Neil Forbes, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and Shradha Khanduja, doctoral candidate and first author, explain their research on using engineered non-toxic Salmonella bacteria to deliver viruses that are safe to humans but potent against liver and pancreatic cancer tumors, both with extremely poor prognosis.
Congratulations to the UMass startups who have been selected as the 2025 Western Massachusetts Health Tech Challenge finalists!
3Daughters, a startup supported by the IALS Venture Development Program, announced closing of the first tranche in excess of $2 million in a Seed Round. This round was led by Thairm Bio, with a group of life science investors, and joined by the Argosy Foundation, Wexford Science and Technology, LLC, UMass Amherst, and other undisclosed investors.
Aclarity, a start-up supported by the IALS Venture Development program, successfully completed its Series A funding round, raising $15.9 million. Aclarity is a water technology company that quickly and safely destroys dangerous contaminants in water at the industrial scale and is the leader in PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances) "forever chemical" destruction.
Advanced Digital Design and Fabrication (ADDFab) Core Facility Director Dave Follette and Intern Simon Brooks, Mechanical Engineering ‘25, were approached by a client about a rather interesting project — they were asked to develop a 29-inch model of a black sea bass.
FORGE, a nonprofit helping innovators achieve commercialization and impact, connected the Advanced Digital Design and Fabrication (ADDFab) core facility with Kimberly Cook, founder of Cooked Up Ideas, to create a device that would keep flags from becoming tangled. Together, Cook and ADDFab have created a star-shaped flag weight that will prevent flags from becoming twisted and torn in the wind.
Alicia Timme-Laragy, professor of environmental health sciences, Models to Medicine Center, whose research focuses on developmental toxicology and environmental pollutants, recently served as an expert consultant for the National Academies Committee for their study, “The Role of Seafood in Child Growth and Development,” for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
We are now accepting applications for the IALS Undergraduate Core Summer Internship (CSI) Program, Summer 2024! The CSI Program aims to provide hands-on experiential research & technical training with the UMass Core Facilities to UMass undergraduate students from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Researchers at IALS have pushed forward the boundaries of biomedical engineering one hundredfold with a new method for DNA detection with unprecedented sensitivity.
All IALS affiliated labs have free access to BioRender Premium, thanks to the support derived from IALS-tagged grants. This is a great resource to help create graphics, enhance visual communications, stand out from others, and improve figures for grants/manuscripts.
Join BioRender in-person for a 201 and Posters Seminar to help streamline your figure design and create visuals that get your science funded, published, and noticed. Register below to secure your spot! Come join us in person for snacks, swag, and free premium access for new users!
Xheme, a specialty materials company based at the UMass Amherst Mount Ida Campus in Newton and affiliated with the UMass Innovation Institute (UMII), has developed a non-toxic programmable powder to make “smarter” plastics and coatings. Xheme Multifunctional Additives (XMAs), which can be customized based on application, boast a range of promising uses, from the next generation of blood storage bags to paint that is more resistant to fungus and fading.
Congratulations to Charlene Coleman, former Core Facilities Accountant, as she begins a new adventure in retirement! Charlene was a beloved member of the IALS Administration Team and will be missed by all who had the pleasure of working with her.
Shanlong Li, post-doctoral researcher in the Jianhan Chen lab and Chen, professor of chemistry and IALS translational cohire, recently announced a new publicly available tool, called iConRNA.
Virtual reality and augmented reality (AR/VR) smart glasses, automobile Lidar, cell phone camera lenses, night vision, terrain mapping, and facial recognition — all are technologies dramatically improved by metalenses. Metalenses are extremely thin optical structures that combine multiple functions of traditional and bulky curved optics into an ultracompact package and are key to enabling a wide range of next-generation products in consumer, health care, aerospace, and defense markets.
Dmitry Kireev and his team have received an award to develop a new type of sweat monitor that can be applied to the skin just like a temporary tattoo and assess the molecules present, such as cortisol. The tattoos will ultimately give individuals better insight into their health and serve as a tool for researchers to discover new early indications of diseases.
Veterinary specialist Carlos Gradil has invented an intrauterine device, called the Pearl Pod, for horses who experience extreme symptoms during their heat cycle. This device is safer than oral hormone administration for human handlers or other devices that pose health risks to the horses.
Decker, professor in food science, has been honored for his research into free radical oxidation of lipids and mechanisms of antioxidants in numerous food systems.
Two startups supported by the IALS Venture Development program, Ernest Pharmaceuticals and Organicin Scientific, have been selected as finalists in the 2024 Lever Western Massachusetts Health Technology Challenge.
