UConn Today – UConn’s excellence in graduate education is being recognized nationwide, with U.S. News & World Report granting high rankings for 2026 to several online programs for their quality, affordability, and flexibility for distance-learning students.
OPIM
For Second Consecutive Year, UConn OPIM Professor Wins Prestigious Early Career Award
UConn Today – OPIM Professor Jing Peng, a prolific researcher who has also recently developed and taught artificial intelligence courses at the School of Business, has been awarded his second promising young scholar award in three years.
Peng is one of five recipients of the 2025 Information Systems Society’s Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award, which recognizes faculty on the path to making outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.
An All-Nighter, Perseverance Helped UConn Grad Student Win Predictive Modeling Championship
UConn Today – Graduate student Uday Pandey was working so diligently on a model for the 2025 Travelers University Modeling Competition that he actually forgot to go to sleep one night.
“I was working on the model and was so engaged that I didn’t notice the time,’’ he said, laughing. “When I finally looked at the clock it was 5 a.m.!’’
Two Ambitious UConn Grad Students Win Top Prizes in National Insurance Competition Focused on Pet-Care Policies
UConn Today – Two UConn graduate students took home the first-place and runner-up awards in the ACORD Student Challenge, an insurance-industry competition that drew dozens of participants from across the country.
Manasa Ramaka, a graduate student in the Business Analytics and Project Management (BAPM) program, took first place and accepted the $5,000 grand prize. Rutendo Mahanzu, a graduate student enrolled in the Financial and Enterprise Risk Management (FERM) program, shared the runner-up prize with a student from Georgia Tech, and took home a $2,000 award.
Alumna Kenzie Blowers ’25 Works as Allocation Expert at HomeGoods Headquarters
UConn Today – Call it fate, serendipity, or just plain good luck, but alumna Mackenzie “Kenzie’’ Blowers ’25 had a stroke of career fortune during her second year as a UConn student.
Blowers was assigned to the second floor of Belden Hall and her RA was Danielle Harrington ‘24. Harrington had created a poster for students to get to know a bit about her, and she included her experience as an intern at The TJX Companies.
UConn Business Students Place in Top Three at BU Case Competition
UConn Today – A dream team with great chemistry, months of brainstorming, research and practice, and a well-executed presentation helped five UConn Case Club teammates finish in the Top 3 in the prestigious Boston University Questrom 50K Sustainability Case Competition.
Professor: Supply Chain Management Can Strengthen Connecticut’s Vital Manufacturing Sector
UConn Today – Connecticut’s manufacturing sector remains a powerful economic engine, supporting thousands of jobs and driving innovation in aerospace, defense, health care, and beyond.
Last year, the state’s manufacturers generated more than $34 billion in output, approximately 12% of the state’s gross state product. Connecticut is home to more than 4,500 manufacturing companies and more than 153,000 people work in the industry in our state, according to the latest data.
A ‘Blueprint for Mass Cybercrime’
UConn Today – A sweeping and deeply concerning leak of internet user credentials is making headlines around the globe, with cybersecurity analysts confirming that more than 16 billion usernames and passwords have been compromised in what’s being called the largest credential compilation ever discovered online.
Although many of us have been desensitized to data breaches, this appears to be a much more sophisticated concentration of effort and information.
UConn Among First to Offer Experiential Learning in Decentralized Artificial Intelligence
UConn Today – When graduate student Dmitrii Tuzov ’26 MS heard about an opportunity to learn about decentralized AI (deAI) from experts in the field, and potentially create business-enhancing technology, he couldn’t have been more excited.
“My first reaction was, ‘Definitely! That’s what I want to do,’’’ he says. Now in the early stages of the project, he and four other UConn graduate students are learning technical skills, setting goals, and defining the scope of their work. “The deeper I dive, the more I see how big this opportunity is.’’
OPIM Professor Fasheng Xu, a ‘Forward-Thinking’ Scholar, Wins Early Career Award
UConn Today – Fasheng Xu, a professor of Operations and Information Management (OPIM), has been awarded the 2025 Chelliah Sriskandarajah Early Career Research Accomplishments Award, a global honor bestowed on just one scholar annually.
The award, presented at the Production & Operations Management Society’s (POMS) annual conference in Atlanta last weekend, recognizes exceptional research contributions by a scholar who completed his or her doctorate in the last six years.