University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) announced that Carol Z. Garrison, the sixth president of the UAB, is stepping down from office after 10 years of service. Garrison also reported that she will continue serving until an interim president is named. Garrison came to UAB in 2002 from the University of Louisville, where she was acting president. According to University of Alabama System Trustees, the likely person to serve as interim president is Dr. Ray L. Watts, senior vice president for medicine and dean of the UAB School of Medicine but final decision has not yet been made.

University of Alabama at Birmingham won a $2,191,998 federal contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Institutes of Health, Rockville, Md., for the study of audiometric assessments of infants to determine onset of hearing loss attributable to CMV.

University of Alabama at Birmingham announced Dr. C. Seth Landefeld has been named chairman of the university's Department of Medicine. Landefeld, an internationally known clinician and researcher in geriatrics, epidemiology and biostatistics, joins UAB from the University of California at San Francisco, where he served as chief of the Division of Geriatrics and associate chairman for strategic planning and implementation at the UCSF Department of Medicine. Landefeld will join UAB full-time in September but immediately will take a leadership role.