The positive environmental and health impacts of work led by Upal Ghosh, professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering at UMBC, was recently highlighted by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The agency showcased a low-cost technology that Ghosh and his colleagues developed to clean waterways contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a group of likely carcinogenic chemicals that were used in insulation, coolants, and electrical equipment for decades before being banned in the U.S. in 1979. 

The chemicals are stable and persist in the environment, often accumulating in fish that live in contaminated waterways and posing a risk to humans who consume those fish. NIEHS funded Ghosh’s research into using activated carbon pellets to bind the chemicals in place at the bottom of the waterways. This prevents the PCBs from circulating through the aquatic food chain. In projects carried out in contaminated lakes, rivers, and harbors in Delaware, Maryland, and elsewhere, Ghosh’s team demonstrated that the technique could significantly reduce the concentration of PCBs in the water and in aquatic lifeforms. Importantly, the technique is also significantly cheaper than standard clean-up approaches, such as dredging and disposing of contaminated sediment. 

In related work performed with Kevin Sowers, from the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, Ghosh’s team also developed a way to combine the activated carbon with microbes that break down PCBs, reducing their toxicity.

With NIEHS support, Ghosh has co-founded two companies—Sediment Solutions and RemBac—to commercialize the technology and deploy it at full-scale to clean up contaminated sites across the country, such as at Mirror Lake in Delaware.

“The technology brings together innovations in material science and biology,” says Ghosh. It’s an honor, he says, that the NIEHS, the leading agency in the country that funds research on public health and the environment, recognized “the real impact our research is having on improving public health.”

The Aquaculture Research Center (ARC) at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET), led by Yonathan Zohar, professor of marine biotechnology, has been focused for years on advancing sustainable methods of growing fish on land to meet the growing global demand for seafood. In addition to helping develop new, environmentally responsible ways of producing nutritious food for the long term, the ARC is helping to meet immediate needs in the local community. 

Today, the center donated 1,200 pounds of Atlantic salmon to DC Central Kitchen, a food pantry in Southwest Washington, D.C., after donating 1,400 pounds in November 2023. ProFish, located in Washington, DC, processed the salmon for the donations.

The ARC’s seafood donation program launched in 2017, when the Feeding Individuals to Support Health (FISH) initiative was formed in partnership with several local businesses and non-profit organizations. The first major donation distributed thousands of pounds of European sea bass (also known as bronzino) grown in the ARC’s marine tanks to communities in need in the Baltimore area.

“The U.S. is the largest importer of seafood in the world. Currently the oceans are overfished, and IMET is working on innovative aquaculture platforms that will reduce U.S. and global dependence on wild fisheries stocks,” Zohar says. “Through these donations, we can also provide a small level of societal benefit right away and close to home.”

Learn more about groundbreaking work at the Aquaculture Research Center here.

Curtis Menyuk, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UMBC, has won the 2024 SPIE G.G. Stokes Award in Optical Polarization. The award honors Menyuk’s pioneering work in the 1980’s developing equations to describe how light propagates through optical fibers, as well as his ongoing contributions to the fields of optics and photonics.

The fast and reliable internet we enjoy today would not be possible without the fundamental work that Menyuk and his colleagues performed decades ago. Modern global telecommunication systems are built on backbones of optical fiber, and the rate of information flow through the fibers is limited by physical phenomena that affect the way light spreads. Over time and distance, these phenomena can turn a crisp signal into indecipherable garbage, and so optical communication system engineers must account for them in their designs. 

Menyuk developed equations that allow engineers to effectively model optical communication, most importantly by being the first equations to incorporate the effects of a property of light called its polarization. (Light travels as an oscillating electric field coupled to an oscillating magnetic field, and the direction of the electric field determines the polarization.) 

One consequence of the equations was the realization that spinning optical fiber can minimize signal distortion. 

“Curtis is a renowned pioneer in the field of optical communications, and over the years I witnessed the tremendous impact of his group’s work on the telecom industry, photonic technologies, and the field of optics in general,” says DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory physicist Michael Brodsky in a news story from SPIE announcing the award. 

For his part, Menyuk credits much of the impact of his work to his successful collaborations with colleagues and students. “It’s what comes from working with good people,” he says.

Timmie Topoleski, professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, has received the 2024 Society for Biomaterials Award for Service, which honors individuals who have devoted significant time and energy to advancing the goals of the professional society.

The Society for Biomaterials brings together professionals from academia, government, and business to promote advancements in biomaterials science, education, and professional standards to enhance human health and quality of life.

“I do not know anyone for whom “Service” is written in their DNA as it is for Tim,” said Paul Ducheyne, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania who nominated Topoleski for the award and is quoted in a society press release. 

Topoleski has served on and chaired many Society for Biomaterials committees and has taken on leadership positions for many years. His own research has focused on understanding the behavior of a range of biomaterials, from the harmful plaques that can build up in people’s arteries, to the metal, ceramic, and cement used in joint replacements. The work may lead to better ways to diagnose and treat diseases such as arthritis and heart disease.  