Ernest Pharmaceuticals, an IALS startup, team has demonstrated in theory that a protein antigen from a childhood vaccine can be delivered into the cells of a malignant tumor to refocus the body’s immune system against the cancer, effectively halting it and preventing its recurrence. The bacteria-based intracellular delivering (ID) system uses a non-toxic form of Salmonella that releases a drug, in this case a vaccine antigen, after it’s inside a solid-tumor cancer cell.
This symposium will feature the students who participated in the 2025 IALS Translational Graduate Student Assistantship. They will share the steps they have taken towards translation, their pathway from basic research to an innovative product, and reflect on their experience and what they have learned.
IALS Collaboratories occupant florrent announced the successful close of their Pre-Seed fundraising round, which secured $2.1M of catalytic capital to bring their transformative energy storage solution to the world and realize the impact of their mission. These funds will enable florrent to begin outfitting their pilot manufacturing facility, where they will be scaling the production of their next-generation ultracapacitor activated carbon material, as well as invest in critical R&D equipment and build out their team of scientists, engineers, and professionals.
Lili He, professor and head of food science, and Yuzhen Zhang, a postdoctoral researcher, have created a smartphone-based technology to detect bacteria contamination on surfaces such as food processing plants, hospitals and other public environments.
Four UMass Amherst faculty scholars representing a range of disciplines in the natural and health sciences have been recognized nationally and globally in Research.com’s 2023 list of top scientists and also earned high rankings in their specific fields of research. All four of these researchers are affiliated with an IALS Research Center, with all three Centers being represented on this list.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers led by biologists at UMass Amherst recently published the results of a first-of-its-kind study investigating the links between gene expression and brain evolution across 18 primate species.
Co-founder and CEO of NanoVax Therapeutics, Griffin Kane, completed the Massachusetts Biomedical Initiatives (MBI) SPARK 2026 program.
Health Tech for the People (HT4P), funded by IALS/CPHM, is a new thrust focusing on the ethics of technology and accountable, human-centered design, evaluation and translation of health monitoring technologies for the public interest. This research foci incubates interdisciplinary and community-led teams and technologies in the domains of aging care and reproductive health.
Human Magnetic Resonance Center at the Institute for Applied Life Sciences hosted first Translational MR Imaging Workshop.
IALS is excited to announce the inaugural one-year translational Graduate Student Fellows for 2024!
We define translational research as work that aims to inform or to develop product candidates, technologies, and services that deliver benefits to human health and well-being.
Elena Pobezinskaya is a faculty member in the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences and member of the Center for Bioactive Delivery and the Models to Medicine Center.
According to the United States Census, the population of adults over age 65 has spiked in the past decade, reaching more than 55 million people—or over 1 in 6 people in the country—in 2020. The vast majority of older Americans would prefer to stay in their homes as they age, but for many, chronic illness, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias, make this out of reach without substantial support.
The investments, through MLSC’s Research Infrastructure Program, brought a next-generation mass spectrometer for molecular research and a cutting-edge two-photon 3D printing system for precision biofabrication to campus, significantly expanding the university’s research, training and industry collaboration capabilities.
IALS is pleased to share that we will once again be running our Research Image Competition! If you have a great research image and want to win one of our awesome prizes, then this competition is for you. Submissions are open now and will remain open through Wednesday, July 26 - we can’t wait to see your images.
Michael Busa, director for the Center for Human Health and Performance and technology and consulting company, REOFTech, have been awarded $280,000 from Mass AITC to conduct a pilot study to develop a new at-home technology platform to help patients and their caretakers manage Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).
IALS Founding Director Peter Reinhart was recently featured on WWLP‑22 News InFocus, highlighting two major new additions to campus research infrastructure: the Bruker timsTOF fleX Mass Spectrometer in the Mass Spectrometry core facility and the UpNano NanoOne Bio 3D printer in the ADDFab core.
Peter Reinhart, Karen Utgoff, Julian Lustig-Gonzalez, Heather Aiken and Paul-Miki "Ralu" Ibekwe participated in a two and a half day course delivered at MIT.
Welcome to Lindsey Litwak, Seth Glass, Matthew Belden, and S. Sendhil Velan!
Since 2019, the IALS research centers and the Light Microscopy core facility has supported sending trainees to a week-long, intensive light microscopy training. This spring doctoral candidates, Priyanka Bhattacharyya (chemistry, You lab) and Sarah Mirza (veterinary and animal sciences, Mager lab) will attend Quantitative Fluorescence Microscopy 2025 held at the beautiful Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory.
