The calendar may have flipped to 2018, but there are so many great milestones achieved by the UMBC community to recognize from 2017. Here are twelve top highlights:

1. Rhodes Scholar

The past year was history-making for UMBC as Naomi Mburu ’18 was named as the first Rhodes Scholar in school history. A chemical engineering major, Mburu is one of only 32 students from across the nation to achieve this prestigious honor. “Rhodes Scholars come from all over the world, but they are unified by a joint passion to make great change in their communities,” says Mburu.

2. Alumni Accolades

Sean Pang ’09, English, M.A. ’11, education, has been teaching at Rockville High School since 2011. His commitment to his students hasn’t gone unnoticed as he was named Teacher of the Year 2017 by The Washington Post. “UMBC was not only my home for six years during both my undergraduate and graduate pursuits, but I identify with this university as the place I found my calling,” says Pang. Kavita Krishnaswamy ’07, computer science and mathematics, Ph.D. ’18, computer science, was named both a 2017 Microsoft Fellow and recipient of the Google Lime Scholarship. Krishnaswamy’s research focuses on building a teleoperated mobile robotic prototype that seniors and people with disabilities will be able to control by repositioning their arms and legs.

3. Play Ball

2017 continued to be a year of firsts for UMBC, both in the classroom and on the field. For the first time in program history, UMBC men’s baseball team won the America East championship and played in the NCAA tournament. As a team and individually, 2017 was a year of achievement for the Retrievers. Catcher Hunter Dolshun ’17, health administration and policy, was named America East Tournament Most Valuable Player, and several other players were named to the all-tournament team.

4. Making a Case

For being so young, UMBC’s Mock Trial team has quickly made a name for itself in collegiate competition. Having outperformed hundreds of other college and university teams since last September, these exceptional undergraduates traveled to the American Mock Trial Association’s National Championship Tournament in Los Angeles in April. The tournament included a select group of only 48 teams from across the United States.

5. Faculty Achievements

UMBC biologist Erin Green received a five-year, nearly $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to examine how cells respond to environmental signals at the molecular level. Her work could provide clues to understanding processes as broad as how cancers take hold, the causes of autism, and aging. Lee Blaney, associate professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, has received a prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to advance his research on contaminants of emerging concern and their effects on the environment. The grant will support Blaney’s research on pharmaceuticals, hormones, and personal care products in the local Gwynns Falls watershed. Tinoosh Mohsenin, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, and Ting Zhu, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, also received NSF CAREER Awards in 2017. 

6. Taking Home Gold

Cyber Dawgs, UMBC’s Cyber Defense Team, traveled to San Antonio, Texas, in April to dominate the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. The UMBC team defeated nine other regional winners from across the country in a contest to protect their networks from cyber attacks and threats efficiently and effectively to become the winners of the 2017 competition. Cyber Dawgs faculty advisor Charles Nicholas, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, calls the win “my proudest moment at UMBC.”

7. A Growing Partnership

UMBC’s strong partnership with Lakeland Elementary and Middle School has grown steadily over the last five years. The relationship includes professional development for Lakeland teachers; an opportunity for Lakeland students to attend special events; and a math coaching program, where UMBC students travel to Lakeland and work with small groups of students during the school day. The positive results of this program are clearly evidenced by Lakeland’s success on the math portion of the PARCC, Maryland’s state test. A $6 million gift from the George and Betsy Sherman Family Foundation to establish a new Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities will continue to support these efforts at Lakeland Elementary and Middle School.

8. Commitment to Diversity

The UMBC economics department received a $1.3 million grant from the  Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to increase the number of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups who complete highly competitive doctoral programs in economics. This five-year program will support students through scholarships, mentoring, research experiences, and, finally, entry into postgraduate programs specializing in doctoral preparation. UMBC continues to prove its commitment to diversity, having recently been recognized as the nation’s leader in producing African-American undergraduates pursuing M.D.-Ph.D.s, according to new data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

9. A Peek Behind the Curtain

This past November, students took the stage to perform the William Shakespeare classic Twelfth Night. Looking at the polished set and flawless costuming, it’s easy to forget just how much effort goes into creating a production of this magnitude. Students worked with faculty to create the sets from scratch—and to design the costumes that would transport the audience back in time to 19th century Russia.

10. Reaching for the Stars

UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (CNMS) dedicated the Earth and Space Institute (ESI) in September 2017. The research center includes a prototyping lab and operations center. It also acts as a physical home for the interdisciplinary earth and space science UMBC researchers do with support from NASA, NOAA, and other federal agencies, as well as collaborators around the world. “The Earth and Space Institute is our opportunity to reach for new heights,” said CNMS dean, Bill LaCourse.

11. Surgeon General

UMBC alumnus Jerome Adams ’97, M4, biochemistry and molecular biology, was sworn in as U.S. surgeon general on September 5, 2017. The baton was passed by Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams Ph.D. ’06, public policy, who served as acting U.S. surgeon general beginning in late April. Adams’ focus during his tenure as surgeon general includes tackling the country’s growing opioid crisis.

