School of Engineering News - School of Engineering

by Hannah Buckelew
Massimo Fazio, Ph.D., an associate professor in both UAB’s Departments of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, together with Christopher Girkin, M.D., and Alecia Gross, Ph.D., received a five-year, $2.9 million R01 to support his project, “The mechanotranscriptome of the optic nerve head following acute experimental ocular hypertension in living human eyes.” The grant is funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

by Hannah Buckelew
The American Heart Association’s annual Scientific Sessions meeting held in Philadelphia, November 11-13, saw representation from faculty and students from the Department of Biomedical Engineering this year.

Process Designed by ASEM Faculty Effects Change in a Wide Range of Industries

By Hannah Buckelew
Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., T. Michael and Gillian Goodrich Endowed Chair of Engineering Leadership and Chair of the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been selected as recipient of the 25^th John Foerster Distinguished Lecture Award by the University of Manitoba’s Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences in Canada.

Twenty faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students from the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) attended the Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BMES) 2023 Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington, October 11-14. The number is the largest group UAB has taken to BMES to date.

Kathy Lu, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering (MME), recently began her term as president-elect of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society. Lu, who arrived at UAB in August as the inaugural MME chair, ascended to the leadership role on July 1. Her three-year term will include one year each as president-elect, president, and immediate past-president.

On September 21^st, UAB engineering students took advantage of a full day of networking with more than 100 employer partners at the 2023 Engineering Career Fair.

On August 15, the Department of Biomedical Engineering hosted Joseph Wu, M.D., Ph.D., president of the American Heart Association, director of Stanford University’s Cardiovascular Institute, Simon H. Stertzer, M.D., Professor and professor of radiology, to give a the season’s first “Frontiers in Bioengineering” lecture. Wu spoke on the topic, “Stem Cells & Genomics: from Precision Medicine to Clinical Trial in Dish.”

by Hannah Buckelew
Eight members from the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), alongside several others from the Departments of Pathology and Cardiology, attended the annual Basic Cardiovascular Sciences Scientific Sessions in Chicago, Illinois July 30-August 3.

Student fellows with program director Alan Eberhardt

Three pairs of undergraduates in the Department of Biomedical Engineering recently completed a unique research and development program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Over an eight-week period that ended in late July, six rising juniors engaged in team-based projects that led them through the process of medical-device development—from identifying a challenge to designing and building a prototype.

The six fellows—Jade Buston, Dylan Cothron, Hunter Goffinett, Brianna Green, Annabel Johnson and Georgianna Khong—were selected in a competitive process and were chosen for their “intellectual promise, curiosity, and motivation.” Each student was awarded $3,000 from the NIH for participating in the program, plus an additional $250 for prototyping expenses.

By Hannah Buckelew
The Department of Biomedical Engineering boasts a diverse research portfolio covering a wide range of topics. Biomedical imaging, for example, is an essential tool in visualizing the body’s internal organs. To showcase the impactful contributions of imaging research in the department, Anna Sorace, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology, and director of UAB’s Small Animal Imaging Facility, answers a series of questions.

Rachel June Smith, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received a $50,000 Junior Investigator Award from the American Epilepsy Society (AES). The award was part of the AES 2023 Early Career Fellowships, which awarded $1.19 million in research grants and fellowships to 25 researchers in a variety of categories. Smith was one of three chosen for a Junior Investigator Award.

by Hannah Buckelew
More than six million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the leading cause of dementia worldwide, and nearly 95 percent of all AD cases are late-onset. However, the current success rate for AD drug development is very low. Yuhua Song, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging funding her research on drug repositioning to target TREM2 in AD. The grant is funded at $2.89 million over five years, through 2028.

by Hannah Buckelew
The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering has launched a new graduate certificate in Translation of Biomedical Innovations to Clinical Practice. This non-degree program is now open for enrollment for the upcoming fall semester.

By Hannah Buckelew
Biomedical Engineering Chair Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., traveled throughout India in March to deliver lectures and form research and educational collaborations at various institutions.

Kathy Lu, Ph.D., has been selected to become the inaugural chair of the UAB Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. Lu was selected after a nationwide search for a chair that began when the department was formed in 2022 from the merger of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.

by Hannah Buckelew
Ameer Mansur, a Ph.D. candidate in the laboratory of Anna Sorace, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a pre-doctoral research training program (TL1) fellowship from the UAB Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS), for his project, titled, “Prognostic biometric extraction of multiparametric imaging data in human epidermal growth factor receptor (HER2) positive breast cancer.” The fellowship is effective July 1, 2023 and will run through July 2024.

After a career spanning nearly 40 years at UAB in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Dale Feldman, Ph.D., associate professor, officially retired on May 31, 2023. This is not, however, the conclusion of his long and productive career. Feldman emphasizes that he will continue to assist the department with accreditation for undergraduate education, and to teach two of the three required courses for the Translation of Biomedical Innovations to Clinical Practice certificate program.

by Hannah Buckelew
Biomedical Engineering student Emma Stevenson has been awarded a 10-week Biomedical Engineering Summer Internship from the National Institute of Health’s Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NBIB) for her project titled, “Automation of radioactive cell labeling using microfluidic acoustophoresis.” The NBIB summer internship allows rising biomedical engineering students to participate in cutting-edge research projects under the mentorship of world-class scientists in NIH laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland, from June 5 to August 11, 2023.

BioHorizons is a Birmingham company whose history is rooted in UAB. Today, thanks to a growing and successful co-op program, it appears that BioHorizons and UAB will continue to be linked far into the future.

