The University of Alabama has tapped the College of Community Health Sciences to oversee the operation and use of the UA MRI Research Facility.
The facility is the centerpiece of the University’s growing focus on neuroscience research and provides a major resource that supports not only neuroscience research but behavioral health and clinical and translational research as well.
The MRI Research Facility has about 9,700 square feet of space comprising two MRI bays along with research, training and administrative offices. The facility also has space for behavioral data collection, including biospecimen collection and processing, electroencephalography data collection and an MRI simulator.
CCHS began overseeing the MRI Research Facility, located on the back side of University Medical Center, in 2026 and is working to facilitate and encourage innovative and cross-disciplinary research using the MRI. The facility will be used by UA faculty, students and research teams across campus – particularly from psychology, education, communicative disorders, health sciences, engineering, kinesiology and athletic training – providing them an infrastructure for advanced imaging, training and collaborative research.
With access to participants from rural, underserved communities, the MRI Research Facility will also expand the diversity of research data that could impact national studies.
Among the research projects currently using the facility is the HEALthy Brain Child Development Study, which is being conducted by a team of researchers and physicians at UA and the UAB Heersink School of Medicine in Birmingham. The study seeks to understand the effects of exposure to social factors and other environmental conditions during pregnancy and after birth, and to identify family resilience factors that help overcome adversity.
The research is part of a comprehensive and long-term nationwide study, funded with a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, of the risk and protective factors for healthy brain development in children. The Alabama researchers, who received $7.1 million of the NIDA grant, are part of a 27-site national consortium of universities and research hospitals involved in the research.
The researchers in Alabama are establishing a large cohort of pregnant women and will follow them and their participating child for at least 10 years. The study is collecting data during pregnancy and early childhood, including images of the child’s brain, growth measurements, medical and family history, as well as information about social, emotional and cognitive development. The researchers are using the MRI Research Facility for brain imaging.
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