Bringing research to the public

Michael Knodler (pictured above), 2019 PEP Fellow, PEP Leadership Team member, and Director for the UMass Amherst Transportation Center (UMTC), presenting at the state-of-the-art aviation research and training center officially opened at Westover Municipal Airport in Chicopee on April 26, 2022.

We have a role in making the world a better place. Public Engagement Project (PEP) is a community of scholars that promotes research and expertise for the common good across public domains. We support and train scholars in public engagement through our workshops and fellowship program.

Spotlight

Mariana Chilton (Leadership Team) regularly contributes across public engagement mediums from commentary on nutrition policy to organizing food security initiatives and more.

Read about Chilton's work

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In the News

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The PEP community actively engages in today’s debates and conversations about the state of the world to make it a better place.

Shannon Roberts

2024 PEP Fellow

Shannon Roberts’s lab studies eye-tracking movements of drivers’ interactions with vehicle dashboards and safety systems. On her latest research collaboration, similar technology was used to study “how nurses interact with IV smart pumps.” Roberts says the study is “‘a powerful reminder that our best tools, techniques and metrics rarely stay confined to a single discipline.’”

Paul Collins

2015 PEP Fellow

The 1964 ruling of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan protected “the press from being sued for defamation when publishing false information about public officials unless they are aware the statements are false or have reckless disregard for the truth.” Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision to overturn the case would “‘make it much, much easier for public figures to succeed in defamation cases,’” Paul Collins says.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce

2024 PEP Fellow

A recent study found that vaping products may be more effective at helping smokers quit than patches or gums, which Hartmann-Boyce attributes to “the physical ritual of vaping.” “A vape delivers a throat hit, a hand-to-mouth motion, and a visible cloud on the exhale,” providing actual sensory cues that Boyce says ‘feed into the addiction pathway.’ Although vapes aren’t clinically approved yet, “clinicians now have firmer ground to suggest them to patients who need other options.”

In appreciation of their generous support, the UMass Public Engagement Project would like to thank the Office of the Provost, University Relations, and the Colleges of Natural Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Humanities and Fine Arts, Engineering, Public Health and Health Sciences, and Education. The UMass Public Engagement Project also recognizes and appreciates in-kind contributions and collaborations with the Center for Research on Families and the Institute for Social Science Research.