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‘Suite-est’ Dorm in Decades The University broke ground in April on the $54 million University Suites, the first residence hall to be built on campus in more than two decades. The 148,000square-foot hall will provide 472 students with amenities unheard of a generation ago: larger rooms, suite-style apartments, quiet study rooms, cafés and more inspired architecture and landscaping. Slated to open in 2013, the brick facility will be built around a courtyard that faces the Campus Recreation Center.
Students Report on Weather From Boston Marathon Route Everyone was talking about the weather at the 116th Boston Marathon on April 16—but a group of meteorology students and faculty from UMass Lowell were the experts, providing live weather reports along the route of the 26.2-mile race. “This is the first time the Boston Athletic Association has asked an outside group to do weather monitoring as far as we know, so we’re pretty excited,” says Prof.
Frank Colby of the Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department (EEAS), who headed the team. “Our students were positioned at five locations along the route—at the starting line in Hopkinton, the 10K mark in Framingham, the halfway mark in Wellesley, the 30K mark near ‘Heartbreak Hill’ in Newton and the finish line in Boston,” says Colby.
The team gathered real-time data—temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction as well as local sky and road conditions—and relayed it to the event media center at Boston’s Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel. In previous years, the BAA received weather reports from a vehicle that preceded the race leaders and also utilized data from Logan Airport and Hanscom Field. Temperatures that day rose to 89 degrees, forcing a number of participants— including 2011 champion Geoffrey Mutai—to drop out. It was one of the top-10 hottest days in the history of the Boston Marathon. Some areas were hotter than others. “It was really interesting to see the weather’s variability throughout the race course,” says graduate student Chris Hoyt.
The EEAS Department has proven to be a great springboard for launching the careers of researchers and TV weather forecasters. Many of the big-city TV stations across the country have UMass Lowell gradu-
ates on their weather teams. They include Danielle Niles ’06 at New England Cable News (NECN), Sarah Wroblewski ’05 at Fox 25 News Boston, Barry Burbank ’72 at WBZ-TV and Shiri Spear ’07 at NBC 6 Miami.
ALUMNI STAR IN NEW TV AD The spectacular successes of UMass Lowell alumni— who’ve invented AstroTurf, run Fortune 500 companies, produced Broadway plays and served as ambassadors to other countries—are front and center in a 30-second TV spot now airing on major regional networks. The ad, first in a series of alumni-based spots, features Rich Miner (Android co-founder and Google Ventures partner), Lynne Samuelson (chief scientist of U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research) and Adam Ayan (Grammy-winning sound mastering engineer). View the spot at www.uml.edu/about/TV-spot-Alumni.aspx.
Prof. Frank Colby conducts a dry run with his students. S P R I N G 2 0 1 2 UMASS LOWELL MAGAZINE
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