Image

The Office of Research and Engagement has announced that three researchers have been named 2026-27 Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Awardees.

The Conti Fellowship recognizes the exceptional quality and significance of a faculty member’s accomplishments in research and creative endeavors at UMass Amherst, as well as their potential for sustained excellence, and the expected impact and timeliness of the project they propose to pursue during the fellowship.

The 2026-2027 Conti Fellows and descriptions of their planned fellowship research can be found below. More information on the program and the current and former Conti Fellows is available on the Research and Engagement website.
 

Duncan Irschick, Biology

Image

During the Conti Fellowship, Duncan Irschick plans to focus on further developing and refining methods for using simple 2D photographs to extrapolate 3D properties of animals including their body volume, mass, and physiological condition. He emphasized that the accurate estimation of an animal’s body mass from such images would be a game changer within the field of conservation biology, as it would enable scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and governments to accurately estimate the health of key animal species within an ecosystem. He plans to use the time to conduct field work in Africa and elsewhere to gather the required data to develop reproducible protocols and algorithms. This aligns with his devotion to developing the tools and knowledge to allow humans to make better decisions about how to conserve biodiversity.

Irschick, a professor of biology, was highly praised by his references, stating that “a hallmark of Duncan’s research is that he has always pushed the field forward using approaches that are innovative and cutting-edge.”

He is a co-inventor of two technologies – Geckskin^TM, a bioinspired superadhesive, and Beastcam^TM, a portable multi-camera technology that can create high-resolution 3D models of living creatures. He is also the co-founder and director of Digital Life, and the former Center for Evolutionary Materials at UMass Amherst. He has published 181 papers on animal function and evolution and has been a co-inventor on several patents. He has received funding from NIH, NSF, and private foundations, and media attention from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNET.org and CNN.
 

Shona Macdonald, Art

Image

As a Conti Fellow, Shona Macdonald’s artwork will be centered on the study of six under-represented Massachusetts woman artists from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, bringing a contemporary perspective to their overlooked contributions. Working within a field historically dominated by men, she will research women landscape painters in the region and will create new works from the vantage points they once used. During the fellowship, she plans to revisit the sites from which they worked and make a new body of work. Macdonald states that “by standing on the same ground as Peterson, Starr, Browne, Macrae, Jones and Baker, and looking out at the same views, my artworks will also serve as testimony to the groundbreaking work of these painters.”

Macdonald’s sustained record of showing her art nationally and internationally has been recognized and awarded in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and beyond. Since joining the faculty in 2006, the professor of art has mounted an extraordinary 29 solo exhibitions, along with numerous two- and three-person shows and over 100 group exhibitions.

External referees acclaimed her work, stating that “Macdonald is an artist of national stature whose artistic work has been primarily based in Massachusetts and has been exhibited widely for more than two decades. Her creative practice exemplifies the intellectual rigor, innovation, and public relevance that define excellence in the arts.” Another referee noted that “what distinguishes Professor Macdonald’s work is her ability to transform the tradition of landscape painting into a site of critical reflection on perception, belonging, environment, and history.”
 

Qiangfei Xia, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Image

Artificial intelligence is now widely used in everyday technologies, but the hardware running these programs hasn’t evolved as quickly as the software. Modern AI systems still rely on outdated computing designs that separate memory and processing, causing inefficiencies in speed and energy use. As AI demands grow, companies compensate by building large, energy-intensive data centers, which increases power consumption and raises environmental and societal concerns. Qiangfei Xia’s research aims to address power consumption in AI hardware and his proposed research contributions will benefit our computationally intense future.

With the Conti fellowship, the Dev and Linda Gupta Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering plans to develop a low power and uniform memristive device to further reduce energy consumption in next generation AI hardware. Xia will first make the behavior of devices more consistent by improving their physical structure, followed by fine electrical tuning to control speed of response. His research will lay a foundation for future generations of energy-efficient, brain-inspired computing hardware. 

References wrote that “Professor Xia is an internationally renowned leader in the development of novel semiconductor devices and nanoelectronics for integrated information processing systems.”