Dr. Byron Lai is hard to pin down, both literally and metaphorically.

With a career spanning across four decades, Dr. Mohan Thirumalai has paved the way for groundbreaking research at the cross-section of medicine and technology. Thirumalai joined the UAB/Lakeshore Research Collaborative before its surname ever included UAB or Lakeshore.

Several years ago, a good colleague of mine, Jim Charlton, wrote a classic book titled Nothing About Us Without Us. At the time of publication, the disability rights movement was riding the crest of civil rights legislation with its own passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, better known as the ADA.

When a young Christine Ferguson stepped onto the campus of the University of Alabama as a wide-eyed freshman pre-med student, she had no idea that a personal interest in health would spark a flame that has now grown into a full-blown blaze of research.

My name is Stephen Lanzi, and I am the new communications specialist at CEDHARS and the UAB/Lakeshore Research Collaborative. I am extremely excited for this opportunity to promote and advance the mission of CEDHARS and the Research Collaborative, and I hope you join me in this newsletter as we look at all the groundbreaking research CEDHARS and the Collaborative have to share.

I am pleased to share with you the inaugural CEDHARS newsletter. Realizing how busy we all are, the purpose of one more email needs a strong justification; we have several.