An international team of astronomers, including University of Massachusetts Amherst professors Gopal Narayanan and Peter Schloerb, has just revealed a new view of the massive black hole at the center of a galaxy located 55 million light-years away, known as the M87 galaxy.
University of Massachusetts research continues to grow in Fiscal Year 2020 as the university positions for post-pandemic recovery
Faculty expertise and strategic planning position the university for continued research growth
BOSTON – Despite the onset of the coronavirus, the University of Massachusetts conducted a record-breaking $687 million of research in Fiscal Year 2020, according to a report released at today’s meeting of the UMass Board of Trustees Committee on Academic and Student Affairs.
Extreme weather. Sea-level rise. Food and water shortages. Climate change is challenging our region, nation, and world on an unprecedented scale. Science is exposing the sobering extent of these problems, but also revealing solutions — opportunities to create a future that is not just low-carbon, but also equitable and even profitable, built around a robust sustainable economy and quality of life.
As the COVID-19 pandemic made clear, disease risk and severity differ from person to person, each individual’s outcomes shaped by his or her unique mix of genetics, lifestyle, and environment. Precision health posits that healthcare should be shaped by this mix as well. Its emergence is a revolutionary moment, when medicine based on averages gives way to treatments tailored for each of us.
The transformation of laboratory observation into human impact: That is the power of applied life science.
Advances in computer science, with their almost limitless applications, are enabling a societal transformation. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and data science extend our brain and body power in ways that promise broad impacts across all areas of applied science and human endeavor, from medicine to manufacturing to municipal services. These technologies have the potential for great human benefit—potential that is quickly becoming a reality.
The Internet. Global Positioning Systems. Drones. Much of the most world-changing, ubiquitous technology to emerge over the past 50 years has sprung from research sponsored by the Department of Defense and NASA in partnership with academic institutions like UMass.
The human impact of all other fields of applied science depends, in the end, on advanced manufacturing. Every translational innovation requires something—a smart device, a novel material, a drug molecule—to be produced reliably, safely, and affordably at scale. Making that happen is the domain of manufacturing scientists and engineers.
What do successful rock 'n’ roll bands have in common with hard-charging entrepreneurs who reach the top echelons of business?
A willingness to fail, to regroup and to try again, said Greg Harris, president and CEO of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame who moderated a virtual event on music and entrepreneurship hosted by the UMass Lowell’s Innovation Hub. It’s about adaptation, and developing the depth to withstand failure.
Last spring, after COVID-19 shut down the campus, education Ph.D. student Sharifa Djurabaeva was feeling isolated. She had finished all of her classes and was starting the long, hard solo work of completing her dissertation.
“I was getting so frustrated just sitting in one room,” she says. “I also wanted to socialize.”