The dental-implant company, which started as a spinoff of research from the UAB Schools of Engineering and Dentistry, has hired more than a dozen UAB alumni and students over the past 28 years. More recently, though, its co-op program has begun to bring in current engineering undergraduates—creating a talent pipeline for students to get a head start in a growing industry.

“Hands-on experience has always been a key element of engineering education,” said Neil Adams, director of the Engineering Career Center. “The success of our program depends on strong co-op and intern partners, like BioHorizons, who offer quality experiences to our students so that they apply their engineering knowledge while also learning how to be a contributing part of a professional organization. We are proud of this continued partnership and look forward to supporting Blazer engineering co-ops at BioHorizons for many years to come.”

A Blazer Legacy

BioHorizons was started in 1995 by the late Martha Bidez, Ph.D., then a faculty member in the School of Engineering who would serve as the company’s first CEO before selling the company and returning to UAB in 2009. Over the years, the company has hired a number of UAB alumni, including several members of its leadership team (see sidebar).

In 2016, however, the company’s ties to UAB got a little closer when Ashley Boggs became the first UAB undergraduate to join the BioHorizons co-op program—a program that provides students the opportunity to work full-time at the company for three semesters, alternating with school. The experience is paid, and students work alongside engineers throughout their time at the company.

Boggs extended her co-op by working part-time at the company until she was hired full time after she graduated in 2018. Today, she is a Digital Dentistry Engineering Manager, and she credits her co-op experience for opening her eyes to possibilities she had never previously considered.

“I had a vague idea that I wanted to work with implants—like hips, knees, ankles—but I didn’t know anything about the dental-implant industry at all,” said Boggs. “During my sophomore year, I went to the Engineering Career Center and told them that I couldn’t keep sitting in class doing problems from a book. They told me about a local company called BioHorizons that was doing on-campus interviews.”

The interview changed Boggs’s personal career trajectory, but her story is not an unusual one. While the engineering curriculum prepares students for a wide variety of careers, it’s often that first on-the-job experience that opens eyes and doors to career opportunities in fields students may have never been aware of.

That was the case for UAB graduate Jonathan Gordon, another former co-op participant who now works as a packaging engineer for BioHorizons. “I started out on a pre-med track, but coming from a very small town to UAB was a big transition,” Gordon said. “I dropped the pre-med route pretty quickly and started looking for other options.”

Like Boggs, the Engineering Career Center helped connect Gordon with a co-op position at BioHorizons, and that, in turn, led to full-time employment. “I realized pretty quickly that I love this industry. It’s exciting to be a part of this.”

An Undergraduate Pipeline

Although Boggs was the first UAB student hired into BioHorizons' co-op program, she soon had company. Three other Blazers followed her into the program (Josh Moore, Karly Casey and Gordon), and all four stayed on to work full-time. That kind of retention is notable for an undergraduate experience that by its nature is often exploratory.

“Since we started the co-op program about 10 years ago, we have had about 17-18 engineering students in our program—two of which have been in our regulatory department and the rest in research and development,” said Tom Lewis, BioHorizons manager of product engineering. “We feel that it has been very successful, and to date we have hired five as full-time employees.”

That transition from co-op to full-time employee makes sense when you consider the investment BioHorizons makes in students over a three-semester co-op. Each student must learn Quality System processes before getting down to work with tasks, such as design control, drawing release, and CAD modeling. “Each student is trained, but it takes hands-on involvement to learn all of these processes,” Lewis said. “It’s also helpful for students to experience how different departments work together for a common goal.”

In addition, students must learn industry standards and technologies in the medical device industry. “This takes longer,” Lewis said, “but over time they begin to understand the ‘whys’ behind the design of dental implants, restorative components and instruments. Although we have the expectation that co-ops produce for us, my hope is that when they look back they realize the value of their experience here, and as they move into their careers they have a head start in their understanding of engineering organizations."

“Co-op is both an investment by the company and a commitment by the student,” added Adams. “The depth of experience pays dividends in that co-op students are ready to contribute immediately at an organization after graduation.”

“I have been part of teams in which we have drawn and developed state of the art dental surgery kits that are slated to hit the market this year; I have managed drafting and conducting test plans to research the durability of implant designs; and, most importantly, I have been able to teach incoming co-ops the ins and outs of the company and guide them as they grow from a college student into true engineers.”
—Benjamin Pody, mechanical engineering student and 2nd-year co-op

Homegrown Talent

Lewis says the co-op program historically has drawn from several area universities, but he admits UAB students have one obvious advantage. “Since they are local, they already have living arrangements,” he said. “After completing the three co-op terms, students return to school to finish up and graduate. With UAB being in town, when the opportunity was available several UAB students have stayed on and worked part-time until graduation. The company knowledge they have has allowed them to be productive even on a part-time basis.”

While the growth of BioHorizons’ co-op program is exciting for current and future engineering students, UAB School of Engineering Dean Jeff Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., says that is just one of the reasons UAB engineers should look at the BioHorizons story with pride.

“It’s not unusual for a promising startup to spin off from university research—in this case, arising from research in the UAB Schools of Engineering and Dentistry,” said Holmes. “We often comment that these startups have the potential to revolutionize an industry. But in the case of BioHorizons, it has actually done that, and it continues to innovate and to grow. I am tremendously excited that our students are able to be a part of that continuing UAB success story.”

“At BioHorizons, we look forward to continuing our work with UAB in the future,” agreed Lewis. “We appreciate the relationship we have developed with the university that has served us well over the years.”

