The University
The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) represents an ideal environment for training in the broad field of immunology due to its outstanding researchers who are supported by an extremely collaborative infrastructure encouraging interdisciplinary interactions. Much of this infrastructure is supported by our strong history of institutionally supported centers. UAB is a young institution that has developed an entrepreneurial spirit of expansion in its research mission. UAB is committed to providing state-of-the-art research facilities that match the outstanding quality of its scientists. Since 1998, major construction and improvements to UAB facilities have taken place. Completed projects include the 155,000 square foot Kaul Human Genetics Building, the 95,000 square foot Biomedical Research Building II, and the 12-story 323,000 square foot Richard C. and Annette N. Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building (323,000sq.ft.)– all of which are located within a block of each other.
Research Centers
UAB offers an unusually interactive research environment. Supporting the permeability of UAB’s research environment is UAB’s long history of supporting and developing centers. There are currently 106 Centers that have been formally approved by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees. Of these, 21 have been designated University-wide Interdisciplinary Research Centers (UWIRCs), reflecting their trans-institutional, multi-disciplinary nature. Seventeen are full UWIRCs and four are currently Pilot Centers. These designations are the result of a competitive internal review process which results in a major institutional investment in the infrastructure of the Centers. Click here to see a list of all UWIRCs the Program in Immunology Faculty are associated with.
The UAB Health System
The UAB Health System was established to oversee UAB’s entire inpatient and outpatient enterprise. It includes 1,287 authorized beds and over 950,000 outpatient visits, with approximately half seen in The Kirklin Clinic. UAB Hospital is the flagship of the UAB Health System. Licensed for more than 900 beds, it serves approximately 45,000 patients each year. The largest comprehensive medical facility in Alabama, it excels in emergency care transport, heart and kidney diseases, cancer, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, arthritis, organ transplantation, and cardiac surgery.
Program in Immunology
Research Laboratories and Offices
The faculty active in the Program in Immunology occupies modern and high quality research laboratory, office, conference room, and service area space. Currently, most of this space is located in a complex of interconnecting buildings at the east end of the campus, e.g., the Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Building, the Bevill Biomedical Research Building. In addition to laboratory and office space, ample classroom space is available in this complex of buildings and several conference rooms are available for journal clubs, workshops, and courses with a small class size.
Specialized Research Facilities
- Genomics Core Laboratories
- Animal Resources Program
- Comprehensive Flow Cytometry Core
- Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
- Cell Senescence Culture Facility
- Cell Therapy Laboratory
- Center for AIDS Research Flow Cytometry Core
- Center for AIDS Research Virology Core
- Center for AIDS Research HIV Transplant Procurement Facility
- Central Alabama High Field NMR Facility
- Comparative Pathology Laboratory
- Small Animal Imaging Facility
- Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Shared Facility
- Sanger Sequencing
- Small Animal Phenotyping Core
- UAB Microbiome Resource
- X-Ray Crystallography Shared Facility
UAB Information Technology
A wide range of sophisticated computers is available to the faculty and trainees. Every trainee has access to Macintosh or Wintel personal computers. There are also large computer facilities available to the trainees that offer programming services as well as assistance in the selection of hardware and the design of software for personal computers. The University Computer Center is primarily an administrative computing facility, but it is also used by researchers, particularly those drawing on the statistical and modeling expertise of the Department of Biomathematics and Biostatistics. The Biostatistics and Biomathematics group at the University is conversant with the use of computers and assists investigators in utilizing the appropriate facilities.
The Lister Hill Medical Library
The Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, established in 1945, is the largest biomedical library in Alabama and one of the leading such libraries in the South. It serves as a Resource Library in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine for the Southeast/Atlantic region. The Library’s collections span seven centuries of knowledge from the ten thousand old and rare books, including over 30 printed before 1501, to electronic textbooks and full-text journals. It holds books, bound journals, microforms, and other media that total approximately 323,000 volumes, access to 34,856 unique electronic journal subscriptions, and an increasing number of electronic resources. Its present structure, built in 1971, underwent a major expansion and renovation project in the spring of 1997. Approximately 52 full time staff members, including 18 faculty librarians, staff the Library. Available are eight group study rooms which also contain a computer to assist with group projects.
The Mervyn H. Sterne Library
The Mervyn H. Sterne Library, which is the general library for the University, contains more than 890,000 books and more than 70,000 bound periodicals and subscribes to more than 2,800 periodicals pertaining to chemistry, physics, mathematics, and the biological sciences as well as to topics in the social sciences and humanities. There are also more than 890,000 microfiche and microfilm copies of books, reports, etc. Both libraries provide an inter-library loan service.