Nelanne Bolima,‘24 chemical engineering - biotechnology & bioengineering track

When did you start your Research?

Fall 2021

Where was your Research Experience?

Marten Lab

What is the focus of your Research?

My research focuses on understanding the physical and mechanical properties of mycelial materials, made with the model fungus Aspergillus nidulans. Our goal is to eventually make mycelial materials that are able to mimic the properties of traditional materials (e.g., plastic) but have greater sustainability.. 

What was the best part of your Research Experience / What was the biggest learning moment of your Research?

The best part about my research experience in the intrinsic mentorship that comes with being in a research lab. My graduate student mentor and PI provide such a warm and supportive environment. 

What advice do you have for students who are interested in getting involved in research or an internship?

Just try it! Research seems very intimidating as there is no clear solution for the problem you want to solve. But even performing research for one semester will give you invaluable skills such as communication, presenting, and even critical thinking. 

Are you a member of any clubs/campus organizations?

UMBC National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) President, CBEE 225L Teaching Fellow, AiChE, Meyerhoff/U-RISE

What are your goals after graduation?

I hope to pursue an MD-PhD in predictive medicine. Long-term I plan to entire academia and ideally become a professor teaching future scientists. 

Learn more about Nelanne Bolima: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelannebolima/

Catherine Wraback, '23 chemical engineering, traditional track and AIChE co-president 

Meet Catherine Wraback, a senior in the chemical engineering traditional track, President of the AIChE student organization, and a CWIT (Center for Women in Technology) Scholar. Catherine was also the President of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) ChemE Jeopardy team which won first place at the 2022 national competition. She will be heading to GE Aerospace to become a part of the Edison Engineering Development Program. Take it away, Catherine! 

Catherine Wraback, chemical engineering '23, poses in the GE Aerospace office after accepting the Edison Engineering Development Program offer. Image courtesy of Wraback.

Q: Why did you choose UMBC?

The Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering (CBEE) department at UMBC has a strong sense of community, which I experienced firsthand during a campus tour. I was impressed by the friendly and welcoming atmosphere of the department, and it was clear that the faculty and students form a close-knit group. One of the main reasons why I was attracted to UMBC is the family-like environment within the CBEE department, where professors and staff not only care about the academic success of their students, but also their personal well-being. This dynamic ensures that students receive the support they need to thrive both personally and professionally.

Q: Tell us about someone in the department who has inspired you or supported you & how did they do it?

Dr. Raikar and Dr. Castellanos are remarkable professors at UMBC, who go above and beyond to support their students. Dr. Raikar is known for her open-door policy, which makes her approachable to all students, and she is always willing to lend an ear and provide guidance on any topic. Her classes are not only inspiring, but also challenging and intellectually stimulating, which keeps students engaged and motivated.

Dr. Castellanos is an advocate for the needs of her students and encourages them to approach problem-solving from a holistic perspective, considering the broader impact on society. Her passion for thermodynamics is contagious and inspires her students to develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter. 

Both Dr. Raikar and Dr. Castellanos are instrumental in running the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChe) at UMBC. Their guidance and support ensure that the student organization runs smoothly and provides a valuable platform for students to develop their leadership skills, network with peers and professionals, and participate in various academic and social events.

Q: What do you love about your academic program?

The chemical engineering bachelor's program at UMBC offers a variety of tracks, which allows students to tailor their education to their specific interests and career goals. One of the most beneficial aspects of the program is the ability to choose elective courses, which provides students with the flexibility to customize their curriculum and explore various topics in depth. I particularly appreciated the ample opportunities to take labs, which provided me with hands-on experience and helped me develop my practical skills. Additionally, the program encourages students to design their own projects, which fosters creativity and innovation, and provides a platform to apply theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios.

Q: What clubs and orgs are you a part of and why? How was that experience?