“I enjoy working to make the Society for Biomaterials a society that serves the needs of our members and provides a forum for the exchange of the latest developments in our biomaterials research,” Topoleski says. “It is an honor and very humbling to be in the company of those who previously received the award.”

The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has chosen UMBC’s Interdisciplinary CoLab for its “Undergraduate Spotlight” series. ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 80 scholarly organizations that has supported and amplified American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences since 1919. Over the last six summers, UMBC’s CoLab has provided students with an innovative team-based applied learning opportunity through a three-credit paid internship in narrative-based research. 

ACLS writes, “Unlike traditional group work in a college classroom, wherein majors from the same discipline are all trying to master the same material, CoLab projects require students to use their own skills and appreciate the skills of others.”

Professional research experience

CoLab gives interdisciplinary student teams a professional research experience while learning how to tell effective stories and create valuable public-facing results for community partners. “I wasn’t aware of the [Baltimore Immigration] museum prior to my internship,” shared CoLab alum Johanna Alonso ’20, English, about her team’s project “Baltimore: The Second Ellis Island. “I think the real benefit of the CoLab is that it exposes students to people, places, programs, and projects we may never have encountered otherwise.”

Co-directed by Carole McCann, professor and chair of gender, women’s, + sexuality studies, and Donald Snyder, a principal lecturer in media and communications studies, UMBC Interdisciplinary CoLab is a partnership between the Provost’s Office, the Dresher Center for the Humanities, and the Office of Summer, Winter, and Special Programs.

“ACLS is a very prestigious national academic organization,” says McCann, “so for it to highlight CoLab as an innovative program is a big deal.” 

After participating in the 2021 CoLab focused on BLM and Civil Rights Oral Histories, Deysi Chitic-Amaya ’23, media and communication studies, said, “I want to be able to approach future projects with a more open-minded perspective that may help to produce something new and innovative.”

Read more about students’ CoLab experiences and the application process.

Noor Zaidi, assistant professor of history, received a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship to research and write Translations of Zaynab: Gender, Sectarianism, and Citizenship in Shi’a Islam. The book will analyze how the seventh-century figure, Zaynab bint Ali, granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammed, has been used in 20th-century political contexts.

“It is my great pleasure to announce NEH grant awards to support 260 exemplary humanities projects undertaken by scholars, higher education institutions, and organizations of every size,” stated NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo) in the NEH press release. “This funding will help preserve and expand access to community histories, strengthen the ability of small museums and archives to serve the public, and provide resources and educational opportunities for students to engage with history, literature, languages, and cultures.”

Zaidi, a 2017 UMBC postdoctoral fellow, is a scholar of the Middle East and South Asia. She specializes in the history of gender, sectarianism, and Shi’a Islam in national and transnational spaces. Her research explores “sites of sectarianization” through the 20th century, tracing the development and evolution of pilgrimage to two female shrines in Syria and Pakistan and prisons in Iraq as sites of memory and identity construction. Based on oral interviews, fieldwork, and archival research in Syria, Pakistan, and Iraq, Zaidi’s work explores the physical and imaginative spaces in which identity is made and contested and shows how transnational narratives become embedded in local contexts.

You can read Zaidi’s articles about “green” Ramadan, the hajj pilgrimage, and the Shiite Muslim holiday, Ashura, in The Conversation.

Sebastian Deffner, associate professor of physics, attended “Quantum Science and Technology: Recent Advances and New Perspectives,” a workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City from November 30 to December 2. Deffner was among only about 70 global experts invited to the workshop, and the guest list included numerous Nobel laureates.  

“The leading experts in quantum science met in a unique place for a unique workshop to discuss the past, present, and future of quantum technologies,” Deffner says of the workshop.

For Deffner, it was an exciting and rare opportunity. The invitation recognizes his leadership role in developing the young field of quantum thermodynamics on an international scale. In 2019, he co-authored the first textbook focused on the subject, and his research group consistently contributes to the research literature.

Recordings of talks from the workshop are available here.

In September 2023, the UMBC Academic Success Center (ASC) gained a Learning Center of Excellence designation from the International College Learning Center Association (ICLCA). There are only six other institutions in the world with an active designation of excellence from ICLCA, shares Amanda Knapp, associate vice provost and assistant dean for undergraduate academic affairs.

“It’s remarkable what has been achieved since establishing our one-stop shop learning center model in 2019,” says Knapp. “We can now say with full evidence that our ASC is among the best in the world!” 

It was no small feat. ASC staff—in addition to their role providing centralized support services to all undergraduate students at UMBC—completed a rigorous application and peer review process, meeting many standards along the way.

The Learning Center of Excellence designation came at the same time that ASC’s Tutoring Program met the College Reading and Learning Association rigorous standards and successfully completed the International Tutor Training Program Certification peer review process. SI PASS—ASC’s peer-assisted study sessions—gained programmatic accreditation through the International Center for Supplemental Instruction.

In spring 2024, the ASC will have a grand opening of the newly renovated, expanded, and highly visible first floor location in the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery.