For anyone needing an extra push to make it through the final few weeks of spring semester, UMBC’s annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day offers a healthy dose of extra energy and a contagious sense of curiosity. This year, the must-see, campus-wide event celebrates its 20th anniversary on April 27th with a diverse array of performances, film screenings, exhibits, posters, and talks.

“Creating a vibrant community of scholars is a major goal at UMBC, and URCAD is a realization of that goal,” says Diane Lee, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education.

“Undergraduates in every field share the knowledge they have gained,” Lee explains. “Beyond the talks and performances we all look forward to, through conducting and sharing their research and creative work, our students develop habits of mind that will serve them well in the future.”

Andreas Seas ’17, chemical engineering, agrees wholeheartedly. “Being involved in this research has really shaped what I want to do after I graduate from UMBC,” he says. “It has provided clarity as well as given me something that I can channel my passion into.”

Seas’s research focuses on risk factors for strain to femoral arteries, as part of a larger project in collaboration with the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC). Seas’s experience at the medical center combined research and clinical work. He says, “Working with UNMC has definitely helped me focus in on what I am passionate about—improving patient care by developing more effective treatment techniques.”

This Goldwater Scholar still has one more year as an undergraduate researcher before pursuing an M.D./Ph.D. degree. For now, he encourages all of his classmates to attend URCAD if they can: “Not only is it really cool to see what everybody is doing, you never know what will spark your interest or what you can contribute to someone’s work.”

Nneka Opara ’16, psychology, began attending URCAD as a freshman. “It’s been a very inspirational event to attend every year and see the [work] students just like me are doing. It left me with the sense that I could achieve just as much as they were if I put my mind to it.”

For many UMBC students, who want to tackle tough questions that reach across different fields, URCAD is a chance to see up close what interdisciplinary research looks like and to learn about opportunities to do research that has real, positive outcomes.

Brittney Kramer ’16, English, shares that URCAD “is a way for all of the disciplines to come together and see what everyone is doing. It’s a way of showing how much research impacts every aspect of our lives.”

“A lot of times when you go into an English major, you think research is something [for science students],” Kramer says, “but this is a chance to really see how [all kinds of] research has an impact.” This includes Kramer’s own contributions to building a digital exhibit on women working in American textile mills during the nineteenth century, in collaboration with the American Antiquarian Society.

Filmmaker Paul Oh ’17, visual arts, describes URCAD as a helpful opportunity for creative students who want to begin connecting with audiences, but can’t yet access big festivals or performance opportunities. “It’s great that URCAD displays undergraduate work and allows people like myself…to exhibit their work for other students and peers,” he says.

Visit the URCAD website to access the brief event schedule and full schedule with abstracts, to learn about the featured speaker, or to see sneak peeks of select research projects. Guests can support participating students by asking them about their research during the event, and by sharing photos and messages on social media with #URCAD, #UMBC50, and #UMBCproud.

“Support is so important,” says URCAD presenter Austin Maduka ’17, biochemistry. “The support I received as an undergraduate pursuing my own research career has transformed my life,” he shares. For Maduka and his fellow student researchers, URCAD is a day to honor that transformation.

Arti Deore Choudhary
Master’s in Professional Studies, Cybersecurity
Summa Cum Laude
Hometown: Pune, India
Plans: Cloud Support Engineer, Amazon Web Services

This UMBC cybersecurity master’s program has helped me to sharpen my professional, as well as management skills in a most demanding field. Without my degree and UMBC’s support I would not have been able to reach out to professionals and grow as a cybersecurity professional.

Arti Deore Choudhary arrived at UMBC with an impressive academic and professional background, including a B.S and M.S. in computer science from Pune University in India and years of experience as an IT professional, and she graduates from her cybersecurity master’s program with a 4.0 GPA. She has been actively involved in sharing her knowledge and experience with others in the fields of computer science and cybersecurity, particularly through mentoring.

Choudhary partnered with UMBC alumnus and co-founder of LKA Computer Consultants, Larry Aikins ‘14, M.P.S. cybersecurity, to lead Teens in Technology, a seven-day cybersecurity workshop designed to educate high school students about tech security. She also competed in the Maryland Cyber Challenge in 2015, with her UMBC team making it to the semifinal round.