A team of researchers from civil and environmental engineering, led by professors Simos Gerasimidis and Chengbo Ai, have received the inaugural IDEAS | next Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction for pioneering a field-ready cold spray additive manufacturing repair technique.
Have you ever wondered about the differences between trademarks, copyrights, patents, or how Creative Commons licenses work? Join us for an engaging virtual session exploring the fundamentals of intellectual property designed specifically for artists and creatives.
Jiahui (Chris) Wu, assistant professor of chemistry and IALS translational cohire, and Daisy Pham, graduate student and lead author, have developed an innovative three-color method for capturing images of mRNA inside live mammalian cells.
Jianhan Chen, professor of chemistry and IALS translational cohire, and colleagues have revealed new insights into the body’s electrical communication system by studying a key cellular ion channel known as the BK (big potassium) channel.
Jinglei Ping, member of the Center for Personalized Health Monitoring and assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, has been awarded the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institutes of Health.
An app that turns consumer Apple Watches into tools for highly sophisticated sleep stage monitoring was developed by team of researchers led by professor Joyita Dutta at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Yao, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and an IALS translational cohire, and Shuai Fu, graduate student and lead author, announced the creation of an artificial neuron with electrical functions that closely mirror those of biological ones.
Researchers Katherine Boyer and Jane Kent have secured a five-year, $3.4 million NIH grant to study why older adults require more energy to walk as their pace slows down.
T. Leo Liu, assistant professor, mechanical and industrial engineering and IALS, will receive $400,000 over three years to investigate a topic that is exploratory, developmental, proof of concept or high-risk/high-impact.
Lili He, department head and professor of food science, and director of the Raman, IR, and XRF Spectroscopy core facility, received funding to develop a faster, safer and more affordable way to test for arsenic in foods focusing on high-risk foods such as apple juice and rice products, including infant rice cereal.
Lauren Bourke-Layne, PhD
Science & Technology Advisor
10x Genomics
Getting into 3D cell culture? Looking for a better way to grow your organoids and spheroids? Come join us for lunch and to learn about the ClinoStar2 incubator system, with cloud control and hypoxia capabilities. Discover how you can refine your research with Celvivo.
Registration requiredAre you interested in learning more about tissue disaggregation in single-cell research? Come join us for lunch and to learn about the Cytiva VIA Extractor. Discover how you can refine your research with Cytiva.
While we often think of diseases as caused by foreign bodies—bacteria or viruses—there are hundreds of diseases affecting humans that result from errors in cellular production of its proteins. A team of UMass researchers recently leveraged the power of cutting-edge technology to unlock the carbohydrate-based code that governs how certain classes of proteins form themselves into the complex shapes necessary to keep us healthy.
Congratulations to the nine UMass Amherst founders who participated in the Massachusetts Life Science and Innovation Day at The Engine at MIT.
Embr Labs partnered with professor Mike Busa and his team in the Center for Human Health and Performance to develop a breakthrough feature for the Embr Wave wearable device.
The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) is hosting the Convening of the Cores event to highlight scientific equipment and facilities, including those funded through the Center’s competitive grant programs.
Ivan Lee, associate professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences and IALS translational cohire, and Juhyeon Lee, PhD candidate and first author, published their findings in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering which was recognized with a Featured Article Award.
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) allows scientists to view biological molecules at a level of detail that was once unimaginable by sending electrons through samples frozen in ice.
IALS has received more than $4.4 million from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) to acquire an 800 MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometer. This high-field atomic resolution instrument will aid researchers working to develop the next generation of drugs to treat high unmet-need diseases, including various types of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
A team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS), Technology Transfer Office, Office of Research & Engagement and the Office of the Provost has won a $5.5 million Accelerating Research Translation (ART) award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to support and expand faculty and student researchers’ efforts to translate research conducted in campus laboratories into tangible solutions to real-world problems.
Dr. Pradeep Fulay, Program Director for the Directorate for Technology and Partnerships at the National Science Foundation (NSF), came for a site visit to learn what UMass Amherst Accelerating Research Translation (ART) has been doing to accelerate translational research on campus.
Karen Giuliano and Juan Jiménez won honorable mention in the 2025 Team Innovation Award category.
