As the COVID-19 pandemic made clear, disease risk and severity differ from person to person, each individual’s outcomes shaped by his or her unique mix of genetics, lifestyle, and environment. Precision health posits that healthcare should be shaped by this mix as well. Its emergence is a revolutionary moment, when medicine based on averages gives way to treatments tailored for each of us.
The transformation of laboratory observation into human impact: That is the power of applied life science.
Advances in computer science, with their almost limitless applications, are enabling a societal transformation. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and data science extend our brain and body power in ways that promise broad impacts across all areas of applied science and human endeavor, from medicine to manufacturing to municipal services. These technologies have the potential for great human benefit—potential that is quickly becoming a reality.
The Internet. Global Positioning Systems. Drones. Much of the most world-changing, ubiquitous technology to emerge over the past 50 years has sprung from research sponsored by the Department of Defense and NASA in partnership with academic institutions like UMass.
The human impact of all other fields of applied science depends, in the end, on advanced manufacturing. Every translational innovation requires something—a smart device, a novel material, a drug molecule—to be produced reliably, safely, and affordably at scale. Making that happen is the domain of manufacturing scientists and engineers.
What do successful rock 'n’ roll bands have in common with hard-charging entrepreneurs who reach the top echelons of business?
A willingness to fail, to regroup and to try again, said Greg Harris, president and CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame who moderated a virtual event on music and entrepreneurship hosted by the UMass Lowell’s Innovation Hub. It’s about adaptation, and developing the depth to withstand failure.
Last spring, after COVID-19 shut down the campus, education Ph.D. student Sharifa Djurabaeva was feeling isolated. She had finished all of her classes and was starting the long, hard solo work of completing her dissertation.
“I was getting so frustrated just sitting in one room,” she says. “I also wanted to socialize.”
A Message from the President
Applied science research is a vital part of what the University of Massachusetts is all about. It’s been programmed in our DNA since the very beginning.
For years, the state of the university address has been an opportunity to celebrate our progress with students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends all tightly gathered in a large room.
That, of course, is not possible this year, and so we’ve adjusted, just as we’ve learned to adjust in nearly every facet of our lives as a result of the pandemic.
BOSTON – University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan announced today that he would recommend that the university’s Board of Trustees freeze tuition for in-state undergraduates for the academic year beginning in September. If approved by the UMass Board, this would be the second straight year of a tuition freeze at the Commonwealth’s 75,000-student national public research university system.