Johnnie Aycock
Every breakthrough, every innovation, every bold idea shaping our future begins with curiosity and the people willing to follow it.
Lisa Jones
From research labs to manufacturing, from discarded materials to the next generation of design, this is BrightPath,
Johnnie Aycock
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. 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
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. Dr. Mohler, welcome back to the BrightPath Studio.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Thanks for having me, and roll tide.
Lisa Jones
And roll research, sir. We're delighted to continue our conversation. So, just to remind everyone, in our last conversation, we explored the university's vision for research, education, and preparing tomorrow's leaders. Today, we'd like to look at how that vision comes to life through innovation, partnerships, and the people who will shape Alabama's future.
Johnnie Aycock
And Dr. Mohler, we did talk about this to some extent in the first session, but let's look at some other areas in a little bit more detail. You use the word. Let's unpack a few more things. Yes, sir. Entrepreneurship initiatives, technology commercialization efforts, partnerships, creating new opportunities not only for our students but also for the citizens of this state. I think you started talking about this toward the end of convening, and I use the word catalyst. Convening-they both work, don't they? But for innovation and economic growth across Alabama, I totally believe we're in a unbelievably great position as a community and as a state to really move forward and become a leader in this nation in these areas.
Dr. Peter Mohler
100% agree. But I think you mentioned the word catalyst, and if you remember going back to organic chemistry or regular chemistry classes, you have this chemical reaction, but it doesn't happen, or it doesn't happen as quickly if you don't have that catalyst. And so, I think the point that we're really going to be pushing in Alabama is you can't sit back passively and expect great things to happen. You can have all the ideas in the world, but if you wait for someone else to do them or someone else to help you with them, it's not going to happen.
And so, an ecosystem is about having the right people. It's about having great ideas. We talked about in the last episode about making sure we have the right questions to answer or the right solutions to go after, but then putting together opportunities and whether that's capital they were investing in this or helping to bring the right team together. Sometimes always have a great scientist, but you don't have a great business officer that can help them move this to market, or the first customer or a large organization to help this move forward, they just sit on the sideline, and so we have to make sure that we're very intentional and we track this or show our math to make sure that when we have a great idea, that there's no excuse for not getting it to market.
Johnnie Aycock
You mentioned this word a couple times. One of the elements that we probably need to work on is the whole idea of venture capital, capital investment. That seems to be, if we've got a weak link, that may be it. How would you suggest we approach that? And what is the role of the university in your partnership efforts to attract that type of investment?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Sure. So the both of you are very well aware. But maybe for your listeners, there's this concept of when you come up with an idea or an invention, we describe it as the valley of death. And so, you may have the best idea in the world that is going to solve a disease or create a new material or solve a big problem in the world, but because it sits without care, and that care might mean input on market availability or fit, it might mean customer base. It might mean building a prototype. It sits on a shelf in an academic lab, and so the key for us as a university is to bring this valley of death and create bridges. And those bridges can come in a lot of different forms. They can come in the form of capital. They can come in the form of what we call entrepreneurs and residents, which means you take a business leader that's in the defense world or in the healthcare world, and you embed them in the lab. You have them talking to your faculty member, your student every day, and saying, "Hey, instead of talking to me on Zoom, I'm going to come right here and learn more about your idea and give you feedback in real time.
But that needs to be a constant relationship, and so your times between Zoom calls go away, and they become part of the team. We need to be able to understand how do we create a favorable business environment, or tax environment, or a state environment that innovation is welcome. That we have a strategy across the state where we're not competing against each other. We need to get all the universities, whether it's Alabama and Auburn or South Alabama or fill in the blank, and be having ideas where we come together on these. There's opportunity where we take this beyond simply everyone thinks about college or the university as four years. Let's get the 12-year-olds that are super interested in science and engage them more in our university, so they know that it's cool to be a nerd. It's cool to be a scientist. It's cool to be an entrepreneur and build a farm team the same way we would do this in athletics. So it's about being intentional. But you're going to see from Alabama a very defined strategic plan in this space, and the same way we would do it for any of our other areas. But it can't just happen by accident. It can't happen if we just sit around and wait for it.
Lisa Jones
That's true.
Dr. Peter Mohler
And so, we're going to be leaning in on this. And what we'd love to come back and talk to you about is give you some examples of how we did this before, and then how do we increase our batting average to where we may not be hitting 500, but it's good to be a 300 hitter. But sometimes when you're an entrepreneur and you're missing 70% of your balls. It's troubling. We need to let them know that that's okay. You're going to fail. You're going to fail, and you're going to fail. But hearing that from an entrepreneur that's made $100 million makes you feel a little bit better about it.