12. High Honors

UMBC was honored by U.S. News as a national leader in innovation and teaching, in addition to being named one of Times Higher Ed‘s top universities in the world for teaching, research, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. The Princeton Review again named UMBC as one of the nation’s top universities in its highly revered The Best 382 Colleges, an undergraduate guide.

To hear the latest UMBC news as it happens in 2018, follow UMBC on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat (@UMBClife), UMBC News, and the UMBC Magazine, and subscribe to the UMBC News “Top Stories of the Week” email.

All photos courtesy of Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC unless otherwise stated.

A discovery by UMBC theoretical physicists could improve the performance of one type of quantum computer enough to stimulate major progress in its development, enabling more practical uses of quantum computers in the future. Classical computers (the kind we use every day, from fitness trackers to desktops) compute by toggling their building blocks, or “bits,” between zero and one, so each bit has only two possible states. But the bits that make up quantum computers, called “qubits,” take advantage of quantum mechanics to access many more possible states, allowing faster and more secure computations.

Quantum computers can be constructed from a range of materials. Those based on superconducting materials have made great strides in recent years, but those based on semiconducting materials lag behind because they are plagued by noise: Even extremely small disturbances in the area surrounding their qubits can render an entire system useless. The new finding from UMBC introduces a set of conditions under which the qubits are not negatively affected by noise. Using those conditions could increase computational precision from a maximum of 90 percent to as high as 99.9 percent, pushing the computers closer to a critical threshold of usability.

The new finding “is attacking the bugaboo of this whole class of possible quantum computers,” says Jason Kestner, assistant professor of physics at UMBC and final author on the new paper in Physical Review B. And yet, Michael Wolfe ’17, physics, and first author on the paper, says the finding “is something we stumbled across almost by accident.”

Kestner didn’t expect anything Earth-shattering when he assigned Wolfe an undergraduate research project cataloging the errors caused by noise in a model of semiconductor-based quantum computers. Wolfe says his results were suspicious when they came back predicting a “sweet spot”—a set of parameters where the qubits weren’t affected by noise. After a careful look, however, they realized the sweet spot was indeed predicted by the model, which had been developed by Fernando Calderon-Vargas, Ph.D. ’16, physics. At that point, “I just told [Michael] to drop everything and to look into this,” Kestner says.

Further examination confirmed Wolfe’s initial results indicating the existence of the sweet spot. Controlling the qubits, which in semiconducting quantum computers are microscopic structures made of pairs of electrons, in a certain way prevented noise from disrupting the computer’s computations, but didn’t interrupt the interactions between qubits that are necessary for the computer to function. Using this sweet spot, a computer could complete anywhere from 10 to 100 times more computations before it accumulated too many errors to continue operating accurately.

That kind of improvement gives semiconductor-based quantum computers a chance at catching up to their superconductor-based peers, which don’t suffer as much from the same challenges associated with noise. That’s why the superconductors are “miles ahead right now,” says Kestner, even though semiconductors come with their own set of advantages. “We’re really hopeful that this ends up being a really useful technique for people with this particular type of qubit.”

Next, it’s up to experimental physicists to test out the sweet spot with physical qubits. Wolfe is making sure he’s one of them. On a Fulbright Fellowship at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, Wolfe says, “I’m convincing our team to search for this mysterious sweet spot, despite initial doubts.” If they find it, semiconducting quantum computers could “get comparable attention from big companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Intel who are investing millions of dollars into other qubit platforms,” says Wolfe, so that the true potential of this quantum computing platform could be explored more fully, potentially even surpassing superconductor-based quantum computers for certain uses.

One of the best aspects of the new finding is that it doesn’t require experimentalists to do anything fundamentally differently—only to choose the parameters wisely for experiments they’re already doing. That should make implementation much easier. Next steps for Kestner’s lab include refining Calderon-Vargas’ model to pinpoint “some of the more nitty gritty details,” says Kestner, which is likely to slightly alter the recommended parameters. “We want to try to make sure we get the details right,” he says. “That’s the next step.”

Image: From left to right, Fernando Calderon-Vargas, Ph.D. ’16, physics; Jason Kestner, assistant professor of physics; and Michael Wolfe ’17, physics, in Kestner’s office. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

On November 16, Brian Carroll and Christiana Sasser ‘18, mechanical engineering, rose at 3:45 a.m. to drive to Lancaster, PA. After a briefing, they, a student from Millersville University, a pilot, and a technician took to the skies in a research airplane. Carroll, a student in the atmospheric physics Ph.D. program, had used detailed weather forecasting to meticulously plan the route to track a cold front passing through the area. Onboard instruments would collect data about how it affected the local air mass all along the way.

The plane chased the cold front across Atlantic City, NJ and then out over the ocean. But weather can be fickle, even with the best-laid plans.

“We never caught the cold front,” recalls Carroll. “We had to decide in the moment how we were going to salvage this and make it a decent research flight.” They did—the group instead focused their data collection on exploring differences in the planetary boundary layer (PBL) over water, the coastline, and farther inland. The PBL is the lowest layer of the atmosphere and can be anywhere from several hundred to 2,000 meters from Earth’s surface.

