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. 

Four projects proposed by faculty members have been awarded Public Service Endowment Grants from a special campus fund designed to boost outreach, extend the campus resources into the surrounding community and enhance the public service mission of the university.

Professors Michael Zink, electrical and computer engineering, and Ramesh Sitaraman of the College of Information and Computer Sciences, invite you to imagine watching a Super Bowl game from the comfort of your own living room, but experiencing the game as if you were on the field with the quarterback.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded a collaborative team led by Andrew McGregor, computer science, a three-year, $1.5 million grant to further develop the foundations of data science in a project that will create NSF’s national TRIPODS Institute for Theoretical Foundations of Data Science.