BioHorizons Senior Leadership

A glance at the BioHorizons team shows a number of UAB graduates among the senior leadership.

R. Steve Boggan, President and CEO

M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UAB

J. Todd Strong, Executive VP and COO

M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UAB

Mike Mills, Executive VP and CFO

B.S. from UAB Collat School of Business

Andrew Baroody, VP of Sales Operations

B.A. in English from UAB

Juan Jaramillo, VP of Global Business Support

UAB Graduate

Fred J. Molz, IV, VP of Research and Development

M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UAB

Elbert Jenkins II, VP of Information Technology

MEng in Information Engineering Management from UAB
MBA from the UAB Collat School of Business

Over the past 30-plus years, Mark Berry, Ph.D., has been no stranger to the faculty, staff, and alumni of the UAB School of Engineering. This year, however, he has been getting to know a different group of SOE stakeholders—undergraduate students.

When Bailee Isbell and Alivia Sims enrolled at the UAB School of Engineering, they knew they would be in a minority in a field that historically enrolls more men than women. But they had no idea they would become pioneers.

This weekend, the trailblazing duo will become the first two graduates of UAB’s Bachelor’s in Engineering Design program. The program, started in 2019, allows students flexibility to adjust the engineering curriculum to their own interests with a heavy focus on hands-on design and innovation, as well as a minor in one of the existing engineering disciplines.

For most UAB engineering students, Senior Design is a one-time thing. An arduous, two-semester team project, often referred to as the “capstone” of their undergraduate education.

For UAB alumnae Haley Ashway and Ashlyn Manzella, Ph.D., this year’s senior design course was a do-over, of sorts, as the two worked as mentors on a senior-design project to build a wall-racking system for BLOX, a local company that manufactures medical modules.

Ingenuity and innovation will be on display this week when the UAB School of Engineering hosts a pair of “Media Day” events to showcase the Class of 2023’s senior design projects. These projects include prototypes of devices students have designed and built over two semesters—many of them at the request of real-world clients attempting to meet current needs in the marketplace.

The Leah McCraney Memorial Endowed Scholarship was created in memory and in honor of the late Leah Gaye McCraney who was the inaugural Program Manager for the Master of Engineering with a concentration in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management. Criteria for the scholarship include current enrollment in the Master of Engineering - ASEM program, completion of at least 6 credit hours in ASEM, at least a 3.0 GPA, and being a self-supported student. Mr. Charles Tetteh is the 2022-2023 recipient of this scholarship.

The Dr. Martha Bidez Endowed Memorial Scholarship was created in memory of Dr. Martha Bidez, the first Graduate Program Director of the Master of Engineering in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management. Criteria for the scholarship include enrollment in ASEM, completion of at 6-credit hours in the program, at least a 3.0 GPA, and having shown leadership in the occupational safety and health profession. Ms. Layla Lahoud is the 2022-2023 recipient of this scholarship.

Avinash Unnikrishnan, Ph.D., a transportation engineer whose interdisciplinary research program spans areas ranging from freight and logistics to autonomous vehicles to the health impact of extreme weather events, will bring his vision for incorporating computation and data science into civil engineering to Birmingham later this year when he becomes the chair of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering in the UAB School of Engineering.

Vivek Shukla, M.D., a neonatologist in the UAB Heersink School of Medicine and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded the American Heart Association (AHA) Career Development Award for his innovative project, titled: "Machine Learning Modeling for Early Identification of Perinatal Depression Risk Using Cardiotocography."

More than 1,200 UAB employees, including 13 faculty and staff members from the School of Engineering, were honored Tuesday afternoon at the UAB annual service award reception at the Hill Student Center.

By Matt Windsor
When she was in high school in Houston, Texas, Daniela De Nobrega was “all over the sciences,” she said. “Calculus, statistics, physics — I liked them all. So when I got to college, I wanted to find a major that offers a little bit of everything.” That is how she ended up as a biomedical engineering major in the UAB School of Engineering. “Biomedical engineering is challenging but also encouraging,” said De Nobrega, who is a sophomore and member of the UAB Honors College Personalized Honors Program. “It makes you want to keep learning.”

Lots of people go to Florida during Spring Break, but how many go there to launch sophisticated hardware into orbit?

By Jacob Taylor
The O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center recently announced the funding of six grants in fall through the fall 2022 round of its ongoing O’Neal Invests program.

Written by Hannah Buckelew
Mary Kathryn (M.K.) Sewell-Loftin, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been named a Scholar of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Early Investigator Advancement Program (EIAP).

Three UAB students with ties to the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) were awarded prestigious two-year fellowships from the American Heart Association in 2023.

Johane Bracamonte, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, was recently awarded an American Heart Association (AHA) postdoctoral fellowship. The award includes nearly $140,000 in funding over the next two years.

Andrea Wingenroth and Andee Beierle were named the UAB Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Students of the Year, respectively, Tuesday night at the Engineering Council of Birmingham’s (ECOB) 62nd Annual Awards Banquet. The winners were chosen from among 13 nominees who were honored at the banquet.

The Construction Engineering Management (CEM) program received a total of 34 new master’s students during the January 6^th and January 7^th Graduate Orientation. This was an excellent opportunity for the incoming academics to meet the CEM faculty, staff, and their new classmates, in a convenient virtual setting.

UAB graduate Kimberly S. Greene was recently named chair of the Board of Directors, CEO, and president of Georgia Power, effective March 31, 2023.