I have had the privilege of serving as the President of the AIChE chapter at UMBC, as well as being a part of the Jeopardy Team, which has won at both the regional and national level. I am on the women's ultimate frisbee team at UMBC and attend practice twice a week. Being involved in these extracurricular activities has taught me valuable lessons in teamwork, conflict resolution, and leadership. Through these experiences, I have learned to approach disagreements with empathy and respect for diverse perspectives, while also managing multiple responsibilities and growing as a leader.

Moreover, being part of these teams has given me the opportunity to have fun and connect with my peers outside of the classroom. I have formed close personal connections with my teammates and learned a lot from their unique perspectives and experiences. These extracurricular activities have also taught me the importance of compassion and understanding towards others, and the value of taking time to enjoy the company of friends.

Q: What would you tell others who are in your shoes at UMBC?

I strongly encourage everyone to get involved in extracurricular activities and events on campus. Don't hesitate to attend office hours, ask questions, and engage with your professors, as they are a valuable resource and can provide guidance and support beyond the classroom. Additionally, attending student organization meetings and other events is an excellent way to meet new people, build connections, and broaden your horizons. Getting involved in extracurricular activities can help you build a well-rounded skill set that will serve you in your future endeavors.

2022 AIChE ChemE Jeopardy National Championship team and their advisor (l-r): Max Bobbin, Catherine Wraback, Dr. Neha Raikar, Colin Jones, and Pavan Umashankar. Image courtesy of Wraback

Shawn Serafin, ‘23 chemical engineering - traditional track, minor in chemistry

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

When did you do your Research Experience?

Hennigan’s Lab: May 2021-May 2022

Where was your Research Experience?

I worked in Dr. Hennigan’s Lab in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering at UMBC.

What is the focus of your Research Experience?

I focused on two different projects. The first project focused on characterizing the solubility of environmentally relevant gasses into salt solutions with varying conditions. The second project focused on characterizing the effect of pH on the presence of brown carbon with cloud water samples.

What was the best part of your Research Experience?

Our periodical meetings with Dr. Henningan where we learned about new ideas and projects, presented and discussed ongoing results, and recalibrated and refreshed our efforts.

INTERNSHIP

When did you do your Internship?

May 2022-May 2023. I went for a summer in-person, and continued remotely during the 2022-2023 school year. 

Where was your Internship?

I went to Santa Fe Springs, CA, for an summer in-person and continued remotely during the school year.

What is the focus of your Internship?

Process/Manufacturing Engineering of Carbon-Carbon Composite Plane Brakes

What was the best part of your OR What was the biggest learning moment of your Internship?

The unexpected test failures of parts that required fast, on your feet thinking, and lots of extra long hours of work and thinking.

More about Shawn…

What advice do you have for students who are interested in getting involved in research or an internship?

Start with on campus research: show interest in a professor’s research and try to get involved. Then, utilize that relevant experience to build your knowledge and interests. Finally, work to attend as many career fairs as possible to speak with people and try to show interest in their work and be likable, and the opportunities will come flowing in. Become more than just another name on the page. 

Are you a member of any clubs/campus organizations?

I am a member of Tau Beta Pi, The Engineering Honor Society. I was the treasurer for the 21-22 academic year and the president for the 22-23 academic year. I have also been a teaching fellow for the CBEE department every regular semester since I was eligible.

What are your goals after graduation?

I have a position at Northrop Grumman as a Systems Engineer in the pathways program. Perhaps, I will move into a more managerial position, and then farther down the line I will run various business ventures.

Learn more about Shawn Serafin: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawn-serafin

Visit the UMBC CSEE Website

An Dang, '24 chemical engineering - biotechnology & bioengineering track

When did you do your research/internship?
May 2023

Where was your research experience?
Purdue University, with Dr. Brandon Boor, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering

What is the focus of your research/internship?
Air filtration

What advice do you have for students who are interested in getting involved in research or an internship?
Make sure to start looking for opportunities as early as late October, and start asking your Professors/supervisors for recommendations early!

