Need to Know

Nominations are now open for the 2024 UB Alumni Achievement Awards. Each year, UB graduates are selected for these prestigious awards based on their outstanding contributions, work and service to the university and to their communities. Awardees will be recognized at a celebratory event during Homecoming 2024 in October.

Jinjun Xiong was early in his career, working on AI technology at IBM, when the company’s Watson computer famously beat the top human players on “Jeopardy!” in 2011.

Gene Morse, SUNY Distinguished Professor, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, has been appointed executive director of the State University of New York-University of the West Indies Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development.

Local and national experts will take a deep dive into what the future of health care looks like at a panel discussion at UB on Nov. 29.

Lee Melvin, who has led UB’s enrollment efforts for the past decade, is retiring from the university at the end of the year.

Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review have again named UB one of the country’s top schools for undergraduate entrepreneurship studies.

UB will no longer mandate health insurance for domestic students and will discontinue the university-sponsored insurance plan offered to them effective next fall.

The Center for 21st Century Music in the Department of Music is presenting two free concerts this month — one that spotlights a featured guest in the music department this semester, and another that pays tribute to a late faculty member.

Journalist Nicholas Thompson and legal scholar Nita Farahany will share the stage for a provocative discussion about artificial intelligence on Nov. 16 as part of UB’s Distinguished Speakers Series.

Members of the UB community can learn about the progress being made to advance diversity, equity, inclusion and justice at the university at a virtual town hall on Nov. 16.