This article originally appeared on the Heersink School of Medicine News page

Yang Zhou, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, is the latest winner of the UAB Heersink School of Medicine’s Featured Discovery. This initiative celebrates important research from Heersink faculty members.

By Hannah Buckelew
A researcher from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Department of Biomedical Engineering recently received a $1.4 million R01 grant to research systemic toxicities in breast cancer. Toxicity is the main dose-limiting factor in cancer treatments. Developing methods to control it could dramatically impact patient health.

By Christina Crowe
Jiacheng “Jason” Sun, student in the lab of Jianyi Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., T. Michael and Gillian Goodrich Endowed Chair of Engineering Leadership, Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association, effective January 1, 2023.

Seven members of the UAB chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) attended WE22, the world's largest conference for women in technology and engineering, held in Houston, Texas, in late October.

By Hannah Buckelew
Yajing Wang, Ph.D., a professor and director of basic and translational research in UAB’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, played a major role in the organization of the 33^rd annual meeting of the Great Wall International Cardiology Conference (GW-ICC), held virtually and in-person in Beijing, October 26-28.

By Christina Crowe
The American Heart Association’s annual Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago, November 5-7, saw representation from researchers across both the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Department of Pathology this year.

by Hannah Buckelew
Seventeen faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students from the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) attended the Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BMES) 2022 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas, October 12-15. The number includes Jeffrey Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., dean of the UAB School of Engineering, and is the largest group UAB has taken to BMES to date.

On October 21, a trio of UAB School of Engineering faculty members were among the 16 inductees into the inaugural class of the UAB Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Haibin Ning, Ph.D., Selvum “Brian” Pillay, Ph.D., and Dean Sicking, Ph.D., were inducted during the Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s yearly Innovation Awards ceremony.

Samain Sabrin, post-doctoral student in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, was awarded the 2022 Postdoctoral Dory Award. This award is for the postdoctoral fellow/trainee who, despite setbacks and obstacles in their project, has kept pushing and persevered until they successfully finished the work.

Sabrin is a former Ph.D. student of Rouzbeh Nazari, Ph.D. She was named the 2022 SOE Graduate Student of the Year before graduating in May 2022. She now works in the Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center.

Materials engineering undergraduate Hannah Blansett recently received the first-ever Sinto-AFS Future Leaders of Metalcasting Scholarship. She formally accepted the honor on October 11 at the Future Leaders of Metalcasting (FLM) meeting in Tennessee.

School of Engineering Professor Jamie Tyler, Ph.D., is principal investigator on a new National Science Foundation (NSF) project that seeks to combine information and methods from neuroscience and biomedical engineering to functionally map deep-brain circuits that underlie human cognition, emotion, and decision making.

Arie Nakhmani, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received a short-term $85,000 award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a multi-university project to improve software that processes data from the glymphatic and lymphatic systems of the brain.

Written by Christina Crowe
Jervaughn Hunter received the 2022 UAB Alumni Rising Star Award along with four other recipients on Friday, September 23. Hunter graduated in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science from the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the UAB School of Engineering. He is currently a graduate student and researcher at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), pursuing a Ph.D. He returned to the UAB campus to participate in the awards event, and was joined by Alan Eberhardt, Ph.D., Professor, BME.

Mohammad Haider, Ph.D., an associate professor in the UAB Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, recently received a three-year award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) worth nearly $500,000 to continue work toward developing a machine learning platform on a flexible substrate for next-generation personal protective equipment (PPE).

Mary Kathryn (MK) Sewell-Loftin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, was recently featured in a "Women in Medicine" interview where she discusses her cross-disciplinary collaboration with a colleague in the UAB Heersink School of Medicine.

Iwan Alexander, Ph.D., former dean of the School of Engineering and former chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recently appointed Dean and Professor Emeritus by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees.

The Construction Engineering Management (CEM) program received a total of 36 new master’s students during the August 19 and August 20 Graduate Orientation. This was an excellent opportunity for the incoming academics to meet the CEM faculty, staff, and their new classmates, in a safe and convenient virtual setting.

Written by Christina Crowe
Yang Zhou, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, received a Transformational Project Award from the American Heart Association to support her project, “Systematic deciphering regulatory elements driving direct cardiac reprogramming,” with three years of funding in the amount of $300,000.

Written by Hannah Buckelew
Mary Kathryn (M.K.) Sewell-Loftin, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a research grant from the UAB Division of Gynecologic Oncology for her project, titled, “Elucidating the Biomechanical Tumor Microenvironment of Ovarian Cancer.” This one-year, $50,000 award will examine how ovarian cancer cells respond to mechanical stimulation.

Yajing Wang, M.D., Ph.D., will join the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering this summer as the director of basic and translational research and professor.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at UAB has developed a new plasma-enabled process that could limit the proliferation of toxins from implants into a patient’s bloodstream. The team, led by Vinoy Thomas, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering (MME), recently published its findings in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Jianli Zhao, M.D., joined the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering as an assistant professor on June 15, 2022.

BME undergraduate student Yancey Williams II recently coauthored a study along with team of researchers at UAB and Emory University that describes using a sophisticated fluorescence microsopy to observe vesicle formation in living cells from initiation to completion.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering is proud to welcome Manuel Rosa-Garrido, Ph.D., as Assistant Professor.

Seniors in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering gathered on April 22 for the first time in person since 2019 to present their senior design projects in the Education-Engineering Complex.

Nicholas Millen (left) and Zachary Newman (right)

Engineering students Nicholas Millen and Zachary Newman have each been awarded a Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship by the U.S. Department of Defense. The awards will provide the students with full tuition for up to five years, in addition to mentorship, summer internships, a stipend, and full-time employment after graduation.

