In low- and middle-income countries, gaps in healthcare infrastructure and high costs for medical supplies and services can mean high numbers of babies dying in their first week of life. Often, these deaths are due to “extremely preventable causes,” says Govind Rao, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) at UMBC.

Rao described for The Hindu, a major Indian newspaper, how he and a team of faculty and student researchers designed an affordable infant incubator that addresses two of the three leading causes of infant death (which include preterm birth, lack of oxygen and sepsis).

“This incubator chamber has been made using cardboard. It’s low-cost, disposable, and possesses heating and cooling functionality,” he explains. The cardboard helps regulate the temperature of the environment, which allows babies to use their metabolic energy for growth rather than regulating their body temperature.   

The device is powered by a solar rechargeable battery and can be used without electricity for up to eight hours each day.

“While in urban hi-tech hospitals, the cost of infant care would be in tens of thousands of rupees, in rural India, the medical centers have no facilities—typically a light bulb serves as a warmer,” says Rao.

The incubator design was created and prototype developed over three years with support from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance and the Food and Drug Administration. The next step is for the built-in sensors to be integrated into the device and validated in a field setting.

Read the full article, “For a frugal way to save lives,” in The Hindu Business Line.

Bachelor’s and master’s programs in cybersecurity at Maryland colleges and universities are growing rapidly as more students become interested in careers in the industry. At UMBC, the number of graduate students studying cybersecurity has grown nearly five-fold over the past six years, explains Rick Forno, director of UMBC’s graduate cybersecurity program and assistant director for UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, in an article in The Daily Record.

UMBC’s proximity to government agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) and private security and tech firms, has contributed to the growth of the university’s cybersecurity programs. One draw, engaging both introductory students and more advanced experts in the field, is the Maryland Cyber Challenge, a statewide competition for high school and college students and cybersecurity professionals held during the CyberMaryland Conference, which Forno founded.

Forno says that there are between 12,000 and 13,000 job openings in the cybersecurity industry across the state, which is good news for graduates from UMBC’s programs.   

In a separate article in The Daily Record, Tim Finholm, cybersecurity instructor at UMBC Training Center, shares his perspective on risks that companies must identify and be alert for to protect private information. He explains that companies must fend off threats that employees may unknowingly click right into—links that seem innocuous but are really traps left by hackers, designed to gather information or lead the user to a site where a server can take control of the computer, says Finholm.

Image: UMBC cybersecurity class in 2014. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC environmental engineering students have created a YouTube video to help middle and high school students and the broader public understand the kinds of work environmental engineers do and the impacts their work has on the world. They developed the video as part of a national competition hosted by the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) with the theme “Environmental Engineers Protect Public and Ecological Health.”

UMBC students Helena Gaifem ‘16, Ph.D., chemical and biochemical engineering; Nick Rogers ‘15, environmental engineering; Utsav Shashvatt ‘19, Ph.D., environmental engineering; and Kiranmayi Mangalgiri ‘16, Ph.D., environmental engineering, approached Lee Blaney, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering (CBEE), to express interest in entering the AEESP contest. Gaifem illustrated the drawings in the video and Shashvatt photographed the images and edited them before sending them to Mangalgiri, who put the video together using VideoScribe. After the visuals were completed, Rogers added narration. Environmental engineering majors Hollie Adejumo ‘16, Savannah Steinly ‘18, and Hannah Aris ‘18, also contributed to the video.

The discipline of environmental engineering is fairly new and AEESP members have been concerned it is not yet well understood by the general public, Blaney notes, in explaining the origins of the competition. “Hopefully, more efforts like this one will increase knowledge and understanding of the field,” says Blaney. He emphasizes that another major goal of the competition is to “increase outreach to younger students (K-12) and build interest in the major.”  

Competition finalists and winners will be announced on January 29, 2016, with the winning teams receiving cash prizes.

*Update (2/10/2016): The AEESP announced that the UMBC team’s video “What do Environmental Engineers do?” was awarded first place in the competition. The team will receive a $1000 cash prize.

Image taken from YouTube video.

The number of women in computing fields is not only well below the number of men pursuing similar careers, the proportion of women majoring in computer science has actually decreased in recent years. At this challenging moment for gender equity in the field, many college women pursuing computer science careers are using conferences and other networking opportunities to connect with mentors, support their peers, and learn about emerging developments in tech research and industries.

