As President Obama prepared for his historic trip to Japan and Vietnam, Constantine Vaporis wrote a powerful op-ed for The Conversation, calling the trip “a key opportunity to showcase the power of remembrance and reconciliation.”

In the article “A trip to be remembered: Obama in Japan and Vietnam,” Vaporis, a professor of history and director of Asian studies, wrote that the president’s trip to Hiroshima presented a significant opportunity given his policies and the United States’ standing in the world.

“Given his history as Nobel Peace Prize winner and as a major advocate for nuclear nonproliferation, the president’s trip should be seen as an act of commemoration for all who died in the Pacific War,” wrote Vaporis. “As the leader of the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons, Obama’s presence and any remarks of remembrance and acknowledgment of the terrible human toll of war will be powerful acts of reconciliation.”

Vaporis provided important context for President Obama’s trip by recounting the history of U.S./Japan differences on the Pacific War, including plans for a joint 50th anniversary commemoration of the war’s end that fell apart.

“Differing national perspectives on the Pacific War will likely persist. Yet, by expressing his remorse at the great loss of life on both sides in the Pacific War and advocating again for the end of nuclear proliferation, President Obama will demonstrate to Japan and our other allies that we too can confront history,” Vaporis explained.

Read the full article, including Vaporis’s thoughts on the president’s Vietnam trip, in The Conversation and the Associated Press.

Image: Constantine Vaporis. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

This story, written by Max Cole, originally appeared here. 

Announcing the latest grants from the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation

We are proud to announce the projects awarded grants in the fall 2015 round of the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation competition. We are truly inspired by the creative ideas we hear each day and are delighted to be able to support more of them through this fund.

IMPLEMENTATION AND RESEARCH GRANTS

Designing and Developing Effective Mobile Applications – A team led by Viviana Cordova, Assistant Professor of Visual Arts, and Nilanjan Banerjee, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, will create a new interdisciplinary project that teaches both designers and developers the life cycle and project management of mobile application development. Working with professional clients, visual arts and computer science students will use teamwork to tackle real-world projects with deadlines, milestones, and budget constraints. Throughout the semester, students from the Advanced Interface Design and Mobile Programming classes will collaborate to apply their design and programming experience to develop smartphone applications for clients.

Proposals for the next round of Innovation Fund grants are due by October 14, 2016. Please considersubmitting an application.

This post originally appeared here. 

Rebecca Boehling and Kate Brown have won a coveted semester-long fellowship from The American Academy in Berlin. Boehling and Brown, both professors in UMBC’s history department, are two of just 23 scholars selected nationwide to receive Berlin Prize Fellowships, which are awarded annually to scholars, writers, composers, and artists from the United States who represent the “highest standards of excellence in their fields.”

During the fall 2016 semester, Rebecca Boehling will use the fellowship in Berlin to make a comparative assessment of how the United States, Great Britain, and France approached the process of undoing Nazi influences in post-World War II German society. She will examine the divergent theories behind denazification and how they were implemented. From 2013-2015, Boehling was director of the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany.

In spring 2017, Kate Brown will continue her research project by writing a history of human survival in the territories surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. She is conducting a large-scale, archival-based history of Chernobyl to explore how citizens negotiated daily life with exposures to radioactive isotopes. Last month, Brown received a prestigious research fellowship from theCarnegie Corporation of New York.

“We look forward to welcoming another group of outstanding fellows to the Academy. By working with their peers and partner institutions in Berlin and presenting their projects to the public, they will actively contribute to the exchange of ideas,” said Academy president Gerhard Casper in a news release announcing the 2016-17 awards.

The fellows were chosen by an independent selection committee and they are encouraged to work with individuals and institutions in The American Academy in Berlin’s established network to forge connections and lasting partnerships.

This is the first time that UMBC professors have received the prestigious fellowship. Read more about Rebecca Boehlingand Kate Brown on the history department website. For more information about The American Academy in Berlin, visit the Academy’s website.

This story originally published on UMBC News.