University of Massachusetts Amherst | Research

👏 Congratulations to University of Massachusetts Amherst sociologist Joya Misra on receiving the 2026 Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association! This award recognizes scholarly work that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society. Misra’s research has fundamentally shaped how scholars understand gender, race and class within social policy. Using an intersectional lens, she has documented how welfare state policies produce different outcomes across race and class. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gMFSQ3jB

From rethinking community safety during power outages to designing a robotic guide dog for inclusive tourism, the Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS) at University of Massachusetts Amherst is supporting research that is ambitious, interdisciplinary and committed to the public good. It recently awarded four $15,000 grants to interdisciplinary teams of faculty and student researchers through its annual seed grant competition. Learn more about this year's funded projects: https://bit.ly/4wJDheo

🎉 We're proud to announce that six University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty members received prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awards during the 2025-26 academic year! The CAREER Program supports early career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. The UMass recipients came from the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, UMass Amherst and the Riccio College of Engineering, UMass Amherst. Learn more about their work: https://lnkd.in/gXf4ntrD

Imagine an at-home HIV test that's sensitive enough for early diagnosis comparable to—or exceeding—lab standards. Not only would such a test help patients, but it would be crucial to preventing transmission by those unaware of their status. Chang Liu, an associate professor in the Riccio College of Engineering, UMass Amherst, recently received a two-year, $1.3 million award from The National Institutes of Health to help him advance his proof-of-concept work on such a device toward commercialization. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4f45y9w

Congratulations to Alice Y. Cheung, an internationally renowned plant biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, on being elected as Honorary Academician by Academia Sinica, Taiwan's preeminent national academic institution. This was one of only three such awards given this year, and is among the highest academic honors the country bestows. Cheung studies how plants, and especially those that feed us, reproduce. Her trailblazing work—supported by organizations including the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, among others—has received over 10,000 citations. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4weAIBi

They're heeere. A collaborative team of biologists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT Sea Grant, and the Center for Coastal Studies, has discovered that the invasive Manila clam, Ruditapes philippinarum, has established itself along the northwestern Atlantic coastline — the last place in the northern hemisphere to have remained Manila-clam free. The team’s findings, published in Biological Invasions, document an exceedingly rare moment when an invasive species first takes hold in a new environment and begins to spread. Learn the implications of this finding for the New England coastal ecosystem—both good and bad: https://lnkd.in/etSTq_kU

From the lenses in Galileo’s 16th century telescope to today’s high-precision instruments for gravitational wave detection, glass and scientific research go hand-in-hand. In the College of Natural Sciences at UMass Amherst's Scientific Glassblowing Laboratory, master scientific glassblower Sally Prasch designs and fabricates speciality glass instruments that can't be found in a catalog but which are essential to scientific discovery. Learn more in this video: https://bit.ly/4wCl8iA

Could salmonella, a bacteria responsible for sickening millions of people each year, actually be a secret weapon in the fight against cancer? Neil Forbes, professor in the Riccio College of Engineering, UMass Amherst, is interviewed on the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Discovery Files podcast about his group’s NSF-supported research to engineer these bacteria into molecular treatments for some of the deadliest forms of cancers. Learn more about this innovation that could be transformative for the millions of Americans diagnosed with cancer each year. https://bit.ly/4xb53AN

If you know you were genetically predisposed to developing a disease like Type 2 diabetes, would you live your life differently? See a doctor regularly, try to eat better, or exercise more? If you do get sick, what if knowledge about your genetic make-up could even inform better, more personalized therapies? In the UMass Amherst School of Public Health & Health Sciences, researchers in the Spracklen Lab are combining epidemiology, genetic, and bioinformatic knowledge to understand the drivers of diabetes and inform prevention and treatment strategies. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4wVo2Ps

When the temperature spikes in summer, electrical grids feel the strain as customers crank the AC to beat the heat. But increasingly, not only AC, but also AI, is putting a heavy burden on the grid—with serious implications for humanity and the planet. At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, researchers are developing innovative, holistic solutions to meet the unprecedented demands AI is creating for resources, while harnessing AI's robust capabilities to chart a sustainable energy future.