The OneUSDA Internship Program offers Federal opportunities to students currently enrolled in qualifying educational programs or institutions. It is a comprehensive developmental program intended to provide students with experience in a dynamic work environment that will enhance their educational goals and shape their career choices. An internship with USDA will involve various components of on-the-job experience, mentorship, and training tailored to the student’s education, experience, and interests.

During 2018, USDA was proud to host more than 3,000 interns throughout the country, about half were through the Federal Pathways program.

For the summer of 2019, we are aiming to bring even more college students onboard in the Federal Pathways program, to serve their country through a career in government and begin pursuing careers in agriculture, natural resources, and rural development.

The improvements we’re making to internships at USDA will enable us to recruit the best (that is you!) and retain the best (it’s a competition, and we want you to perform at your best here, for the American people!).

UMBC’s Idea Competition offers students from all fields an opportunity to present business ideas to a panel of expert judges and receive immediate feedback on moving from vision to reality.

The university’s Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship hosts this competition each fall. This year’s event featured ten project finalists. Student teams had just three minutes each to sell the judges and the crowd on their innovative product and business ideas.

Vivian Armor, director of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, notes that the popular event now receives submissions from nearly every major across campus. Armor, herself an alumna of UMBC (‘73, American studies), shares, “I love seeing how creative our students are.”

While the Idea Competition can be intense, the organizers also focus on providing support for the emerging student entrepreneurs who participate. Local entrepreneurs on the judging panel don’t just evaluate the finalists’ ideas; they also provide advice on next steps.

The ideas presented this year ranged from technology to make schools safer from physical threats to wearable technologies that can help people in their daily activities. One team presented materials that can help clean up contaminant spills in the environment, while another shared homes built from 3D-printed materials.

Top prize: ReActive

Jood Ali ‘20, mechanical engineering, submitted an idea called ReActive, along with her project partner Nila Lahijan ‘19, biological sciences. ReActive combines electronic muscle stimulator technology with compression clothing. Ali shared how her personal experience with physical therapy inspired her to look closer at these two technologies, which aided her recovery from an injury. She wondered if they could be made more portable and wearable.

Ali described how electronic muscle stimulators deliver electrical current to the body through electrodes that are placed on the skin. Both these devices and compression clothing are commercially available, but, Ali noted, the technology has not been combined in this innovative way to help people receive the benefits of their physical therapy while on the go.

ReActive won both the first place prize ($750) and a special award for best presentation ($250). “I was confident of my presentation, but by no means was I expecting to win first place,” said Ali. “Sometimes, you have to have a little faith in yourself, and when that doesn’t work you just have to be okay with letting yourself be scared for a little while…because that’s the only way you’ll grow.”

Supporting healthy online communities

Michael Ogunsanya ‘21, mechanical engineering, and Eric Solender ‘21, information systems, presented MindStand Technologies, which works to foster healthy online communities by identifying and preventing harassment.Ogunsanya, Solender, and their team are using artificial intelligence informed by clinical psychology to determine the intent and content of messages, and flag concerning material. Their project earned the second place prize ($500) in the competition.

The students shared that a key distinction between MindStand and its competitors is the ability to process full-length conversations, rather than relying on keyword searches to flag cyberbullying and harassment. They explained that the technology they are developing can also get professionals and administrators involved, through interactive dashboards and email notifications, to address bullying behaviors. Solender and Ogunsanya are working with UMBC’s Division of Information Technology to explore implementing the MindStand Technology on the myUMBC platform.

“Participating in the Idea Competition gave me the confidence and drive to apply the lessons I’ve learned in entrepreneurship classes,” said Ogunsanya. “It’s amazing seeing so many innovators gather together to support one another and help turn our dreams into careers. Seeing faces in the crowd light up as I explain the months of work I’ve put into my venture created a drive in me to finish what I’ve started and truly disrupt the tech industry.”

Affordable housing through new technology 

Jen Spiker ‘21, information systems, presented her business idea, 3D Printed Home, which won the third place prize ($250) in the competition. Inspired by how the military is using 3D printing technologies to construct barracks, she developed a proposal for printing homes in as little as 24 hours and for the price of a car. Spiker hopes her work can help reduce homelessness and expand affordable housing options in the United States.

The business pitches were judged by Sean Booker ‘04, computer engineering, president and CEO of Booker DiMaio; Eli Center ‘01, political science, president and CEO of 4S-Solutions, LLC; and Paula Kipperman, president of United World Technologies, LLC, located in bwtech.

To other student entrepreneurs considering this type of competition, “I would say go for it,” Solender shares. “You’ll get great feedback on presenting, find out if your idea is viable, and get to see all of the other cool things students at UMBC are doing.”