Carroll and Sasser’s flight was one of 14 student-led flights that occurred as part of a two-week, NSF-funded educational program led by Millersville University with UMBC, Penn State University, and Rutgers University as research partners and the University of Wyoming King Air aircraft and crew as hired support. Far from being a disaster, their flight met the initiative’s goal to provide experiential learning opportunities. It showed the group “how the science gets done in real life,” Carroll says. “It’s not an idealized problem of ‘Here’s this wonderful data set, you need to get something out of it.’ We needed to improvise with what was going on while we were in the air, and we now know about a lot of very real, small issues that we wouldn’t know about otherwise.”

The third UMBC student participant, atmospheric physics graduate student Zhifeng Yang, participated in a second UMBC-led flight with Carroll on November 11. Belay Demoz, director of UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology and professor of physics, and Zhibo Zhang, associate professor of physics, supported the students.

In all, 175 students participated in the program, which was intended to serve as a springboard for students’ research projects while giving them hands-on experience with the instruments and process required for in-flight data collection. The resulting data cache was immense: Instruments on the aircraft measured a few dozen variables every second for 40 total flight hours, in addition to data collected by 50 weather balloons and two ground stations. The instruments included two Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems (one pointing skyward and one toward Earth), sensors to detect gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, and tools to measure temperature, humidity, wind speed, and more.

Demoz, who encouraged his students to get involved with the project, would like to see a similar flight series happen in the future, closer to UMBC. “He’s always pushing students to get as much professional experience as they can,” says Carroll.

Carroll didn’t need the nudge, because “it’s possibly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Even though aircraft are used often, it’s not often oriented in this give-everybody-a-turn sort of way.” Yang agrees. “It’s a very rare opportunity for us to observe the data in flight,” he says, “and now we know how to use a lot of the instruments that we didn’t know before.”

Carroll will use a similar type of aircraft to collect data for his doctoral research, “so knowing their capabilities and how to deal with them is definitely going to be valuable,” he says. Yang’s research seeks to improve weather forecasting models, so “we need observational data to evaluate the model, so we can adjust it to get better simulation results,” he says.

Both of them, however, have goals that go deeper than collecting, analyzing, and modeling data. “After I got introduced to this field, and when I realized that this work is very important for human health,” Yang says, “I wanted to do something to make this field better and better.” As for Carroll, “My long-term goals are to save the world and go into space,” he says. “If I enjoy doing math and science, which I do, then it’s good for me to put those skills to use toward helping the greater good and preserving the planet.”

Banner image: The King Air aircraft, ready to fly. Photos by Zhifeng Yang.

Throughout his career, Philip Graff ’08, mathematics and physics, has conducted research at Cambridge University on a prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, developed an algorithm that enabled experiments confirming the existence of gravitational waves, and worked to improve cybersecurity measures for the U.S. armed forces and Department of Homeland Security.

This fall, the Maryland Science Center named Graff their 2017 Outstanding Young Scientist – Non-academic Track. At a ceremony held November 15, the center honored two scientists and two engineers, including UMBC’s Lee Blaney, associate professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering. Researchers younger than 35 in academia and younger than 40 in other sectors who have distinguished themselves with accomplishments in science and engineering are eligible for the awards.

Graff’s research career began at UMBC in the lab of Markos Georganopoulos, associate professor of physics, who noted his potential early on. “Once I gave Philip a suggestion on how to solve a key issue with the stability of our code, but my suggestion was wrong in a subtle way,” Georganopoulos remembers. “Philip found my error by himself, modified my suggestion, and fixed the code in two days.”

Yet, Graff maintained his humility as a new researcher. “When you’re starting out in research, there’s a lot to learn in the beginning,” he says, “and [Georganopoulos] definitely put in the time to help me work through that,” especially pertaining to scientific writing. Graff and Georganopoulos published a paper with Graff as first author—a rare accomplishment for an undergraduate—and Graff presented the findings at an academic conference. The paper dealt with modeling blazars, a variety of quasar that Graff describes as “bright and energetic beams of radiation coming from black holes at the centers of galaxies.”

“As an undergrad, Philip took on and completed a computational astrophysics project that was practically at the level of a heavy Ph.D. thesis,” shared Georganopoulos. “Many astrophysicists at conferences had a hard time believing that the problem we worked on was solved by an undergraduate student.”

Graff’s research experience at UMBC catapulted him to a summer internship at CalTech’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Lab, a leading center for gravitational wave research. After that, he received the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, a younger version of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, to pursue a Ph.D. at Cambridge University. Nancy Lloyd Miller ’74, political science, M.P.R. ’85, policy sciences, and the recently-retired associate director of academic and pre-professional advising, provided significant support throughout Graff’s application process, he says.

Graff’s work at Cambridge continued to focus on LIGO, this time developing software tools to analyze data from LIGO and beyond. “We were very focused on making sure any new software we developed for data analysis would be generally applicable,” Graff says, “and that other people would be able to take it and use it to solve their problems as well.”

