Johnnie Aycock & Lisa Jones
Every breakthrough, every innovation, every bold idea shaping our future begins with curiosity and the people willing to follow it. From research labs to manufacturing, from discarded materials to the next generation of design, this is BrightPath, where science meets creativity and ideas come to life.
Lisa Jones
Today we're talking about one of Alabama's greatest strengths, The University of Alabama. Every day, the university is preparing future leaders, advancing groundbreaking research, and building partnerships that make a difference across our state and beyond. I'm Lisa Jones,
Johnnie Aycock
and I'm Johnny Aycock. Before we begin, here's a little background on our very special guest. Dr. Peter Mohler became the 30th president of The University of Alabama in 2025 after serving in several leadership roles at Ohio State University, including executive vice president for research, innovation, and knowledge, and chief scientific officer of the Wexner Medical Center. He's also an internationally recognized biomedical scientist whose research has focused on heart disease and cardiac rhythm disorders.
Lisa Jones
Dr. Mohler earned his bachelor's degree in biology from Wake Forest University before receiving his Ph.D. in cell and molecular physiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An internationally recognized biomedical scientist, he has authored more than 275 peer-reviewed scientific publications, with research appearing in leading journals, including Nature, Cell, Nature Medicine, and the New England Journal of Medicine.
Johnnie Aycock
His work has focused on uncovering the genetic and cellular mechanisms behind heart disease and cardiac rhythm disorders, while advancing new approaches to diagnosis and treatment.
Lisa Jones
Throughout his career, he has championed the idea that universities should do more than educate students. They should drive discovery, strengthen communities, create economic opportunity, and improve lives. That's a perfect fit for today's conversation. Dr. Mohler, welcome to the BrightPath Studio.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Well, I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Lisa Jones
Thank you so much. We are more than delighted that you are here. Let's begin, Dr. Mohler. When you think about the University of Alabama's mission today, what excites you most about the opportunity to improve lives, not only through education, but through discovery, innovation, as well as service?
Dr. Peter Mohler
So, I am coming up on almost a year now at the University of Alabama, and I have had a wonderful opportunity to spend a lot of time both in Tuscaloosa and outside of Tuscaloosa, 67 amazing counties, and had a chance to spend time in many, many, many of them. When we talk about sort of our tagline or what I'd like to create here with the amazing team at Alabama is to stop thinking about this as the University of Alabama and begin to think of this as a university for Alabama.
And so, what does that mean for me? When we think about education and workforce, we think about innovation or discovery or creative expression, in my mind, as the flagship, it's thinking about how do we create opportunity and impact for the state. So when we're thinking about how are we training our students, or the research that we're doing, or the teams that we're building, in my mind, that has to move beyond the campus boundaries. It must move into our communities across the state, because I'll tell you what, they need us right now. It's an incredible, incredible state, but there are some challenges.
And I think we have to be open about what those challenges are and use our research, use our innovation, use our workforce, all of the amazing things that we've done for almost 200 years to impact the citizens of Alabama.
Lisa Jones
Very well-articulated. Thank you for that.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, let's take that even a little bit further. Many people, our listeners including, often hear the word research, they think of laboratories and maybe academic journals and publications. But could you share just from your observation a few examples of how research happening at this university is making a tangible difference in the lives of the people of Alabama, the businesses, the communities, and our economic well-being?
Dr. Peter Mohler
I'm a self-described nerd. I'll own that
Lisa Jones
And I love it, and there's nothing wrong with that, Dr. Mohler, nothing at all.
Dr. Peter Mohler
I'm proud of it. When you think of the typical laboratories where there's beakers and test tubes… there's a lot of great research like that happening at Alabama. What I'm so proud of is that that research that's happening in these laboratories is having a direct impact on some of the biggest industries that are out there today. So we have the Alabama Materials Institute, incredible work that's looking at semiconductors, it's looking at materials, it's looking at robotics. You see some of the things that are happening in our Water Institute, things that our folks in agriculture across the Black Belt or some of the communities in northern Alabama rely on to understand what's going to happen in a drought or what they can count on in terms of irrigation.
