It started small. Molly Teece and David Barry, co-presidents and founders of the UML 3D Club, decided to make face masks using the 3D printers that they own. In the early days of the COVID-19 quarantine, they produced eight masks in their apartments in Lowell. 

It was slow going. Each mask took four hours to print, but the students, both junior plastics engineering majors, were not discouraged. 

Duy “Jeremy” Cung is in limbo.

The senior mechanical engineering major is about to graduate – and he had planned to return home to Vietnam to interview for jobs.

Graduate student Sam Codyer ’14 doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth at the moment. On top of working full-time from home in Fitchburg while finishing his final two courses for his master’s degree in public health, he is about to become a father.

But when Codyer heard that the commonwealth of Massachusetts was looking for public health students to volunteer with its COVID-19 contact tracing efforts, he made the time.

From doubling the number of electric vehicle charging stations on campus to increasing incentives for energy-efficient infrastructure projects, the university is working with its utility provider, National Grid, on new and innovative ways to advance its sustainability and cost-saving goals.

In February, the university and National Grid entered into a strategic energy management partnership, a three-year agreement that earmarks more than $500,000 in incentives for campus projects that help save electricity and natural gas.

UMass Medical School cell biologist Thoru Pederson, PhD, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Class of 2020. Comprising artists, scholars, scientists and leaders in the public, nonprofit and private sectors, the academy recognizes excellence and expertise among its membership, representing innovative thinkers in every field and profession.

With the Commonwealth’s latest field hospital set to open this week at UMass Dartmouth, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Representatives Bill Keating and Joseph Kennedy III, and other officials visited the campus’s Tripp Athletic Center on Tuesday for a tour.

AMHERST, Mass. – A team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Clean Energy Extension recently was awarded a 15-month grant to lead development of community-focused solar siting and financing procedures in three rural western Massachusetts communities, Blandford, Wendell and Westhampton.

AMHERST, Mass. – An estimated 80% of ornamental plants for sale at garden centers and other outlets are non-native, which means “the average yard does a poor job of supporting native flora and fauna,” says invasive plant expert Bethany Bradley at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

A group of College of Nursing (CON) faculty has formed an appreciation committee to offer gratitude and support for healthcare workers who are providing patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The committee has begun to issue an "Encouragement Newsletter" which is distributed to the CON community and to local healthcare facilities.

The newsletter offers words of gratitude and hope for healthcare workers, as well as quotes and stories from students and faculty. The committee hopes to continue to issue the newsletter weekly for the foreseeable future.  

Thanks to the UMass Amherst Libraries’ partnership with a consortium of academic and research organizations, UMass Amherst students, staff, and faculty now have temporary access to digital versions of approximately 1.5 million volumes held by the university.