Shaped by 9/11

In the summer of 2001, Rebecca Adelman was fresh out of college, working a temp job and searching for a sense of direction. When terrorists struck the World Trade Center on September 11, the heart-wrenching footage of the wreckage, victims and first responders affected her deeply. �I felt this sense of urgency,� Adelman says. �I needed to make some decisions about what was going to happen in my life.�

Ten years and one Ph.D. later, Adelman explores imagery of the War on Terror as an assistant professor of media and communication studies at UMBC.

It�s often said that the events of September 11 changed the course of history. To some UMBC faculty, particularly those early in their careers, the attacks also changed the course of their life�s work.

As the UMBC community remembers the 9/11 attacks through campus programming and reflection, it also notes how those events fundamentally impacted UMBC students, faculty and staff across all disciplines and university departments.

Seth D. Messinger, associate professor of anthropology, was a Columbia University Ph.D. student at the time of the attacks. He considered a career studying addiction, until hundreds of veterans began returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq as amputees. �In 2004, my recollection is that there were 60 service members with traumatic limb loss,� says Messinger. �Today that number is over a thousand.�

Messinger specializes in the social reintegration of US military service-members following traumatic injury. His work explores how veterans recovering from limb loss refashion their senses of self and identity during rehabilitation. He asks, �How do you know you�re well when you�ve lost a limb?�

Jeffrey T. Mitchell, clinical professor of emergency health services, focuses on related questions. Namely, how can we support the mental health of first responders in crisis situations? Mitchell has become an authority on psychological first aid and stress management for emergency response personnel. His writing addresses topics ranging from suicide prevention in the military, to mitigating the psychological effects of terrorism, to mental health care in police departments after line-of-duty deaths.

Another UMBC professor developed a process that helps those first responders act more quickly. When letters containing a mysterious white powder showed up at media and government offices in the weeks after September 11, it took authorities about 48 hours to determine if the substance was anthrax. Today, a new process developed by Chris Geddes, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, with colleagues at UMBC�s Institute of Fluorescence, can quickly identify bioagents such as anthrax and salmonella. (see a video of the process here)

The impacts of the 9/11 attacks are not just far-reaching�nationally and globally�they are also deeply felt throughout the UMBC community. The UMBC Office of Student Affairs will host a series of commemoration events on campus to provide students with an opportunity to remember and reflect. For information on these programs, including a service project to benefit U.S. troops and a film screening with facilitated discussion, contact Fritzie Charne-Merriwether.

Read more about the events UMBC has planned to commemorate the anniversary.

(9/6/11)

A team of UMBC researchers has received a four-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop an online infrastructure intended to vastly improve how scientists study land change. The new toolbox aims to allow researchers to rapidly share, compare and synthesize local studies and combine them with global datasets of human and environmental variables. A planned social-networking component would also allow researchers to more easily find one another and collaborate.

The simplest description: “A globally relevant Google scholar,” says Erle C. Ellis, the principal investigator on the grant and associate professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC.

The toolbox, a “Global Collaboration Engine” (GLOBE), will facilitate the growth of land change science, an emerging field of study that is focused on understanding how human use of land affects the terrestrial biosphere, atmosphere and other Earth systems. You can read more about the work here, in Ellis’ own words.

The project is highly interdisciplinary, involving environmental, geographic, computer and information scientists at UMBC. Joining Ellis on the research team as co-principal investigators are UMBC researchers Tim Finin, professor of computer science and electrical engineering; Wayne G. Lutters, associate professor of information systems; Tim Oates, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering; and Penny Rheingans, professor of computer science and electrical engineering and director of the Center for Women and Information Technology.

The University of Pennsylvania Law School reports that Christopher DiPompeo ’04, economics, attained a highly-coveted clerkship in the U.S. Supreme Court for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. He started his clerkship in July.

DiPompeo earned his law degree from UPenn in 2009, having served nearly half of his law school career as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. Read the full article here.

UMBC senior goalkeeper Dan Louisignau was named America East Conference Men’s Soccer Player of the Week for games ending September 4, 2011.