As the Building Bridges team prepares for its eighth annual Showcase Event, the initiative's Worker Artists Group is launching their annual Random Acts of Kindness Through Art (RAK) campaign. This year, the campaign will launch in conjunction with the opening reception of a special projects installation at the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS). This special installation features the creative work of 12 Building Bridges Worker Artists and can be viewed in the Life Science Laboratories.
Paul Katz, professor of biology and member of the Center for Bioactive Delivery (CBD), has been awarded a $3.1 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke to advance knowledge on human brain development by using an unusual subject: the brain of the sea slug.
Speakers: Michael Busa (CH2P), Kathryn Pap, Harvard Med School and Ipsit Vahia, McLean Hospital. Hosted by MassAITC this webinar session will focus on the topic of cognitive assessments and their importance for Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease Related Dementia (AD/ADRD) research.
Rajakumar Nagarajan, an MRI Physicist at hMRC, presented novel findings on the determinants of muscle performance during exercise at the prestigious International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.
Genomics Resource Laboratory Director Ravi Ranjan recently presented at the 2024 Advances in Genome Biology and Technology General Meeting in Orlando, Florida. The presentation, “Streamlined for speed: NEBNext UltraExpress for DNA and RNA library prep,” helped address challenges pertaining to next generation sequencing (NGS) applications.
The Jianhan Chen Research Group has made a major advance toward modeling and understanding how intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) undergo spontaneous phase separation, an important mechanism of subcellular organization that underlies numerous biological functions and human diseases.
A team of researchers, jointly led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Plymouth, along with collaborators from the University of Maine and UMass Chan Medical School, have discovered that a population of symbiotic microbes, living in an overlooked sub-organ of the gut called the “typhlosole,” have the ability to secrete the enzymes needed to digest lignin — the toughest part of wood.
Sankaran “Thai” Thayumanavan, distinguished professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering, and Ryan Lu and Jithu Krishna, graduate students and lead authors, have developed precise methods for shredding or repairing and replacing specific cancer-causing proteins in a malignant cell and could have applications beyond cancer to a wide range of immunological diseases.
Sarah Perry, chemical engineer, is studying a new approach to protein stabilization based on how cells work at body temperature. The research is aimed at boosting the accessibility of vaccines and other therapeutics, especially in developing countries, and extending the reach of temperature-stable proteins to sensing and catalysis applications.
Meghan Lemay, Regional Manager of Alzheimer's Association of Western MA, joins us for a presentation on understanding Alzheimer's disease and dementia, including current treatments and risk factors. The program will also provide tips on how to better interact and communicate with individuals living with dementia. You will also learn about resources available to support families impacted by Alzheimer's disease or dementia.
Schiffman and Perry, both professors in chemical engineering, and Perry is an IALS translational cohire. The $2 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation is in collaboration with researchers from Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Univ. of Buffalo and the Air Force Research Lab.
Sean McBeath, assistant professor in the Riccio College of Engineering and recent master's graduate and first author, Faye Kuszewski, publish their findings in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.
The 2024-2025 cohort of Translational Graduate Student Assistants completed their program with a symposium sharing their path towards translation.
Join Heejae Kim, Associate Director of Manufacturing Sciences and Technology at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, for an in-depth conversation on how early manufacturing strategy can make or break the path from academic discovery to scalable therapy. Drawing from his experience at the intersection of research, process development, and commercial production, learn how adopting a manufacturing mindset early helps academic founders transform their innovations into robust, manufacturable, and investment-ready products.
Rich Carter, Professor of Chemistry and Faculty Lead for Innovation Excellence at Oregon State University
This symposium will feature the students who participated in the 2024 IALS Translational Graduate Student Assistantship. They will share the steps they have taken towards translation, their pathway from basic research to an innovative product, and reflect on their experience and what they have learned.
Twelve campus research teams have been named recipients of the annual Translational Seed Awards. These awards advance applied R&D efforts from UMass-based faculty research groups towards the development of spin-out/startup companies and the out-licensing of UMass intellectual property.
The UMass Amherst ART program hosted Rich G. Carter, Oregon State University and the Promotion and Tenure – Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PTIE) team as part of their collaboration through U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Accelerating Research Translation (ART) award.
IALS had the pleasure of hosting Satoko Ishigaki, Keita Suzuki, Hiroki Masumo, and Taena Uemura of Hokkaido University for a tour of the Core Facilities led by directors James Chambers and David Follette, through the H.U.-UMass Two-Way Professional (Technical) Staff Development Program.
Wei, extension associate professor of veterinary and animal sciences, director of Animal Models core, and a translational co-hire in IALS, is one of eight recipients to receive this multidisciplinary award.