Centers
The Department is currently a leader in two research centers.
The UAB Sustainable Smart Cities Research Center (SSCRC)
More than half of the world’s population resides within urban environments. The challenges presented by co-locating large populations, industry, and aging infrastructure can be numerous and significant. Cities are the engines of growth, but also generate environmental pollution and consume scarce natural resources.
The department founded the SSCRC to foster cross-disciplinary research, training, and outreach that integrates health, socio-economic impacts, and infrastructure design for the purpose of developing innovative solutions within emerging sustainable smart cities and communities. Specifically, the center brings together multidisciplinary faculty with diverse expertise — green construction materials; sustainable building and design concepts; social impacts of technology; modeling and simulation; medical sociology, health informatics, and social psychology; public health, emergency preparedness and response, and community resiliency; and government and public policy — to develop tools and methods for sustainable infrastructure design.
For more information on the center and its programs, please visit the SSCRC website.
The Southeastern Transportation Research, Innovation, and Education Center (STRIDE)
The University of Alabama at Birmingham is a member of STRIDE, a Regional University Transportation Center led by the University of Florida (UF). The STRIDE Center is housed within UF's Transportation Research Center, with local offices at the partner university campuses, namely:
- University of Alabama at Birmingham,
- Georgia Tech,
- Mississippi State,
- University of North Carolina,
- North Carolina State University,
- Florida International University, and
- Auburn University.
Dr. Virginia P. Sisiopiku is the Associate Director of STRIDE on the UAB campus.
STRIDE University partners bring a wealth of expertise related to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s research priorities and devote their energies to three major focal areas: transportation safety, livable communities, and economic competitiveness. Interdisciplinary activities address regional and national challenges including those related to growing urban centers, an aging population, increasing freight demands, and natural disasters. For more information on research projects, please visit the STRIDE Center website or contact Virginia Sisiopiku at