A group of 31 undergraduate students and nine faculty, staff, and post-doctoral candidates from UMBC attended the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) of Women in Computing held this fall in Houston, Texas. The event brought together women exploring careers in technology with the goals of increasing the visibility of research by women in computing and supporting women pursuing computing careers. Organized by the Anita Borg Institute, the GHC is named for U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, an early computer programmer who invented the first compiler for programming languages.

Susan Martin, associate director of the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) at UMBC; Marie desJardins, associate dean in UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology and professor of computer science; and Cindy Greenwood, assistant director of the CWIT at UMBC, supported the UMBC group during the GHC event.

Sessions offered during the conference provided participants with a broad range of perspectives from within the industry and inspiration to move forward with their career goals. 

“It is a unique and transformative experience for a female computer scientist to attend the GHC,” says desJardins. “For many of them, it will be the first time they’ve been a room full of computer scientists in which women were the majority.”

desJardins continues, “It’s quite powerful to walk into the plenary session, with thousands of computing professionals, look around, and see a sea of female faces—but still a truly diverse group of people, with women of all ages, ethnicities, geographical origins, educational backgrounds, and industry/academic positions—as well as a supportive group of men.”

GHC attendees also report that the conference gives them greater resilience in facing the challenges of being a women in computing. “Being in the minority in these majors can take its toll on women’s overall confidence and perceptions of their technical competence,” explains Martin. “Women in computing often encounter microaggressions, subtle or hidden messages that may invalidate their identity as computer scientists or computer engineers, or their experiences as members of a minority group.”

After the conference, UMBC’s GHC attendees completed a survey about what the conference meant to them and how they predicted the experience would impact their futures.  

“It was a great opportunity to experience an inverse of normal gender ratios within technology,” one sophomore computer engineering major wrote. “That experience overall is valuable to women and men. It was a great opportunity to travel and meet new people, within the context of our majors, interests, and fields of study.”

The conference also allowed UMBC students to work on collaborative proposals and meet professionals who are already pursuing careers in their fields of study. “Attending GHC enabled our UMBC students to connect with each other at a deeper level and to plug into a national and global network of highly successful women in technology,” says Martin. “It is these connections that will sustain them as they encounter the typical challenges associated with their academic and professional careers in computing.”

Post-event survey responses indicated that before attending GHC nearly 56% of the participating students felt “very sure” they would complete their degree in a computing major. After the conference that proportion jumped to 83%.

As one sophomore computer science major who attended the event wrote, the Grace Hopper message was clear: “It is time for women to be inspired to do more and to go further in computing.”

Image: A panel of images at the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), named for U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper.

Photo by D Coetzee, CC0 1.0.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) hosted a small gathering of national thought leaders in computer science education on Friday, December 11, as part of Computer Science Education Week 2015. Julie Ross, dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT), and Marie desJardins, COEIT associate dean and professor of computer science, attended the event, where participants identified obstacles and opportunities to increase access to computer science curriculum in K-12 schools.

Both Ross and desJardins are known nationally for their work to improve and promote K-12 education in STEM fields, encouraging more girls and underrepresented minority students to pursue STEM careers. desJardins’ recent media coverage related to K-12 computer science has appeared in The Conversation and Fortune.

Computer Science Education Week is celebrated annually in the U.S. around the birthday of U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, an early computer programmer who received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale in 1934 and went on to invent the first compiler for programming languages.

Photo by Geoff Livingston, CC by 2.0.

UMBC celebrated the accomplishments of over 1,000 new Retriever alumni at 2015 Winter Commencement, with a graduate ceremony held on December 16 and undergraduate ceremony on December 17.

The ceremonies included representatives from UMBC faculty, staff, student, and alumni leadership, as well as the University System of Maryland Board of Regents. UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski shared more than a dozen inspiring stories of accomplishment, highlighting graduates who have achieved great things, often despite significant challenges in their lives and while balancing personal and professional commitments.

These graduates included students like Muntadar Al-Luwaim ’15, design, a deaf student from Saudi Arabia who welcomed the challenge of mastering two new languages, English and American Sign Language. He has helped build a welcoming community at UMBC for other deaf and hard of hearing students, and plans to develop his own design studio in Saudi Arabia.

