Top State Economic Development Official Daniel O’Connell to Visit UMass Amherst Monday, Oct. 29

Oct. 26, 2007

Contact:

Ed Blaguszewski 413/545-0444

Campus connections to Springfield, life sciences, clean energy to be discussed

AMHERST, Mass. – Daniel O’Connell, state secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, will visit the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Monday, Oct. 29 to discuss the campus’s connections to Springfield, research and development in the life sciences, and the latest advances in clean energy development and technology.

O’Connell will meet with university administrators and top faculty, tour campus laboratories and meet over lunch with regional mayors and legislative and business leaders. Among the research areas to be reviewed by O’Connell are the wind energy laboratory run by James Manwell; the nanotechnology work conducted by James Watkins and his team; life sciences research under way in the laboratory of Lila Gierasch, and work on bioremediation and microbial fuel cells being done by microbiologist Derek Lovley.

The secretary will conduct a luncheon meeting with regional leaders, economic development officials, legislators and other elected officials and school administrators at the Marriott Center for Hospitality Management on the 11th floor of the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center. The press is invited to meet with O’Connell and other officials at 2 p.m. at the Marriott Center following the luncheon.

In addition, campus officials will present O’Connell with a report they have compiled on the network of connections linking UMass Amherst with the schools, businesses and research enterprises in Springfield. This will include longstanding education and commercial linkages as well as relatively new initiatives such as the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute, which is located in downtown Springfield and is a collaboration between UMass Amherst and Baystate Medical Center.

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