So that's fun to watch. What they may be surprised on are some of the research that's happening to impact things like rural health. When we think about the needs of some of our smaller communities, what are we doing in modeling? How do we take care of communities in a way where they may be distant from a large hospital or from a transplant center? How do we get into these communities and work with their providers and work with their pharmacists? How do we create the next generation of nurses that understand that you may not have access to the big and bright and beautiful hospital, but you may be two hours away and have to think about rural health and how to think about artificial intelligence and telehealth?
So when we think about research, you nailed it. It's not just about the beakers. It's not just about fancy AI and data centers. It's how do we look at problems that the state is facing today and create solutions? And those solutions may be in a lab, they may be in a classroom, they may be in an office building. But I think the most important piece is what are the questions that we want to answer, and then getting teams built around that to really go after it and go after it aggressively.
Lisa Jones
Wow, I love that answer. Sometimes it's about finding the right questions to answer. We actually kind of talked about that before when John and I interviewed you for the book. I just wanted to let you know that really resonated with me. Honestly, it's exciting, Dr. Mohler, to me personally to hear it is making a real difference in people's lives. So I would like to know what are some of the most promising areas of research and innovation at the university today that you believe could fundamentally change our future, maybe say, I don't know, over the next decade?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Well, I would say there's never been a more exciting time to be a researcher. And I think when I look at our campus, typically there's groups that wear the lab coats or the safety goggles and say, I'm a researcher. I want to challenge every person on our campus and every person in our community that they're a researcher too. And what does that mean? It means that they are all able to define problems that need impact in their own worlds. And whether that's how do we retain students or how do we treat the next generation of providing healthcare for all Alabamians, or whether we're building new semiconductors or submarines in Mobile, that everyone has the opportunity to help create solutions.
And so that's what's most exciting in my mind for this next 10 years. Areas that I'm interested in right now, and you can probably see this from some of the things that we've done, I'm fascinated with data and artificial intelligence. And I want to say, I said the word data first. Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence these days and how it's going to change all of our worlds, and that may be true. But the key relies in how do we make sure that we have the right information or the right data to be able to do that? It doesn't take any of us more than 2 seconds to get on the internet to see how much bad information is out there. And so, how do we at the University of Alabama work with partners across the state of Alabama and our country to make sure that we're making decisions or we're creating research based on the best data?
And if that's going to mean creating solutions or creating networks that we can get great data in energy and create links with the best data in business development or workforce or education to really make sure that we're not looking at data in isolation. But if we're going to look at big areas that are going to impact the state in terms of economic development, it's important that we understand that in research, sometimes you create a solution, but that solution can never make it to the market or can never expand or scale because it doesn't have a business partner or it doesn't have funding or it's the right place, but it's the wrong time.
And so, none of what we create here at the research university is going to be able to get out into the world until we can create those partnerships. And so, spending a lot of time in my job right now is getting out there to understand what does the ecosystem look like? How do we make sure that we have this great discovery, but it doesn't just sit on the shelf or sit in the library? So I think that's a challenge for all of us in Alabama right now is we've got to tell a better story of the impact of research.
And we need to make sure that research is great, but if you don't have the founders, the entrepreneurs, the investors, the adopters, the first customers, that none of this means anything.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, and I want to take that further. You're in my wheelhouse now. Because as you pointed out and as we're learning ourselves, discoveries have got to make their way into the real world, into communities, into people's lives, and you want that out. How, as a state, as a community, working in lockstep, in partnership with the university, how can we make sure that those ideas don't stay on campus?
You're talking partnerships. I want you to go a little further into that because we are finding out that some real-world solutions are happening right here at this university. Everything from potential cures for Parkinson's to better materials for space and defense. I mean, it's just a wide range of discoveries going on right here. That's what we're trying to communicate. It's exciting. You're right. It's the best time to be in Alabama, I think.
But what do we need to do to make sure as a community, as a state, that these real-world solutions take hold? The seeds are planted. We do truly improve health, rural health you mentioned, which I happen to agree with you, that's a major one. How do we strengthen communities? How do we create that entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tuscaloosa and across this state?
Dr. Peter Mohler
I think, and you all know this phrase better than I do, but it's amazing what can happen when no one cares who gets the credit. So I'm going to start with that, and so I think when you talk about partnerships, a lot of states where a lot of innovation doesn't happen, or translation of that innovation doesn't happen because everyone is so worried about who gets the credit or who gets the money coming out of it. And so, what I've experienced over the last 11 months in Alabama is there's a real community of change, there's a real community of hope of what the future looks like for this state, and I think there's huge opportunity.