Moreover, Louisignau was selected to TopDrawerSoccer.com’s “College Team of the Week.”

Read more here.

Commercials will tell you to blame your cell phone carrier for problems with reception. They’re partly right, though location also plays a role — a Metro train might not be the best place for a heart-to-heart with a loved one.

But a seldom acknowledged source of bad reception comes from a basic challenge of signal processing. Cell phones convert data from two distinct channels of radio waves into information that can be used and understood. The same signal processing challenge applies for a wide range of devices used in communications, medicine and other fields.

For decades, engineers made various assumptions to simplify the data so they could design devices efficiently. They traded clarity for speed, reducing costs but also leaving us with garbled phone calls and reduced precision for some medical tests.

Now researchers at UMBC are receiving wide recognition for describing a mathematical technique that allows researchers to avoid this tradeoff.

“People have been making simplifying assumptions that don’t make good use of the data,” explains Tülay Adali, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering. “With the framework we developed, researchers don’t have to do that.”

The technique is not technically new. The researcher D.H. Brandwood described similar ideas in a 1983 paper. But Adali describes a “lightbulb” moment in 2006 when she was discussing that paper with Hualiang Li ’08, Ph.D., electrical engineering, who has since become a research assistant professor at UMBC.

The two researchers realized the technique could be applied broadly to process a range of data without having to simplify those assumptions.

“People had missed that one elegant, simple point,” Adali says.

Subsequent research at UMBC linked the technique to work published in the early 20th century by the Austrian mathematician Wilhelm Wirtinger. Adali and Li, along with Mike Novey ’09, Ph.D., computer science, and French researcher Jean-Francois Cardoso, described the technique and developed a framework for applying it to a range of problems in “Complex ICA Using Nonlinear Functions,” a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing in 2008.

The four researchers were honored in May with the 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, presented in Prague at the 2011 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing. Given annually, the award recognizes up to six recent papers with significant impact on the field.

While cell phone reception problems frustrate many consumers on a daily basis, the same challenges present themselves in satellite communications, acoustics, radar, medical imaging and other fields. Adali’s research now focuses on an analysis of medical data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other sources. Researchers often use fMRI to see what is happening in subjects’ brains while they are at rest or performing tasks such as driving or solving problems.

Applying Wirtinger’s techniques to analyze fMRI data, Adali and her colleagues have shown, on average, a 20 percent improvement in sensitivity detecting brain activity. The technique also does a better job highlighting which brain regions are involved in certain tasks, providing insights that can be used to more accurately diagnose mental disorders.

It’s a discovery that translates into shorter, more accurate tests and, for the broad field of signal processing, a more effective and efficient way to use data.

— Anthony Lane

Manil Suri, professor of mathematics, will serve on two panels at the Centre Pompidou library in Paris as part of an event with Indian authors. Suri’s most recent book is “The Age of Shiva.” Suri also teaches in the Asian studies program.

Manil Suri, professor of mathematics, reflects on returning to Mumbai, the Indian city of a million incarnations, in the July 17 issue of Newsweek magazine. Suri also teaches in the Asian studies program.

In his piece, he compared Mumbai to a Hindu goddess. “In some ways, Mumbai is called upon to be even more subsuming than other goddesses. Her population is enormously diverse and regularly at odds on the basis of religion, language, ethnicity, and a host of other schisms. Her visibility attracts benign and malignant elements from inside and outside the country. These factors can result in heinous acts of terror. Yet somehow, Mumbai always manages to recover, no matter how grievous her wounds,” he writes.

The full piece can be read here.

Beginning in October of 2011, UMBC will transition from issuing student refunds via paper checks to E-Refunds (electronic deposit of refunds).

Parent refunds will continue to be issued via paper checks.

Why Direct Deposit?

• Students will have access to refunds much sooner!
• Provides convenient access to refunds, on and off campus, via a debit card.
• Eliminates refund checks lost in the mail.
• Provides efficient customer support, easy online tracking of refunds and immediate text message notifications, as soon as refunds are available.
• Supports the campus “green” initiatives.

