UAB honored internationally for outstanding achievement in technology innovation

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has been recognized among an “elite” group of organizations that achieved excellence in technology innovation last year.

On Monday, International Data Group’s CIO Magazine released its 34th annual CIO 100 list, which “recognizes 100 organizations for their achievements in technology innovation.”

UAB was included in this exclusive list of CIO 100 award winners for its innovative technology solutions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the GuideSafe exposure notification app and hybrid classroom technology.

Some of the honorees will receive in-depth profiles by CIO in the coming months, and all winners will be celebrated at the annual CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony to be held virtually in August.

“This year’s CIO 100 class demonstrates an amazing array of initiatives,” stated Anne McCrory, group vice president for Customer Experience and Operations at IDG Communications, Inc. “Many helped their organizations thrive during the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic, whether by directly addressing new realities in health care or business or by expediting digital adoption to adapt. We are honored to showcase these achievements and the spirit behind them at this year’s virtual CIO 100 Symposium & Awards in August.”

Per a university release, UAB’s submission for the awards showcased how the institution led technology initiatives to ensure students, faculty, staff and fellow citizens were protected and enabled to thrive during the pandemic.

“These innovations brought UAB employees together to collaborate across disciplines to save lives, transform operations and help other organizations,” remarked Curtis A. Carver, Jr., Ph.D., UAB’s chief information officer and vice president for Information Technology. “We embraced that the pandemic presented unprecedented challenges. Our challenge was the breadth of different solutions needed to address these unprecedented challenges — not only for our campus but for our community and our state.”

In addition to the GuideSafe exposure notification app — one of the first in the United States to use anonymous Google/Apple technology to notify users of possible exposure to COVID-19 — UAB supported 59 other institutions with the informatics portion of a statewide COVID testing program for incoming college students and supported the development of the daily Healthcheck symptom tracker.

The university, which is part of the University of Alabama System, also worked to narrow the digital divide for students in Birmingham and across the state with a free Wi-Fi app to help individuals find Wi-Fi hotspots across Alabama and offered free drive-in Wi-Fi on campus. Loaner laptops were offered to UAB students, as a large-scale virtual desktop infrastructure was deployed to open new models of hybrid and online education and support research.

To transform education internally, UAB also reengineered lecture-capture and broadcast technologies for more than 225 classrooms and deployed 1,200 new Wi-Fi access points and building occupancy sensors to create safe in-person study spaces on campus.

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn