Oprah Winfrey made quite a splash when she visited campus last year and helped the university raise more than $3 million for student scholarships – including a surprise $1.5 million matching gift of her own.

As with any splash, Winfrey’s generosity created a ripple effect that has already grown from six to 60 students – and will continue on at the university for years to come.

UMass Lowell has opened a new center for cybersecurity education, research and workforce development called the Cyber Range that will help students prepare for careers in the high-demand field. 

Edwin Boudreaux, PhD, has been working to implement screening for suicide in emergency rooms for more than a decade and has published numerous studies that show a large population of patients can be reached through such a process, according to a Nov. 8 article in the Washington Post about his research.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette was on hand for the first WooHealth Hackathon, hosted by UMass Medical School on Nov. 15 and 16. The event brought together students and faculty from nine area colleges and universities to brainstorm innovative solutions for a public health challenge: how to improve physical access to health care.

AMHERST, Mass. – Today a diverse group of scientists including Nilanjana Dasgupta, professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the campus’s director of faculty equity and inclusion, report their findings and recommendations on how institutions and funding agencies can address and prevent sexual harassment and gender bias in the STEM workforce. Details of their suggested “specific, potentially high-impact policy changes” appear in the current issue of Science.

Alumnus Marcos A. Reyes-Martinez, a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was honored by the U.S. Department of Commerce for Hispanic Heritage Month in October. He was chosen as one of only two employees to be spotlighted from among roughly 50,000 workers at the department. 

An interdisciplinary team of students, Arianna Kazemi, Connor Kennedy and Gabri Silverman, undergraduate winners of the American Statistical Association (ASA) Public Health Data Challenge, and their advisor, associate professor of biostatistics Nicholas Reich, have published an article exploring the differences in the death, arrest and reoffending rates for opioid users in the U.S.

Ten “green idea” projects around campus are underway, made possible with grants from the Sustainability, Innovation and Engagement Fund (SIEF). Launched in 2013, the program aims to foster sustainability by financially supporting students, faculty and staff who propose projects to promote a greener campus.

Beginning with this issue, Inside UMass will take a look at a few of the SIEF projects.

Don’t Dump that To-Go Container: Use It Again (and Again)!

The Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, along with other sponsors, hosted the Massachusetts Ecosystem Climate Adaptation Network’s (Mass ECAN) third annual conference on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at the Mount Ida campus of UMass Amherst.

The conference was designed to serve as a venue to shape conversation about ecosystem resilience, for participants to reflect on their own work, to boost morale and to network.

Jedaidah Chilufya, a third-year Ph.D. student from Ndola, Zambia, who studies in professor Dong Wang’s biochemistry lab, was recently awarded an International Peace Scholarship for the 2019-20 academic year from the Iowa-based Philanthropic Educational Organization (P.E.O.). 

The P.E.O. Fund, established in 1949, provides scholarships for international women students for graduate study in the United States and Canada. The organization states that education is fundamental to world peace and understanding.