After completing a Ph.D. in physics at Cambridge, Graff continued his LIGO work at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In 2015, he transitioned to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where he is working primarily on projects for the U.S. government.

Graff’s years at UMBC, which also included involvement in student government and Greek life, provided the foundation for his success. “UMBC prepared me for the Gates [Scholarship] to get me to Cambridge, and […] set me on the path that I’m on now,” he shares. “It was one of the important steps on the way.”

The award, Graff says, “is a real honor. I hadn’t expected it. Now I just hope I can continue to live up to it, so that I’m not just an outstanding young scientist, but can continue to do good work in the future.”

A UMBC faculty member and a UMBC alumnus were recognized by the Maryland Science Center for their outstanding work in engineering and science. Lee Blaney, associate professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, was one of two people to receive the 2017 Outstanding Young Engineer Award, and Phillip Graff ’08, physics, was awarded one of two 2017 Outstanding Young Scientist Awards. The ceremony, hosted annually by the Maryland Science Center and the Maryland Academy of Sciences, highlights the work being done by young scientists and engineers in Maryland to advance the fields.

In his work, Blaney develops technology used to recover nutrients, such as phosphorus, from poultry litter. The phosphorus found in poultry litter often saturates the soil on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, making the water that runs off into the Chesapeake Bay a hazard for aquatic life. The technology he is testing in his lab could reduce the amount of phosphorus that ends up in the Chesapeake Bay from manure by about 90 percent.

Earlier this year, Blaney received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to address contaminants of emerging concern, from personal care products and pharmaceuticals, found in the Gwynns Falls watershed.

“Dr. Blaney is a dedicated professor with unique and innovative research ideas. He is a great mentor who encourages his students to think about research problems from multiple angles and asks tough questions to push us to reach for the best solution,” says Mamatha Hopanna, Ph.D. ‘22, environmental engineering, who works in Blaney’s lab.

Blaney is the faculty advisor of the UMBC’s Engineers Without Borders student organization. He has led several trips to Kenya, where he and his students developed a clean-water supply for a village with a population of 500.

Graff currently works as a data scientist and astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore. He has industry experience in many fields including cybersecurity. Previously, he worked at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and helped develop an algorithm for the Laser Interferometry Gravitational Wave Observatory. He has also developed algorithms to protect the nation’s computer networks for the Department of Homeland Security National Cyber Protection System.

Banner image: Lee Blaney. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. Videos courtesy of the Maryland Science Center.

Nine distinguished faculty and alumni shared their stories at GRIT-X, a TED talk-style event during UMBC’s Homecoming. Karl Steiner, UMBC vice president for research, introduced the event, which debuted at last year’s 50th anniversary celebration. “We’ll take you from outer space to inner space,” he said, “from black holes in the universe to a pacemaker for the brain.”

Kafui Dzirasa ’01, chemical engineering, kicked off the program by discussing the latter. Now associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke School of Medicine, Dzirasa has a personal connection to his groundbreaking work. “My family has struggled with mental illness for generations,” he shares. While much mental health research has focused on chemical imbalances in the brain, Dzirasa is using new tools and techniques to detect rhythmic waves of electric pulses in the active brain.

“These rhythms work together in the same way that a conductor can allow all the instruments in a symphony orchestra to work together to produce music,” he says. “These little rhythms allow brain cells to coordinate—to produce motions, and thoughts, and feelings.” He calls these rhythms the “metronomic system” of the brain, and is investigating whether psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar and schizophrenia, are a result of faulty metronomes. Dzirasa’s lab is learning about how these metronomes function through animal studies, and he hopes to one day apply the results to humans.

“In the future that I see, our family members would have lived out their life’s greatest dreams,” he says, “because we won’t simply treat psychiatric disorders by tuning electricity, we will cure them.”

Christine Mallinson, professor of language, literacy, and culture, is looking to cure a different ill: the negative biases teachers may harbor against students who speak differently than they do, even if they’re speaking English. Hearing “coffee” pronounced several different ways as a child sparked Mallinson’s lifelong interest in linguistic diversity, which she says “is a resource, not a deficit.”

Demonstrating the value of diverse linguistic patterns in the classroom shows students they are valued, which makes them likely to value school, Mallinson explains. Overall, educators must “give the students the tools they need to succeed on the tests that we require of them, while sustaining and empowering their diverse voices,” she says, “so that we can have all our students with all their diverse voices right here in the front row of our classes at UMBC.”

Nilanjan Banerjee, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is working on wearable sensors—communication of a very different kind. After the iPhone revolutionized “smart” technology in 2007, he says, “Ten years later, we are at the brink of yet another revolution: the revolution of the next generation of wearables.”

Banerjee explained how these tiny computers can make people with spinal injuries more independent, by allowing them to control appliances or communicate via motions as minute as tongue movements. Ankle straps could track health-related statistics from sleep patterns to cardiac conditions, reducing the strain on clinics facing an ever-increasing demand for services as the population ages. Banerjee also sees applications in driving safety, with sensors able to detect whole-body movements that may indicate distracted, drunk, or drowsy driving.

