Department of Microbiology at UMass Amherst

World AMR Awareness Week is held between November 18 and 24 each year to highlight the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance, which occurs “when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death” (World Health Organization). Erika Hamilton, Senior Lecturer of Microbiology, has incorporated a curriculum-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) called Tiny Earth in to her Microbiology 312 course, General Microbiology Laboratory.

Derek Lovley was one of twelve UMass Amherst faculty who made the list of the world’s most highly cited researchers. The UMass researchers demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field of research in 2023. The list is generated by the Web of Science database of analytics by provider Clarivate and spans 67 countries or regions and represent a diverse range of research fields in the sciences and social sciences.

Sloan Siegrist and her Latde Diagnostics research team, was one of six campus recipients of the fifth annual Manning/Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) Innovation Awards. The grants advance R&D efforts from UMass faculty-led research groups to develop spin-out/startup companies. Latde Diagnostics is developing accessible, rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing using lateral flow detection of metabolic labeling.

Effective September 1, 2023, Mandy Muller was promoted to the faculty rank of associate professor with tenure.  Wilmore Webley was promoted to the rank of professor and is also the Senior Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion at UMass Amherst.