Johnnie Aycock
Absolutely, and we'd love to have you come back any time and talk about that. Yes, sir.
Lisa Jones
Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, that's part of the beauty of academia. Failure is not something that's just accepted; it's expected. That's right. To your point, and I love the way you describe that ecosystem that is necessary. And it's not just the University of Alabama; it's all of the major universities, Auburn, UAH, all of them. I'm really excited to see that future happening, and I like to think that our flagship university will be the leader in making that happen, being that we are the University for Alabama.
So I would also like to know from you, Dr. Mohler - so honestly, some young people, or I'll say many of them, are actually searching for purpose. They're looking for something to do and be fulfilled, not just work, just to make money or make a living. They're wondering how they can actually make a difference. So, what advice would you offer students and future leaders about pursuing curiosity, embracing innovation, that type of ecosystem, and creating meaningful impact in the world?
Dr. Peter Mohler
I meet a lot of students every week, and the first question I ask them is, "What's your why? And what is your why? Why are you here? And often this can take two or three conversations with the students, and we have it with our faculty as well. This has got to be beyond getting your diploma. Why are you here? And it's always fun because two or three conversations later, they start to find their why and find it because they get outside of the classroom. We have incredible faculty, and our faculty are exposing them to the whys, right? And it may be designing a new material. It may be understanding that there's a world out there of telehealth and inventing software that they never thought about before.
One of the reasons that this last year, we embedded what we call experiential learning into our curriculum is to help our students find the why. It's great to want to become an engineer, but if you're able to understand that all of this math is going to help you design a new software device or a new drone that can be used to film a football game or change outer space, then they get really excited about that. But if it's I'm understanding chemistry and I'm learning all these equations, and it's just for the test, sometimes and I and I was that way as a student as well, right? But when I started to understand how could I apply this learning to the real world, then it makes a. Difference and they get pretty jazzed. And so you're going to see us beyond this requirement for experiential learning, which means I'm not going to learn just the chemistry, but I'm going to learn how that chemistry applies to inventing a new device or a new material. Or if you're thinking about software and coding, how do I make a new app that helps me find my roommate next year, or, or helps me find my car in the parking lot every night, or something like that.
Lisa Jones
Or I need that one, please.
Dr. Peter Mohler
And so the next piece to add on that is that I want every one of our students to leave with a meaningful internship or a meaningful service, where they can see what it's like to work in an office, or what it's like to work in that factory, or what it's like to work with a group of engineers, where they can see that it's not just about getting a job when you leave the university; it's about getting the job, or it's about developing the career, and so that they see before they leave campus what's out there. They have a chance to try two or three things, and then they pick the one they're excited about. And again, these careers are all going to change, but we need to make sure that the first job or the job that they need-they've had two or three interviews before. They know what it's like to have an alarm clock. They know what it's like to be able to look an employer in the eye, and they can thrive.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, I want to circle back to something you talked just briefly about earlier. Matter of fact, you actually said, "Let's unpack it a little bit more." I want to go back to the new school of leadership and policy. Why is that so important for students today? What skills will they develop and what will that do to enhance our workforce?
Dr. Peter Mohler
So, whether you read the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, I would challenge any of our students, our listeners, to open it today, and you see what's happening in our world today. You see changes in inflation. You see what's happening with China and Taiwan. You see what's happening with Ukraine and Russia. You see what's happening in global AI markets. You see what's happening in the World Cup or what's not happening in the World Cup. All of these are challenges that go beyond Tuscaloosa, Alabama or the University of Alabama. I want our students to be prepared, whether they start a small business or whether they're the CEO of Lockheed - which was, by the way, an Alabama grad. Roll Tide - that they understand the skills to say, let's say there's a new tariff. If you, or let's say that there's a trade war happening, you think about that happening across the world, but guess what?
On the river, two miles from here, from your studio, there might be a backup of coal for a month and a half, if that happens, they need to understand that, and so we need to be able to train them when they leave the organization, when they walk across that stage. That not only do they understand the world of business, or the world of accounting, or the world of nursing, but they need to understand some context that some of these things that are happening in the Wall Street Journal are going to be applying to them, and they better be ready. And guess what? If they are ready, they are going to lead. And so it's not just about graduating; it's not just about getting the job, but it's creating the future leaders for our state and for our country, and so this is not just about Montgomery or D.C. but this is about leading every industry across the state and around the country, and that's what we should aim for. We should not aim to be number 20. We should not aim to be in the top 50. We should aim to be the leaders in these spaces, and if we don't have that mindset, then guess what? We're never going to lead.
