Director of News and Editorial Communications

Tom Breen

Tom Breen has been at UConn since 2012, serving as a news writer, deputy spokesperson, manager for special projects, UConn Today editor, and, as of January 2021, director of news and editorial communications. Prior to UConn, he worked as a reporter for The Associated Press, covering health care, religion, and state government in West Virginia and North Carolina, and before the AP, he worked at newspapers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. He is the author of two books about Christianity and contemporary culture, and has published short fiction in many periodicals and anthologies. A second-generation Husky, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 2000. He is the co-founder of the award-winning UConn 360 podcast and has given presentations on UConn history to community groups throughout Connecticut. He lives in Manchester, is active in volunteer organizations, and recommends that you try the coconut flavor at the Dairy Bar.

Author Archive

Laguna La Brava in Chile, where UConn researcher Pieter Visscher found clues that help explain how early life on Earth used arsenic to survive.

Ancient Microbial Life Used Arsenic to Thrive in a World Without Oxygen

Researchers traveled to a landscape in Chile similar in some ways to Mars to learn how life existed on Earth before oxygen.

October 2, 2020 | Pieter Visscher, University of Connecticut Brendan Paul Burns, University of New South Wales Kimberley L. Gallagher, Quinnipiac University

WFSB-TV

Wells Drying Up Across the State Due to Drought Conditions

September 30, 2020 | Tom Breen

Highway traffic on Interstate 84

Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center Receives 5-year Extension to Improve and Expand Safety Analysis Tool

UConn's Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center has won a grant to continue developing its nationally-lauded highway safety data analysis tool.

September 29, 2020 | Anna Zarra Aldrich '20 (CLAS), Office of the Vice President for Research

Community Impact Research & Discovery
A mother helps her son with school work on a laptop computer.

UConn Researchers Working Toward Equitable At-Home Reading Disability Intervention

UConn researchers are working on solutions for school-age children with reading disabilities, who often don't have access to the resources most effective in addressing those problems.

September 23, 2020 | Anna Zarra Aldrich '20 (CLAS), Office of the Vice President for Research

Research & Discovery
STAT News

Fears About Covid-19 Are Complicating Care for Patients with Sickle Cell

September 17, 2020 | Tom Breen

WNPR

Long Island Sound Bacteria Hospitalizes Five, Officials Note ‘Unusually High’ Case Spike

September 15, 2020 | Tom Breen

President Theodore Roosevelt and conservationist John Muir (to the President's left) in Yosemite Valley, California, 1903

Op-Ed: American Environmentalism’s Racist Roots Have Shaped Global Thinking About Conservation

The racist assumptions underlying early US environmentalism have had far-reaching effects.

September 14, 2020 | Prakash Kashwan, Associate Professor of Political Science

Students, faculty, and staff gathered on the Student Union Mall on the Wednesday following the Sep. 11 terrorist attacks.

Remembering September 11: How UConn Responded

Nineteen years later, the terrible trauma of that day is still fresh.

September 11, 2020 | Tom Breen

Fox 61

UConn Nursing Student Becomes Yale-New Haven Hospital’s First Paraplegic Nurse

September 10, 2020 | Tom Breen

Overweight woman looks out window

Weight Stigma Predicts Emotional Distress and Binge Eating During COVID-19

Young adults who have experienced weight stigma have more distress and maladaptive eating behaviors during the pandemic, regardless of their body size, researchers at UConn's Rudd Center have found.

September 10, 2020 | Kristin Messina, UConn Rudd Center