UAB Briefs: Innovation grants, New York lights and blood work
Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs.
In this weekly online feature, 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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Planting economic seeds
UAB and Innovation Depot have been awarded grants totaling more than $650,000 by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The university was awarded about $498,000 and Innovation Depot about $171,000, according to a recent UAB news release.
The money is to be used to create or expand proof-of-concept and commercialization programs and provide some early-stage seed capital.
The grants were awarded through the Economic Development Administration’s Regional Innovation Strategies program.
The $498,216 EDA investment in UAB will fund the creation of a proof-of-concept incubator that will provide the facilities, training opportunities, guidance and funding access necessary for students, faculty and staff to students, faculty and staff to launch and nurture startup companies launch startups.
UAB expects to help start about 35 new companies over seven years,
With its $170,925 EDA award, Innovation Depot will enhance and expand its Velocity Accelerator Program and fund to enable entrepreneurs in the financial services, health care and technology sectors.
Innovation Depot expects to help support the creation of about 50 companies in five years.
“The i6 Challenge Award will help UAB students, faculty and staff accelerate the transition of discoveries to the marketplace and ultimately facilitate job creation in the region,” said Kathy Nugent, associate vice president and executive director of the Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at UAB.
New York lights
Hadiyah-Nicole Green, a pioneering cancer researcher who graduated from UAB, was honored recently as part of a spectacular visual display in New York’s bustling Grand Central Station, according to a UAB news release.
Green, now an assistant professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, is known for taking new approaches to cancer cures.
And in late September, General Electric used 32 projectors to turn the spectacular Grand Central ceiling into a visual tribute to Green and other unsung female scientists.
By displaying the projections in a high-traffic area like the station, GE hoped to highlight innovative women in scientific fields who often do not receive recognition, the release states.
Blood work
“One in Our Blood,” a series of exhibitions and programs by artist Jordan Eagles, who has been working with blood for 20 years, is on view at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at UAB.
“One in Our Blood: Blood Equality” is to be in display there through Dec. 9.
The exhibition runs concurrent with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute presentation of Eagles’ “Blood Mirror.”
“One in Our Blood” exhibitions and programs address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s recent update to its lifetime ban on gay and bisexual male blood donors, which now requires 12 months of celibacy prior to donation.
Between 2015-2016, Eagles enlisted gay, bisexual and transgender men to donate their blood in protest of the FDA’s ban and to create the sculpture, “Blood Mirror,” a 7-foot-tall monolith in which viewers can see themselves reflected in the fully encased and preserved blood of 59 donors.
Eagles’ works are in numerous collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art and Princeton University Art Museum.
Blood donations for “Blood Mirror” were supervised by Dr. Howard Grossman.
The donors were selected, in part, because their blood is medically safe for donation, yet cannot be donated under current FDA policy.