Johnnie Aycock
That's exactly right. What was the genesis behind the the new school? Was it underway before you?
Dr. Peter Mohler
So there had been a lot of discussions, I'd say for 15 or 20 years around the university of some of these. And I think, I would say, there's a lot of alignment between business leaders in the state, federal leaders, our industry partners now more than ever need, and leaders that can cross all of our disciplines to repopulate or to create the next generation that have skills that in the past you had to go to the Northeast or you had to go to California or you had to train on the job. Hey, we've got great faculty here. We've got great schools here. How about if you leave the university when you graduate? All these skills in your discipline, but you have these skills as well. And boy, I think it's going to be a big boost for our state. And I'm excited about it. And it's not again. I want to say this again. It's not just about the University of Alabama. It's about the state and what our state needs, and so I think our board stepped up, our system stepped up, and boy, we're excited to have it in Fair Hall. Fair Hall has a long history. . It's going to celebrate, I think, it's 100 year anniversary this fall. What a great way to start its second century with this new school.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, that's an exciting endeavor. I wish you only the best because it's going to tap not only the potential of our young people, it's going to expand their knowledge it's going to expand their potential, and what an impact it can have on our great state.
Dr. Peter Mohler
That's going to be a lot of fun.
Lisa Jones
I would like to personally know more. We've been talking about some of this already, but what actually inspires you personally, and gives you the most amount of optimism for the future of the entire state?
Dr. Peter Mohler
You all see this every day, and you see it with the students that are walking by, the faculty that are embedded in everything we do. I would say, spend a day on campus and see just the incredible culture that we have, and this has nothing to do with me. And I'm just so fortunate to come here and be a part of this organization. But I'd say that right now there is a level of optimism at this university, and I say that because I think there's opportunity in our world. You've been around me enough to know that I'm an optimist.
But I will say that there's something in the water, and there's this moment of opportunity that we have where there's great alignment between the university, what's happening across our state, the communities across our state. And I said this earlier, to reinvest and double down on our role as the flagship and say what can we do for the state instead of saying what do we think we can do. We've got to listen, and we're listening, and there's huge opportunity. And so to take these great students, and they're just awesome, and our faculty are wonderful. But to be able to take these teams and apply them towards solutions for our state, I don't think there's a better place to be right now.
Johnnie Aycock
I have noticed in visuals over the last several months, you tend to really enjoy yourself among students. A lot of visuals of you with students, you spending a lot of time with them. And this is more of a personal question, what are you learning from our students? I mean, you've always got this great joy on your face when you're with the students, and they seem to love you too.
Lisa Jones
I would like to make this a two-parter. And how how often are you bowled over by something you learn from some of the students here? Because I know what happens.
Dr. Peter Mohler 16:41
I love this job. My wife calls me a hot mess, and that's absolutely true. But if I'm not busy doing something, I'm not a whole lot of fun to be around, and the staff knows that, and they'll nod as well.
Johnnie Aycock
Keep you busy.
Dr. Peter Mohler
They keep me busy, but it's one thing to say to a student, "What do you love about this place? And they all have 100 things they love about this place, and and they absolutely love, and the faculty and the staff do as well. But I always pose a question to them, and it helps them get their head around what I'm trying to ask: is if you were me for one day, what would you change, or what would you do differently, or what could we add? And boy, the things that you hear from them that we're now doing, and so a lot of the things we've talked about in the last two episodes have been because of talking to students or staff or faculty or parents. What would you do differently?
And so whether that is changes that we've done in security, adding new experiential learning, we added this new thing called the AI experience because our staff wanted to get a little bit more involved in understanding how do we use this transformational technology. We added new advisors. Our new provost, Leslie Reed, who's incredible. If you've not met her, she's adding and basically tripling the number of advisors that we have on campus because our students, multiple students, said to me, "It's taken too long to see our advisors. We have great advisors. We love them, but we'd love to see more of them. And so you're going to see big changes, double the size of our nursing school because we're hearing that you might have one or two Bs as a nursing undergrad and not get into the program. Boy, we need nurses. We need 13,000 nurses in our state today.