Banerjee acknowledges that “all of these sensors are useless unless people use them,” so this work requires perspective from an array of disciplines, such as human-centered computing, design, software development, and materials science. And of course, privacy and ethics concerns loom large when devices are collecting this much data. To conclude, Banerjee encouraged audience members to “think about what you want these next-generation wearables to do, and more importantly, think about what you want them not to do.”

The second session began with Sean Pang ’09, English, and M.A. ’11, teaching, who recounted his “fortune of misfortunes,” including culture shock and a language barrier upon his immigration to the U.S. as a small child, and poverty and eviction during his undergraduate studies. When he started teaching in Baltimore City after graduating from UMBC, he was the only Asian person in the room, but his background of challenges helped him connect with students. “When they see me come into the classroom, with a smile on my face, with passion, and dedication, and kindness, they see hope,” he shares, “hope that they can make something better from their lives.”

Pang, who was The Washington Post’s 2017 Teacher of the Year, had three recommendations for audience members. First, he said, be kind. In kindergarten, a classmate gave him a plastic dinosaur that Pang keeps to this day—it was the first act of kindness he remembers from a peer in the U.S. Second, “Try everything, because that will lead you to find your passion.” And once you find it, “use it to give hope, because hope is the greatest gift you can give.”

Gymama Slaughter, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is hoping for a future of implantable medical devices that are safe, environmentally friendly, and powered by the metabolism of our own bodies. Her lab has created thin membranes made of nanocellulose—a flexible, permeable, transparent, biocompatible material produced by genetically engineered bacteria—and tiny attachable circuits that harness the body’s energy. Because the byproduct of the energy production process is simply water, it’s completely safe.

So far, Slaughter’s bio-power devices, only a few millimeters on a side, can light up an LED light. “This gives us hope that eventually, with such a small device, we can develop a power system that harnesses the biochemical energy of glucose within our body,” she says, “to power implantable devices that can monitor disease, diagnose diseases, and one day deliver therapeutics into our body to enable our bodies to heal.”

Kate Brown, professor of history, closed the second session with a talk on radioactive blueberries. Brown traveled to the Chernobyl zone expecting to find sadness and isolation. Instead, she found a booming, revitalized economy based on foraging—blueberries in the summer, cranberries and mushrooms in the fall.

“These women and children pickers have made it happen with human-powered resourcefulness. So economically it’s a good idea,” Brown says. “What about biologically? That’s a trickier question.” Brown explains that berries are extremely efficient at absorbing radiation from the soil, and limits have been set on the radiation level allowed in the EU market. But the berries are simply marked as “wild and organic,” so consumers have no idea they are ingesting radiation. There is very little research on the effects of long-term, low-dose exposure to radiation, but in the area surrounding the berry picking region, birth defects are six times as high as the European average.

“I’m here to tell you that even though we think of Chernobyl as something that’s very far away, it’s being brought to us by the global market that’s been so successful,” Brown says. She recommends paying the pickers the same amount to pick the berries, except then disposing of them as waste in the effort to reduce radiation in the area.. Brown even speculates that tourists might be willing to pay to experience picking radioactive berries. “That might be a better way of solving this problem, than just pretending it’s not happening.”

Next, Jane Turner, director of UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology and professor of physics, took listeners much, much farther away to black holes at the centers of galaxies. The Milky Way contains a black hole 2.6 million times as massive as our Sun, she explained, and “there’s evidence for supermassive black holes at the center of all galaxy nuclei. This is one of the big discoveries of the last decade or so in astronomy.” These black holes are proportional in mass to the mass of the galaxy they’re in, so “these things must grow together,” she says.

Most of the black holes at the centers of galaxies are dark and only detected by their gravitational influence, but a few percent emit an incredible amount of light—these are called “active nuclei.” Turner’s work involves investigating why those few are so bright, by looking at X-rays coming from very close to the black hole “event horizon,” beyond which we cannot make observations. These X-rays can tell scientists about what material is present close to the black hole and how that material is moving. Astrophysicists like Turner have found that black holes are pulling in about one star’s-worth of material per year, which is “enough to feed these active nuclei.”  The black holes are also pushing some of that material back out —enough to affect star formation in the surrounding galaxy. It’s by analyzing results like these, Turner says, that “we’re going to be able to understand the connection between the growth of the black hole and the host galaxy, and from that the growth of structure in the universe on the whole.”

While black holes are helping build galaxies far away, Corey Fleischer ’08, mechanical engineering, is helping people build things in Maryland. As co-founder and general manager of The Foundery, a makerspace in Baltimore, Fleischer’s goal “is to have anybody walk in with a hand sketch on a napkin, for a product or an invention they want to build, and with our tools and classes be able to walk out with a polished, professional-looking prototype.”