Yancey Williams II, a junior in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering and UAB Honors College, is one of 20 students chosen from more than 500 undergraduates to participate in the Amgen Scholars Program at Yale University this summer. The Amgen Scholars Program provides students from diverse backgrounds with hands-on summer research experience in science and biotechnology.

Oil rig at night, photographed from above.

After the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, investigations pointed out numerous instances of operator error, as well as cost-cutting decisions by the rig’s owners. But as the authors of a presidential commission noted in their comprehensive report, “Though it is tempting to single out one crucial misstep or point the finger at one bad actor as the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, any such explanation provides a dangerously incomplete picture of what happened — encouraging the very kind of complacency that led to the accident in the first place.”

Ashton Moore is a civil engineering major who has held internships at the Department of Transportation and at Saia Construction.

A UAB Engineering tradition will resume this week when student teams put their senior design projects on display for the public at two separate “media day” events.

Samuel Wilcox has an unusually busy schedule, even for an engineering student.

Chad Duke, PE, has performed a variety of roles during his 20-plus-year career at UAB, but none of them bigger than his current role as Director of the UAB Engineering and Innovative Technology Development (EITD) research group.

Ed Segner, Ph.D., joined UAB in 1990 and served as chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering until his retirement in 1996. In the years following, he was named professor emeritus, and he continued to be a familiar figure around the school, maintaining an office in the CCEE Department and regularly attending meetings and events.

Raheema Al Karim Damani and Samain Sabrin were named the UAB Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Students of the Year, respectively, Tuesday night at the Engineering Council of Birmingham’s (ECOB) 63rd Annual Awards Banquet.

When William “Jamie” Tyler chose to attend UAB as an undergraduate in the 1990s, he was motivated by a chance to be part of something brand new—a fledgling NCAA football program.

Now, more than 30 years after showing up as a freshman offensive lineman, Tyler is returning to UAB, and once again, he says his motivation is all about being part of something entirely new. “Neuroengineering,” Tyler said when asked about his decision to return to UAB. “As soon as I heard UAB was starting a neuroengineering Ph.D. program, it was a no-brainer.”

Associate Professor Xiaoguang (Margaret) Liu, Ph.D., was recently awarded an R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fund her research into “Targeted neuroendocrine cancer therapy using Verrucarin A.”

The Construction Engineering Management (CEM) program received a total of 38 new master’s students during the January 7 and 8, 2022 graduate orientation. This was an excellent opportunity for the incoming academics to meet the CEM faculty, staff, and their new classmates, in a safe and healthy virtual setting.

Written by Hannah Weems

Yang Zhou, Ph.D., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded the Melvin L. Marcus Early Career Investigator Award in Basic Cardiovascular Science from the American Heart Association’s Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences. Zhou received the award at the organization’s 2021 Scientific Sessions following the presentation of her proposal, “TBX20 improves contractility and mitochondrial function during direct cardiac reprogramming from human fibroblasts.”

In spring of 2021 Indiana-based company Infrastructure and Energy Alternatives (IEA) donated $20,000 to UAB for engineering scholarships. This fall, those funds were distributed to five students as part of a nationwide effort by IEA to create a pipeline of engineers that will help diversify the engineering workforce.

Written by Christina Crowe
The Fifth Annual NIH Progenitor Cell Translation Consortium (PCTC) conference, hosted virtually by the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering September 29-30, was a success. The event featured keynote speakers Eric Olson, Ph.D., Scientific Advisory Board Chairman of Cardurion and the founding chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, on “Gene Therapy for Muscular Dystrophy Syndromes;” and Robert Langer, Sc.D., professor in the MIT Department of Biological Engineering.

Fourteen faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students from the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) attended the Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BMES) 2021 Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, October 6-9.

UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering chair Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., was recently awarded a new R01 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for the proposal, “Endogenous and exogenous mechanisms that promote myocardial remuscularization in post infarction LV remodeling.” The grant totals $2.1 million for the project period that began in July 2021 and runs through June 2025.

The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) is proud to announce its 2021-2022 student scholarship winners. The following individuals stand out for their commitment to excellence, both in and out of the classroom, and outstanding work ethic and dedication.

Written by Hannah Weems

Jack Rogers, Ph.D., professor in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), recently returned from an international fellowship that allowed him to spend six weeks studying optical mapping of the heart and stomach at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute in the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Rogers received the fellowship in 2020 from the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi through the Catalyst International Leadership Fellowship.

The 2021 NIH Progenitor Cell Translation Consortium (PCTC) Annual Conference, hosted by the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, will be held virtually this year on Wednesday, September 29 and Thursday, September 30.

Matt Quarnstrom is a civil engineering student who is currently working on his third co-op assignment with Birmingham construction firm Brasfield and Gorrie. A native of Pelham, Alabama, Quarnstrom currently is working at the site of a hydroelectric dam project in North Carolina.

Written by Hannah Weems
Faculty in UAB’s Department of Biomedical Engineering are shaping young minds through UAB’s BioBridge program, offered by the Center for Community Outreach and Development (CORD).

The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering will offer three new co-enrolled elective courses for medical students in the 2021-22 academic school year. Two will be offered in the fall semester and the third will debut in the spring.