Are you a member of any clubs/campus organizations?
I was a teaching fellow for ENCH225L in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023, we mainly graded homework, quizzes, exams, held review sessions, and had office hours. I am a CBEE ambassador. I help run the tiktok account, attend outreach and recruitment events, and give department tours to prospective students. I am an ISSS Global ambassador: I answer prospective students' questions on Unibuddy, write blogs (sometimes...), and film promotional videos for UMBC. I am also involved in the UMBC chapter of AIChE, I am the 2023-2024 service chair. 

What are your goals after graduation?
Industry or Graduate school

Learn more about An Dang: ✓ @anhongdang (Twitter) Check out An Dang’s profile on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anhongdang 

Lessons from ‘Star Trek: Picard’ – a cybersecurity expert explains how a sci-fi series illuminates today’s threats

Editor’s note: This article contains plot spoilers.

Society’s understanding of technology and cybersecurity often is based on simple stereotypes and sensational portrayals in the entertainment media. I’ve written about how certain scenarios are entertaining but misleading. Think of black-clad teenage hackers prowling megacities challenging corporate villains. Or think of counterintelligence specialists repositioning a satellite from the back of a surveillance van via a phone call.

But sometimes Hollywood gets it right by depicting reality in ways that both entertain and educate. And that’s important, because whether it’s a large company, government or your personal information, we all share many of the same cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities. As a former cybersecurity industry practitioner and current cybersecurity researcher, I believe the final season of “Star Trek: Picard” is the latest example of entertainment media providing useful lessons about cybersecurity and the nature of the modern world.

So how does “Star Trek: Picard” relate to cybersecurity?

The nature of the threat

The show’s protagonist is Jean-Luc Picard, a retired Starfleet admiral who commanded the starship Enterprise-D in a previous series. Starfleet is the military wing of the United Federation of Planets, of which Earth is a member. In Season 3, the final season, Picard’s ultimate enemy, the Borg, returns to try conquering humanity again. The Borg is a cybernetic collective of half-human, half-machine “drones” led by a cyborg queen.

The Borg has partnered with other villains and worked for over a decade to deploy hidden agents able to compromise the DNA data contained in the software underpinning the transporter – a teleportation device used regularly by Starfleet personnel. Over many years, a certain subgroup of Starfleet personnel had their DNA altered by using the transporter.

Thus, in launching their final attack, the Borg is able to instantly activate thousands of “drones” to do its bidding in the form of altered, compromised Starfleet personnel. As Geordi La Forge, the Enterprise-D’s engineer, notes, “They’ve been assimilating the entire fleet this whole time, without anyone ever knowing it.”

The Borg’s prolonged, stealthy infiltration of the federation is indicative of how today’s most effective cyberattackers work. While it’s relatively easy to detect when hackers attempt to breach a system from the outside, experts worry about the effects of an enemy infiltrating critical systems from within. Attackers can put malicious code in software during manufacturing or in software updates, both of which are avenues of attack that do not arouse suspicion until the compromised systems are activated or targeted.

This underscores the importance of ensuring the security and integrity of digital supply chains from product development at the vendor through product deployment at client sites to ensure no silent “drones,” such as malware, are waiting to be activated by an adversary.

Equally important, “Star Trek: Picard” presents the very real and insidious nature of the insider threat faced by today’s organizations. While not infected with a cybernetic virus, recently arrested Massachusetts Air National Guard airman Jack Teixeira shows the damage that can occur when a trusted employee has malicious intent or becomes co-opted and inflicts significant damage on an employer.

In some cases, these compromised or malicious individuals can remain undiscovered for years. And some global adversaries of the U.S., such as China and Russia, are known for taking a long-term perspective when it comes to planning and conducting espionage activities – or cyberattacks.

Humans remain the weakest link

“Synchronistic technology that allows every ship in Starfleet to operate as one. An impenetrable armada. Unity and defense. The ultimate safeguard.”