Fleischer’s career path has been largely informed by his experience on UMBC’s mini-Baja team, which involved designing and constructing a one-person vehicle and then navigating it around an obstacle course at competitions. “We were learning textbook knowledge in classrooms, but at the same time we were learning firsthand how to build things,” he says. The Foundery provides a space for people with ideas to make them reality, and quickly, by speeding up the design feedback cycle—which involves a lot of failure. “Failure is an empowering way to learn,” Fleischer says. “And makerspaces allow people to fail faster.”

Finally, Doug Hamby, associate professor of dance, and two UMBC dance students, Emily Godfrey ’20 and Samantha Siegel ’18, created an original dance right before the audience’s eyes. Hamby gave them instructions and they absorbed them on the spot, performing turns, rolls, and pliés to the audience’s delight. “When I make a dance,” Hamby shared as he moved fluidly across the stage, “I like to think of it as an investigation of the human body in motion, and in space, and in time.”

After the dancers performed the full sequence to close the program, Hamby tied all the GRIT-X talks together. “That’s one of the ways art is made,” he said, “through serendipity and experimentation.” Replace “art” with language, science, or technology, and the statement holds. UMBC faculty and alumni are creatively exploring the edge of knowledge, and the physical and mental world, from inner to outer space—from black holes to brain pacemakers, from language usage to radioactive fallout, from driver safety to dance—and sharing it with the world.

Watch videos of the complete GRIT-X presentations to learn more.

Banner image: Sean Pang ’09, English, and M.A. ’11, teaching, chats with his wife (right) and President Hrabowski (left) after his presentation. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

On the third floor of the UMBC Physics Building, a glass sign with crisp white lettering announces UMBC’s newest research center: the Earth and Space Institute (ESI).

The institute includes a prototyping lab, operations center, and offices, but it is also much more than a collection of rooms, explains Karl Steiner, UMBC’s vice president for research. The ESI is a physical home for the interdisciplinary earth and space science UMBC researchers do with support from NASA, NOAA, and other federal agencies as well as collaborators around the world. It’s a hub where scientists, engineers, and students will take UMBC’s earth and space research to the next level.

The ESI, administered by UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (CNMS), joins a set of other distinguished UMBC research centers, including the Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST), Goddard Planetary and Heliophysics Institute (GPHI), and Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), all of which are collaborations with the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

CNMS Dean Bill LaCourse believes NASA has served as “a role model and inspirational force,” that has led people to reach for the stars for generations, and he is excited to expand UMBC’s collaborative work with NASA. “The Earth and Space Institute is our opportunity to reach for new heights,” he shares. “To take that chance in the name of science, commitment, passion, and basic human curiosity.”

At a ribbon cutting for the new space, leaders from the three other centers, as well as the director of NASA Goddard, gathered to discuss current projects and ideas for future collaborations. They emphasized the strong and ongoing relationship between UMBC and NASA, which is only expected to deepen with the dedication of the new institute.

“It’s great to be here. The partnership with UMBC is just fantastic,” said NASA Goddard director Christopher Scolese. “All this happens because of the strength of your work, and we should say thank you to all of you,” added UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, speaking to the scientists in the room. “It takes researchers to produce researchers.”

Vanderlei Martins, professor of physics and director of the new institute, describes the ESI as a place “to develop new technologies and new science in earth and space fields.” Martins is currently working on HARP, a CubeSat mission intended to launch within the next year. But he and other UMBC scientists have their eyes on an ever bigger goal: a full-blown NASA mission with their equipment on it. The ESI will make planning and successfully proposing such a mission a real possibility.

Another important aspect of the institute is its role as a platform to boost collaboration across disciplines. “We want to collaborate even more with Goddard on the engineering side, on the science side, on the education side,” says Martins, noting that this could mean pulling in faculty and students at all levels and from a broad range of focus areas.

Jane Turner, director of CSST, shares that “one of our important roles is to connect our graduate and undergraduate students to mentors and project opportunities at Goddard”—a goal the new ESI shares. Lorraine Remer, a JCET research professor, adds that recruiting UMBC students to careers at NASA or other federal agencies via experiences with UMBC collaborative centers could also play a role in diversifying the federal workforce, because of UMBC’s strong track record for supporting the success of students from all backgrounds in STEM fields.

Alan Yeakley, chair of geography and environmental systems, also envisions opportunities for the ESI to utilize the social sciences in its work. “I see geography and environmental science as the connective tissue between the natural sciences and the social sciences,” he shares. Data collected by NOAA satellites, for example, can contribute to public health research on air quality, urbanization, and the effects of climate change.

The ESI is intended to bring the UMBC community together in new ways, just as it came together to support the institute’s creation. “It takes a community—a wide spectrum of people giving support from all kinds of directions—to bring something like this together,” LaCourse says. From the crews that renovated the space to university administrators at the highest level, “There has been cross-campus support… This is a university facility that was a feat to get off the ground, and now it’s here.”

“The Earth and Space Institute leverages our resources and expands our potential,” LaCourse says. Inspired by NASA, “it allows UMBC to dream bigger and reach higher.”