Written by Hannah Weems

Prasanna Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., an associate professor of Biomedical Engineering, co-authored a study in April that finds a link between brain health and heart disease. Previously, clinical studies have shown a strong connection between depression and the risk for heart disease. Those specific mechanisms, however, are yet to be understood. The recent lab study found cardiac glycosaminoglycans and structural alterations during chronic stress-induced depression-like behavior in mice.

Andrea Cox 1 Andrea Cox, a second-year student in the Master of Engineering Program, recently received the 2021 American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP) Alabama Chapter Scholarship. Cox is a student in the Advanced Safety Engineering and Management (ASEM) track.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Master of Engineering in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management has been reviewed by the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) and approved as a Graduate Safety Practitioner® (GSP®) Qualified Academic Program (QAP), providing the program’s graduates the opportunity to apply with BCSP for the GSP designation after graduation.

Civil Engineers understand the importance of a building a strong foundation, and for the past 25 years, Fouad Fouad, Ph.D., has focused on just that.

UAB School of Engineering Dean Jeff Holmes wasn't sure what kind of response he would get when he invited current engineering students to join a book club during the spring semester of 2021.

Roy Koomullil, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, recently was named as a recipient of a 2021 Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) Summer Faculty Fellowship.

By Christina Crowe
Andrew Pollard, Ph.D., a longtime professor in the UAB Biomedical Engineering, has announced his retirement effective June 1, 2021, after 25 years with the department.

Written by Hannah Weems

Two student teams from the Department of Biomedical Engineering placed in the top three teams overall at the 2021 UAB Expo, winning second and third place for the submission of their senior design projects.

By Hannah Weems

UAB Ph.D. student Rifqi Aufan and postdoctoral fellow Ying Jiang, M.D., were each awarded a fellowship recently from the American Heart Association (AHA).

By Christina Crowe
Thirty years ago, Alan Eberhardt, Ph.D., joined UAB faculty as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering before moving over to the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering in 1999. Today he serves as Professor and Associate Chair of Education for the department and celebrates being named a recipient of the 2021 Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentorship.

IEA gift to provide scholarships, internship opportunities for UAB engineering students

By Hannah Weems
Sachin Budhathoki, a third-year graduate student in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, was awarded with a 2021 Blazer Way Award in the graduate student category on February 5 through a virtual announcement by Student Involvement.

By Hannah Weems

The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME ) is known for routinely tackling daunting health problems head-on and has been doing so for more than forty years. In the community of people living with mobility impairments, affordability is one of the largest issues facing accessibility to therapeutic devices. It is no surprise, then, that UAB graduate students decided to directly combat this problem with the creation and development of a device called the “Motogaitor.”

Why don’t more women pursue careers in engineering? What can we do to change the perception of engineering as a male profession? These were among the questions addressed in an online panel discussion hosted by the UAB chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering is introducing a new class in "Clinical Innovation" that will be offered to undergraduates beginning in Fall 2021.

Krista Jackson and Diana Pizarro were named the UAB Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Students of the Year, respectively, Tuesday night at the Engineering Council of Birmingham’s (ECOB) 62nd Annual Awards Banquet.

The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is hosting an Art and App Design Challenge, sponsored by a grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning.

While this year has seen unprecedented challenges, it has also provided us with a chance to shine.

When officials at the UAB School of Engineering launched a new Peer Tutoring Lab in late 2019, they had no idea how critical such services would soon become.

virtual tutor The service was established prior to the spring 2020 semester as an in-person tutoring facility in the Education-Engineering Complex. Funded by a grant from Alabama Power, the lab employed several highly qualified students to tutor their classmates in a variety of engineering-related subjects with the goal of increasing retention of freshman and sophomore students.

When the university abruptly switched to remote learning mid-semester because of the COVID 19 pandemic, professors and students alike had to adjust to the changed format.

Luckily lab director Gregory Myers says that his team of engineering tutors proved surprisingly adept at remote instruction. “I would say that in some ways, it has been an improvement over the face-to-face tutoring we were doing in the spring,” he explained. “Our number of tutoring sessions went up, and our tutors not only fulfilled their tutoring obligations, they excelled.”

Having proved its worth during that time of transition, the tutoring lab became a mainstay for undergraduates during the fall semester, and it is considered a key piece of the dean’s retention strategy. “Engineering is about solving problems, and talking through problems and solutions with your peers, an instructor, or a tutor is an essential part of the learning process,” said engineering Dean Jeff Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., who arrived at UAB on July 1. “I’ve seen firsthand how one-on-one tutoring helps our students, and it is a great example of how industry partners like Alabama Power are helping us ensure that all our students have the support they need to succeed, particularly during COVID when studying with classmates can be more difficult.”

Highly Qualified Tutors

The dean’s confidence in the tutoring lab is more than just lip-service, and much more than just a statement of ideals. Shortly after he arrived at UAB, Holmes asked Dr. Myers if he could volunteer as a tutor alongside the students; his shift is on Monday afternoons.

Freshman engineering student Lauryn Johnson uses the Engineering Peer Tutoring Lab and other academic support services across campus. When her first test came back with a failing grade, she says she knew she needed to seek out help.

“I dropped in on a Monday, and Dr. Holmes helped me understand some of the concepts I was struggling with,” said Johnson. “I met with him a couple of times after that, and on my next test, I got a 98. So, I was able to improve my grade significantly, but I had no idea he was the dean until my advisor told me.”

