The New England College Personnel Association (NECPA) has named higher education Ph.D. student Patricia (Tita) Feraud-King Graduate Student of the Year and recent graduate of the higher education master's program, Molly Hansen, Emerging Professional of the Year.

AMHERST, Mass. – In a new paper, a team of evolutionary biologists and geneticists led by senior author associate professor Ana Caicedo, with first author Hamid Razifard at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and others, report that they have identified missing links in the tomato’s evolution from a wild blueberry-sized fruit in South America to the larger modern tomato of today.

Evolutionary cell biologist Lillian Fritz-Laylin, biology, recently was granted a three-year, $300,000 Smith Family Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research to support her research on the pathogenesis of the brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri. The amoeba gets inside swimmers’ noses, crawls up the olfactory nerve and into the brain where they destroy tissue.

"DownBeat" magazine, the top publication for "jazz, blues, and beyond," has included a recent recording by UMass associate professor of music Felipe Salles on their list of their 100 top-rated albums for 2019.

“The Lullaby Project and Other Works for Large Ensemble,” which was actually released in late 2018, was inspired by traditional Brazilian lullabies, and featured the debut of the Felipe Salles Interconnections Ensemble, an 18-piece jazz orchestra that combines Brazilian, Latin-American and classical influences.

Three kinesiology students received awards and scholarships during the annual New England Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine (NEACSM) Fall Conference held in Providence, Rhode Island this past November.

Doctoral student Robert Marcotte won the NEACSM Lawrence E. Armstrong Minority Scholarship, which is awarded to support and encourage professional development and academic excellence in minority students in the New England region.

The UMass Medical School community is mourning the loss of James Barry Hanshaw, MD, professor, dean emeritus and founding chair of the UMass Medical School Department of Pediatrics, who died Dec. 19, at age 90, in his home in Boylston.

Dr. Hanshaw served UMass Medical School in numerous capacities, including chair of pediatrics from 1975 to 1985, interim vice chancellor and academic dean from 1985 to 1986, interim chancellor in 1987, and dean and provost from 1986 to1989.

Two of UMass Boston's centers are offering opportunities for research funding for faculty members who are focused on climate change or labor-related themes.

Priyank Arora, assistant professor of operations and information management in the Isenberg School of Management, is the lead author on an article recently published in the "Journal of Operations Management."

The article, “When do appointments of corporate sustainability executives affect shareholder value?,” was first published online in December, with a hardcopy volume to follow.

The Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP) has named Donald Robinson, adjunct professor in environmental health sciences as a board member in 2020.

Robinson also consults in safety and health management and engineering practices for both industry and higher education. He previously served as executive director of environmental health and safety at the UMass Amherst for over four decades having management and compliance responsibility for programs associated with emergency management, fire safety, laboratory safety and disability services, among other things.

First-year chemical engineering major Kevin Griskevich approached English classes with fear and loathing. He found them “dull, tedious, irrelevant and uninspiring.”