So I think some of this is getting in our minds as a community that it is okay to fail. And I think as entrepreneurs, and this again goes back to your wheelhouse, is fail and fail fast, and making sure that we are very honest that it may be a good idea, but it's an idea that's going to need to be tweaked. And there's a tendency in our world today that it's tough to give feedback because people may not take it. I've found in Alabama that people actually appreciate honest feedback. You need to be straight with them, and that's what we're working on with our students, is they may come in and have a gem of an idea, but the gem of idea needs to be tweaked, or we need to get them the right business partner and get it to market, or how do we make sure that we protect it appropriately, and so the discovery stays and is protected long enough where we can get it out to market with the appropriate investors.
And so we're working on creating formal structures that work across all of our colleges here to be able to do that in a way that creates community, but also it's needing to bring the work outside of the bubble of the University of Alabama to the marketplace, getting into Birmingham, getting into Mobile, getting into Huntsville, so we can test these things. So if we have a discovery that may impact the world of defense or the world of AI or the world of semiconductors, we need to get and we need to have partners within these organizations to be able to say, seems like a great idea, but what if you tweaked it a little bit this way? Or this isn't going to survive this, or we've tried this before, what if you did this a little bit differently?
And so it's opening our community as a university beyond just this academic core that we bring partners from industry and open our labs a little bit more than we have in the past, so that we can move a little bit more quickly.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, let me do a little follow up with that. Oftentimes, someone will say, well, it's their responsibility, or that university's, or that community's responsibility. You point out it's everybody's responsibility. And just this week, we were talking with a very successful entrepreneur. He used the same term you did, fail, but fail fast.
And it inspired me quite frankly because I started looking at our own community. We've actually got all the elements we need. I mean, the ingredients are here. The catalytic process, though, needs to happen, it seems. Where is the catalyst for a community like Tuscaloosa who has the potential to be one of the great entrepreneurial cities in America if we desire to do that? But that's everybody's responsibility.
Dr. Peter Mohler
And I will tell you that's going to happen. I think that we need to build into our innovator's mind the sense of urgency. And I'm going to say that because I trained in a laboratory where we were working on therapeutics in the genetics of a disease called cystic fibrosis. And every day I went into the laboratory, I was working across the hall from individuals that had cystic fibrosis, and average life expectancy of those young adults was 25, 26 years old. That creates a sense of urgency when you're working with those individuals and you're dealing with their parents to move quickly and to move in a way where if not us, who? Right? We need to create that sense - If not now, when, or this can't wait for tomorrow.
So, similar to some of the things that Coach Saban did when he was here as coach is working to create process, working to create infrastructure, and so we have an ability to move, but move quickly. But it's understanding that sometimes our investigators, our innovators, are too far away from the problem that they don't understand—you brought up rural health earlier—to see one of these clinics and see what they're facing, or see the individuals that don't have access to healthcare the same way if you're looking and designing materials for a submarine where you don't understand how it's going to be used. We need to get our students, we need to get our faculty more incorporated with the innovation on site to see what happens if they're not involved. What happens if take off a couple weeks and get this done, well, what would happen if you got those two weeks back and can move a little bit more quickly?
So, what I want to create is an opportunity and a culture where there's no excuse. There's no excuse that you can't get this done faster. There's no excuse that you don't have access to an entrepreneur-in-residence. There's no excuse that if this is a great idea, we don't give them access to capital. We need to find first customers. The things that you know very well in your world, we need to create an opportunity where there's no excuses for this to not move quickly.
Johnnie Aycock
I like the way you think, sir.
Lisa Jones
I like the way you think, too. Does it Does this go way beyond Research Park? If so, what do you think this looks like?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Well, I would argue that if you could provide a state and an ecosystem that had access to water, had access to land, had access to energy, had favorable political conditions for economic growth, and you had scaled workforce—and I'm going to use that last one a lot today—scaled, advanced workforce, and whether it's in healthcare, or semiconductors, or cybersecurity, boy, if I'm a founder and starting a company, or I'm a company that's somewhere else in the country or somewhere else in the world, what a great place to come, what a great place to locate, to be able to have access to mountains, to be able to have access to coast. I've been in the state now a year. Boy, we have a lot to offer, but we've got to get this secret out there, and if we build it, I think there's a lot of people that are going to be interested in coming here.
