In a sparsely wooded expanse just off Hilltop Circle, engines rev and dirt flies. Drivers whoop as they steer through trees, clear rocks, traverse ditches, and accelerate down steep hills. You might expect UMBC Police would be handing out tickets for such shenanigans—but this is officially sanctioned fun. It’s all part of the annual Faculty and Staff Drive Day, hosted by UMBC’s Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Baja racing team on Halloween this year.

On the grass, an array of single-seat, off-road vehicles sit parked, showcasing the skills of the UMBC team, whose 20 or so student members pull together to design, build, and race a new car each year. On Drive Day, adventurous UMBC community members and industry sponsors are invited to feel the thrill of hopping behind the wheel. 

The club takes safety seriously. Drivers don a neck restraint, helmet, goggles, and gloves. They are buckled in with a 5-point harness and slip their hands through wrist restraints that will keep their arms inside the vehicle at all times. If things get really hairy, there’s a kill switch that shuts off the engine. 

Plenty of team volunteers are on hand to calm nerves, free stuck vehicles, and fill empty gas tanks. When a suspension arm on one of the cars gets bent in a run-in with a tree, the team grabs tools, lifts up the vehicle, and swaps in a new arm. 

“I want two things: for people to be safe and for them to have fun,” says Shawn Pourifarsi, a junior computer engineering major and co-vice president of the club. 

For two Residential Life staffers who stopped by for the first time, the event was a great success on both counts. “It was terrifyingly fun,” says Marnea Shamblen, an administrative assistant. “What a rush,” agrees her colleague Grace Collins, the residential education and leadership coordinator, still savoring the adrenaline kick. “I give it a 10 out of 10.”

Picture the most advanced technology and certain qualities probably spring to mind: maybe metallic and sleek, with glowing lights and big digital screens. 

The researchers at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) at UMBC, however, have a different adjective they aim for when designing tech: dirt cheap.

For these scientists and engineers, inexpensive doesn’t mean low-quality—it means challenging traditional ways of thinking to produce affordable and reliable products that meet vital needs. Toward this end, a CAST research team recently debuted a new environmental sensor made out of simple balsa wood sheets—the kind you could buy at a craft store for a few dollars. The wood was cut and assembled to make a central well to hold samples and channels for the electrochemical components of the sensor to be inserted. The researchers coated the wood to make it waterproof and stuck it together with wood glue. 

Inexpensive and sustainable

Choosing wood served two purposes: making the sensor low-cost and also environmentally friendly. 

“Sustainability was very important to us,” says Revati Kadolkar, a Ph.D. student in chemical engineering who is working on the project. Kadolkar is advised by professors Govind Rao, who directs CAST, and Douglas Frey in the department of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering (CBEE). “Using wood instead of plastic for the structural skeleton of the sensor was a key step toward that sustainability,” she says.

In collaboration with another UMBC team from the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education led by CBEE professor Claire Welty, the CAST team tested the sensor in the field by measuring nitrate levels in streams in the Gwynns Falls watershed near Baltimore. Nitrate is a pollutant, often linked to agricultural activities, that can cause gut cancer, birth defects and a condition called methemoglobinemia, also known as the blue baby syndrome. Its concentration in tap water in the U.S. is regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act. The accuracy of the sensor’s readings was on par with traditional equipment that cost hundreds of times more money, the researchers say. 

Testing in the lab, the team also found the sensor worked well across a range of conditions, including wide variations in temperature and pH levels, and continued to operate well for more than a year. 

A more comprehensive view of the world

Driving down the cost of technology should drive up its impact. Cheaper sensors could be deployed in higher numbers, yielding a more comprehensive view of the world and spotting potential problems earlier. 

“Let’s say you want to map the whole Chesapeake Bay and know every hour if there is contamination and how it is traveling down the bay,” says Venkatesh Srinivasan, a research associate professor at CAST who also worked on the project. “You can get these details more easily if you have lower-cost sensors.”

Spreading the benefits of science and technology to resource-limited communities has been a driving force behind CAST research for decades. The team has also developed low-cost infant incubators and a suitcase-sized device to make medicine on-demand. 

For now, the sensor operates by analyzing droplets of water added to its central well. Going forward, the team would like to create a sensor that could be submerged in the water and report continuous measurements.  

They are already working with the Maryland company NanoForge Systems to commercialize the new nitrate sensor. 

“Translating science into innovative products that can help people is what really excites me about this work,” Kadolkar says.

When Shaniah Reece ’23, information systems, now a Ph.D. student in computer science at Emory University, was navigating her academic journey at UMBC, there were times she felt like giving up. One evening, around 10 p.m. at night, she was exhausted and considering not submitting an important application. But then Michael Hunt, director of the McNair Scholars Program, with which she was affiliated, gave her a call.

“He said, ‘There are two hours left, and I haven’t seen any indication that you’ve submitted it,’” Reece relates. “I could hear his family and the TV in the background—he was off the clock, at home—but he still made that call. That moment was so impactful because he thought about me, believed in me, and pushed me in a moment when I was too weak to push myself.”