Fellow graduate Wafa Raja ’15, information systems, came to the United States with her family eight years ago to pursue an education, but felt pressure to marry and return to Pakistan. Yearning to continue her education, she returned to the U.S. and enrolled in community college, while working and raising her young daughter. She soon transferred to UMBC, where she became both a Cyber Scholar and a Newcombe Scholar, and has shown a remarkable commitment to mentoring other students. She will work for Northrop Grumman as a cyber intelligence analyst.

During the UMBC Graduate School commencement, President Hrabowski recognized Erika Nesvold ’15 Ph.D, physics, who “spends her days thinking about asteroids smashing into each other.” She has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at the Carnegie Institute of Washington and, in her free time, is a volunteer firefighter and EMT.

Nichole Zang Do ’15 M.A., history, has explored the history of the juvenile justice movement in Baltimore, focusing on understanding the use and misuse of juvenile reform institutions. She will support UMBC’s upcoming 50th anniversary celebrations through alumni outreach.

“The point of these stories is that every one of you indeed has a story,” President Hrabowski reflected, sharing that for each student the path to their degree “has not been easy.”

UMBC is proud to honor all of the students who received graduate and undergraduate degrees in Winter 2015.

Videos of the ceremonies will be available soon on the UMBC Commencement website. The ceremonies were also live-tweeted @UMBC, with posts available through #UMBCgrad. For additional photos, see our Undergraduate and Graduate Commencement galleries on Facebook.

Images: All photos are by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Two posters created by UMBC student researchers were highlighted during an informational hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, December 16, focused on the Information Security Research and Education (INSuRE) project.

UMBC is one of seven universities nationwide participating in INSuRE, a multi-disciplinary and multi-level collaborative research initiative. Through INSuRE, undergraduate and graduate students have the opportunity to work on various problems related to cybersecurity while being mentored by industry professionals.

Alan Sherman, professor of computer science, is a co-Principal Investigator (PI) of the INSuRE project, which began in 2013. He is leading seven UMBC students across three research groups as part of a 2015 fall course connected with the project, which is funded by a nearly $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Photo by Elliott P., CC by 2.0.  

UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC) has debuted the 3D Scanning Room, featuring new software that allows 3D models to be created by combining dozens of 2D photographs. A ribbon-cutting event and brief remarks from President Freeman Hrabowski and Vice President of Research Karl Steiner were held on Tuesday, December 8.

The 3D Scanning Room features 90 digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras that are set up in a circular formation around a space where people or objects are positioned for 2D photographs. The cameras take simultaneous photos, looking for features like textures and edges that reflect light.

Once the photos are captured, they are processed through special software called Agisoft Photoscan, to create a virtual 3D model of the subject. It takes between four and six hours for the software to render a clear and detailed 3D image from the approximately 900 photos that are taken, but a rough depiction is available within an hour of the photos being snapped.

President Hrabowski said that the technology in the 3D Scanning Room is expanding the possibilities for UMBC researchers, thinkers, and artists. “This technology connects faculty across disciplines, and is fascinating because it goes across all UMBC colleges and departments,” he said.

Steiner described the 3D Scanning Room as a “three-legged stool”—a reliable, stable, easy to use system to create 3D models through the three steps of visualization, scanning and fabrication. Fabrication refers to the actual cutting or layering of the data to create a tangible 3D model.

The subjects being photographed do not need to be stationary. The cameras can capture people or objects in motion, explained Don Engel, assistant vice president for research at UMBC.

Direct Dimensions, Inc., a Maryland-based company specializing in 3D imaging for the medical, consumer and military industries, worked with UMBC’s Marc Olano, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) and principal investigator (PI), and Dan Bailey, director of the IRC and co-PI, to create the 3D Scanning space. The space was funded through a $180,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

A second new tool was also introduced during the ribbon-cutting event: a four-foot-by-eight-foot ShopBot, a type of CNC mill, run by Lisa Moren, professor of visual arts, and Amy Hurst, assistant professor of information systems. Different drill bits attach the CNC tool to create various cuts and patterns in materials, including wood and stone.

Read more about the ribbon-cutting event, “A crazy 3D-scanning room was recently delivered to UMBC,” on Technical.ly, and “Immersive, 3D scanner comes to UMBC,” on The Daily Record. 

