News

Paluca Wins Student Choice Award

Tami Paluca, the Academic Advisor for Undergraduate Studies and Director of Alumni Affairs in the Chemical Engineering Department, is the recipient of a UMass Amherst Residential First-Year Experience Student Choice Award. The award was announced by Danielle Barone, First-Year Experience Specialist in the Residential Learning Communities for the UMass Amherst campus. Paluca was nominated by first-year students for her positive contributions to their experience at UMass Amherst. First-year students were given the opportunity to nominate a professor or instructor who had a profound influence on them during their first semester. Paluca will accept her award at the Academic Engagement Awards Banquet, held at the Marriott Center (top of the Campus Center) on April 21 at 6:30 pm.

Read more »
Alumna Named Woman to Watch by Mass High Tech

Alumna Leslie Jelalian, VP of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at BAE Systems, has been named by Mass High Tech as one of its 20 “Women to Watch” in 2013. Jelalian is a 1988 graduate of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Now in its 10th year, the annual Women to Watch program recognizes women in tech and life sciences who are judged to be leaders in their field and shaping the future of their industries for years to come. According to Mass High Tech, “Leslie Jelalian has become part of BAE’s DNA. The vice president of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance at one of the largest defense companies in the nation has been with the company since college. In fact, it is where she landed her first job.” Read Mass High Tech article on Jelalian: jelalian.html

Read more »
UMass Team’s Black Box for Humans Featured on Yahoo! News

An enterprising team of student innovators from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department was the object of an admiring feature story on Yahoo! News (black-box-html). Though the UMass team did not win any prizes for its Personal Black Box as one of 30 finalists in the 2013 Cornell Cup competition during the first weekend in May, Yahoo! News judged that “The Amherst black box for humans was perhaps the most intriguing idea on display.” The team—comprised of Brett Kaplan, Jack Vorwald, Mike Burns, and Ryan Holmes, with assistance from advisors Professor David Irwin and Professor Tilman Wolf—presented its black box prototype at the annual competition hosted by Cornell University that challenges engineering students to create new technologies of their choosing using embedded Intel chips.

Read more »