It’s just one example of the many times that Hunt ’06, applied mathematics, Ph.D. ’25, language, literacy, and culture, has shown up for students in just the ways they need. Since 2019, Hunt has directed the federally funded UMBC McNair program with a goal of empowering students from underrepresented segments of society to earn research-based doctoral degrees. Not only does he support the 30 students who enter the full program each year—he’s worked hard to extend opportunities to affiliated students, through a program now called the Retriever Graduate Preparation Network, and to spread the supportive culture of the McNair program across the university as a whole. 

On October 29, Hunt’s contributions will be recognized when he receives the 2025 Outstanding Staff award from UMBC’s Alumni Association Board of Directors. 

Showing up for students

What makes Hunt such an effective mentor? For one thing, he asks students what they need and makes their voices and experiences a central part of his relationship with them. He strives to support them holistically, including emotional, cultural, and academic support. He wants the mentor-mentee relationship to be reciprocal, to honor the value of the mentee’s contributions, and to extend into a wider network of community support. 

The approach, called holistic critical mentoring, has been central to the McNair Scholar’s Program under Hunt’s leadership. Hunt even wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the subject and his interviews of former McNair scholars showed how much they valued the mentoring philosophy.

“I am one of the many UMBC students whose trajectory was forever changed by Dr. Hunt’s mentorship,” says Ting Huang ’21, psychology, the program coordinator for UMBC McNair Scholars Program and a former scholar herself. “I didn’t know my path until I stumbled onto McNair as an undergraduate. Through the program, I conducted research virtually for the first time during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the remote nature of those years, I had never felt more connected to a community. That sense of belonging was cultivated by Dr. Hunt and his team, showing how intentional leadership can overcome even the most isolating circumstances.”

Building community

Hunt says the experience of reaching out to current and former McNair program participants to request their help supplying information for his dissertation research was ultimately very gratifying. He wondered how many would respond, given their busy schedules, but a large number were eager to engage.

“I was genuinely surprised, I didn’t expect that number of responses. But then my mentor pointed out: That’s what happens when you build relationships,” Hunt says.

Hunt says the continued support of program alumni makes him feel like he is making a difference. He’s happy that former participants, some as far away as California, regularly offer to serve as volunteer mentors for current students.

This summer, Hunt had the opportunity to sit in on the dissertation defense of one of the first students to go through the McNair Scholars Program under his watch.

“It’s wonderful to see these alums thriving,” Hunt says. “We are building community. And while we stood on the shoulders of giants, we’re making sure to also be the shoulders that others can stand on next.”

Mark your calendars for the 2025 Alumni Awards on Wednesday, October 29, at 6 p.m., and consider joining the UMBC community at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena to celebrate Michael Hunt and the many remarkable individuals receiving awards. The event will be livestreamed for those unable to join in person. You can learn more at alumni.umbc.edu/alumniawards.

“There’s a little engineer in all of us. Because the truth is you’re iterating all the time. You’re failing, but you’re learning from those awesome failures.” 

Jamie Gurganus ’04, M.S. ’11, Ph.D. ’20, mechanical engineering, doesn’t believe engineers need to be geniuses; she also doesn’t believe failure means it’s the end of the road—so much so that her winding and impressive career over the last twenty years has been a product of taking chances, accepting the small failures, and still marching onwards. 

As an undergraduate, Gurganus pursued an opportunity to teach STEM subjects in local middle schools. The experience sparked her interest in engineering education. Her desire to help everyone see that they, too, could become an engineer has driven her professional life ever since. Students praise her for lifting them up when they felt discouraged and always encouraging them to aim high.

Gurganus’ tireless advocacy for students and continual innovation in teaching will be recognized on October 29, when she will receive the 2025 Outstanding Faculty Award from UMBC’s Alumni Association Board of Directors. 

Building confidence

Gurganus says that as a college student, she never expected to end up where she is today: “I didn’t think I’d ever be faculty or get a Ph.D.”

But when she got a National Science Foundation-funded fellowship in 2002 from the Teaching Enhancement Partnership Program at UMBC’s Shriver Center, she found herself enjoying the STEM classes she was teaching at local schools, especially connecting with students who may have assumed their options in life were limited.

“Many of these students came from precarious situations and weren’t thinking about going to college, much less having a STEM career,” Gurganus remembers of the Title I schools, which means they had high percentages of children from low-income families.

Gurganus taught as part of the partnership program for almost three years, and then proceeded to earn a graduate fellowship both through NSF and later NASA, which in turn cultivated a real passion for teaching and research. 

Gurganus also became a substitute teacher for the Anne Arundel County public school system, focusing on teaching mathematics. “My goals were fostering engineering awareness in these kids and showing them they, too, could do this—and showing them the real-life applications of it all.”

Breaking down the basics of math and engineering got the kids excited. As they got excited, they became more engaged, and as they became more engaged, their grades began to improve significantly. It might not have been the only reason for the successful outcome, but Gurganus believes being a young college student played a hand in it all. The breadth of knowledge and sense of authority was always present but packaged in a way that the students weren’t familiar with.

