Members of the first cohort of the Blazer App Accelerator (BAA), a new program designed to jumpstart software innovation across the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) campus, have moved into the program’s second stage.
The BAA is a partnership between UAB’s Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (HIIE) and Birmingham-based Harmony Venture Labs (HVL). BAA participants go through HVL’s AppThink program, which includes an entrepreneurship curriculum that will help UAB software and app creators validate their ideas and create prototypes ready for the next step of development.
The program began with a “Foundations” course, which helped idea-stage founders progress through a series of validation milestones. The second course, “Your First Customer,” will help potential founders understand audience building, creating MVPs, going to market and scaling the product and company.
Upon completing “Foundations,” several participants chose to move on to “Your First Customer.” Those included seven participants from various UAB departments and schools, including the Heersink School of Medicine, the Graduate School, the Collat School of Business, the School of Education, and ArtPlay Community Education.
"Your First Customer" participants include:
- Dylan Ferniany, “Vocabby’s World”
- Lillian Hewitt, “The Mentor App”
- Ryan Melvin, “AI-Assisted Tools for Integrating Literature into Research and Education”
- Cori Perdue, “The DISC Experience: VR Training for Effective Communication”
- Rahul Sharma, “Multi-Modal AI Agent Based Platform for Data-Centric Biomedical and Clinical Discoveries”
- Kristine Lokken, “Precision Brain Health (PBH) Program Online Course”
- Lori Edwards, "TeaCha"
The BAA was created to encourage and support UAB software innovators, providing them with opportunities for success.
The HIIE team expects those who complete the BAA program to apply for the Blazer Bridge Fund, which is administrated by the HIIE and is intended to identify and assist in the development of promising ideas, discoveries, innovations and/or technologies from UAB faculty and staff that have commercial potential.
To find out more about the BAA program, visit the Blazer App Accelerator webpage. More information about the Blazer Bridge Fund program is available here.
-- April 16, 2025