patients find answers to medical mysteries.

Innovative new heart catheter used first in the United States at UAB pinpoints areas for therapy delivery.

Following evidence that CT scans can be a reliable screening tool for early detection of lung cancer, UAB becomes the first hospital in Birmingham to offer that service.

Participants can sign up to meet in group setting with trained lifestyle coach to learn how to prevent or delay onset of type 2 diabetes

An aggressive blood-management plan has changed the culture at UAB, leading to less blood use, more blood donation and better outcomes for patients.

Originally built in 1975, the Wallace Tumor Institute is the hub of the Cancer Center’s research and administrative enterprise.

Magnetic stimulation therapy is gaining popularity in treating depression and UAB researchers are now looking at a low-magnetic strength version that might be better and cheaper.

Following evidence that CT scans can be a reliable screening tool for early detection of lung cancer, UAB becomes the first hospital in Birmingham to offer that service.

The School of Dentistry received more funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2012 than any other school of dentistry in the nation.

Walters, Bleich provide services for employees who have lost a special patient, and provide training for residents

UAB and Birmingham stepped up to fight the virus that causes AIDS years ago when it could have easily turned away

The new 11,000 square foot, state-of-the-art Kidney & Pancreas Transplant Clinic opened this month.

Nearly 100 proteins will launch with the SpaceX-3 rocket March 16 and travel to the International Space Station to demonstrate the benefits of microgravity on protein crystallization, in a study led by Lawrence DeLucas, O.D., Ph.D., and his team at UAB's Center for Biophysical Sciences and Engineering.

UAB researchers will work with community partners in Black Belt counties to reach diabetics in denial and use personal stories and coaching to demonstrate that their lives can be full if they take their medication as prescribed.

The deadline for submissions for the seventh annual UAB Expo has been extended to March 21. The event, open to all undergraduates, showcases the research and creative scholarly work produced by students in UAB programs ranging from science and technology to art and filmmaking.

UAB is one of 32 clinical sites of the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, a large-scale study that will study individuals with genetic mutations associated with Parkinson’s disease to identify and validate biomarkers that aid in diagnosis and treatment.

UABTeach will prepare students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics to enter careers in secondary education by enabling them to earn a teaching certificate without adding time or expense to their four-year degree program.

Abstracts relevant to transplant immunology or protective immunity are being accepted until March 1 for the annual symposium hosted jointly by UAB and Emory University. Send abstracts and register for the March 21 conference by emailing This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Download PDF for details.

In "Positive," Michael S. Saag, M.D., offers a behind-the-scenes story of the AIDS epidemic and "how, by people pulling together for a common cause, we converted HIV from a near-certain death sentence into a chronic, manageable condition." Saag, director of the UAB's Center for AIDS Research, also shines a light on dysfunctions of the U.S. health-care system and proposes remedies drawn from his distinguished medical career.

UAB's annual research update on rheumatoid arthritis will be held March 19. Professor V. Michael Holers, M.D., of University of Colorado, Denver, will deliver the keynote at noon. General sessions begin at 1:30 p.m., and poster sessions follow at 5 p.m. To present a poster, send a one-page abstract by 5 p.m. March 14 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Details online.

UAB full-time faculty may apply for funding for research, teaching and service-related projects. This year, separate funds are available to support three additional grants in the area of women’s health and sex differences. Junior faculty are encouraged to apply. Get the application and guidelines at www.uab.edu/facultysenate.

Cancer Resource is a free smartphone app that identifies more than 500 valuable community services for people battling cancer in North Central Alabama. Users can search by location, service and target audience to identify nearby support groups, wig shops, learning centers and more.

The idea that sex sells is generally accepted as fact. The idea that the sex of cells is important to biomedical research is not as well-known, but an editorial co-written by Associate Professor Cathy Fuller, Ph.D., suggests that gender matters.

The American Heart Association issued its first guidelines for preventing strokes in women, which consider hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other sex-related factors. “Men are physiologically different from women, so preventive tips cannot be one-size-fits-all,” explained UAB Professor Virginia Howard, Ph.D., co-author of the new scientific statement published in the AHA journal Stroke. The guidelines report stroke risks unique to women and provide scientifically based recommendations on how best to treat them.

In the six years since its creation, the center has parlayed an initial investment of $140,000 from the UAB School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Southern Research Institute into nearly $10 million in extramural research funding, which has helped recruit new faculty and produce new knowledge in treating lung injury.

Professor Michael Saag, M.D., and colleagues created HCVguidelines.org, to ensure recommendations can be updated as soon as new data emerge and new therapies are approved. Hepatitis C virus is the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer.

Experimental tools for determining how, when and why particular tissue or organ molecules act in the body were not sophisticated enough to determine exactly where they are produced or where they accumulate to function. Until now. The UAB-created matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization imaging mass spectrometry, or MALDI-IMS, has implications in critical research initiatives for many diseases, including cancer, chronic inflammatory autoimmune diseases and age-related degenerative diseases.

It is not uncommon for prison inmates to claim that a spiritual experience has changed their nature and made them a better person. Kent Kerley, Ph.D., associate professor in the  Department of Justice Sciences, has heard these stories and examined religion-based programs to discover the effect they have on inmates who are still imprisoned. His findings will be published next month in his book, “Religious Faith in Correctional Contexts.”

This week, polar research scientist and biology Professor Charles Amsler, Ph.D., did something no other UAB professor has done: He took a selfie at the South Pole.
Amsler, who is co-director of UAB's research in Antarctica, also has been manager for the Antarctic organisms and ecosystems program at the National Science Foundation since June 2013. He is in Antarctica reviewing research support facilities and science programs under his management at NSF.

Abstracts are due Feb. 1 for the Health Disparities Research Symposium to be held March 20. The symposium highlights the work of faculty and student investigators related to health disparities. Download the PDF for information, and register online.

Changes to a key protein amplified its natural ability to counter kidney disease, according to UAB research. The team now will work to confirm those results and conduct toxicity and dosing studies that would need before they could conduct human clinical trials. The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine.

UAB marks the grand opening of Alabama’s largest nuclear magnetic resonance facility.