While in graduate school at UMBC, Gurganus also helped lead professional development for Project Lead The Way, a national nonprofit organization that provides STEM education programs for PreK-12 students, and Engineering is Elementary, which provides engineering teaching materials. In 2012, she became an instructor in mechanical engineering and assistant director of engineering education initiatives in the College of Engineering and Information Technology at UMBC, transitioning to a faculty role in 2014.

Over the years, Guganus’ skills, passions, and love for her students have improved UMBC’s course offerings, reputation, and quality of education. Currently, Gurganus is the associate director for STEMed Research, director for the Center for the Integration for Research, Teaching and Learning in the Graduate School and an assistant teaching professor in the engineering and computing education program. She also serves as a faculty fellow in entrepreneurship for the Alex. Brown Center For Entrepreneurship and Innovation, has mentored around 150 engineering teams under the senior capstone design course (including teaming up with Steve McAlpine to guide the kinetic sculpture team this year), and is an honorary faculty coach for UMBC’s softball team. 

Reaching across borders, she has also built international partnerships in Brazil, Portugal, Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and collaborates widely on STEM education initiatives.

Embracing the journey

If her professional progression comes across as linear and like it unfolded at breakneck speed, Gurganus is here to assure you it did not.

“It’s been an interesting journey,” she says. “I stopped trying to plan my future and just accept (and expect!) the unexpected. I just take it on and see what happens.”

She’s never strayed from that principle, letting the journey—and the experiences it’s unveiled—guide her to new milestones. One of those milestones has been the nurturing of a strong undergraduate teaching fellows network on campus. Remembering her own experiences as a student and then seeing much of the same insecurity in the local middle school students from years ago, Gurganus struck out to find students who could guide other students by relating to the stresses of failure they might feel. 

“I had this mission to foster a community of individuals who never thought of themselves as being ‘smart enough’ to teach others in their own technical field,” Gurganus says. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s how Gurganus expresses she felt as a student herself.

While the teaching fellows program was started nearly 20 years ago as a tool for undergraduate students to assist faculty, and more importantly their peers, in classes, Gurganus has expanded the program in an organic way. 

“These students just became friends and bonded over their common interests or maybe their similar experiences in undergrad,” she says. 

“The teaching fellow program laid a foundation for growth and confidence-building in the formative stages of my career,” says De’Shaunna Scott ’19, computer engineering, who is now a principal RF integration engineer at Northrop Grumman. “I quickly felt overwhelmed and out of my element, but Dr. Gurganus was the guiding light I could always turn to. There were times, I would just show up after work and sit in Prof’s office unloading all the stresses I endured. Without fail and without question, Prof listened to every one of those complaints and provided words of advice that I still use to this day.”

“Prof G profoundly shaped my life and inspired me to become faculty,” adds Shannon Clancy ’19, mechanical engineering, who is now an assistant professor of engineering at Elizabethtown College. “As her teaching fellow and research assistant, I experienced mentorship rooted in care, unwavering support, and high expectations—even during my most uncertain moments. The teaching fellow program was the catalyst to get my Ph.D. I wanted to teach undergraduate students and build a community in my own way like Prof had.”

The fellows’ connection with each other, as well as the students they teach, has fueled the community’s growth. Gurganus begins naming fellows who are thriving post-UMBC, having gone on to receive master’s degrees, Ph.D.s, research fellowships, and more. It’s an obvious point of pride for her as she recalls the impact of all the work being a two-way street—for both her and the students.

“To teach is to engineer,” she adds. “You try it, you make it better, you bring your own spark, to keep improving with purpose and heart.”

By Nikoletta Gjoni ’09

Mark your calendars for the 2025 Alumni Awards on Wednesday, October 29, at 6 p.m., and consider joining the UMBC community at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena to celebrate Jamie Gurganus and the many remarkable individuals receiving awards. The event will be livestreamed for those unable to join in person. You can learn more at alumni.umbc.edu/alumniawards.

In the crisp autumn air, Jackie King laces up her running shoes, her white cane—affectionately named Amigo—tucked nearby. The UMBC alumna is training for the New York City Marathon. The effort underscores a life shaped by triumphs and relationships, rather than her gradual loss of sight.

After years of misdiagnosis, in 2017, King finally learned she had retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition causing progressive vision loss. Today, King is legally blind—and yet she radiates resilience and positivity. “I have chosen this,” she says firmly. “I could choose to be like, ‘Oh man, this sucks,’ every day, all day. But I’ve chosen not to.”

In her early 20s, King built a graphic design business in Baltimore, mixing paints and hand-lettering signs when she could still see clearly. But by age 30, dark flecks were regularly drifting across her field of vision, making night driving and dim spaces like movie theaters challenging. 

As her vision faltered, a recurring dream of a college campus spurred her to enroll at Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) as an art history major, but she shifted to psychology after a professor’s nudge. “I fell in love,” she recalls. “Studying behaviors and people—it seemed so natural.” King arrived at UMBC in 2002 as a Ph.D. student in human services psychology.