Dr. Peter Mohler
We can produce them, but if you had two Bs, you couldn't get into our nursing program. So those are these little comments that you might get in the hall or walking across the quad or talking to a parent- that's important. I'm a parent of three college-age students, and so it's important to me that if I'm going to invest this much, or if I'm going to send my child for four years, that someone's listening.
Lisa Jones
Well, I mean, it sounds like an ongoing, progressive town hall.
Dr. Peter Mohler 18:35
And I think, this is no shocker, but we work for them. We work for the state, we work for the students, we work for the parents, faculty, and the staff. And so, boy, how about listening to them. And so, I think that's got to be the key. And you can't say yes to everything, but a lot of these ideas are great and they're a lot of fun.
Johnnie Aycock 18:52
You look like you're having just an absolute blast.
Dr. Peter Mohler
It's a ball, it's a ball.
Johnnie Aycock
That's good to know.
Lisa Jones
Well if there's one other thing that you would like for our listeners to really understand about the University of Alabama's role in shaping the future of Alabama through research, talent development, and innovation and service. I'm just wondering, what would that be?
Dr. Peter Mohler
We've spent the last two episodes talking about new things that we're going to do, and I want to make sure that I say these two words a lot: is tradition and integrity and pride, and that's three words. But it's important that the audience knows that for almost 200 years, this place has been doing very well. And so, when I say the things that I've said in the last two sessions, I want to recognize that we've got a great university. But I also want to make sure that we're never satisfied. In the same way, whether you had a football coach or a basketball coach or our incredible women's softball coach on to talk about their areas, that we can't waste these opportunities. We have these incredibly bright minds, and the state needs us, the country needs us right now.
And so let's not be satisfied. Let's keep the bar high. Let's hold each other accountable, but. Talking to you all, you love this place. You absolutely love this place, and you do anything for that. And so, if you have this group of people that are all as dedicated as you all are, and your staff that's sitting in the room today, and we can mobilize them towards some very focused areas. Boy, in 10 years this is going to be a very different place.
Johnnie Aycock
Yeah, looking forward to it.
Lisa Jones
There's no end to the amount of improvement there can be because there's always something else to learn. There's always something else to discover, and the sky's the limit. And then Johnnie will immediately give me pushback, right?
Johnnie Aycock
Well, the sky's not the limit. It keeps expanding.
Lisa Jones
That's true, that's true.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Well, what I've learned from coming from the north - you know I was in Ohio for about 15 years - is we have all these extra months where it's warm outside, where we can do all this other fun stuff, where there's no snow on the ground and it's warm, and we got to be bold. We got to be bold. Not everything we're going to do is going to work. We've got to have more shots on goal, and it's an exciting time.
Lisa Jones
What would you say to the students who might be a little intimidated with the whole idea of being bold, and they're afraid of failure? What would you say to that?
Dr. Peter Mohler
You know, I would say talking to our students, I don't see it. I don't see any worry there. I think what we have to expose them, and their students here, is that we need to show them these opportunities that they can do it. I think they've been told so many times, be careful, be careful, and that's fair. But we need to show them that they can change the world. But we've got to demonstrate for it, and we've got to follow through, and we have to be accountable ourselves as leaders to make sure that every student that we take into this university that they're successful and acknowledge when it's not working that we need to tweak the place.
Johnnie Aycock
I want to circle back again to something we talked about earlier, and that's the term partnerships and collaboration. What would you say to our state about partnerships? Number one, the partnerships that you already have here at the university. But what would you say in terms of how this university develops new and expanded partnerships? What are the opportunities based on the mission, the strategies that you have in place, kind of the focused areas. How would you position us as a community and as a university to expand those partnerships?
Dr. Peter Mohler
So I think the first thing I'd say to folks across Alabama is we want to listen. This is true across higher education. Is that I think a lot of folks view whether it's right or wrong, is these academic bubbles that kind of live in their own world that are immune to the rest of the things happening across the rest of the globe. The goal is to pop that bubble and to build bridges. We'd like to listen, and we'd like to listen on your terms. Meaning, come invite us, invite us to your business, help us understand what's happening in your community.
I spend a lot of time across the state and putting miles on the jeep to get out and understand what are these issues, and they may not know exactly what that means. And so, like if you're thinking about, I'm a small company, I don't understand AI, but what I do know is I'm really having a hard time with my supply chain, or I'm having a hard time understanding how do I move from analog to digital in my accounting. Come talk to us. We work for you. We are the state's flagship, and we'll meet you on your own terms. And you don't have to be an expert in these spaces for us to help you, but we'd like to listen, and we'd like to partner, and we can do it on your terms. So we're open for business, and let us know how we can help.