Choudhary has received an Ethical Hacker Certificate and has interned with Ridgeback Network Defense, a startup technology company at bwtech@UMBC. She will soon begin a position as a cloud support engineer at Amazon Web Services.

Images: Arti Deore Choudhary leads a UMBC workshop for aspiring cybersecurity and technology students; photo courtesy of Arti Deore Choudhary. Portrait by Marlayna Demond ‘11 for UMBC.

Ganesh Mysore
Plans: Working in biotech while applying to graduate schools
B.S., Chemical Engineering; B.A., Political Science
Cum Laude
Hometown: Clarksville, Maryland

The opportunities I had, and the guidance I received, at UMBC have shaped me into an engaged citizen, and not just a capable engineer.

Ganesh Mysore isn’t earning a degree this spring; he’s actually earning two degrees in very different fields and he’s passionate about them both. Through advanced coursework in both chemical engineering and political science, Mysore has developed a unique skill set and approach to solving challenging problems, he says.

Mysore is a member of the Honors College and Pi Sigma Alpha, the national honor society for political science, and recipient of the Premier Award Scholarship. Beyond his achievements in the classroom, he has also been a highly engaged campus leader, serving as president of UMBC’s Student Government Association as a junior and as a member the working group for BreakingGround, UMBC’s nationally recognized civic engagement initiative.

Mysore credits UMBC mentors with helping him understand the importance of creating positive change through taking action in his community, whether that is a community of students or, in the future, engineering professionals.

Portrait by Marlayna Demond ‘11 for UMBC.

Mark Fisher
B.S., Mechanical Engineering
Hometown: North East, Maryland
Plans: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Teaching freshmen students in their first engineering course has taught me the power of making an impression on young students in the STEM field, while at the same time teaching me organization and how to work with faculty.

Mark Fisher has enjoyed taking on new challenges and responsibilities as an emerging leader throughout his time as a mechanical engineering student at UMBC, from ROTC to the classroom to the res hall.

Fisher has served as battalion commander of the Johns Hopkins ROTC program, of which UMBC is an affiliate university. In the ROTC program, he explored leadership styles to prepare him to serve as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after graduation.

Fisher has worked as a teaching assistant introductory engineering over the past three years, assisting first-year engineering students and, most recently, serving as lead teaching assistant. He has also served as lead resident assistant in UMBC housing.

Beyond providing experiences that have helped Fisher define a path for his future career, UMBC has also played an important role in his personal life. Fisher met his wife, Skylar Dewees Fisher ‘16, biological sciences, on the first day of classes in their freshman year, and they married this January. They will graduate together this spring.

Images: Mark Fisher and his wife Skylar on their first date at the ROTC ball; photo courtesy of Mark Fisher. Portrait by Marlayna Demond ‘11 for UMBC.

Cybersecurity concerns continue to make headlines, including the recent attacks at MedStar Health and fraudulent tax returns being filed for Baltimore City employees. In response to this, many local governments, like their counterparts in the private sector, are taking steps to protect their websites and information.  

UMBC’s School of Public Policy hosted a forum on “Cybersecurity Concerns in Local Governments” on Friday, April 15 to present research on cybersecurity initiatives in local governments in Maryland and to highlight the policy implications of these initiatives. The event was sponsored by the UMBC School of Public Policy, bwtech@UMBC Cyber Incubator, and the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity. 

Speakers included School of Public Policy Professor and Director Donald Norris, Anupam Joshi, professor and chair of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) and director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, Rob O’Connor, chief technology officer for Baltimore County, and Gayle Guilford, chief information security officer for Baltimore City.

Norris discussed cybersecurity challenges in local governments across the country based on his research. In 2013, along with Joshi, he convened a focus group of technology officers from around Maryland to identify challenges and what governments are doing to help prevent cyber attacks.

“It was fascinating, because in part, we went in thinking cybersecurity is a technology problem and that the technology would fix itself,” Norris explained. “But people, policy, and process in government and large organizations are almost always the problem.”

Norris found that technology professionals in government identified people as the weakest link in cybersecurity threats because of phishing emails, lack of user training, under enforced and inefficient policies, and lack of funding to deal with cybersecurity threats.

To further research constantly evolving cybersecurity challenges in local government, Norris and his colleagues developed a questionnaire which will be conducted through the International City and County Management Association (ICMA) for city and county governments with populations greater than 50,000 around the country. They anticipate receiving the results this summer.