The vision to see others’ potential

King’s dissertation evaluated Baltimore’s Sisters Circle mentoring program for middle and high school girls, revealing that unstructured, long-term relationships boosted self-esteem and academic drive—and the benefits often extended to mentees’ families. Earning her Ph.D. in 2009, King joined UMBC as assistant director of the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) program, and today she is the associate director of the Undergraduate Research Training Initiative for Student Enhancement (U-RISE), which replaced MARC. In that role, she applies her research, guiding hundreds of students through graduate school applications and academic and personal challenges.

“I often see so much more in them than they see in themselves,” King says. “Seeing their potential is my gift—and then I get to let them in on the secret.” Sharing her own struggles with students builds trust, modeling that seeking help is a strength. 

Phyllis Robinson, U-RISE director and a professor of biological sciences, praises King as “the linchpin that makes the program run smoothly.” Robinson supports King’s pursuits on and off the road, admiring her “compassionate and caring approach” amid her vision challenges.

Adapting hasn’t been easy for King, though. She hasn’t driven in a decade, and reading text on paper is now impossible. Adopting the cane 18 months ago, she admits, was “the hardest hurdle.” Yet she reframes her loss: “I would not be as compassionate or empathetic without this journey. It could have been otherwise—but the fact that it isn’t? I’m making the best of it.”

A healthy mix of challenge and community

Running anchored King. At age 45, she trained on UMBC’s 1.8-mile loop for her first marathon. She ran the Baltimore race with Team in Training, fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. As running alone grew riskier, she was thrilled when Achilles International, a nonprofit that supports athletes with disabilities, launched a Baltimore chapter in April 2024. Now, 15 to 30 athletes—visually impaired, neurodivergent, amputees, stroke survivors, and more—and their volunteer guides gather each Saturday in Patterson Park to train. 

“I came for the challenge; I’ve stayed for the community,” King says. “No one’s judging your pace—6 minutes or 17. There’s a place for you with Achilles.”

After seeing how much the organization has meant to her mom, King’s daughter, Demerise King, is fundraising for Achilles International as she also trains for NYC this fall. “I’ve watched my mom navigate her vision loss for as long as I can remember,” she shares. “She’s given me a gift by illustrating what it looks like to push past obstacles. Knowing that she is safe while running with the Achilles community gives me a sense of peace.”

King’s forthcoming memoir reflects her reluctant embrace of her condition. “I did not want to be here, but I am,” she says. As King tapers for NYC, she takes a spiritual approach to her situation, affirming that “I’m  preparing for what’s been prepared for me.” As her vision dims, she runs with an illuminated heart, lighting the path for hundreds of UMBC students and others along the way.

Learn more about UMBC’s Ph.D. program in human services psychology.

On a recent Wednesday in September, thousands of people filled the arena of the Retriever Activity Center for the UMBC 2025 Fall Career and Internship Fair. At the booth for pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, Mark Benesch ’08, chemical engineering, eagerly engaged with students, some of whom waited in a line 30-odd people long at times for their chance to ask questions and exchange contact information. 

Benesch has regularly brought his enthusiasm and energy to UMBC career fairs, first as a recruiter for ExxonMobil, where he worked immediately after graduating, and later for the Columbia, Maryland-based chemical company W.R. Grace. But it was after starting at AstraZeneca as the senior director of the capital projects portfolio for the Americas region in January 2023 that Benesch spotted the opportunity to take his connections with the university to the next level. 

AstraZeneca employs thousands of people across the state of Maryland, including at a large scientific campus in Gaithersburg, a center in Frederick that manufactures a diverse class of drugs called biologics, and a newly opened facility in Rockville that will manufacture immunotherapy drugs to treat cancer. The company has announced plans to invest $50 billion in America by 2030 for medicines manufacturing and research and development. 

From the hundreds of UMBC alumni at AstraZeneca, Benesch has recruited and inspired a team of eight dedicated to forging stronger links to their alma mater. They, together with partners in AstraZeneca’s Early Career Programs, have built a strong alumni-driven network linking UMBC students with opportunities at the company. 

“Mark is always thinking about innovative ways to connect,” says Christine Routzahn, the director of the Career Center at UMBC who has worked with Benesch to expand the UMBC-AstraZeneca partnership. “He’s very passionate about UMBC and ensuring our students are successful.”

Benesch’s efforts will be recognized when he receives the 2025 Distinguished Service Alumni Award this October. 

A growing partnership 

The work of the AstraZeneca-UMBC recruiting team has gone far beyond career fairs. Under Benesch’s stewardship, AstraZeneca played a key role at the UMBC-hosted 2024 Mid-Atlantic Student Conference for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. The company sponsored the event and Pran Patel, the vice president of global engineering and real estate at AstraZeneca, served as a keynote speaker. Benesch met monthly with student organizers of the conference, helped lead a popular conference workshop, and mobilized other AstraZeneca employees to volunteer.

“From a five-minute conversation at the career fair, Mark took the initiative to follow up and create real collaboration opportunities,” says An Dang ’24, a student organizer who led the fundraising efforts for the conference.

Benesch and his team have also worked with UMBC to launch new collaborations such as dedicated on-campus information sessions and recruiting events, alumni happy hours, and tours and networking at the AstraZeneca Gaithersburg campus.

