AMHERST, Mass. – Distinguished Professor of Economics Léonce Ndikumana, considered by many to be one of the best-known and most widely respected African macroeconomists of his generation, has been named a 2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellow by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Ndikumana is the first University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty member to receive the honor.

AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst Chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy has been elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He joins a distinguished roster of esteemed figures in the arts and sciences, business, philanthropy and public affairs honored by the prestigious academy for their leadership and dedication to excellence.

Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov.

Apic Bio, a gene therapy company developing treatment options for patients with rare genetic diseases and co-founded by UMass Medical School’s Robert H. Brown Jr., DPhil, MD, announced that the FDA has cleared its investigational new drug (IND) application for APB-102, a gene therapy candidate designed to treat a common cause of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

UMass Medical School will invest David McManus, MD, and Brian Lewis, PhD, into endowed chairs. The University of Massachusetts Board of Trustees voted at its April meeting to approve naming Dr. McManus, chair and professor of medicine, to the Richard M. Haidack Professorship in Medicine, and Dr. Lewis, professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology, to the George F. Booth Chair in the Basic Sciences.

A conversation that started on Twitter between a UMass Medical School researcher and a State University of New York medical student has led to a year-long mentorship, published research and an award from the Dermatology Foundation.

Massachusetts residents ages 16 and older are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, April 19, which Gov. Charlie Baker calls a significant milestone in the commonwealth’s mission to vaccinate residents and bring the pandemic to a close.

Nine UMass Medical School student volunteers administered COVID-19 vaccinations to the community on Monday, April 19, at the YWCA Central Massachusetts in downtown Worcester. The mobile clinic, which delivered roughly 300 doses of the Moderna vaccine, was one of scores so far deploying trained health care personnel as well as nonclinical volunteers in the Vaccine Corps, a program organized by UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine to bring COVID-19 vaccinations to where people need them the most.

Assistant professor Omar Abdelrahman, of the department of chemical engineering, has received a five-year, $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development (CAREER) Program to develop dynamic catalysts that can utilize renewable electricity to generate more environmentally sound and inexpensive chemical production. Specifically, his NSF research will attempt to transform the electrochemical oxidation of hydrocarbons into oxygenates.

AMHERST, Mass. – Areas with a high share of minority population were four times more likely to have suffered a power outage during the recent Texas blackout compared to predominantly white areas, reveals a new analysis published by the Electricity Growth and Use in Developing Economies (e-GUIDE) Initiative. e-GUIDE is led by Jay Taneja, assistant professor, electrical and computer engineering at UMass Amherst.