Banner image: Dean LaCourse addresses guests just before they cut a ribbon at the entrance of the new Earth and Space Institute to dedicate the space. From left to right: Felicia Jones Selden ’81, biological sciences, director of applied engineering and technology at NASA Goddard; UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski; Chris Scolese, director of NASA Goddard; Colleen Hartman, director of sciences and exploration at NASA Goddard; Michael Hayden, UMBC professor and chair of physics; Bill LaCourse, dean of UMBC College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences; UMBC Provost Philip Rous (behind Dean LaCourse); Vanderlei Martins, ESI director and UMBC professor of physics; Karl Steiner, UMBC vice president for research.

All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Belay Demoz has been part of UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) since its founding more than 20 years ago, and has been serving as its director since 2014. In his decades as a climate scientist, he’s published countless scientific papers, organized dozens of professional conferences, and has become known as a dedicated mentor committed to fostering a more inclusive culture in meteorology. This year, Demoz adds to his long list of professional accolades a notable new honor: election as a fellow to the prestigious American Meteorological Society (AMS).

Demoz grew up in Eritrea at a time of significant drought, famine, and conflict. As one of few Eritreans to receive the opportunity to earn an undergraduate degree, he became determined to use his education to make a difference for his country. “Hardship is the greatest teacher,” he shares.

After obtaining his bachelor’s degree, Demoz read an article about cloud seeding, a form of human-directed weather modification typically intended to induce rain and snow. Then, he saw an advertisement for a graduate program in physics at University of Nevada-Reno, and a lightbulb went off in his mind. He applied, was accepted, and in 1986, after his family put up their home as collateral to enable his exit, he departed Eritrea for graduate school in the United States.

In his distinguished career, Demoz has led several major scientific projects, such as the International H₂O Experiment (IHOP) in 2002, which collected measurements of water vapor and other particles in Earth’s atmosphere, and documented characteristics of cirrus clouds, wispy high-altitude clouds whose role in climate is still poorly understood. Demoz also continues to lead the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) project, a collaboration between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy that seeks to understand nighttime, warm-weather precipitation over the United States’ Great Plains and similar environments.

Currently, Demoz is involved with a project that collects climate data from a global system of weather balloons known as GRUAN. The only university-run station is in Beltsville, Maryland—a collaboration between Howard University and UMBC. Demoz, who was previously professor and director of graduate studies in the department of physics and astronomy at Howard, continues to collaborate with the university and attends most of the station’s weekly balloon launches.

While Demoz’s research focus has shifted over the years, his dedication to supporting fellow researchers, especially students and junior faculty from underrepresented groups, has never wavered. He especially enjoys the combined educational and research orientation of the center he directs, JCET, which is a collaboration between UMBC and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “JCET is unique because of its educational focus,” Demoz shares. “I’ve always believed in the goal of JCET to connect scientists and students.”

As a scientist who recalls the experience of being one of very few people of color to attend professional conferences in his field, Demoz is also proud to see climate science become increasingly diverse and inclusive. A new collaboration between UMBC, NOAA, Howard, and the City University of New York, funded last fall through NOAA’s Educational Partnership Program with Minority-Serving institutions, will encourage even more supportive connections between students and climate scientists from a wide range of backgrounds. Demoz is excited to see this new partnership take off, and would like to see more multi-agency collaborations that bring students and professional scientists together.

“Belay Demoz epitomizes inclusive excellence in all aspects of his being, demonstrating his exemplary character in his roles as director of JCET, professor of physics, and informal mentor,” shares Bill LaCourse, dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, which administers JCET. “The college and his colleagues are very proud of him, and we are fortunate that he is a member of the UMBC community.”

Image: Belay Demoz at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Today, data of all kinds is generated at a nearly incomprehensible rate, creating endless opportunities for advances in fields from health care to education. Yet plucking meaningful insights out of an overwhelming amount of information can be challenging, leading many researchers to seek out a firmer understanding of data science.

“On one hand, we have tons and tons of information, and on the other hand, we get lost in this information,” explains Zhibo Zhang, associate professor of physics, “so the question is how we can get something meaningful, something useful, from this ocean of data.”

Zhang and three UMBC colleagues will help researchers address this issue head-on with a unique interdisciplinary course for graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty that will launch in spring 2018. The project is funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant, with the expectation that after an initial on-campus test run, the program will be refined and expanded to reach researchers nationwide.

The students in the course will spend at least one-third of their time working on interdisciplinary research projects with colleagues from other fields, under the mentorship of one of the faculty.  “In this program, we are teaching the latest technology to the students, but also letting them do research together,” explains Jianwu Wang, assistant professor of information systems and the principal investigator on the grant.

“Often we use a siloed approach, where each discipline sticks to itself,” says Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor and chair of information systems. Instead, this team’s approach creates opportunities “to leverage the multidisciplinary nature of problem-solving that is required” to address challenging, complex questions in the real world.

The new course will accept students studying atmospheric physics, information systems, and applied mathematics with a focus on high-performance computing. Moving forward, the team hopes to include a wider variety of researchers, with the goal to complement training in their disciplines with stronger computing and complex data analysis skills.

