AMHERST, Mass. – Under partly sunny skies, 5,500 students received bachelor’s degrees during today’s Undergraduate Commencement at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A crowd of 20,000 heard commencement speaker and American Express CEO Kenneth I. Chenault advise, that in a world permanently disrupted, graduates may not “find” a job but that “21st century technology makes inventing a job much cheaper and easier.”
Chenault, who also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree at the ceremony, told the graduates, “When you take a risk, expect others to question you, and they
AMHERST, Mass. – Today the National Academy of Sciences announced a three-year, $271,930 grant to chemist Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to develop, test and deploy new, sensitive, reliable and affordable inkjet-printed, nanoparticle-based test strips for detecting disease-causing bacteria in drinking water, with researchers at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan.
AMHERST, Mass. – Leading Bluefin tuna researchers at the universities of Massachusetts and Maine issued a rebuttal to a “factsheet” they say is an “irresponsible distortion of the information available” issued by the Pew Charitable Trusts this week, as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna’s (ICCAT) expert working groups meet in Montréal beginning today to discuss tuna stocks.
AMHERST, Mass. – Reporting this month in Molecular Microbiology, Peter Chien and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe using a combination of biochemistry and mass spectrometry to “trap” scores of new candidate substrates of the protease ClpXP to reveal how protein degradation is critical to cell cycle progression and bacterial development. The new understanding could lead to identifying new antibiotic targets.
AMHERST, Mass. – In the cover story for the journal Genetics this month, neurobiologist Dan Chase and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst describe a new experimental technique they developed that will allow scientists to study the function of individual proteins in individual cell types in a living organism.
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.
AMHERST, Mass. – A University of Massachusetts Amherst 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.
AMHERST, Mass. – Alex Carter, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 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.
AMHERST, Mass. – Hari Balasubramanian of the mechanical and industrial engineering department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst 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.
AMHERST, Mass. – David Mednicoff, assistant professor of public policy and director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, 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.
AMHERST, Mass. – Mathematics professor Andrea R. Nahmod of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been awarded a Simons Foundation Fellowship in Mathematics by the Simons Foundation. 
AMHERST, Mass. – Delegates from around the world will be participating in “The Past for Sale? New Perspectives on the Economic Entanglements of Cultural Heritage,” a conference being hosted May 15-17 by the Center for Heritage and Society at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
AMHERST, Mass. – At the 91st commencement for the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, speakers told graduates they will become stewards of the world through their chosen professions as well as the latest addition to a long standing family of graduates who support each other. The students in six majors received associate of science degrees and bachelor’s degree of science in Bowker Auditorium today.
AMHERST, Mass.– The Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts Amherst conferred more than 1,200 doctoral and master’s degrees this morning at Commencement ceremonies that drew nearly 1,000 graduates, along with family members and friends to the William D. Mullins Memorial Center.