“We want to find out what local governments across the nation say are their biggest cybersecurity problems and the barriers that they face in addressing cybersecurity,” Norris said.

Joshi discussed various policies that are needed to keep computer and data systems secure, and said that policies should ideally be written in terms that both people and computers can easily interpret. “We need shared ontology that many systems can understand,” he explained. Computer systems can use policies to better understand the computer system’s actions and behaviors and identify issues and cybersecurity threats as they arise.

To regulate access to information, Joshi recommends having adjustable responses and a “need to know versus need to share” framework that can determine who has access to what levels of information. For example, he said that a general question, such as a person’s location, can be answered generally or very specifically. Sharing the state where the a person is located is less helpful than knowing what city they are in, and sharing GPS coordinates is the most helpful information. This method can be applied to providing access to information and data that needs to be kept secure and confidential.

He says that it is increasingly difficult to walk away from a cyber attack, especially if the cyber attack is in progress. “Technology evolves so quickly that hacks also have to evolve rapidly,” Joshi said.

Gayle B. Guilford, chief information security officer for the City of Baltimore, pointed out that the “new ransomware does not require human interaction,” so education about maintaining security on computers needs to change. “It used to be ‘don’t click,’ now you don’t even have to click,” she said, adding that the users should be the biggest group identifying oddities and suspicions.

“End users are the biggest vulnerability, but need to be the biggest defense,” said Rob O’Connor, chief technology officer for Baltimore County.

Note: On the same day as the forum, Norris and Richard Forno, assistant director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, were quoted in a Baltimore Sun article about fraudulent tax returns being filed for Baltimore City employees. Read “Federal, state authorities investigating source of data used to steal city employees’ tax returns” on the Baltimore Sun website, and “Investigation into Baltimore City Employees’ Stolen Tax Returns Underway” in Government Technology.

Forno also was quoted in “Maryland National Guard steps up role in cyberspace” on the Baltimore Sun website, and “Why haven’t hackers taken down the power grid?”in Parallax.

Image: Cybersecurity Forum Speakers (from left to right): Donald Norris, Gayle Guilford, Anupam Joshi, and Rob O’Connor. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

Where many see waste, UMBC’s Lee Blaney, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, sees opportunity.

As Blaney explains in Chemical & Engineering News, poultry litter is a very abundant waste product that is regularly used as a fertilizer, but its high phosphorus content poses challenges. Blaney and the students in his lab extract phosphorus from poultry litter in a way that provides a sustainable source of that nutrient for farmers who want to use it, and leaves behind rich organic matter that can be used as fertilizer by farmers who do not want to add more phosphorus to their soil.

In Maryland, new regulations will be fully implemented by 2022 that will limit the amount of phosphorus allowable in fields, to prevent phosphorus runoff that can damage local watersheds. The amount of phosphorus already in the soil will impact the amount of phosphorus farmers can add to their land as fertilizer.

Blaney uses reactors to extract phosphorus from poultry litter. The extracted phosphorus can be sold to farmers who want to add higher levels of the nutrient to their land within the new guidelines, and the leftover material can be used by people who want fertilizer for their land but have already hit the phosphorus limit.

“The easiest thing to do—and what has been historically successful—is to use litter as fertilizer,” says Blaney. He explains that the method that he uses in his lab can be a cost-effective option for farmers to add phosphorus to their land within legal limits, reuse a material that is abundant, keep costs low, and access a new source of revenue in excess isolated phosphorus that can be resold. Blaney is working with several farmers on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and hopes to have a phosphorus extraction system up and running on one farm in Wicomico County, Maryland in the next year.

Read “How to get the good stuff out of chicken manure” in Chemical & Environmental News.

Image: Lee Blaney works with a student in his lab. Photo by Tim Ford, coordinator of illustrative services in the biological sciences department at UMBC.

Three UMBC students in the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) have been named Barry Goldwater Scholars for the 2016-2017 academic year. The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program seeks to provide the United States with “a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers.”

As Goldwater Scholars, Daniel Ocasio ‘17, Naomi Mburu ‘18, and Andreas Seas ‘17, all chemical engineering majors, will receive substantial scholarship funding.

This highly competitive national scholarship has a major impact on each recipient’s educational path. Ocasio shares, “As a first generation college student, I feel extremely fortunate to be pursuing higher education, let alone a career in scientific research. To me, earning the Goldwater Scholarship is recognition of all those who made it possible for me to further my academic development.”

