The Isenberg School of Management will honor two of its notable alumni, Ben Cherington and Alex Ambroz, at the inaugural Business Leadership Awards Dinner on June 17 at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston.
Cherington, who is executive vice president/general manager of the Boston Red Sox, will be the evening’s principal honoree. Ambroz, an associate with J.P. Morgan Securities, will receive Isenberg’s Young Alumni Award.
A graduate of Isenberg’s Mark H.
The Environmental Health and Safety department has received the Excellence in Safety Award from the Safety Council of Western New England. The award was presented recently at the organization’s 96th annual awards banquet held at Chez Josef in Agawam.
Radhameris A. Gómez, a doctoral candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study transportation engineering in Madrid, Spain during 2013-14. 
The Massachusetts Senate passed a $34 billion dollar state budget on May 23 that earmarks $454.8 million for the five-campus UMass system, $23 million less than the budget proposals presented by Gov. Deval Patrick and approved by the State House of Representatives and advocated by UMass President Robert Caret.
David Mednicoff, assistant professor of public policy and director of Middle Eastern Studies, has been awarded a $1.01 million grant to be principal investigator for interdisciplinary research on legal development and practices in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Alex Carter, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, has received a Fulbright award to study the political and cultural dialogue between the Black Power movement in the U.S. and aboriginal Australian activists in the 1970s.
Chemical engineering researchers Wei Fan, Paul Dauenhauer and colleagues report this week that they’ve discovered a new chemical process to make p-xylene, an important ingredient of common plastics, at 90 percent yield from lignocellulosic biomass, the highest yield achieved to date. Details are in the current issue of Green Chemistry.
Chemical engineer Paul Dauenhauer is one of only 14 scientists worldwide to receive recognition for scientific innovation from the 2013 DuPont Young Professors Program, the company recently announced. He will receive $75,000 over three years to advance progress on his discovery of a process for making renewable plastics and chemicals from biomass.
Hari Balasubramanian of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program to research streamlining the delivery of primary care to patients.