Johnnie Aycock
That sounds like a winner to me.
Lisa Jones
It does to me too. And Johnnie has made the point so many times. We brought so many of the wonderful researchers from the University of Alabama and UAB, but one thing in particular about this university, we're trying on the noon show to help address it as well. As lots of people don't realize that there are so many resources here on this campus that are available to the public. What would you say to that? I mean, you basically just addressed it, but would you unpack that just a little bit more for us?
Dr. Peter Mohler
Sure, absolutely. I'm experiencing it every day myself, and you know, there's not enough days in the week to see all the cool things. Been to Moundsville, or you've seen all of our museums, or you've seen our archives, or you've been to the Bryant Museum, or you see the things that are happening in Extension around the state. We just opened a new hub in Enterprise, Alabama, where we're going to be focusing on business development and recruiting and water research. And so, boy, there is never a shortage of things to think about.
Lisa Jones
So many things.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Sometimes people typically don't think about some of the things happening in the humanities as research. And so we call it research and creative expression because there's amazing things happening in our campus, whether you're in art history, whether you're in dance, whether you're in theater, anthropology, sociology, boy, that blows your mind. Incredible students, incredible faculty, great graduate students, and so we can't unpack. And we've used that phrase a lot this hour.
Lisa Jones 24:38
I mean, and there are lecture series on campus that are open to the public.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Oh, right. And again, I think if we're going to go after some of these big societal issues, we need everybody. We need all the disciplines. Can't be a great idea if we can't communicate that idea. I would just encourage you if you're an Alabamian who's never been to the university or you've been for a football game. Boy, you are missing out because this is your. Place we've been here for literally almost 200 years, and we work for you. And I'm going to keep saying that we work for you. And so, no matter how small or big the problem is, or what we can help with, please, please come and let us.
Lisa Jones
And don't be afraid to ask questions, right?
Dr. Peter Mohler
And I will also say there's two other campuses. You know, we've got partners in Huntsville and our Birmingham UAB and UAH. Great folks, and so if we can't figure it out here, great system, and and we'll get you to the right folks.
Johnnie Aycock
I don't think people realize how integrated and embedded the university is. Sometimes people look at the university and they're sitting out there. That's not true. That's not true at all because often we have to remind people these researchers, these faculty members, guess what? They're community members too, and they care about where they live. And so I get really excited. You talk about the great opportunities in front of us as a university, but also as a state. And of course, I'm a little biased as you guys begin to expand your reach. That's good news for Tuscaloosa.
Dr. Peter Mohler
It is. And we've had wonderful conversations with the city and the county. And the listeners need to understand that we are deeply engaged in those conversations. And if we're going to win, we're all going to win together, and it's exciting.
Lisa Jones
So, Dr. Mohler, as you well know, the name of our program is called Bright Path. When you think about the future of higher education research and innovation. What actually gives you confidence that the path ahead is bright for the University of Alabama and for the communities it serves?
Dr. Peter Mohler
So first, I love the name. Congrats.
Lisa Jones
Thank you.
Dr. Peter Mohler
It's so optimistic, and I think it's a great way to think and a great message to send to our students and our faculty of the art of the possible that they need to dream, they need to think big, they need to always stay curious. We always talk to our students about staying curious. You got to be curious because you never know what's going to happen. And so the name of the program I think well exemplifies where we're headed as a university and hopefully where we're headed as a state.
But we've got to be strategic. So the path represents being strategic and having a sense of where we're headed, we need to be optimistic and we need to be aggressive. We need to be intentional. We need to be focused. If we can do these things and then bring in partners, which we've talked a lot about before, it's going to be tough to compete with us.
Johnnie Aycock
Well, the way we look at it, simply, roll tide.
Lisa Jones
Roll tide and roll research.
Dr. Peter Mohler
Roll tide.
Lisa Jones
Roll tide. Okay, guys. And on that note, Johnnie and I would like to thank our show guest today, President Dr. Peter Mohler.
Dr. Peter
Thank you for having me and call me Peter going forward. I know that's going to be tough for folks but...
Lisa Jones
Thank you for that.
Dr. Peter Mohler
We love you guys.
Lisa Jones
We really appreciate it thank you so much. For Johnnie 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.