The efforts have paid off, as the number of UMBC students applying to summer internships at AstraZeneca has increased by 31 percent in the past year, and the number of students accepting internships has grown from one in summer 2024 to seven in 2025.

On the research side, Benesch attended the College of Engineering and Information Technology’s recent Research Day and is facilitating discussions of ways AstraZeneca may partner with UMBC faculty on joint projects. 

“Mark’s ongoing dedication to serving his alma mater has been nothing short of extraordinary,” says Mariajosé Castellanos, a teaching professor in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering who first met Benesch in her thermodynamics class in 2006. “As a faculty member who has been in the department for 20 years and served as the AIChE UMBC Chapter advisor for the past nine, I can confidently say that I have never seen this level of consistent engagement and support from any other undergraduate alumnus.”

Building community and empowering individuals 

Benesch, who was the first from his family to go to college, credits his UMBC education with empowering him to realize his own potential. 

“At UMBC, I was exposed to so much, and from that I gained confidence. Technical confidence, yes, but also the confidence to navigate the diversity of the world and the opportunities that come from that,” he says. “So I’m inspired to help today’s students receive that same kind of support, and even more so.” 

“Mark is so animated when he’s connecting with people. He listens well and he really brings out the best in students,” says Miriam Friedman, assistant director of alumni professional networks.

On his part, Benesch says the students give him energy. “They are curious and smart and I see their enormous potential,” he says. “To give them opportunities to realize it for themselves is really gratifying.”

Abi Postus, a junior in chemical engineering who interned this summer on Benesch’s AstraZeneca team, says she was impressed by his efforts to connect her to resources and make sure she got the most out of the experience. 

“I remember one piece of advice he told me,” she says, “which was: ‘Don’t be afraid to take up space.’ I found that very helpful because this was my first internship and it was kind of daunting. That made me feel more confident.”

Mark your calendars for the 2025 Alumni Awards on Wednesday, October 29, at 6 p.m., and consider joining the UMBC community at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena to celebrate Mark Benesch and the many remarkable individuals receiving awards. The event will be livestreamed for those unable to join in person. You can learn more at alumni.umbc.edu/alumniawards.

For tech-savvy individuals like Eric Stokan, artificial intelligence, programming languages, and open-source software are powerful tools that can turn once-impossible ideas into reality. Researchers can use human language processing to analyze historical documents or legal texts. Through collaborative platforms, global organizations can collaborate quickly without incurring travel costs. In the social sciences, open-source tools provide students with unique opportunities to work with experts developing projects that address community needs. However, to take full advantage of these revolutionary technologies, these tools often require advanced computing skills or access to expensive software, which can limit their impact and exclude those without the necessary resources or training.

Stokan, director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3), is committed to removing these barriers for faculty and students in computational social science, which uses computers, data, and algorithms to study human behavior and social systems. His research lies at the intersection of urban policy, economic development, and computational social science, with a focus on how local governments make policy decisions and how those decisions impact equity, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. 

The University System of Maryland (USM) William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation has awarded Stokan the Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation to address this gap with his project “Computational Social Science and Generative AI: Scalable, Modular Training for Teaching, Research, and Public Impact.”

The Elkins Professorship is named after Wilson H. Elkins, a former Rhodes Scholar and president of the University of Maryland, College Park from 1954 to 1978. This prestigious award is for faculty within USM who are working on innovative projects focused on the use of generative AI to advance academic transformation, foster improvements in access, affordability, quality of outcomes, and/or stewardship of people’s time, money, and other scarce resources.

“The professorship will allow me, through the Center for Social Science Scholarship, to first assist faculty and students in understanding how to leverage advances in computing and AI to address new research questions and scale their research in ways that were unfathomable during Dr. Elkins tenure,” says Stokan, associate professor of political science, who earned one of three $10,000 awards. He will use the funding to complete Computational Public Administration—his first book written with R, a free programming language used for statistical computing and graphics—about computational social science methods focused on addressing public policy and administration topics, such as climate change and economic development. 

The funding will also support the design and implementation of five hands-on training modules and workshops tailored for faculty, students, and community organizations. Participants will learn to use generative AI large language models (LLM) like ChatGPT and R. The goal is to help participants answer novel and important research questions, develop marketable technical skills, to work more effectively with data, and better communicate the results of their analyses with the broader community.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Elkins Professorship, in honor of the late Wilson H. Elkins, who was a transformational leader, administrator, and educator,” says Stokan. “This award is important to me because it not only provides support but also affirms my commitment to accommodating learners at all levels of experience in computational social sciences, promoting accessibility, equity, and methodological transparency.”

Initial support for the project came from the UMBC’s Faculty Development Center, the AOK Library’s Digital Scholarship Services, iHARP/Data Science Scholars, and the Institute for Public Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The workshops will be offered through CS3 in collaboration with CGC-SCIPE, the UMBC Division of Information Technology, and ScaleS. A lecture series component, which will include external speakers, is being co-sponsored with the Department of English, the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health, and the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communications. 

Register for the fall semester’s workshop series on AI, LLMs, and computational methods.

