Lemak, Hernandez with Distinguished Service Professor proclamationS. Robert Hernandez, DrPH, has been appointed Distinguished Service Professor in the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions. The position of Distinguished Service Professor is appointed by the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees and recognizes a professor’s academic service to UAB and their international accomplishments.

Story by Shannon Thomason, UAB News

An occupational therapy student needed to get a patient, diagnosed with dementia, out of the bed and across the room for evaluation, but this was different from most patient-caregiver interactions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

This patient was an advanced acting student portraying someone with dementia to test an occupational therapy student’s competence.

Gaurav Agrawal and Angelin Ponraj

Original story from Tyler Greer, UAB News

Christlin Ponraj, graduate student in biotechnology, and Angelin Ponraj, sophomore in biomedical sciences, both from Atlanta, along with Gaurav Agrawal, junior in biomedical engineering from Mobile, are seeking a simple, private way to alert Alabama residents about their risk for diabetes.

From left: Garrett Stephens, Samuel Sullivan IV and Brandon CohillBrandon Cohill, a senior in the UAB Nuclear Medicine Technology program, is one of three students bestowed a new honor — the Green Blazer.

Brandon Cohill, Garrett Stephens and Samuel Sullivan IV were awarded the green blazers for 2016 at the Blazer Male Excellence Network’s Undugu Male Gathering, held Feb. 18 in the new Hill Student Center. Undugu, a Swahili word, translates to “brotherhood.”

Cohill, 23, of Birmingham, will graduate in April with a degree in nuclear medicine technology. Cohill has been an orientation leader, deputy chief of staff of Communications for the Undergraduate Student Government Association, USGA senator for the School of Health Professions, and vice president and president of the Iota Nu Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. The recognition he received from BMEN inspired him to push through his final semester of his undergraduate career, he says.

Daniella Chusyd, a student in the UAB PhD Nutrition Sciences program and the Nutrition Obesity Research Center (NORC), and Dr. Janine Brown, a reproductive physiologist at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, have been awarded a grant through the Smithsonian’s Scholarly Studies Awards for Science program titled “Novel assessments of body composition and relation to metabolic status and fat stores in Asian elephants.”