Images: President Hrabowski and Michael Raphael, CEO of Direct Dimensions, Inc., at the ribbon cutting for UMBC’s new 3D Scanning Room (top); The ShopBot cut its own ribbon during the introduction of the second new tool in the IRC (bottom). Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11.  

3D model linked within text was created by Direct Dimensions, Inc., which used 2D photos taken by the scanning device at UMBC. 

December is National Identity Theft Prevention and Awareness Month, and it is a reminder to consumers to be vigilant about the security of personal information. Precautionary measures often considered to be “common sense” are some of the best ways for individuals to protect their identity, says Rick Forno, director of UMBC’s graduate program in cybersecurity and assistant director of UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, in an article on WalletHub.

Destroying unneeded documents that contain personal information, such as old medical records and tax returns, rather than simply throwing the documents in the trash, can help individuals protect their identity. However, Forno emphasizes, “Common sense precautions…are by no means a guarantee of ‘total’ security against identity theft.”

So far in 2015 alone, 690 cybersecurity breaches granted hackers access to more than 176 million records. This has led to the implementation of more aggressive measures to improve cybersecurity across industries, and to more caution by individuals sharing information online, but there are still concerning issues that are beyond consumers’ control.

“A larger problem is how to guard against company and government sites that the individual does not control access to or the security of the data on those servers,” explains Forno.

Social media can also play a role facilitating identity thefts, he notes, reminding readers that hackers can utilize seemingly innocuous personal details posted on social media, such as “your friends’ or relatives’ names, your alma mater, car make/model, favorite color, sports team, etc.” “Here again, common sense practices are key,” he says. “It’s just something to be aware of as you view online risks generally.”  

Read the full article, “2015’s States Most Vulnerable to Identity Theft and Fraud,” on WalletHub, including Forno’s advice to consumers.

Photo by Luke Jones, CC by 2.0.  

UMBC’s inaugural Innovators Luncheon, held November 30, 2015, celebrated faculty innovators from across the university who are forging new paths in their fields. Sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Research, Office of Technology Development (OTD), Office of Institutional Advancement (OIA), and bwtech@UMBC, the event acknowledged accomplishments of UMBC Technology Catalyst Fund (TCF) and Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) awardees.

In addition to recognizing the TCF and MII awardees, five UMBC faculty were presented with awards for outstanding initiatives in disclosing their inventions. Christopher Geddes, professor of chemistry and biochemistry and director of the Institute of Fluorescence (IOF); Fow-Sen Choa, professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE); Leah Croucher, research professor in chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering (CBEE) and assistant director of the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST); and Dan Kostov, research professor in CBEE, adjunct professor in CSEE and assistant director in CAST, were recognized for having submitted over 25 invention disclosures each. Govind Rao, professor in CBEE and director of CAST, was presented with an award for over 50 invention disclosures. In addition, Ryan Robucci ’02, computer engineering, and Nilanjan Banerjee, both assistant professors in CSEE, were recognized as up-and-coming inventors at UMBC for not only advancing technology in their respective academic fields but also pursuing commercial applications of those advancements.

Vice President for Research Karl Steiner opened the event by drawing inspiration from John Lennon’s “Imagine.” He highlighted how the entrepreneurial spirit of UMBC’s inventors enables them to develop novel, creative solutions to pressing issues in Maryland, nationally, and globally. Greg Simmons, M.P.P ’04, public policy, vice president for institutional advancement, shared Steiner’s sentiment, and emphasized the importance of supporting faculty in their work to solve society’s biggest challenges.  

University System of Maryland (USM) Chancellor Bob Caret and R. Michael Gill, secretary of commerce for the State of Maryland, also shared brief comments. Chancellor Caret compared UMBC innovators with inventors in Silicon Valley—their innovative spirit, fresh ideas, fast work pace, and confidence they can have a major positive impact. With that vision in mind, he argued that the State of Maryland must develop “an ecosystem where we can all come together to create that level of success.” Gill challenged the inventors to wake up each morning with the determination to figure out “how to move this forward,” moving past the setbacks and challenges that each will undoubtedly encounter along the way.

For UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, the drive to engage talented faculty from diverse backgrounds in developing solutions to the problems our world faces is essential. President Hrabowski shared how inspired he feels by “what we do on UMBC’s campus to impact people’s lives.”

Image: UMBC TCF and MII awardee Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg; Seven UMBC faculty were presented with awards during the Innovators Luncheon. Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11.