As a high schooler, Emily Brown ’14, M.S. ’14, computer science, dreamed of a future in STEM. Searching for a community to support her aspirations, she found the Center for Women and Technology at UMBC. Brown became a CWIT Scholar and ended up earning her bachelor’s and her master’s degrees one semester apart. After graduation, she was hired at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. This October, Brown will receive the 2025 UMBC Outstanding Alumna Award. In this Q&A, she shares how her time at UMBC—and the support she found there—helped get her to where she is today.

Q: What brought you to UMBC?

A: Initially, I was looking into other schools, but UMBC kept making its way back to the top of my list because I was looking for schools that explicitly had programs and communities for women in engineering.

Eventually, I applied for the CWIT (Center for Women and Technology) Scholars Program. As I kept coming back to UMBC for tours and meetings, I figured out this was a community that I really wanted to be a part of. At the time, Dr. Penny Rheingans was the director of the CWIT program, and hearing her talk about the program and what it would offer made UMBC one of my top two school choices. The in-state nature of UMBC meant that I would come out of school debt-free, with the kind of support that I wanted as a woman in STEM.

Q: What did you enjoy about the computer science program?  

A: I graduated from my master’s degree in the winter. I have a picture of myself and the four other people who graduated with a computer science master’s that December, and I had taken classes with all of them. At my undergraduate graduation in May, there were nine women who graduated from the computer science program. I knew all nine, which is exactly what I had attended UMBC for—to be part of a community of other women in STEM, it meant a lot to me.

Right: Emily Brown along with fellow CWIT Scholars pose to spell out CWIT.

Q: You graduated with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in the same year. How did you decide to pursue that and is there any advice you would give another student who may consider doing the same?

A: I wasn’t sure at first that I wanted to do computer science after graduation, but by my junior year I decided to stick to a computer science career. I realized then I could either graduate early or I could start taking graduate classes with the combined B.S./M.S. program. After finishing my undergraduate degree that May, I took summer and fall classes and finished my master’s in December, and that’s how I was able to graduate twice in one year.

There are both upsides and downsides to having done that. On the upside, I started my professional career with a graduate degree, which does come with more pay and professional respect. On the downside, my computer science master’s was a general master’s degree as opposed to specialized. But this has actually proven to be useful: I started my career thinking I wanted to focus on cybersecurity and now I do more AI work and I have some graduate coursework in both of those things.

Q: Is there a faculty or staff member who helped you on your UMBC path? 

A: There are three faculty members who stand out when I think of my time at UMBC. Dr. Marie desJardins, who has since retired, was an AI and machine learning professor and the professor that I completed undergraduate research with. Her passion for teaching aligned with my desire for a community that encourages women in engineering. The undergraduate research I did with her was working on the new AP computer science curriculum for the College Board. 

Dr. desJardin’s argument was that with computer science you should submit a portfolio rather than take a test. She worked with the College Board to develop what that curriculum for submitting a portfolio would look like and I worked alongside her. My former high school computer science teacher from Howard High School was also on that team, so that was really great. My younger sister has since taken the course and I said, “Did you know I wrote that course that you’re taking in high school now?” Her response was, “I’m not telling anyone that—that’s the most embarrassing thing ever.” I thought it was very exciting.

The second professor who had a huge impact on me is Dr. Tim Oates. I found his teaching style to be one that I deeply resonated with. I always tell people, when you take a class with Dr. Oates, you need to take paper without lines because he draws a lot of pictures to explain things.

He had an example where he would walk around the classroom floor and each tile was a different square and he would say, “All right, I’m an AI, and I’m using reinforcement learning and I physically step here.” He wasn’t just lecturing, he taught by physically moving his body around the classroom. 

One example he used was if a $10 bill drops from the ceiling here, I’m incentivized as the AI to keep going back to that corner of the room, where if a $1 bill drops over there, then I know that’s not as useful of a place to go. Even if you don’t have a computer science background, you intuitively go, that makes sense. I followed him to whichever class he would teach because I knew his teaching style broke it down in a way I would deeply understand. In my final class with him, I rigged a $10 bill to drop from the ceiling because he had done this example over and over. 

The third is Dr. Anupam Joshi. He was my master’s advisor and he’s now the vice provost and chief AI officer, but at the time he was a professor teaching cybersecurity classes. He is largely the reason that I work the way I do here at the Applied Physics Laboratory. He introduced me to the type of work that got me my first job at the lab. I wrote my final research paper for my master’s degree about my APL internship experience, which was combining all of my passions.

Q: Can you share your involvement in CWIT (Center for Women in Technology), both as an alum and mentor, and what your experience was as a student? 

A: I lived in the CWIT Living Learning Community my freshman and sophomore years and then lived in an on-campus apartment with other CWIT students. I met my best friends in the CWIT program. We had a CWIT alum virtual happy hour during the pandemic, and I think there were a number of us who said, “I walked into that CWIT office and just cried and then walked out and passed my classes because there was that kind of support for me.”

I have been involved as an alum since day one. After undergrad, I participated in the career fairs and networking dinners with the talent services recruiting department from APL. 

