2024

Alicia Timme-Laragy, PhD
  • IALS | M2M 

Alicia Timme-Laragy Offers Expertise to National Academies Committee on Role of Seafood in Child Development

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).

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Core Summer Internship Program
  • IALS | Core Facilities 

Applications Are Now Open for the 2024 Core Summer Internship Program

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). 

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Jun Yao - Graphene Mesh
  • CPHM 

CPHM’s Jun Yao and Team Create Bioelectronic Mesh Capable of Growing With Cardiac Tissues for Comprehensive Heart Monitoring

The new device is built of two critical components, explains lead author Hongyan Gao, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UMass Amherst. The first is a three-dimensional cardiac microtissue (CMT), grown in a lab from human stem cells under the guidance of co-author Yubing Sun, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst.

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Dmitry Kireev, PhD
  • IALS | CPHM 

Dmitry Kireev Receives NSF Grant for Sweat-Analyzing Temporary Tattoo Research

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.

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2023 Best Scientists Researchcom
  • IALS | CBD | CPHM | M2M 

Four UMass Amherst Researchers Named in 2023 “Best Scientists in the World” Ranking By Research.com

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.

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CPHM health tech for the people
  • IALS | CPHM 

Health Tech for the People Announces Spring 2024 Graduate Student Fellows

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.

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Hoogkamer and Huber Create Robotic Hip Exoskeleton
  • New Therapies 

Hoogkamer and Huber Create Robotic Hip Exoskeleton To Help Stroke Patients Regain Their Stride

More than 80% of stroke survivors experience walking difficulty, significantly impacting their daily lives, independence, and overall quality of life. Now, new research from UMass Amherst pushes forward the bounds of stroke recovery with a unique robotic hip exoskeleton, designed as a training tool to improve walking function. This invites the possibility of new therapies that are more accessible and easier to translate from practice to daily life compared to current rehabilitation methods.

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Krishna Live Cell Protein Labeling
  • IALS | CBD | CPHM | M2M 

IALS Announces Inaugural Graduate Student Fellows for 2024

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.

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IALS Business Innovation Fellows
  • Venture Development 

IALS Business Innovation Fellows Bridge Science and Business to Catalyze Innovation

Since 2017, the Isenberg School of Management has partnered with IALS to enable on-campus MBA students to augment their business education with real-world experience by collaborating with faculty-founded technology startups. Nearly 90 on-campus MBA students have participated in this industry-like environment to build business plans to support more than 50 startups.

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Elena Pobezinskaya
  • IALS | CBD | IALS Interview Series 

IALS Interview with Elena Pobezinskaya

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.

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Michael Busa, PhD
  • IALS | Core Facilities 

IALS Researchers and REOFTech Receive Funding to Train AI to Support the Relationship Between Alzheimer’s Disease Patients and Their Caregivers

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).

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Craig Martin and Sarah Perry
  • CBD | M2M 

Martin and Perry to Help Launch the Future of RNA Research and Biomedicine

Craig Martin, professor of chemistry, Models to Medicine Center, and Sarah Perry, associate professor of chemical engineering, Center for Bioactive Delivery, recently received support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop an innovative approach toward efficiently, reliably and cost effectively synthesizing novel strands of specialty “long RNA.” Future genetic research into everything from basic cell biology to advanced therapeutics depends in part on having just the sort of complex, modified RNA that Martin and Perry will be working to make widely available.

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Myrias Optics, Founded by James Watkins
  • Venture Development 

Myrias Optics, Founded by James Watkins, Secures $3 Million Seed Investment Round to Deploy New Class of Optics

Myrias Optics, built on research developed by the Watkins Group at UMass Amherst, announced that it has secured a $3 million seed investment led by Asia Optical Inc. Myrias, an emerging developer of all-inorganic printed meta-optics, will use the funding to meet growing customer demand and interest in the company’s structure, materials and process technology platform. 

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Jeanne Hardy and Jasna Fejzo
  • IALS | M2M | Core Facilities 

NMR Core Facility Receives $4.4 Million from MLSC for Advanced Atomic Resolution Instrument

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.

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NSF Accelerating Research Translation (ART)
  • IALS | Venture Development 

NSF Accelerating Research Translation Award Brings New Resources to Campus Innovators

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. 

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Provost Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, IALS Director Peter Reinhart, NSF Program Director Pradeep Fulay, and Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement Mike Malone
  • IALS 

NSF Program Director Pradeep Fulay Visits UMass Amherst

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.

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Ravi Ranjan, PhD
  • IALS | Core Facilities 

Ravi Ranjan Presents at Advances in Genome Biology and Technology Conference

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. 

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Shipworms
  • IALS 

Researchers Led By UMass Use Genetic Probe Microscopy to Solve 2000-Year-Old Mystery of the Shipworm

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.

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Sarah Perry, PhD
  • CBD | M2M 

Sarah Perry to Receive American Chemical Society Young Investigator Award

Sarah Perry, associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Center for Bioactive Delivery, Models to Medicine Center, has been chosen as one of two national recipients of the 2024 American Chemical Society (ACS) Macro Letters/Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Investigator Award for her contributions to the field of polyelectrolyte self-assembly and the incorporation of proteins into these assemblies.

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