Although every tutoring session doesn’t mean a private session with an M.D./Ph.D., Myers says he is proud of the work the student tutors do to help their classmates. “We certainly try to identify highly capable students to work as tutors, but it might not always be the top students who make the best tutors,” Myers said. “Just as important to me is that the tutor be able to empathize and be patient with the person seeking help. In some situations, the tutors may still be figuring things out themselves, but if that tutor is passionate about the subject matter and is willing to give something back, that’s an ideal situation. And we still have faculty and TAs who can support them when they need it.”

That helpful spirit—and the impact it is having on her academic performance—is what Johnson says keeps her coming back. “I have worked with a variety of tutors, and I’ve never had anyone who got impatient or acted like I should already know something,” she said. “There have been times when I had more than one tutor online trying to help me work through a problem.”

And even though hybrid learning has been effective in many respects, she says the tutoring services at UAB are a key piece to help her bridge the gap created by Zoom lectures. “I think it’s more important than ever to have services like this because of the environment we’re in,” she said. “It’s really hard to not be able to relate to a professor face-to-face in class, to not be able to ask questions in a natural way. If I wasn’t able to drop in to the engineering tutoring lab, I don’t know where I would be right now.”

According to Myers, some of the secrets to the Tutoring Lab’s success lie in the format. The convenience of dropping in remotely, combined with the tutors’ technological skills with the whiteboard and other Zoom features, proved to be unexpected advantages last spring that have continued this fall. “It has worked so well that even when things return to normal, I suspect we’ll still want to retain some aspects of online tutoring,” Myers said.

Praise Daramola is a senior electrical and computer engineering student from Lagos, Nigeria. Despite growing up on the other side of the Atlantic, Praise is the latest of several members of his family to study at UAB.

The 2020 Progenitor Cell Translation Consortium (PCTC) Cardiovascular Bioengineering (CVBE) Symposium co-hosted by the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, will feature a keynote address by Victor Dzau, M.D., president of the National Academy of Medicine. Dzau, a professor of Medicine at Duke University will speak on “The Future of Heart Failure Therapy/Paracrine Mechanism of Stem Cell Therapy,” on December 5, 2020 at 9:10 a.m.

Haas Blacksher is a senior materials engineering student from Mobile, Alabama. She hopes to use her materials engineering training to develop ways to reduce the amount of plastic waste through mass recycling technology.

Due to the worldwide outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-19), the 2020 Progenitor Cell Translational Consortium (PCTC) Cardiovascular Bioengineering (CVBE) Symposium will be held in a virtual format on December 5, 2020.

Engineers are often asked to find solutions for difficult problems. Other times, the solution is only a first step.

Zachary Newman is a biomedical engineering major and an intern at the Materials Processing and Applications Development (MPAD) research facility. A native of Norcross, Georgia, he currently resides in a UAB residence hall, where he serves as an RA..

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Engineering recently launched a new research initiative that could help shape the future of autonomous vehicles. Funding for the project includes $35 million over four years from the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Ground Vehicle Systems Center (CCDC GVSC).

Atharva Vyawahare is a biomedical engineering major and a student in the UAB Sci-Tech Honors Program. He has lived in India, Lithuania, and the U.S. and is fluent in three languages. He currently works as an intern in the Southern Company Environmental Affairs Division.

McKinney2020 UAB graduate student Brandy McKinney was recently selected as the recipient of the National Alumni Society’s 2020 Distinguished Alumni Scholarship. McKinney is a UAB doctoral student in the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program with an emphasis in transportation. She is studying under the mentorship of Virginia Sisiopiku, Ph.D.

Tequila Smith, a two-time UAB graduate and a member of the School of Engineering’s Advisory Board, was recently promoted to vice president of Charitable Giving at Alabama Power. In her new position, Smith will lead the company’s philanthropic, volunteerism and community support initiatives.

Somnath Mandal, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was recently awarded a $10,000 scholarship from ASTM International.

The Construction Engineering Management (CEM) program greeted a total of 62 new students during the August 21st and August 22nd Boot Camp. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, CEM held a virtual-online graduate student orientation.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham has developed a new method of surface engineering polymer soft-materials that has potential to accelerate bio-integration, while potentially contributing to other scientific uses, such as decontaminating personnel protective equipment (PPE).

Mariam Massoud is a civil engineering major and a student in the UAB Honors College. She was awarded a Fulbright US-UK Summer Institute Scholarship in 2018, and earlier this year she represented the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering as the Student of the Year nominee at the Engineering Council of Birmingham (ECOB) Annual Banquet.

Freshmen and transfer students in the School of Engineering are invited to participate in the Engineering Early Engagement Experience (E4), beginning Monday August 17, 2020.

Photo from Sunday’s historic NASA landing includes a familiar piece of UAB cargo

When the SpaceX Crew Dragon splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, all eyes were on astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, the capsule’s human occupants. But while the world was celebrating their safe return, engineers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham were cheered by another site—a safely returned Polar freezer, designed and built by the UAB Engineering and Innovative Technology Development (EITD) team.

Dale Callahan, Ph.D., PE has three Electrical Engineering degrees as well as an MBA. He has been a member of the UAB faculty since 2000 and he serves as the director of the Information Engineering Management track in the Master of Engineering Program.

When the I-20/59 corridor through Birmingham was demolished and rebuilt over a period of 12 months in 2019, travel became a nightmare for thousands of truckers, daily commuters and other travelers. But where most people saw chaos and frustration, a pair of UAB researchers found inspiration.

Edwin Cueva, a graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Engineering, recently became the first recipient of the Dr. Martha Bidez Endowed Scholarship in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management (ASEM).