“Data and computing are becoming two more pillars of science in all fields,” explains Wang, who sees strengthening collaborations across disciplines as beneficial to all. “We need each other,” he says. “For us, in information systems, we can get more concrete challenges to solve, and for scientists in other fields, they can learn from the techniques. Together, we can solve the multi-pronged challenges the world is facing today.”

In atmospheric physics, for example, pulling climate trends out of mountains of data from NASA and other sources is important, but it’s impossible to process vast quantities of complex climate data effectively and efficiently with outdated tools and training. “I used to be able to do everything on my laptop,” remembers Zhang, “but now you can’t put your data on a laptop. You have to put it on a huge data server.”

That’s where collaborations with information systems researchers and high-performance computing experts come in. “In traditional analytics, data is loaded in the memory of a computer, but in big data analytics, the data might be much larger than the machine can handle,” explains Gangopadhyay. “So how do you deal with that? New algorithms must be designed.”

The fourth participating faculty member, Matthias Gobbert, professor of mathematics and faculty lead of UMBC’s High-Performance Computing Facility initiative, notes that NSF’s full funding of the grant proposal indicates this area is a priority for the agency, and his collaborators explain why. “There are no such training programs nationwide,” says Wang. As compared to industry, “for scientific research, we have specific challenges.” Gangopadhyay adds, “Big data analytics is arguably one of the most sought-after skill sets in today’s IT world.”

“In a way, we are training a new type of scientist, a new generation of scientists,” Zhang says. These scientists will access and analyze data in new ways, often relying on computing techniques previously unnecessary in their fields. And now that the four colleagues have begun working together, Zhang sees future collaboration opportunities in every new paper he reads. “They’re just popping up everywhere.”

The team acknowledges that there will be hurdles along the way to changing how researchers understand and utilize data science, first and foremost teaching a group of students who are already all highly trained, but in vastly different fields. Zhang shares, “I think the challenge will be fitting it all together.”

Still, the team is excited and optimistic. “This type of work is only possible by people who have an adventurous spirit,” says Gangopadhyay. “Sometimes, taking risks is the only way to do something meaningful. And we are ready for the challenge.”

Check cybertraining.umbc.edu for updates on the program.

Image: Data servers at the climate computing facility at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Photo by Flickr user ep_jhu, used under license CC BY-NC 2.0.

Lipi Mukherjee, Ph.D. student in atmospheric physics at UMBC, has received the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF), which will provide funding to support her research for up to three years. Mukherjee is focused on creating a model to more quickly and precisely detect particles dissolved in large bodies of water that can reduce survival of local aquatic life, cause algal blooms, and modulate global climate.

Satellites in space collect data that describe the light reflected by the ocean’s surface. Current analysis methods allow scientists to use the ocean’s reflectance profile to infer what kind of particles the light interacted with in the water, the water’s depth, and the sea floor’s structure. Although valuable, these methods are slow, require a great deal of computer power, and can’t always distinguish between situations that produce similar data output for different reasons.

Mukherjee’s model will significantly speed up the analysis process by streamlining it to a single equation, while at the same time incorporating additional parameters to improve precision. Specifically, the model will detect the presence of colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM, mostly dead plants) and phytoplankton (tiny photosynthetic organisms), which contribute to dangerous algal blooms. Phytoplankton themselves have highly complex impacts, playing a role in global carbon regulation (by absorbing large volumes of carbon dioxide) while also posing direct threats to marine life by producing toxic compounds.

New in Mukherjee’s model will be the ability to detect water’s turbidity, or choppiness, by measuring polarization of the light returning to the satellites’ sensors. Light in calm water is generally polarized, meaning every light wave is heading in the same direction. In choppy water, the light gets bounced around, changing its polarization. Her model will also take advantage of UV light data for the first time, useful because dissolved organic matter and plankton absorb UV light. The structure of her equation will also make it easier to determine which parameter is responsible for changes in reflectance.

The project requires strong computer programming skills, which Mukherjee has picked up since moving to the United States in 2010, after completing undergraduate and master’s degrees in India in physics, with an electronics concentration. She found a welcoming environment in The Graduate School at UMBC and shares that from the beginning “everyone was very helpful and open.” In particular, Todd Pittman, professor of physics, and Michelle Massey, assistant director of International Education Services, provided a great deal of support as Mukherjee transitioned to UMBC.

Earning the NESSF fellowship is especially noteworthy for a non-U.S. citizen, because preference is given to proposals of equal caliber from American scientists, meaning Mukherjee’s proposal had to go above and beyond the high bar set by proposals from American colleagues. Mukherjee almost didn’t apply for that reason, but her advisor, Pengwang Zhai, assistant professor of physics, encouraged her and provided key support throughout the application process.

Mukherjee shares that she is thankful for the “close-knit community” in the physics department, including faculty and fellow graduate students. Even before moving to the U.S., she says, “I always wanted to do a Ph.D. in physics, and I always dreamed of working for NASA.” Now, she is one step closer.

Image: An algal bloom on the Bering Sea, captured by a NASA satellite and edited by Stuart Rankin. Used under Creative Commons License 2.0.