News

The Alabama Reading Initiative has made a dramatic difference improving the reading proficiency among public school students. So much so that it's often held up as a model for other states. The Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative, also managed under the State Department of Education, strives for similar success. American schoolchildren are woefully behind students in other industrialized nations in their science and math abilities. 

Two lead stories last week in The Times show how Huntsville is working with educators to share its vast knowledge of technology, math and the sciences. HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are playing a key role in educating students and teachers in those disciplines.

To read the rest of the editorial in The Huntsville Times, please click here. 

Dr. Debra Moriarity knew about breast cancer before it knew about her.
 
As a member of the biology faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Moriarity studied breast cancer and had long decided that, with the knowledge she had gained, she wouldn't hesitate to undergo a double mastectomy should the cancer ever find her.
 
And when it did in 2005, Moriarity said "it was odd" being a victim of the disease she had studied.
 

A new partnership between the Genetics and Genomic Sciences (GGS) Graduate Program and research juggernaut HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville will substantially increase UAB’s expertise and exposure in the area of genomics and give students the opportunity to engage in large-scale genomic analyses.
 

Han lab turns out first patent for institute
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology has been awarded a patent for a new, rapid response method to detect pathogens from clinical samples. The method— amplicon rescue multiplex polymerase chain reaction for amplification of multiple targets— is highly sensitive and as the name implies, can differentiate between pathogens that symptomatically display very similarly among populations. It is the first patent awarded for institute-generated intellectual property.
 

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the University of Michigan grant monies totaling $7.8 million to identify genes and pathways that contribute to the risk for bipolar disorder.