Lisa Jones
So please remind our listeners again what you said at the very beginning of this episode. We introduce, of course, The University of Alabama, but you described it a different way.
Dr. Peter Mohler Well, this is the university for Alabama.
Lisa Jones Exactly. So, we're thinking bigger. This is for the entire state.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Right, and I think all good things in time. When we think about things like a research park, the critical piece is making sure you have innovation, because you can create all the parks in the world, you can create buildings and flashy lights and banners, but the things that matter most are the discoveries, the intellectual property, the ability to have differentiated whether it's software or materials or an idea. There's no substitute for that, and so discovery is going to matter and to get out there, but you got to have genuine, authentic discovery if anyone's going to care. And so, that’s…
Lisa Jones
utilitarian discovery.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Yeah, I think translatable discovery or translatable innovation. And so, again, no flashy lights are going to disguise innovation that's not meaningful, and if we have the right level of intellectual property here and conceptual product, people are going to come. And then we'll start working on capital for research parks, but we have to be honest about where we are and where we're going to go, and invest the resources in great researchers, great faculty, great students, building teams, and really going after areas of science that don't even exist yet today.
Johnnie Aycock
I'm hearing a term that I'm just dying to ask. Are we really off-the-wall question, I'm afraid, but are we thinking big enough as a state?
Dr. Peter Mohler
I think every state has great opportunity to think bigger, and I think now is the time to be asking these questions, and I say that in a number of ways. We're looking at big movements in data. We talked about data a few seconds ago, and that gives us an opportunity to answer questions that we've never answered before, but there's elements of energy that come into that. So, what's our grid going to be looking like in a few years? And how do we regulate that energy even if we have that?
So, those create solutions, right? And opportunities. Look what's happening on the far side of the world in China and Taiwan. These are the things that we need to think about innovating today for geopolitical issues that may be happening tomorrow. What's happening in onshoring? How do we think about advanced robotics and manufacturing? Those are solutions that if we wait for it to happen, or we wait two or three years, there's a hundred different places that are going to be asking those same questions. We need to be first to ideas. We need to be first to market, and you all know this, if you're first to market and can be able to write the script, we're less reactive. You have opportunity.
Lisa Jones
And you set the standard. So, speaking of things that don't even exist yet, we'll say, how is the university preparing students not just for today's jobs, but for careers and industries that may not exist? How are they doing that?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Well, I think we have to think about disciplines, and I think we have to have a framework for what our students should expect to graduate with. And so, we've always done very, very well in training great business leaders. We've always done very well in training engineers or nurses. But if you could have one of those three categories of students that had great background in this discipline but you could also layer on them an element of leadership and understanding policy and being fluent in artificial intelligence and data, boy, who wouldn't want to hire those students?
And so, in this last year, we created two new schools, and you probably have heard about those schools, the first two schools in the last 50 years, one that's focused on leadership and policy. Spent a lot of time talking to big CEOs across the world, and they always talk about how great the students at Alabama are. They come with grit. They work hard. They're very smart. But if they could have those elements of some of those nuance of a little bit more EQ of how do you solve big questions, how do you insert yourself into areas where there's no one there today and create a discipline that doesn't exist yet today, how do you lead with leadership that's backed by data and evidence, and you're not just saying, Hey, I have an idea with you about energy or artificial intelligence, but, I've got a whole big pile of books and data to support what I'm saying, that's what this new school is based on.
And so, whether we're talking about space, the future of space, or the future of defense, or the future of energy or healthcare, to be able to have a school that is evidence-based, that provides our state, the citizens across the state, our students, our faculty, elements of data that can support their ideas, I think it's going to be incredible.
The second one is the School of Data Science. So this used to be a world that just sat in engineering. Well, we all know that it's everywhere now. And so if you're, again, a graduating nurse from our Capstone College of Nursing, I want you to be able to talk big, big, big about telehealth, or how you're going to use a new electronic medical record to help people with drug safety, or how do you find a first responder in a county that doesn't have first responders? So those are some of the elements that I want our students to be able to leave with their diploma, but also these skills that maybe they wouldn't have had before that doesn't make them a passive employee but makes them an active leader that's going to help redefine whether they're in a small business or a large corporation.