With these words, humanity’s military defenders activated a feature that linked every Starfleet vessel together under one unified automated command system. While intended to serve as an emergency capability, this system – called Fleet Formation – was quickly hijacked by the Borg as part of its attack on Earth. In essence, Starfleet created a Borg-like defense system that the Borg itself used to attack the federation.

Here, the most well-intentioned plans for security were thwarted by enemies who used humanity’s own technologies against them. In the real world, capabilities such as on-demand real-time software updates, ChatGPT and centrally administered systems sound enticing and offer conveniences, cost savings or new capabilities. However, the lesson here is that organizations should not put them into widespread use without carefully considering as many of the potential risks or vulnerabilities as practical.

But even then, technology alone can’t protect humans from ourselves – after all, it’s people who develop, design, select, administer and use technology, which means human flaws are present in these systems, too. Such failings frequently lead to a stream of high-profile cybersecurity incidents.

Resiliency is not futile

To counter the Borg’s final assault on Earth, Picard’s crew borrows its old starship, Enterprise-D, from a fleet museum. The rationale is that its ship is the only major combat vessel not connected to the Borg collective via Starfleet’s compromised Fleet Formation protocol and therefore is able to operate independently during the crisis. As La Forge notes, “Something older, analog. Offline from the others.”

From a cybersecurity perspective, ensuring the availability of information resources is one of the industry’s guiding principles. Here, the Enterprise-D represents defenders in response to a cyber incident using assets that are outside of an adversary’s reach. Perhaps more important, the vessel symbolizes the need to think carefully before embracing a completely networked computing environment or relying on any single company or provider of services and connectivity for daily operations.

From natural disasters to cyberattack, what’s your plan if your IT environment becomes corrupted or inaccessible? Can your organization stay operational and still provide necessary services? For critical public messaging, do governments and corporations have their own uncorruptible Enterprise-D capabilities to fall back on, such as the fediverse, the decentralized microblogging platform that is immune to the impulsive manipulations of Twitter’s ownership?

Prepare for the unknown

The “Star Trek” universe explores the unknown in both the universe and contemporary society. How the crews deal with these experiences relies on their training, the appreciation of broad perspectives and ability to devise innovative solutions to the crisis of the week. Often, such solutions are derived from characters’ interests in music, painting, archaeology, history, sports and other nontechnical areas of study, recreation or expertise.

Similarly, as modern digital defenders, to successfully confront our own cyber unknowns we need a broad appreciation of things beyond just cybersecurity and technology. It’s one thing to understand at a technical level how a cyberattack occurs and how to respond. But it’s another thing to understand the broader, perhaps more systemic, nuanced, organizational or international factors that may be causes or solutions, too.

Lessons from literature, history, psychology, philosophy, law, management and other nontechnical disciplines can inform how organizations plan for and respond to cybersecurity challenges of all types. Balancing solid technical knowledge with foundations in the liberal arts and humanities allows people to adapt comfortably to constantly evolving technologies and shifting threats.

Dystopic metaphors in fiction often reflect current social concerns, and the “Star Trek” universe is no different. Although rooted in a science fiction fantasy, “Star Trek: Picard” provides some accurate, practical and understandable cybersecurity reminders for today.

Season 3, in particular, offers viewers both entertainment and education – indeed, the best of both worlds.

Richard Forno, Principal Lecturer in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Carlos Romero-Talamas, Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director, received the Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award

Maria Sanchez, Professor of the Practice, received the Excellence in Teaching Award. Dr. Sanchez is also the Director of Engineering and Computing Education Program

Congratulations!

We are proud to announce that the Chemical, Biochemical, Environmental Engineering Department was acknowledged for our involvement in the Fall 22 STEM Expo and Fall Fair, as well as for representing the COEIT department in the First Lego Program STEM Education Research at the Annual Annapolis Area Christian School STEM Program.

We extend our gratitude to the Annual Annapolis Area Christian School system, the COEIT department, and all the students, staff, and faculty members from CBEE for their generous support and contributions.