How It Will Work

• Students will receive the UMBC Student Refund Card (a MasterCard Debit Card offered by UMBC & Higher One) in the mail, in October.
• They will go online and select to have their student refunds deposited to the Student Refund Card OR provide their own banking information, to have refunds deposited to an existing account of their choosing.

Direct inquiries regarding the new Student Refund Card to Student Business Services at ext. 5-2288.

For more information on the Student Refund Card please visit www.umbc.edu/sbs/erefunds.

Faculty and staff are invited to learn more about the Voices Against Violence Program, as well as the steps one must follow when reporting incidents of sexual assault and relationship violence, Tuesday, September 20, 2-3 p.m., in the Commons room 329.

At the end of the session, you will be able to clearly identify the University’s protocol for responding to and reporting incidents of sexual assault and relationship violence on campus; understand the steps a staff or faculty member must take when reporting such an incident; comprehend the importance of reporting this information, both for the victim as well as the University; clearly recognize the role and members of the Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Team; and be familiar with on and off campus resources for victims of violence.

Jennifer K. Lepus and Alison Rohrbach, University Health Services, will present the session.

To register, visit the Training and Organization Development website at www.umbc.edu/training.

Contact Alison Rohrbach with questions at ext. 5-1599 or arohrbach@umbc.edu.

For more information about the Voices Against Violence Program, visit www.umbc.edu/vav.

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III takes your questions.

Q. UMBC ended its successful Exceptional by Example capital campaign by raising $15 million more than the $100 million target for the effort. What gave you the faith that this target of $100 million could be met? How gratified are you that the goal was surpassed in the end?

— Richard Byrne ’86

A. I am very encouraged by the success of the campaign. We appreciate the support that people have given us. This success also lays the foundation for future campaigns.

What we’ve been doing at UMBC is developing a culture of philanthropy. The reason that we thought we could reach the target was the encouragement that we got from our partners. There are certain names that you hear and recognize on campus: Meyerhoff, Erickson, Shriver, Linehan, Dresher and Shattuck. They are very important names, because they are leaders in our community who believe in UMBC.

The campaign also speaks to the growing support we get from our alumni – and the ways that we are increasing the engagement of our alumni with campus.

Here is the challenge: We’re still in our first 50 years. But we are competing against institutions that are hundreds of years old and which have had much more experience in developing support from various groups, including alumni. We have to be as good as, if not better, than the best.

The success of this campaign reflects the fact that people are willing to support this institution, because of the quality of the enterprise. You know, 20 years ago, we hadn’t even raised $5 million. So to command the respect to raise $100 million not only shows how far we have come, but how far we could go. Because success is never final.

Q. Why has UMBC invested so heavily in Homecoming in recent years? What makes Homecoming matter – to you and to the university?

— Amanda Winters ’11

A. Homecoming gives us a great opportunity to get people back to campus. It gives alumni a chance to remember and to reflect on their experience here. It also gives alumni a chance to see how the university is changing – and to understand that the change that’s happening at UMBC isn’t just physical. Homecoming is a chance for alumni to come and talk with people here. And when they do, they have the chance to see the rise in our prominence as an “up and coming” university. They are amazed, for instance, to find out that UMBC is being compared with places like Stanford University in terms of our opportunities for undergraduates.

Homecoming is also a time for alumni to be really proud of their alma mater. To feel that UMBC really is, indeed, home. And it also provides an opportunity, with our annual Outstanding Alumni of the Year awards, to celebrate the achievements of our alumni.

And UMBC Homecoming also points to something else. Our academic program gets stronger and stronger all the time, but the university also celebrates the fact that out athletic program is getting stronger and stronger as well. One of the highlights of the weekend is the men’s soccer game on Friday night, October 14. It’s a showcase for a team that has become a national powerhouse in soccer. A lot of people don’t know that our men’s soccer team won its conference championship last year and went to the NCAA tournament, where they beat Princeton University in the first round.

Homecoming at UMBC is a chance to celebrate our academic and our athletic successes. That’s Homecoming to me.