Jeff Holmes, M.D., Ph.D., officially became the School of Engineering's seventh dean on July 1. Since it could be a while before everyone has a chance to get to know him in person, we sent a few questions his way to get an idea of the person beyond the professional resume.

EITD Director Reflects on How UAB Helped Shape a Career

moradi EITD Director Lee Moradi is pictured in this 2018 file photo with a piece of cold-stowage hardware built for the International Space Station.As a child, Lee Moradi thought of United States as the "Light of the Hill." Today, more than 40 years since he first emigrated from Iran, Moradi has found no place that embodies that American ideal more than at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

X. Margaret Liu, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Lufang Zhou, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Medicine, recently developed a novel mitochondrial luminoptogenetics technology that can be adapted to treat multiple cancers and other diseases.

A new paper written by an interdisciplinary team reveals the alarming impact mechanical strain can have on breast cancer cells by creating conditions that could lead to dangerous acceleration of the disease

Jack Rogers, Ph.D., Professor of Biomedical Engineering, was recently awarded a grant from the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi through the Catalyst International Leadership Fellowship.

For students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Engineering, the Capstone Senior Design course is a rite of passage. The two-semester course requires students to work in teams, calling on all of their classroom knowledge to design a viable product and build a working prototype.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has developed a new method designed to improve the surface characteristics of Teflon, or polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE).

Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering student Jason Zhang has been awarded the UAB Honors College Presidential Summer Fellowship 2020.

Robert Blakely, development director for the UAB School of Engineering, was recently awarded the Dr. Kenneth E. Burke Award for Outstanding Achievement in Advancement.

Dianne Gilmer is a rare figure in her field. As the assistant director of the UAB Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) concentration in the Master of Engineering Program, she is a woman working in two fields—construction and engineering—where women are historically underrepresented.

Two engineering undergraduates are the first students ever to receive a new annual scholarship awarded by the Birmingham Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), a joint department in the School of Medicine and School of Engineering, ranked fifth in the nation in the Blue Ridge Institute database of National Institutes of Health funding in 2019, the fourth straight year the department has ranked in the Blue Ridge top five.

The inaugural recipients of the Ray L. Watts Endowed Engineering Scholarship have been awarded to three outstanding undergraduate students in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, in the amount of $1,000 each.

The UAB Society of Women Engineers hosted two day-long events in February to engage fourth, fifth, and sixth graders with an interest in science, technology, engineering and math in a fun day of learning.

New UAB research is combining mathematical modeling and advanced imaging to find the right mix of therapy for patients with a common subtype of breast cancer.

Dr. Xiaoguang (Margaret) Liu, an Associate Professor in Department of Biomedical Engineering, recently received notice of award for four grants on which she is a collaborator, to conduct cancer research.

Wesley LaBarge, a BME Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Jianyi “Jay” Zhang’s lab, will receieve the 2020 UAB Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies at the Doctoral Level.

Xixi Zhang is graduate research assistant and American Heart Association (AHA) pre-doctoral fellow in Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Micah Armstrong and Hunter Zhang were named the UAB Outstanding Undergraduate and Graduate Students of the Year, respectively, Thursday night at the Engineering Council of Birmingham’s (ECOB) 61st Annual Awards Banquet, while UAB Ph.D. student Brandy McKinney received the ECOB Distinguished Service Award.

Questions and answers with Program Director Timothy Wick.

The UAB chapter of the Society of Women Engineers will host its annual Kids in Engineering event during two days in February.

Art or App Design Challenge Offered for 2020

After a successful challenge last fall, the UAB Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) is hosting an Art or App Design Challenge, sponsored by a grant from the UAB Quality Enhancement Project (QEP) of the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Two students in front of their poster at the Student Research Symposium

Nearly 100 students met at UAB earlier this month for the third annual Alabama Materials Science Student Research Symposium. The event included participants from all three schools in the University of Alabama System.

On January 10 and 11, 2020, Construction Engineering Management (CEM) held an on-campus boot camp that serves as an orientation for new graduate students.

On December 4, the Department of Biomedical Engineering welcomed students, faculty, staff, leadership, and friends of the department to take part in an event at the Hill Student Center recognizing the first 40 years of BME as an official department at UAB.

Biomedical Engineering at the 2019 BMES conference

Update:

Due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, all engineering summer camps have been cancelled for 2020. Any registrations submitted earlier in the year will be discarded. Please check this space in early 2021 for information about future summer camps.

Imogene Baswell Society Endows Scholarship to Support Female Engineering Students

Imogene Baswell was truly a 20th century pioneer.

School of Engineering's Founding Dean Leaves Behind a Legacy of Service

On January 17, 2019, the UAB School of Engineering lost a beloved and historic figure when Joseph Appleton, Ph.D., the school’s first dean, passed away at age 91.

Construction Engineering Management (CEM) welcomed 40 new graduate students this spring. Attendees came from as far as California, Connecticut, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Wyoming for the two day event. CEM admits during the spring and fall terms and currently has 148 registered graduate students.

ISS Payloads The SpaceX CRS-16 launched its resupply mission to the International Space Station on Dec. 4 and carried four Polars and the Rapid Freezer developed by UAB engineers from the Engineering and Innovative Technology Development (EITD) research group. This flight, combined with additional assets currently on-orbit, provided a record for UAB developed payloads on-orbit.

Bond-Haggard Endowed Scholarship Opens a World of Potential

After a successful career in both industry and academia, Warren Haggard, Ph.D., has seen a lot of changes in biomedical engineering. Now retired, he says the thing that excites him most about the future of the field is the same thing that excited him as a student—the possibilities.