This year, a new initiative coordinated by Mitsue Wiggs, assistant director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, allowed UMBC students interested in applying for a Goldwater Scholarship to receive feedback on their applications before formally submitting the materials. Applicants shared early versions with alumni of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, who reviewed the draft applications and provided advice before the students submitted their official applications to UMBC’s Goldwater Scholarship Selection Committee.

David Eisenmann, associate professor of biological sciences; Lee Blaney, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering (CBEE) and Simon Stacey, director of UMBC’s Honors College, served on the UMBC Goldwater Scholarship Selection Committee this year. The committee reviewed applications, and provided advice and feedback to nominees on their essays.

At UMBC, Seas is involved with both the Meyerhoff Scholars Program and MARC U*STAR Program. He has also worked closely with faculty mentors at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Collaboration for Advanced Surgical and Engineering Applications. After pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, he would like to become a professor and do vascular mechanobiology research. “I am honored that my contributions to science have been recognized by the Goldwater Committee,” he said. “My only hope is that I continue to learn from the world around me and contribute to the advancement of human knowledge.”

Ocasio has worked as a student researcher in Lee Blaney’s lab for over a year, and credits Blaney with helping to push him beyond his expectations for his undergraduate experience, and to pursue research as a career. Ocasio would like to pursue a Ph.D. in environmental engineering with the goal of conducting research related to water treatment and quality.

Mburu began research as a high school student with Lasse Lindahl, professor of biological sciences. She says that early exposure to research sparked her interest and encouraged her to join other labs and explore a variety of research areas. As an undergraduate at UMBC, she has worked with Gymama Slaughter, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, who has inspired Mburu to pursue research on energy sources. Mburu also worked with mechanical engineering faculty at Vanderbilt University, producing research that formed the basis of her Goldwater Scholarship application. Mburu’s goal is to pursue a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering, and then teach physics and do nuclear energy development research.

“Being chosen for this prestigious scholarship as a sophomore is such an honor,” says Mburu. “I thank God for this amazing opportunity, and I am incredibly grateful for the wealth of opportunities UMBC had provided for me to make my goal of making an important contribution to the scientific world a reality.”

Image: Andreas Seas, Naomi Mburu and Daniel Ocasio (left-right) have been named Goldwater Scholars for 2016-2017. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC partnered with the Maryland State Department of Education to bring more than 200 educators, industry leaders, and legislators together for the Maryland Computing Education Summit, the state’s largest gathering focused on computing education. The event was held at UMBC on Tuesday, April 12, 2016.

The Maryland Computing Education Summit began as an annual event in 2013, with the goal of finding a way to offer at least one computer science course to students in every high school across the state, explained Marie desJardins, associate dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) and professor of computer science, one of the leaders behind the event.

Continuing the vision of the original summit, Jack Smith, Maryland interim state superintendent of schools, delivered opening remarks, emphasizing that computer science education needs to be integrated into all levels of K-12 education.

Throughout the summit, attendees participated in sessions on topics such as instructional resources, curriculum for students at different levels, teacher preparation, careers in computer science, and introducing students to computer science outside of the classroom. The session “Diversity and Equity: Why is CS Education Access So Important?” prompted participants to discuss unconscious and societal stereotypes within and about the field of computing.

Jan Plane, director of Maryland Center for Women in Computing and senior lecturer in the University of Maryland, College Park’s department of computer science, showed a graph illustrating the how fields such as biology, chemistry, math, and physics have become increasingly representative of the U.S. population, and how computer science still has significant work to do. “Without fixing the K-12 issues, we cannot fix the computer science pipeline,” Plane noted.

Both desJardins and Plane shared concerns that students often feel they aren’t “good at” or “cut of out for” computer science despite the fact that they haven’t tried it. They stressed that it is important for students to have exposure to computer science from an early age, before taking to heart stereotypes about who computer scientists are, and to have an understanding of the breadth of computing and the ways computing is used in society.

In one popular session, five UMBC students participated on a panel about their experiences in computing. Beatrice Garcia ‘16, computer science, recalled feeling troubled when she was one of a handful of women in her computer science courses. “Am I behind? Am I on par with the guys?” she would ask herself.

