Come check out Kayla Barrett's poster at URCAD!

In 2015, a TEDtalk-style documentary produced in China entitled “Under the Dome” went viral on the internet, alerting the entire world to the problem of air pollution and the lack of environmental safeguards in place in China. In a modern society, the protection of the environment is vital to the health of the people, not to mention the legitimacy of the government. This research addresses the question of how the government has managed environmental policy, the nature and scope of the health crisis facing Chinese society, and the strategies the Chinese people have taken to cope. To assess the impact of pollution on society, I analyzed government policies, popular media and scholarly reports, focused on air pollution in major cities, especially Beijing. The paper concludes that the Chinese state is continuing to put economic expansion above environmental health and leaving the people to defend themselves from the ever-growing problem.

Kayla Barrett
The Social Impact of Air Pollution in China
Mentor: Constantine Vaporis
UC Ballroom | 10:00 a.m. – Noon

A Probabilistic Approach to Modeling Socio-Behavioral Interactions

Arti Ramesh, University of Maryland, College Park

Noon Thursday, 24 March 2016, ITE325b

The vast growth and reach of the Internet and social media have led to a tremendous increase in socio-behavioral interaction content on the web. The ever-increasing number of online interactions has led to a growing interest to understand and interpret online communications to enhance user experience. My work focuses on building scalable computational methods and models for representing and reasoning about rich, heterogeneous, interlinked socio-behavioral data. In this talk, I focus on one such emerging online interaction platform—online courses (MOOCs). I develop a family of probabilistic models to represent and reason about complex socio-behavioral interactions in the following real-world problems: 1) modeling student engagement, 2) predicting student completion and dropouts, 3) modeling student sentiment in discussion forums toward various course aspects (e.g., academic content vs. logistics) and its effect on their course completion, and 4) designing an automatic system to predict fine-grained topics and sentiment in online course discussion forums. I demonstrate the efficacy of these models via extensive experimentation on data from twelve Coursera courses. These methods have the potential to improve learning and teaching experience of online education participants and focus limited instructor resources to increase student retention.

Arti Ramesh is a PhD candidate at University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary research interests are in the field of machine learning and data science, particularly on probabilistic graphical models. Her advisor is Prof. Lise Getoor. Her research focuses on building scalable models for reasoning about interconnectedness, structure, and heterogeneity in socio-behavioral networks. She has published papers in peer-reviewed conferences such as AAAI and ACL. She has served on the TPC for ACL workshop on Building Educational Applications and has served as a reviewer for notable conferences and journals such as NIPS, Social Networks and Mining, and Computer Networks. She has won multiple awards during her graduate study including the outstanding graduate student Dean’s fellowship 2016, Dean’s graduate fellowship (2012-2014), and yahoo scholarship for grace hopper. She has worked at IBM research and LinkedIn during her graduate study. She received her Masters in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

LEDO’S PIZZA FUNDRAISER

Grab some pizza for dinner and show support for UMBC's     Best Buddies CHAPTER on

THURSDAY, MARCH 24^TH 

4-8PM.

Address:

4636 Wilkens Avenue

Baltimore, MD 21229

(410) 242-8868

See reviews below:

Program: The Data Incubator is an intensive 8 week fellowship that prepares Masters, PhDs, and postdocs in STEM + social science fields seeking industry careers as data scientists. The program is free for Fellows and supported by sponsorships from hundreds of employers across multiple industries. In response to the overwhelming interest in our earlier sessions, we will be holding another fellowship.

Locations: There will be both an in-person (in NYC, DC, SF) and online section of the fellowship. There is a common application for both the online and in-person sections.

Dates: All sections will be from 2016-06-06 to 2016-07-29

Application Link: https://www.thedataincubator.com/fellowship.html#apply

Who should apply: Anyone within one year of graduating from a masters or PhD program or who has already obtained a masters or PhD is welcome to apply. Applications from international students are welcome. Everyone else is encouraged to sign up for a future session.

You can read about our latest alumni working at the New York Times or Palantir.  For additional information, checkout our blog, Venture Beat article, or Harvard Business Review piece.

Questions, contact:

Michael Li

Postdoc, Cornell

michael.li@thedataincubator.com

March is Women’s History Month!

Three  years ago Women’s History Month’s national theme was “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.” The theme honored generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields. At UMBC we honored this theme by partnering with the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) to feature some of their amazing students participating in technology in the engineering and information technology fields. While the theme for Women’s History Month changes every year, we have come to love the tradition in spotlighting the stories of UMBC’s CWIT women. So with that, we are honored to bring you the 3rd Annual CWIT Showcase in honor of Women’s History Month.

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Natacha Ngea
Computer Engineering
CWIT  Scholar & Newcombe Scholar

Meet Natacha Ngea! A CWIT Scholar and computer engineering major.

Describe what sparked your interest STEM and the journey to choosing your major.

