The Daily Hampshire Gazette has published an article about the $6,141,551 grant received by the UMass Transportation Center (UMTC) in the College of Engineering from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT). The large grant will support UMTC’s project to combine and run the state’s Local Technical Assistance Program, the Transportation Training Institute, and the Cooperative Research Program as one unit. The funding runs from...

The UMass Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory (MIRSL) is participating in the 2016 Verification of the Origin of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX), specifically in the Southeast (VORTEX-SE) region, sponsored by NOAA's National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). During March and April 2016, MIRSL is deploying two mobile radar systems to northern Alabama to study the environment leading up to tornadoes and the severe weather outbreaks that can directly produce tornadoes. MIRSL is partnering with the Purdue University Department of Earth Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences in this...

Officials in Ellis County, Texas, are crediting the recently installed radar system created by our Center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) with being at least partially responsible for saving lives and greatly reducing injuries during the very dangerous tornado that touched down in the Ellis County town of Midlothian, south of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, during the December 26 Tornado outbreak.

As Ellis County Judge Carol Bush said at a press conference immediately following the tornado, “With the CASA radar system in the Midlothian area, it gives a...