Inside UMassD October 29, 2026

Campus Community Accomplishments

The Kaput Center for Research and Innovation in STEM Education recently held its annual STEM4Girls Day, which brought together more than 160 girls from local school districts for a day of exploration, discovery, and hands-on learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Professor Sheila Macrine (Education) authored "The Embodied Hijack: when Pleistocene minds meet disembodied artificial intelligence" in Frontiers in Psychology. The article discusses the Embodied Hijack Hypothesis, a theoretical framework explaining why humans continually attribute human-like agency, intentions, and understanding to artificial intelligence—even when they know the system has no mind.

Professor Brian Williams (History) authored "Reflecting on an Epic Horse Campaign in the Mountains of Afghanistan". The article reflects on the partnership between U.S. Special Forces, CIA operatives, and Afghan Uzbek horsemen who helped overthrow the Taliban in 2001, highlighting their shared sacrifices, enduring bonds, and the ongoing responsibility to protect Afghan allies who risked their lives alongside American forces.

Professor Kenneth Manning (Political Science) was featured in an article discussing the upcoming midterm elections. Manning forecasts significant Republican losses, citing historical voting trends, while highlighting economic concerns among voters and the potential implications of shifting congressional control.

Assistant Professor Kristopher Jackson (Nursing) and Assistant Professor Melissa Desroches (Nursing) co-authored "Teaching Research Ethics through Historical Controversy: IRB Simulation in Health Professions Education" in Medical Science Educator. The article describes an IRB simulation grounded in Kolb's Experiential Learning and Mezirow's Transformative Learning theories. Working as simulated IRB panels, undergraduate nursing students unknowingly evaluated the 1996 trovafloxacin clinical trial, applying the Declaration of Helsinki and Belmont Report principles.

Assistant Professor Melissa Cronin (Fisheries Oceanography) co-authored "Conflict with industrial fleets undermines the contributions of small-scale fisheries to sustainable development in vulnerable regions" in Nature Food. The article uses a small-scale-industrial fisheries interaction index and applies it to 126 countries using 2 recent global datasets. Conflict vulnerability is highest in countries where SSFs are vital for nutrition, but governance is weak, especially in Africa, Oceania, and Asia.

Assistant Teaching Professor Basil H. Aboul-Enein (Health & Society) recently co-published "Reducing violence against women and girls across Spanish-speaking sovereign states: a scoping review of preventive interventions" in the Journal of Population Research. This scoping review aimed to identify and report on primary, secondary, & tertiary intervention strategies in addressing violence against women and girls and gender-based violence across all Spanish-speaking countries. 

Donna M. and Robert J. Manning Dean of SMAST Kevin Stokesbury received $ 411,224 from NOAA for "Spatiotemporal Variability of Atlantic Sea Scallop (Placopecten magellanicus) Shell Height to Meat Weight Relationships and the Environmental Factors Affecting It". The project will provide fishery resource managers, scientists, and industry with spatially and temporally specific shell height-meat weight (SHMW) relationships and understanding of the environmental factors affecting these relationships.

Associate Professor Geoffrey Cowles (Fisheries Oceanography) and Research Assistant Professor Max Zavell (Fisheries Oceanography) received $221,146 from NOAA for "Interactive Effects of Food Availability on the Temperature Tolerance of Atlantic Sea Scallop Early Life Stages Project". This project will provide fishery managers, scientists, and fishing communities with experimental assessments of larval scallop survival, growth, and physiological and developmental parameters from fertilization to settlement and the juvenile stage under future regional projections for ocean warming and ecologically relevant food concentrations (phytoplankton).