Several students mentioned that diversity is a huge issue in STEM fields. Sarah Heiner ‘19, computer science, said that she felt like an imposter during some of her classes, and wishes that one of her technology teachers in high school had been a woman. She did positively reflect on one high school STEM experience, recalling an exciting field trip to the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University to learn about the broad ways math can be useful in careers.

Kiante Brantley ‘15, computer science, M.S. ‘16, computer science, emphasized that when educators present information about computer science and careers that use computer science, it is important to present the content in a way that young students find engaging, relatable, and memorable.

Other sessions highlighted resources that educators can use in their classrooms to introduce students to computer science, and gave attendees opportunities to brainstorm ways to integrate computer science principles into their courses.

Core to all these conversations was an understanding that computer science should not be siloed and accessible to only the small percentage of students who might discover it on their own. “We need to make coding a part of our culture,” said UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, “in the same way that students need to know how to write and think.”

Maryland Secretary of Commerce Mike Gill visited UMBC on April 7, 2016, for an afternoon focused on UMBC research and entrepreneurship.

While at UMBC, Secretary Gill met with President Freeman Hrabowski and UMBC leaders focused on research and technology commercialization, including Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of the bwtech@UMBC Research & Technology Park. He also toured the lab of Govind Rao, director of the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) and professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering (CBEE).

CAST is known as an international leader in developing revolutionary technologies intended to scale up to impact lives across the globe. One tool currently under development is a portable, briefcase-sized bioreactor that rapidly manufactures medicines, replacing airdrops of pharmaceutical supplies to battlefields with point-of-care technology to manufacture specific drugs as they are needed. Rao’s lab has also developed an affordable incubator for vulnerable newborns in low-resource areas. With co-PI Yodan Kostov, CBEE research professor, and faculty collaborators from the College of Engineering and Information Technology, Rao is also working on a wearable system to track asthma triggers in pediatric patients, supported through a nearly $2 million award from NIH.

“I often say that economic development is a team sport, and an important player on Maryland’s team is UMBC,” says Secretary Gill. “Our higher education institutions foster the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that help drive Maryland’s industry sectors like cyber and life sciences. It was terrific seeing firsthand the great work that UMBC’s researchers and innovators are doing.”

“We were proud to share with Secretary Gill the strong record of our faculty in launching new companies and contributing to the Maryland economy,” says Karl Steiner, vice president for research. “UMBC and bwtech have been partnering successfully for a long time on creating and attracting businesses that match our scientific strengths in cybersecurity, life sciences and environmental technologies.”

Secretary Gill began his service in the Maryland Department of Commerce in January 2015, after four decades as an entrepreneur, tech executive, and investment banker. His work with UMBC extends back over a decade, through his service on the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, 2004-2009. Sec. Gill’s team includes Brady Walker ’08, political science, special assistant to the secretary.

Image: Maryland Secretary of Commerce Mike Gill, Brady Walker, and  Prof. Govind Rao (left-right). Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

More than five million Americans have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and Kafui Dzirasa ‘01, chemical engineering, is working to develop an electrical device that would stabilize a person’s mood without the side effects caused by medications. His work is featured in “Ride the Tiger: A Guide Through the Bipolar Brain,” a new PBS documentary that gives viewers a glimpse into the lives and stories of people with bipolar disorder.

Dzirasa, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, describes how he is able to approach studying the brain from the perspective of an engineer.

Nearly one third of people with bipolar disorder are prescribed lithium as a way to help manage their symptoms. “These medications go everywhere in the brain. And when they go everywhere, the come along with some side effects that are pretty troubling,” explains Dzirasa.

When it comes to treatment, Dzirasa says, “We want to do the least necessary thing to get [a beneficial] outcome.”

The device that he is creating is able to specifically target a certain part of the brain where there is a “roadblock.” “Because the stimulation is only going where you need it, you don’t have to worry about any of the other side effects,” he notes.

The technology Dzirasa is developing is being tested on mice, which are injected with a human bipolar gene and over time begin to show behaviors that are similar to behaviors exhibited by people with bipolar disorder.

Watch the full documentary “Ride the Tiger: A Guide Through the Bipolar Brain” on PBS or in the window below. Learn more about Dzirasa’s research in a recent UMBC News article about his Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Image: Dr. Kafui Dzirasa. Photo by Les Todd, Duke Photography.