The University of Alabama at Birmingham has selected seven projects for the 2026 Blazer Bridge Fund, supporting technologies with potential commercial applications across medicine, engineering, and the sciences.
The fund was launched in spring 2023 by UAB’s Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to help faculty and staff move promising discoveries toward commercialization.
Since its creation, the program has invested $1.2 million across 28 projects.
The 2026 winners include a new saponin adjuvant for salmonella poultry vaccines developed by Pengfei Wang; V-SAFE, an in-line speaking valve for ventilated patients developed by Ryne Simpson and Andres Morales; and a method developed by Sunnie Thompson to prevent BK polyomavirus reactivation following kidney transplantation.
Other recipients include Steven Lloyd’s PVSync technology for generating heart pressure-volume loops for diagnosis and research; Vivek Shukla’s Bump2Tots digital health platform for parents from preconception through a child’s first three years; Abdulhakim Tlimat’s VentInsights remote monitoring platform for mechanical ventilation; and Sasanka Ramanadham’s approach to targeting lipid signaling in Type 1 diabetes.
UAB received 40 applications for the 2026 funding round, representing 54 inventors across 37 academic departments and divisions in seven UAB schools and Southern Research.
Blazer Bridge Fund grants can support prototype and software development, contract research organization work, consultants, students and postdoctoral researchers, antibody humanization and research designed to strengthen intellectual property.
The latest group includes inventors from the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine, School of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences.
KEY QUOTES:
“This year’s Blazer Bridge Fund applicants brought an incredible range of innovative ideas, and our reviewers had some very difficult decisions to make. We are proud to support inventors from three different UAB schools, including the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine, the School of Engineering, and the College of Arts and Sciences. These projects reflect UAB’s commitment to advancing scientific discovery, and we are excited to help move them forward at this early stage.”
Karthik Gopalakrishnan, Senior Director at the Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
