News & Events

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.

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.

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.

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. The client was referred to the ADDFab facility by a former ADDFab Core Summer Intern who knew Dave and Simon would be up to the task. As a reference, Dave and Simon were given a 20-inch plastic model of the fish to work off of.

Optical Waters, a startup supported by the IALS Venture Development program, was awarded National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research Phase II (NSF SBIR Phase II) funding in order to scale and optimize their manufacturing methods.

On Tuesday, November 7, IALS hosted the third annual UMass Core Facilities Showcase!

The event began with two excellent student presentations. Neeraj Raghuraman, MIE, Srimathveeravalli group, presented on “Irreversible electroporation-assisted decellularization of intestinal tissues for use as a potential graft in bladder reconstruction therapy,” and Gabrielle Villafana, BMB, Rausch group, presented on “Determining the effect of LRP1 inhibitors on tau spread in vivo.” Great work to both students!

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) announced an award of $3.2 million in research infrastructure grants to be shared by two of the UMass Amherst Core Facilities managed by the Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS). The research infrastructure program provides grants for capital projects that support the life sciences ecosystem in Massachusetts by enabling and supporting life sciences research and development in the Commonwealth.

The UMass Amherst Core Facilities awarded funding include:

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. Like other intrauterine devices, the Pearl Pod works by simulating pregnancy. “This IUD gives that signal to the mare, and she believes she is pregnant,” he says.

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.

Researchers at IALS have pushed forward the boundaries of biomedical engineering one hundredfold with a new method for DNA detection with unprecedented sensitivity.

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.

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.

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.

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