I have always been interested in Science and Technology. My favorite classes were biology, chemistry and Mathematics. I still remember how excited I was to perform experiments with test tubes. In my country of origin, Cameroon, you specialize in high school and your admittance in College depends on what you graduate in. I was placed in Modern Languages. It never felt right. When I got the opportunity to come to the US, I decided to use that chance to finally do what I always wanted to do. In order to do so, though, I needed to pay my way to school and fill the gap I had in technology so I had so I enrolled in a professional certificate at Howard Community College (HCC). My first class was a computer repairs class. I loved it. I wanted to know how computers work. My professor knew so much on the topic that I asked him what was his background was in. He told me he was a mechanical engineer. That is when I started thinking about getting a degree in engineering. After meeting with my advisor, I took some tests and I enrolled in a second degree in engineering. After physics I, I knew mechanical engineering was not the right fit for me but I found out there was a computer engineering program. I read the curriculum and I was sold. In the meantime, I was invited to join the STEM community at HCC. Through this program, I grew more and more confident. I also joined the Computer/Network support team as an intern. I discovered that I liked troubleshooting and taking things apart. I learned a lot there. I am a visual learner and English is not my first language so being able to relate a concept I learned in class with an application I encountered through my internship was great. After an A.A.S in Computer Support Technology and an A.A in Computer Science, I transferred to UMBC in fall 2014 to pursue a degree in Computer Engineering and I also work for DoIT as a network technician.

Tell us about an internship, research experience or project that you are proud of.

When I started my first internship. I had no experience. No one expected much from me or asked me anything so I started going on tickets on my own and shadowed more experienced technicians. I wanted to be taken seriously. Finally a big project came and individual assignments were made as it went. When I was given my own part of the project, I knew that my efforts were paying: I was part of the team.

Who are your role models in the engineering or IT field? How have their stories influenced your educational or career goals.

My role models are my peers. Each one of them has her story and it is really fascinating to hear them. I went to Grace Hopper Conference last Fall and I met a lot of professionals in the field and other students in the country or from other countries. It was very encouraging to me to hear the same passion and drive, sometimes the same goals and I felt re-energized. It was a great experience. If you are in a computing major, you must attend Grace Hopper.

Women often face subtle comments (microaggressions) or people who tell them they can’t/shouldn’t be in these majors which are often dominated by men. What would you say to those women or what advice do you have?

In the environment where I grew up, the young are discriminated against because they are young. The older can get away with anything because they are older. That experience and the other forms of discrimination I faced taught me a very important lesson: It is not about you. It is about the aggressors. They have a problem. You do not. For the most part, you are never really conscious right away of these microaggressions. You find yourself angry and low on energy because those tiny papercuts start to accumulate. You are not alone in this. At Grace Hopper, I kept hearing the same story over and over again no matter where the women were in their professional lives.You need to create your own support system: It may or may not involve people. If it does, it does not need to be other women in your major, though that would be ideal. My first year at UMBC, I was hanging out with mechanical engineers. Do something that always brings you high positive energy (it will channel your frustration into something positive) and remind yourself of what motivates you to be in these majors. I created a Women in Computer Engineering Lean In Circle opened to undergraduates, graduates and alumnae. Of course, there are plenty of other resources on campus such as SWE and affiliates from scholarship programs.

Natacha is also a Newcombe Scholar and part of the Women’s Center Returning Women Students Program. She’s pictured here with other UMBC returning women students at fall orientation.

With viral hashtags like #DistractinglySexy or #AddWomen and #Ilooklikeanengineer, women in STEM are using social media as a tool for activism and creating awareness about women’s representation in STEM. What’s your favorite example of women in STEM supporting and empowering themselves and other women to change the narrative about women in STEM?

I have already mentioned the Grace Hopper Conference and Lean In Circles but my favorite is #Ilooklikeanengineer. America loves labels. I have never seen anything like it. When you think about it, most issues stem from this need to catalog everything including people. This campaign is great because you can fit in any other label and see how pointless they are.

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The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) is dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields. CWIT efforts begin with nurturing a strong group of Scholars, grow to building community resources for other women in these majors, extend to fostering a healthy gender climate and ITE pedagogy in College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) departments, and finally expand into outreach efforts to increase interest in technical careers. A successful program for female-friendly engineering and information technology education at UMBC will help make UMBC a destination for women (and men) interested in technical careers and serve as a national model for other universities. To read previous Women’s History Month CWIT spotlights, click here. 

To learn more about the experience of women in STEM, check out the American Association of University Women’s report, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) which presents in-depth yet accessible profiles of eight key research findings that point to environmental and social barriers — including stereotypes, gender bias, and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities — that continue to block women’s progress in STEM.

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For more information about Women’s History events and happenings, visit the Women’s Center myUMBC group page.

The Baltimore Corps Fellowship is coming to campus this TUESDAY to recruit those completing their undergraduate or graduate degrees in the coming months from ALL fields of study.

Baltimore Corps recruits across the board because the organizations with whom they partner are looking for a wide array of skills. Fellows come from all backgrounds and all fields of study.

BALTIMORE CORPS FELLOWSHIP INFORMATION SESSION
Tuesday, March 22nd
6:00 to 7:30 pm in Commons 331

At this information session, learn what Baltimore Corps is all about--our mission, our work, and our vision for years to come. We will present about our programming, introduce attendees to some of our current Fellows, learn about what attendees are studying and are passionate about, and hold space to answer any questions about our Fellowship program.

The application for the 2016-17 Baltimore Corps Fellowship is now live. Apply now through April 15th.

The Baltimore Corps Fellowship is a network of professionals leading impact-oriented initiatives in Baltimore City, the social change capital of America. Working across fields including health, education and workforce development, our community is on the front lines of creating opportunity for Baltimore's communities and families. 

Fellowships are full-time, paid positions in a Baltimore nonprofit, social enterprise or government agency. Though the Fellowship is one year, 80% of Fellows are hired by their host organization at the conclusion of the year. If you are interested in joining us, apply today and attend Tuesday's information session.  Bring your resume.