I’ve done industry mentoring nearly every year for the past six years. When I was a CWIT student, my industry mentor was from Lockheed Martin. She did a mock interview with me where she asked me the same questions she would ask a candidate interviewing for their summer internship. She then brought me on a Friday afternoon to the Lockheed Martin office facilities for a lab tour. Those two things were both extremely memorable to me, and I carried that forward with my mentees, some of whom then got internships at APL. That was the experience I sought to replicate and produce for my CWIT mentees.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit more about your current job at APL? What do you enjoy most about it? 

A: I’m currently the assistant group supervisor for the analytic capabilities group. The group is really known for a space at APL called the Live Lab, which was started as a response to a 2009 cyber attack that APL was victim of. The lab watches cyber data coming into the lab and processes it in real time to try to be more proactive about the next attack. I actually toured the Live Lab as part of a CWIT Scholars and Cyber Scholars visit day my senior year and thought to myself, ”This place is really cool. I would really like to work there someday.” The staff member running the tour that I attended was Dr. Elisha Peterson, who is my direct boss now. It took a while, but I made it to where I wanted to work my senior year of undergrad.

I’m so proud of UMBC. Being recognized as someone who UMBC is proud of also is incredible.

Emily Brown ’14, M.S. ’14, computer science

Q: How did your UMBC degree help prepare you for your professional career?

A: It wasn’t just what I learned at UMBC that was valuable, but how I learned how to learn. I came into my career already knowing that I valued community and diversity of thought because I had valued it and been taught to value it from my time at UMBC. 

UMBC also prepared me to anticipate that there are things that will be interdisciplinary in nature [in my career]. I was able to quickly understand at APL that the value of interdisciplinary teams is really important.

For example, I’ve worked with a psychologist colleague on the concept of a moral foundation. There is, of course, a computing component to parsing out the information, but there’s also a psychological component: Why does this message resonate with you, but not with me? Everybody has their own semi-unique moral foundations profile and a message that aligns to your moral foundations is more likely to resonate with you. That’s something I didn’t study in my computer science coursework at UMBC and I do need to make sure that I’m taking my psychologist colleagues’ opinions and thoughts about this into account as we’re building a project.

Q: What does winning a UMBC Alumni Award mean to you?

A: My sister, who I already mentioned finds me embarrassing, has told me in the past, “You know, there’s such a thing as too much school spirit.” And I refuse to believe that. Having been given so much by UMBC and being so passionate about what I experienced in that circle on that campus, I’m so proud of UMBC. Being recognized as someone who UMBC is proud of also is incredible.

Left: Emily Brown with her younger sister at Homecoming.

Q: If you could give one piece of advice to a current UMBC student, what would it be?

A: Try to do something different. I got a computer science degree, but I was also on The Retriever Weekly editorial staff, which for a CS major was super unusual. But that was my something different. I can’t tell you how many times I have been told in my professional career, “Wow, finding an engineer who is a decent writer is rare.” But that’s because I was on a student newspaper in undergrad. That ability to communicate has taken me pretty far in my career.

Mark your calendars for the 2025 Alumni Awards on Wednesday, October 29,at 6 p.m., and consider joining the UMBC community at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena to celebrate Emily Brown and the many remarkable individuals receiving awards. The event will be livestreamed for those unable to join in person. You can learn more at alumni.umbc.edu/alumniawards.

On a late September weekend, hundreds of people converged on the UMBC Catonsville campus for the 11th annual hackUMBC, a 24-hour competition where teams of students create creative solutions to problems that matter to them. Under a tight deadline that fosters camaraderie and quick thinking, teams tackle a range of challenges, some proposed by industry sponsors and others that are personally meaningful to students. 

“What makes hackUMBC great is the display of growth, innovation, and teamwork,” says Isabella Goltser, the president of hackUMBC and a junior computer science major who has been part of hackUMBC since her first year on campus. “Participants from across different universities and high schools come together for 24 hours to create amazing projects, connect with each other, and really grow as individuals over the course of a weekend.”

The competition itself has also grown over the years, from under 100 participants in the first year to 600 participants this year, including increasing numbers of high school students who get to witness and participate in the vibrant UMBC community. This year, the organizers added more opportunities for students to network and learn new skills through activities such as workshops and guest panels of tech industry professionals, Goltser says.

The event culminated with the judging expo in the afternoon of the second day, where teams presented their projects and competed for prizes. Teams were recognized for the best overall “hacks,” as well as in specific categories, such as best games, best AI/machine learning hack, best health/environment hack, and more.  

“Seeing everyone present their projects and the proud look on their faces makes it worth spending so much time organizing,” Goltser says.

Twenty-seven UMBC students worked together for the past 10 months to pull off the event. The students divided themselves into teams that dealt with specific tasks such as securing sponsorships, marketing, designing the website and more. The student organizing team was also supported by faculty and staff throughout the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) and the university as a whole. Renique Kersh, vice president for student affairs, and Marc Olano, associate dean for academic programs and learning in COEIT served as keynote speakers at the event. 

“This hackathon would not have been possible without teamwork and I want to thank everyone involved,” Goltser says.

