It’s not often one gets to meet a Nobel prize winner. But here’s our very own recent salutatorian, Phillip Fitzgerald ’11, biochemistry and molecular biology, rubbing elbows with Ei-ichi Negishi, who won the chemistry prize last year.

As you might imagine, this meeting was not a complete coincidence. Phillip, who plans to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine this fall, is the second UMBC student in as many years to attend the annual meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany. (Read the full story here.) Perhaps someday he’ll be the first UMBC Nobel winner!

Growing up in rural western Maryland, history alumnus Seth Sawyers ’99 couldn’t possibly have known what was in store for him — or how his world would expand — as a student at UMBC. Now a writing lecturer at UMBC, Sawyers shares some of those initial experiences in an essay appearing in The Morning News:

When I was 18, I left the skinny part of Maryland and woke up in a place paved over with asphalt, girded by concrete, nourished by it. I awoke fascinated by the mechanized hum, disoriented, wide-mouthed before the man-made angularity, the downtown steel visible from the top floor of the college library. I woke up that September in the middle of the great flowering of the American Dream. I woke up in the suburbs.

Read the full story here, and link to additional essays by Sawyers.

UMBC Receives Grant to Operate NASA Center Focused on Space Weather

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) will administer a new NASA research center focused on studying space weather and the impact it can have on human activities.

The Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute (GPHI), operating under a 5-year, $10 million cooperative agreement, will provide support and resources for university researchers to collaborate with scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as they refine efforts to predict the solar activity that ejects charged particles into space. The “weather” created by these events interferes with power grids, telecommunication systems and other activities on Earth, while also threatening spacecraft and creating risks for space travel.

“This agreement offers a great opportunity to continue research that is deepening our understanding of solar and magnetospheric physics,” said Jan Merka, director of the new center. “The main goal is to more reliably predict space weather so we can avoid the impacts on space and Earth activities caused by extreme solar and magnetospheric events.”

The GPHI research portfolio was formerly part of the UMBC-administered Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center (GEST). The cooperative agreement that established GEST in 2000 expired in May, and research now encompassed by GPHI was re-competed separately from the rest of the GEST portfolio. The remainder of GEST is now administered under a new cooperative agreement between NASA and the University Space Research Association.

The research group at GEST that focused on heliophysics has expanded to 16 researchers at GPHI.

UMBC has a long history of working closely with scientists at NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center. In addition to GPHI, UMBC administers the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), which focuses on geosciences and is now in its sixteenth year. The university is also a partner in the Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science and Technology (CRESST), which focuses on astrophysics.

“We are delighted to continue collaborating with NASA in the area of planetary and heliophsyics research as GPHI scientists work to expand our understanding of space weather,” said Geoff Summers, UMBC’s vice president for research. “This ongoing area of research is particularly exciting as it both increases our understanding of the solar system and helps explain the effect of space weather on Earth.”

(6/21/11)

Expectant father, UMBC alumnus and UMBC development office Jordan Hadfield ’07, ’08, shares memories of his father, Ken Hadfield, Jr., in an essay in the Dundalk Patch.

While a student at UMBC, Jordan served as president of the Student Government Association, and also was a founding member of the a cappella group The Mama’s Boys.

Read the full story here.

Former UMBC track and field standout Cleopatra Borel-Brown ’02, interdisciplinary studies, is preparing to compete in the 2011 World Track and Field Championships, to be held in August in Daegu, South Korea.

Borel-Brown, an assistant coach at Morgan State University, has competed in the shot put event at two summer Olympics.

Read the full story here.

Read more about this theatre production’s journey to the Kennedy Center here.

Video by Chris Hartlove.

English alumnus Adam Trice ’04, discusses his “graveyard country rock” band Red Sammy in a new interview with Baltimore City Paper editor Lee Gardner.

Read the full interview here.

After graduating from UMBC, Trice earned his M.F.A. in creative writing and publishing arts from the University of Baltimore. His band, Red Sammy, recently released a third album, A Cheaper Kind of Love Song.

UMBC has named 1994 economics alumnus Bob Mumma the new head coach for baseball. Mumma, who was drafted by the White Sox following his graduation from UMBC, has served as assistant coach to the team for the last 15 seasons. He was inducted into UMBC Athletics’ Hall of Fame in 1997.

Mumma succeeds John Jancuska, who had coached the men since 1978.

Read the full press release here.

Via the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship:

In the spirit of entrepreneurship itself, the Alex. Brown Center is pleased to announce a new minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation this fall. This new minor will not be housed under any one major, allowing any student to declare it and any faculty member to incorporate it in their curriculum. Faculty Fellow Bill LaCourse says the initial spark for the minor was to “infuse entrepreneurship into the university, looking for methodology and pathways that don’t disrupt the system.” He goes on to explain that everyone at UMBC is an entrepreneur – everyone here is in the “business of education,” from learning and teaching to grant writing and research.

Two new entrepreneurship courses will be introduced this fall. Both courses will give students a good entrepreneurial mind set and skill set that will be invaluable to them as they head into their own disciplines. Entrepreneurial Mindset, taught by guest instructor and serial entrepreneur Gib Mason ’95, will give students the tools necessary to apply entrepreneurial thinking to their studies, work and life. Through case studies, texts, projects, magazines and blogs, students will explore what it means to think like an entrepreneur, and how they can establish and leverage an entrepreneurial mindset to achieve career success. Mason says, “I am a very passionate person. My hope is that I can instill in the folks that take the class a passion behind one’s ideas and desires.” He is excited to return to a campus he knows very well and to “unlock the entrepreneurship in all of us.”

Learn more…

“Lift Up,” a new documentary on post-quake Haiti co-directed by Huguens Jean ’12, Ph.D., electrical engineering, and Phillip Knowlton ’03, visual arts, will have its film festival premiere this Sunday, June 5, 5:30 p.m., at the 2011 DC Caribbean Film Festival.

The creators of “Lift Up” also recently announced that the film received the Best Documentary Directing Award at the 2011 Amsterdam Film Festival. The juried festival received entries from over 20 countries this year.

Held at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, MD, the DC Caribbean Film Festival is co-presented with the Caribbean Association of World Bank and IMF Staff (CAI), Caribbean Professional Network (CPN), Institute of Caribbean Studies (ICS) and TransAfrica Forum. “Like” the film on Facebook to access future screening details.