Banner image: Jood Ali (left), Jennifer Spiker, Eric Solender, and Michael Ogunsanya  after the Idea Competition. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

This full-day conference will focus on the unique needs of international students in their job search process in the United States. Topics will include H-1B and permanent resident statuses, negotiating for these statuses with potential employers, advice on getting the most out of your job search, and more. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from experts, students, and employers to make sure they are fully prepared to meet their career goals in the United States.

Friday, February 8, 2019

9:30 AM - 4 PM

University Center 312

 
AN RSVP IS REQUIRED FOR THIS EVENT. Please RSVP via UMBCworks under Events- Workshops.
 

AGENDA INCLUDES:

·         Immigration lawyer

·         International student alumni panel

·         Career Center highlights

·         Employer panel

·         Job search strategies for F-1 students workshop

·         CPT/Intern Success Practicum overview

Please note: UMBC is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for all faculty, staff, students, and visitors.  If you would like to request accommodations (e.g., ASL interpreters, captioning, wheelchair access, etc.) for this event due to a disability, please notify us at least two weeks prior to the event. Requests received after that time cannot be guaranteed, but we will do our best to make arrangements for program access. Please contact the event host (careers@umbc.edu) with your specific request and be sure to include the event title, date, and time.     

UMBC Hour of Code events

This week on Wednesday and Thursday from 10:00am – 1:00pm, the UMBC Computer Science Education Club will host Hour of Code events in the Engineering Building Atrium. Hour of Code is an annual campaign that is part of Computer Science Education Week with the goal of expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities.

On Wednesday, December 5th, the focus will be on on computer science outreach within the UMBC community. There will be an Arduino workshop from IEEE from 11:30am – 12:45pm (bring your laptop if interested), interactive games teaching introductory programming concepts, and Makey Makeys.

On Thursday, December 6th,  students from Lakeland Elementary School will visit the UMBC campus and learn about programming. The CS Ed club are still accepting volunteers to help students during the activity, and/or attend lunch with the students. You can sign-up here. Computer Science Education Club would appreciate any time you can dedicate to this event.

Email *protected email* with any questions. For more information about Hour of Code, visit https://code.org/about.

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Distinguished Departmental Seminar

The Web PKI in Theory and Malpractice

Dr. Bruce Maggs, Duke University

11:00am Friday, 7 December 2018, ITE325b

The Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for the web was designed to help thwart “phishing” attacks by providing a mechanism for browsers to authenticate web sites, and also to help prevent the disclosure of confidential information by enabling encrypted communications. For users to reap these benefits, however, the parties that implement and operate the PKI, including certificate authorities, web-site operators, and browser vendors, must each perform their roles properly.

This talk focuses on one aspect of the PKI: certificate revocation. The security of a web site hinges on the ability of the site operator to keeps its private keys private. While most operators guard their keys carefully, on occasion software vulnerabilities such as the notorious Heartbleed Bug have put millions of keys at risk. If a web-site operator fears that its private key has been compromised, it should ask its certificate authority to revoke the corresponding certificate. Browsers, however, often do not fully check whether the certificates they receive have been revoked, and mobile browsers never check. There are a variety of reasons for not checking, but the most important are the amount of bandwidth required to download certificate revocation lists in advance, the latency of checking certificates on the fly, and the slow progress of upgrading every web server to support the newer certificate status stapling approach.

This talk presents a new and much more efficient system, CRLite, for pushing the revocation status of every certificate to every browser. CRLite leverages a recent development: although lists of revoked certificates were previously available, Google’s Certificate Transparency project now also provides a log of all unrevoked certificates as well. With both lists in hand, a compact data structure called a filter cascade can be used to represent the status of every certificate with no false positives and no false negatives. CRLite requires a browser to download a 1.2MB filter cascade initially, and then a 40KB update (on average) every day. Our results demonstrate that complete revocation checking is within reach for all clients.

Bruce Maggs received the S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985, 1986, and 1989, respectively. His advisor was Charles Leiserson. After spending one year as a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT, he worked as a Research Scientist at NEC Research Institute in Princeton from 1990 to 1993. In 1994, he moved to Carnegie Mellon, where he stayed until joining Duke University in 2009. While on a two-year leave-of-absence from Carnegie Mellon, Maggs helped to launch Akamai Technologies, serving as its first Vice President for Research and Development. He retains a part-time role at Akamai as Vice President for Research. In 2017 he won the Best Dataset Award at the Passive and Active Measurement Conference, The Best Paper Award at CoNEXT, a Distinguished Paper Award at USENIX Security, and the 2017 IEEE Cybersecurity Innovation Award for work that appeared at IEEE Security and Privacy. In 2018 he was part of a large team that received the inaugural SIGCOMM Networking Systems Award for the Akamai CDN.

Supported by UMBC’s Eminent Scholar Mentoring program.

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