New Ideas in Semantics and Modeling (NISM 2016) will take place in Paris on September 7-8. Paul Portner (Georgetown University, 1992 UMass PhD) is one of the invited speakers. He will talk about verbal and sentential mood, a topic that is related to his forthcoming book with Oxford University Press.  Chris Davis (University of the Ryukyus, 2011 UMass PhD) will give a joint talk (with Eric McCready) arguing that expressives are not presuppositions, with evidence coming from expressive wh-constructions. Yangsook Park will present a paper on obligatory de se elements with a de re Logical Form, which is part of her ongoing dissertation work at UMass.