UAB Briefs: campus food bank, green ribbons and capturing the flag
Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs, in which we keep track of interesting people and events on campus.
Know people, places and programs on the UAB campus that deserve a mention?
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Fighting food insecurity
Blazer Kitchen, an on-campus food bank, will have its grand opening on Monday, March 6, according to a UAB news release. The open house is from 8-10 a.m., and the first food distribution will be from 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
The kitchen will provide fresh and nonperishable foods to UAB employees and students faced with food insecurity.
Donations are encouraged, and drives for food and household items will be held throughout the year by student groups and on student move-out days.
Sponsored by the UAB Benevolent Fund, the kitchen is located in UAB Medical Towers, Ste. 100.
Hours of operation for the kitchen are Mondays 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and Thursdays 3-6 p.m.
All UAB employees and students must present a UAB ONE Card or VIVA Health Employee Badge.
There will be opportunities for students and employees to volunteer with the kitchen operations.
Individuals and employee groups who would like to unpack and sort food can email benevolentfund@uab.edu, and classes or student groups can contact Service Learning
Capture the Flag
Twenty Alabama high school students took part in the Blazer42 Capture the Flag Scholarship Competition, a test of their digital investigation skills, at UAB’s Edge of Chaos events venue on Saturday, Feb. 25, according to a UAB news release.
Five teams of four students participated in hacking simulations created by UAB’s Capture the Flag team. The goal is to uncover “flags” hidden in various cybersecurity challenges.
The competition tested their knowledge of cybersecurity in such areas as social media, network analysis, file analysis, web security and data encoding and encryption.
The purpose of the event – hosted by the UAB Department of Justice Sciences and Palo Alto Networks – is to get students interested in cybersecurity careers.
“There are currently 290,000 vacant cybersecurity jobs in the United States with an average starting salary of about $80,000,” said Gary Warner, director of the UAB Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research. “That deficit is expected to increase to 1.5 million globally by the year 2019.”
Students competed for $20,000 in scholarship funds to study computer science or digital forensics as UAB.
The winners of this year’s Blazer42 Capture the Flag Scholarship Competition are as follows:
- Huntsville High School seniors Nick Nurre, Bryce Willhelm, Connor Smith and Dylan Maurel of the team RSAHHS finished first, with each team member winning $2,500 in scholarship funds.
- Tuscaloosa Academy juniors Jesse Wells, Jonas Schanz, Sam Daly and Sam Zito of the team Warriors of the Net finished second, with each team member winning a $1,500 scholarship.
- Michael Charette, Robert Thompson, Timothy Jesionowski and Nicholas Scala of team OR 1=1 finished third. Each team member was awarded $1,000 in scholarship funds to study at UAB.
Next year’s Blazer42 Capture the Flag Scholarship Competition will be held Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018.
Winning a Green Ribbon
UAB has been selected as an Alabama Green Ribbon School for 2017 by the Alabama State Department of Education, according to a UAB news release.
The award honors the school’s efforts to reduce environmental impact and costs, improve health and wellness and provide environmental education to students and Birmingham residents.
UAB was honored along with Sycamore School and Childersburg Elementary School, both in Talladega County.
“Our campus has become a living lab for developing novel pathways to sustainability,” said UAB President Ray L. Watts.
Schools selected at the state level will represent Alabama as nominees for the U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools Awards, a federal recognition program that began in 2011.
National honorees will be announced following Earth Day on Monday, April 24.
Making the top 5
The UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering took a big step forward in 2016, ranking in the top five BME departments nationally in the amount of funding it receives from the National Institutes of Health, according to a UAB news release.
With $4.3 million in funding for fiscal year 2016, the department ranks fourth behind the BME departments of Stanford, Johns Hopkins University, and Oregon Health and Science University. The rankings are published by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, which lists all NIH funding for U.S. medical schools.