Northrop Grumman Corporation announced an expansion of their cybersecurity work with UMBC to include research on health data analytics in partnership with the UMBC Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research (CHMPR). CHMPR is an NSF-sponsored industry/university cooperative research center and consortium focused on addressing the productivity, performance and scalability issues in meeting the computational demands of its sponsors applications through the continuous evolution of multicore architectures and open source tools.

From the Northrop Grumman press release:

The UMBC-Northrop Grumman collaboration began with a cybersecurity initiative and is now leveraging the big data analytics used in cyber and applying the tools and technologies to health. This has enabled Northrop Grumman to dive into expansive health data on a variety of subjects, such as the impacts of cardiovascular disease as it relates to smoking, obesity and pharmaceutical drug use.

"CHMPR has provided greater clinical access to information, analytic techniques and natural language processing," said Amy Caro, vice president and general manager, health division, Northrop Grumman Information Systems. "Our efforts have yielded real-time results and are driving programs and practices that are helping to improve the health of large populations. As we move forward, our security capabilities and work with CHMPR will allow for continued large scale data mining to help inform breakthrough research and drive better health outcomes."

Northrop Grumman has been a member and supporter of CHMPR, since its inception and chairs the CHMPR Industry Advisory Board. Northrop Grumman and UMBC started their participation with CHMPR focusing on cyber to demonstrate a commitment to that mission and have since expanded that focus to include high performance computing and big data analytics in the health arena. Most recently, Northrop Grumman has provided initial funds to CHMPR's new North Carolina State University planning site.

"Our partnership with Northrop Grumman and our work in cyber and now health are huge steps forward in advancing critical research and driving better business and health results. We couldn't be prouder of these accomplishments and we look forward to continuing this great work," said Yelena Yesha, professor of computer science and CHMPR director, UMBC.

"Working with industry to advance research is a great model and Northrop Grumman and UMBC have been a key leaders and partners in building this industry, government and university consortium to advance issues like cyber security and health analytics," said Rita Rodrigues, program director, National Science Foundation.

Northop Gumman is collaborating with UMBC on several initiatives supporting cybersecurity education, training and technology. These include partnering with the bwtech@UMBC Cyber Incubator to form Cync, a program that nurtures innovative cybersecurity startups and helping UMBC launch its Cyber Scholars Program.

Come to URCAD to see new ways to collect and measure data! Research by Kit Kearney, Andrew Comer, Marcus Flores, Lewis Gould, and Daniel Zuckerbrod will be presented Wednesday, April 22 at the University Center Ballroom from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m.

This research project developed a universal device with the ability to collect a broad range of sensory input while simplifying operation, optimizing portability, and expanding file format compatibility.

Come to URCAD April 22 to see how UMBC student James Loy has produced a computer interface to control the instruments of a microscopy unit for general optical research of single nanoparticles.

His poster presentation "Computer Interface for Optical Studies of Single Nanoparticles" will be in the Ballroom from 10am - 12 pm. Come check it out!

Want to learn about the relationship between feminist epistemology and personal experience? Come to URCAD Wednesday, April 22nd to see Amelia Meman talk about the impact, implications, and limitations of the unique paradigm shift inherent in using personal experience to find what makes "good knowledge".

This presentation will be held in the University Center, room 312 at 2:15 p.m.

UMBC researchers, Julie Norton, Kevin Liao, Mimi Way and Brittnie Prakash will be presenting a poster in the University Center Ballroom from 12-2pm on a bacteriophage from Russian soil!!!

The researchers ran a series of host-range tests, and isolated the TsarBomba DNA and submitted it to the University of Pittsburgh for sequencing. The TsarBomba genome was also being annotated by the Phage Genome Analysis class at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

UMBC CWIT alumna Dr. Katherine Gibson (http://bit.ly/1DXQa8A) will
visit on this Wednesday (4/15) to interview for a position in the
CSEE Department as a full-time lecturer.  She received her BS degree in Computer Science in 2008 and was a  member of the third class of UMBC CWIT Scholars.  She is  finishing her Ph.D. in Computer Science this Spring at the
University of Pennsylvania, where her research involves "human  interactions with non-human security systems (e.g., face  recognition, graphical passwords)".

Dr. Gibson will give a talk  from 12:00 to 1:00pm in ITE 227 and also be available to meet  with students from 3:30 to 4:00pm, also in 325b and again in the CWIT office from 5:00-5:30 PM.  

Please stop by to any or all of these events to meet Dr. Gibson and give her a BIG CWIT welcome home!