Written by Richard Forno, teaching professor in computer science and electrical engineering, UMBC

As the United States experiences its latest government shutdown, most of the daily operations of the federal government have ground to a halt. This includes much of the day-to-day work done by federal information technology and cybersecurity employees, including those at the nation’s leading civilian cybersecurity agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

CISA is among the entities that will see the deepest staffing reductions during the shutdown that began Oct. 1, 2025, according to Department of Homeland Security documentation. Only about one-third of its employees remain on the job after federal employees were furloughed. As if cybersecurity wasn’t challenging enough, fewer CISA employees are being asked to do more and more work protecting American cyberspace during the shutdown. And they’ll be working with the promise of getting paid for their efforts at some date in the future once the shutdown ends.

The current CISA situation is grim, from my vantage point as a cybersecurity researcher and former industry practitioner. The agency was already experiencing deep cuts to its staff and resources before the shutdown. And now, coinciding with the shutdown, a key law that enabled the agency to facilitate information-sharing with the private sector has expired.

Taken together, the cyberdefense agency is being hobbled at a time when the need for its services has never been greater, from the ongoing China-led Salt Typhoon attack on U.S. telecommunications networks to ransomware, data breaches and threats to infrastructure.

CISA was created in 2007 within the Department of Homeland Security. As its name implies, the agency is charged with digital security matters across the federal government. The agency also works with the companies that operate and secure the numerous critical infrastructure sectors of the American economy, such as phone networks, the electric grid and energy pipelines. Additionally, it helps state and local governments across the country secure their vulnerable networks and data.

CISA also publishes threat and vulnerability alerts for the government and cybersecurity community and engages with public and private stakeholders on best practices in response to emerging vulnerabilities. Prior to the recent expiration of the 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, the agency also made it easier for organizations to share useful information with the government to help cybersecurity teams better protect their systems.

Political football

The agency takes a nonpartisan approach to cybersecurity matters. However, some politicians have accused the agency of political bias for its work helping states protect their voting infrastructure from cyberattacks and external influence. Specifically, the agency was repeatedly maligned for calling the 2020 election the “most secure” in history. For some in elected office, this work on election security has tarnished CISA’s reputation and perhaps explains recent budgetary actions taken against the agency.

Since the Trump administration took office in January 2025, nearly 1,000 CISA employees have departed the agency through voluntary buyouts or deferred resignations. By the end of May 2025, nearly all of CISA’s senior leadership had resigned or had announced plans to do so.

For 2026, the president’s draft budget proposes to reduce CISA’s head count by nearly one-third, dramatically cutting staff from its risk management and stakeholder engagement divisions. Other cuts will significantly reduce the agency’s collaboration activities and funding for CISA’s various cybersecurity education and training programs.

Making the problem worse, the government shutdown began at the same time that Congress failed to renew the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. This law provided a legal shield that allowed companies and infrastructure operators to share timely and often sensitive information with CISA about the cyberattacks, vulnerabilities and incidents that they were encountering.

In the wake of the law’s expiration, prudent companies may consider restricting what information they share with the government. Without the indemnification provided by CISA, many companies will likely have their legal teams review any information to be shared with the government. And that takes time.

Unfortunately, adversaries do not reduce their attacks against the U.S. based on available federal cyber defense funding or the status of cybersecurity laws. In fact, malicious hackers often strike when their target’s guard is down.

Charting a better course

Early in my career I had to work through a prolonged government shutdown. I’ve also participated in and developed assorted public-private information-sharing environments to exchange intelligence and analysis on cyber- and national security matters. And having been in the D.C. area for over 30 years, I’ve seen how government works. So I have a good idea of what’s needed to improve American cybersecurity. The following suggestions are a starting point.

First, Congress could ensure that critical security agencies such as CISA are immune from the threat of recurring federal government shutdowns. If it desired, Congress could set budgets for America’s security agencies on a biennial basis – as 16 states already do for their entire budgets.

In terms of cybersecurity funding, the White House’s proposed 2026 budget reduces research and education on cybersecurity. For example, the nation’s premiere federal cybersecurity scholarship program to recruit, educate and place future federal cybersecurity workers would be reduced by over 60%. Protecting this funding would allow CISA and the federal government to maintain the pipeline for a robust and capable cybersecurity workforce both today and into the future.

Companies could develop new or expand existing nongovernmental information-sharing networks that are not completely dependent on the government to facilitate or fund, such as the Cyber Threat Alliance or the Center for Internet Security. Cybersecurity relies on trust. But right now, the instability of the federal government makes it difficult to rely on any entity under its policy or funding influence, no matter how well time-tested and trusted. Regardless, without legal protections, the information-sharing utility of these services will be limited.

Cybersecurity risks remain even if the federal government shuts down. So this is another reminder that each of us is responsible for our own cybersecurity. Individual users should continue to remain vigilant, follow accepted best practices for cybersecurity and always be mindful about online risks.

It’s ironic that the federal government is shutting down, CISA is being eviscerated and the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act has expired just as the country begins to observe national Cybersecurity Awareness Month – another collaborative public engagement activity that CISA promotes to help improve cybersecurity for all Americans.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 300 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.