Lisa Jones
And that kind of speaks to what you're saying before about how we're all potentially researchers, because they gain that kind of training, that gives them the skills to help problem solve, which is what research is, right?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Exactly right.
Johnnie Aycock And to your point, it's a true statement. We have the largest talent pool in Alabama right here in Tuscaloosa.
Dr. Peter Mohler
We absolutely do.
Johnnie Aycock
It's important. But keeping those students invested in our community or across our state, that's really what one of the goals should be. And I think, matter of fact, I've heard you articulate that the university attracts world-class faculty, researchers, and students. What must Tuscaloosa and Alabama do to encourage them more to stay here, to build their careers, launch their business, invest in the communities? What's it going to take for us to do that?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Well, I think the first thing is to brag on our students a little bit. You know, we have just incredible students from all 67 counties of this great state, but also all 50 states and I think 99 countries right now. And they are bright. Once again this year, one of the highest numbers of National Merit Scholars in the country, in the country. I'm going to say that again: in the country. So they are bright.
Lisa Jones
Roll Tide and roll research. Roll Tide.
Dr. Peter Mohler
But the challenge is we need to make sure we keep, whether you're growing up in Eufaula or whether you're in Dallas or whether you're in San Francisco, we need to give them a reasons to stay in this great state. So we've talked in this first part of the hour about the research and the laboratories and identifying solutions.
The second piece that is, I would say, is just as important is how do we translate that into economic development and economic impact for the state of Alabama?
How do we take this incredible intellectual property and turn it into businesses, into industries where not only do we have great manufacturing here in Alabama, but we have the C-suite, we have the headquarters, where we are leading the nation from the state of Alabama. And so we have done that for almost 200 years.
Now is the time to be able to double down on this and say it's not enough to create the ideas, to create the software, to create the materials. We need to turn that into product, and we need to turn that into industry that we keep here in Alabama. Not just Tuscaloosa, but the state of Alabama. And there are a lot of communities that would love to have these small businesses, these large businesses, these new corporations. And so we've got to be intentional. We can't just passively expect this to happen, and that means partnerships: working with universities across the state. It means working with technical colleges, community colleges, working across the country and across the world to bring these industries here and then to create our own for ourselves.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, building our own ecosystem, basically.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Yes, sir.
Johnnie Aycock
I have this dream. Someone inspired it. I think I've always had it, but someone inspired it this past week. I'm biased toward Tuscaloosa, obviously. I can see Tuscaloosa being one of the premier entrepreneurial communities in America. and with the universities partnership. I love the way you use that word constantly: partnerships, partnership. But there's still got to be a catalytic process somewhere. I think the university plays an important role in being that catalyst, but also with our private sector, our public sector, our non-profit sector here.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Yeah, and you're going to be hearing from me in a few weeks about some of these ideas. But I think we need to do a better job at convening. If you are an entrepreneur or an investor or a government employee or a big defense contractor, sometimes it's hard to navigate a university. And so, hard to find websites or it's hard to know kind of where do you go and how do you get an ID or how do you build a team.
And so we're going to be putting together both programs as well as some structure that can help convene these groups together. And again, as we said this earlier, it shouldn't be about the credit; it should be about the state.
And so we can bring these people together and have a great trip and even see some football or basketball or softball, but also leave with an idea that they can move their company here, better yet.
Johnnie Aycock
That's very encouraging.
Lisa Jones
That is very encouraging. So, Dr. Mohler, thank you so much for spending time with us today. We have absolutely enjoyed learning more about the university's mission, the impact of research, and preparing the next generation of leaders.
When we continue our conversation on part two, we're going to explore the partnerships, innovation, and collaboration that are helping turn that vision into opportunities across Alabama. And on that note, Johnny and I would like to thank our show guest today, President Dr. Peter Mohler.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Thank you for having me. It's been great.
Lisa Jones
For Johnny Aycock, I'm Lisa Jones, and this is BrightPath.
Johnnie Aycock
BrightPath is made possible in part by our partners at Alabama Public Radio and by the music of Matt Jones, whose song This Place sets the tone for our journey. Thank you.
Matt Jones (Theme Music)
This place is all I need to clear my mind and find some peace. This place I sometimes call it home. This place is my sweet dream to get away from everything. Oh, I I love, oh, I I love this place.
