News

Congratulations to Reika Katsumata for the CNS Internal Service Award. 

Some words from Reika, "I am honored to receive the CNS Internal Service Award in my role as Graduate Program Director. Much of this work happens behind the scenes, but I focused on “Do less, do well” : streamlining the recruitment process to reduce the burden on faculty, students, and staff while maintaining the high quality of incoming students. I believe the strength of these efforts is reflected in the outstanding first-year students you can see across the department. This would not have been possible without the

Congratulations to Bradley Mish for his 1st place finish in the UMass Dash & Dine 5K event, Saturday, April 25th. 

Mish represented Polymer Science & Engineering in the race. His time was an extremely respectable 15:31 minutes and an overall rank of 1st out of over 1200 runners. 

Dash & Dine Official Site

Congratulations to Todd Emrick for the Provost Professor honorific. 

The Provost Professor honor recognizes exceptional achievement in both research or creative activity and teaching. Each year, the Provost Professor Selection Committee selects from a highly competitive group of nominees representing the best of the UMass Amherst faculty. The Provost Professor title is designated for tenure-system faculty who hold the rank of professor and do not hold a named or distinguished professorships.

Emrick Research Group

The article titled, "Hemisilicone (PM2E) Elastomers: Assessing Prepolymer SyntheticStrategies​" was published April 21st, 2026 in ACS, Macromolecules. This paper was co-authored by *Shota Fujii, *Shiqi Liu, *Pei Bian, *Tom McCarthy.​

Mr. Fujii writes: "Hemisilicone (−(SiMe2–O–SiMe2–CH2CH2)ₙ–(PM2E)) emerges as a compelling alternative to conventional PDMS for advanced elastomer applications. This study introduces a controlled anionic ring-opening polymerization (AROP) strategy that enables precise regulation of both α- and ω-chain end functionalities via in situ–generated lithium silanolate

The article titled, "Hemisilicone Elastomers Containing Tactical Defects" was published April 16th, 2026 in ACS, Applied Materials and Interfaces. This paper was co-authored by Shiqi Liu, and Thomas McCarthy*. 

Ms. Liu writes: "Taking advantage of the controlled synthesis of hemisilicone (PM2E) polymer, we developed a versatile defect-free structurally uniform polymer network platform, and established a root-cause analysis framework linking rheology and rubber elasticity to network defects. The study offers a clearer and more experimentally grounded way to understand how specific network

Congratulations to Cristina Thomas ’92 PhD, the 2026 Chemical Engineering recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award!

Thomas is a chemical engineering leader with more than 35 years of experience in research and development across the oil, chemical, and advanced materials industries. Over her career, she has led large-scale innovation initiatives at organizations including IBM and 3M, driving the development and commercialization of new materials and technologies.

She and her husband Scott have been steadfast supporters of UMass Amherst for many years, including establishing an endowed fund to

We are excited to highlight the ongoing collaborative efforts between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Hokkaido University!
👏  A big congrats to PSE faculty Reika, Bryan and Melody on being selected for the 2026 UMass–Hokkaido Joint Seed Funding Awards:

🔬 Reika Katsumata working with Takayuki Nonoyama on:
 “Lignin-Derived Carbon Materials for Sustainable Energy Storage”

🔬 Bryan Coughlin working with Toshifumi Satoh on:
 “Advancing Fundamental Research in Polymers and Soft Materials Towards Applications Through Industrial Sponsorship”

🔬 Melody Morris working with Milena Lama, PhD on:
 

Congratulations to Alyssa Panitch ‘90 BS ChE, ‘97 PhD PSE (Awarded by BME). 

Her research interests include the design and synthesis of glycosaminoglycan-based biomaterials, including hyaluronan-based materials, for drug delivery and the development of biomimetic therapeutics for vascular, cartilage, dermal, neural and fibrotic diseases. She has co-founded four companies based on technologies developed in her laboratory. Several of the compounds have entered human clinical trials. 

She is a member and Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, the American Institute for Medical and Biological

Congratulations to Xin Hu, the 2026 winner of the Three-Minute-Thesis Community Day, for her presentation titled “Microfiber Weaves”. The 3MT challenges students to present their work in three minutes or less, and they rose to the occasion with clarity, passion, and purpose.

This event is a follow-up to the 3MT finals held in March. Community Day brought these exceptional presentations to the Amherst community at UMass Downtown, where audience members voted for the People’s Choice winner. 

Hu LinkedIn