Center for the Promotion Of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW)
The Center for the Promotion of Health in the New England Workplace (CPH-NEW) (PI: Laura Punnett, Sc.D.) conducts research with working people and employers to overcome workplace obstacles to health.
It is a Total Worker Health® (TWH) Center for Excellence, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health since 2006.
TWH calls attention to how “environmental workplace factors can both mitigate and enhance overall worker health.” The program aims to create and disseminate evidence for effective and efficient activities to preserve the health, safety and productivity of the American workforce. CPH-NEW researchers are especially interested in topics such as job stress, musculoskeletal disorders, organization of work, and worker engagement in program design.
Our projects develop and evaluate ways to help a workplace be health-promoting; evaluating the full costs to employers of worker ill health; the feasibility of delivering a TWH program in different types of settings; and how to strengthen system organizational readiness for optimal program adoption and impact. The Center also offers research-based program toolkits and continuing education opportunities directed to employers, workers, health professionals, and union representatives.
Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2)
The Massachusetts Medical Device Development Center (M2D2) is a lifeline for the state’s smaller medical device companies, offering inventors and executives easy, affordable, and coordinated access to world-class researchers and resources at the UMass Lowell and the UMass Medical School campuses of the University of Massachusetts.
Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies (CAPCaT)
The Center for Advancing Point of Care Technologies (CAPCaT) (MPI: Bryan Buchholz, Ph.D. and Dave McManus, M.D.) is a partnership between UMass Medical School and UMass Lowell. The center's mission is to support development and testing of promising late-stage, point-of-care technologies that can be rapidly deployed to enhance the diagnosis, monitoring, management and treatment of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders. The center has an additional interest in projects that incorporate complementary and integrative health approaches. CAPCaT is supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Once a year, CAPCaT accepts applications for its pilot grant-funding program for innovative projects focused on developing, adapting or validating technologies that can be rapidly applied to heart, lung, blood or sleep disorders. In addition, we offer access to business and medical feasibility assessments, product development, medical and clinical pathway assistance, connection to additional services (such as laboratory use), incubator space for start-ups and clinical trial support through the product life cycle, SBIR and STTR research partnerships, capital, training and education, including capital discovery.
The Advanced Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Lab
The Advanced Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Lab (PI: Chiara Ghezzi, Ph.D.) The focus of my research liaises with engineering biopolymer structure/function properties with advanced bio-fabrication techniques to develop 3D tissue models, by combining physiological architecture, physical stimuli, and native microstructure to recapitulate healthy and disease tissue states. The impact of these approaches will be to further guide and educate biopolymer material designs towards needs in regenerative medicine.
The Medical Devices and Biomedical Optics Lab
The Medical Devices and Biomedical Optics Lab (PI: Walfre Franco, Ph.D.) - My research initiatives span the design, development, and fabrication of devices, sensors, and computational tools for solving health-related problems.
Pain Research Lab
The Pain Research Lab (PI: Bryan Black, Ph.D.) - Our mission is to develop optical and electrical neural interfaces, along with novel tissue engineering constructs, to better understand and treat chronic pain conditions.
The Biofluids and Inhalation Drug Delivery Lab
Biofluids and Inhalation Drug Delivery Lab (PI: Jinxiang Xi, Ph.D.) – The areas of interest in my lab include respiratory dynamics, characterization of oral and nasal devices and drugs (MDI, nebulizer, nasal sprays), personalized drug delivery, inhalation toxicology, aerosol-based tumor diagnosis, snoring/apnea diagnosis and therapy.
Innovations in Engineering Workforce Development Laboratory
The Innovations in Engineering Workforce Development Laboratory (PI: Yanfen Li, Ph.D.) is an interdisciplinary research group that brings together best practices from engineering, education, psychology, and sociology to further the development of a diverse workforce in engineering and STEM to meet regional and national demands. We investigates evidence based best practices at all stages of the pipeline from high school student recruitment, to undergraduate discipline based pedagogy, to future career advancement in order to improve the undergraduate and graduate learning experience and support their career advancement.