A blog reflection by Women’s Center intern Mariana de Matos Medeiros 

I’ve been working on a draft for this blog post for over 6 weeks. It’s been intimidating and scary to be vulnerable in such a public space.

I was hoping to describe how I self-silence and how I struggle to find words that match my thoughts and feelings. I often try to polish them, make them perfect and pristine. Drafting and editing about a million times and still feeling like what I’ve written is not quite right. Sometimes I feel that folks are all too willing to accept that femme women often struggle with expressing their unique voices.

Further, my ideas and how I express them through writing—in other words my voice—have often been devalued. Whether through my experience with academic writing or the constant rhetoric that lived experience is less valuable than ‘objective’ facts found through scientific research. Often, lived experience is closely associated with emotion and thus femininity. It feels invalidating and that my thoughts are only valuable if I can back them up with an outside source.

Recently, while scrolling through my various social media pages, I noticed that I share poetry quite often. In fact, out of 20 posts on my Facebook about 12 of them were poetry by Rupi Kaur.

Some of them include:

Sharing these images and words is how I communicate with my friends via social media. Often, the poetry I share is a reflection of my thoughts, ideas, and feelings.

Which sounds like the definition of ‘my voice’ that I described earlier.

Perhaps, it’s fine that I can’t find my own perfect words to convey my voice. I’m finding that self-expression does not have to fit into a box of what other people expect. Also, that there is value in empathizing and sharing other people’s words in addition to creating my own.

It is self-expression anyway and if I feel accurately represented by the words and images that others have created, then so be it.

Poetry has played an immense role in my healing from sexual violence. The words of others have also served as a reminder that I am not alone. My experience did not happen in isolation. The personal is political. I have a community and that realization has changed everything for me.

This journey to finding my voice belongs deeply to me and I can make it my own.

Meet Renee,

She is a English major and an URA Scholar. She is also a staff writer for The Retriever Weekly and is involved with UMBC’s creative arts journal, Bartleby. Rene also has some advice for future researchers... "Don’t doubt the merits of your research project. Even if your project is very different than many others, don’t let that discourage you. You’re bringing your own perspectives and ideas to the table, and they deserve to be heard just as much as everyone else’s ideas do."

Rene's research project explores the effects from people who were children at the time of 9/11 in order to look at how those attacks were a common point of awakening among the members of her (Rene's) generation. The research also plans to look at how the attacks continue to affect those individuals today. I plan to take elements of the recollections collected, as well as my own, and combine them into a nonfiction book. The aim of this book is to appeal to a wide range of ages, from middle school-aged children through the Millennial Generation. An effect of the timeline will emphasize the enormous impact that one single day can have on an entire generation.

Read more about her research here…

At one table, thirteen Lakeland Elementary/Middle School students from Baltimore used tablets to create patterns of colorful shapes through code. At another station, the students composed music and played games on laptops by completing circuits connected to bananas and celery.

The scene in UMBC’s Commons last Thursday was just what Gabrielle Salib ‘17, interdisciplinary studies, had hoped for. “Our world is quickly becoming more automated and by learning how to code, as President Obama has said, we ‘become the creators rather than just the consumers’ of our ever-growing tech society,” shared Salib. She is president of UMBC’s Computer Science Education student organization, which organized the event as part of the international Hour of Code movement

UMBC joined thousands of schools around the world in hosting Hour of Code events to celebrate Computer Science Education Week, drawing both UMBC students and younger area students to learn about circuits, coding, and computing through hands-on activities.

“Hour of Code events are a great way to gain visibility and awareness of the importance of CS for All,” said Marie desJardins, COEIT associate dean and professor of computer science, and faculty advisor of the Computer Science Education student organization. “It’s especially important to reach out to young women and minority students in their critical middle school years, and to connect them with peers and role models they can relate to.”

“The Hour of Code day is especially important for our Technovation Club because two days a week our girls spend two hours learning how to code and how to develop their own apps,” said Acacia Asbell, a project director for UMBC’s Sherman STEM Teacher Scholars Program who works closely with Lakeland Elementary School. “This event really reinforces how important coding is, and how they can have an impact on the world around them.”

The Lakeland Elementary School students were not the only ones to gain valuable experience from the event. “Our student volunteers also benefited by increasing their own confidence in their skills, connecting with other students and faculty, and knowing that they are making a difference in the world around them,” said desJardins.

Dr. Marie desJardins, President Freeman Hrabowski, and Gabrielle Salib ’17, interdisciplinary studies, working with Lakeland Elementary/Middle School students at the Hour of Code.

One major challenge with engaging young student in coding is the intimidation factor, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski told The Baltimore Sun, at the event. He noted that Hour of Code events give hands-on experience that removes that barrier and encourages young students to pursue college degrees and careers in technical fields.

For Salib, that hands-on experience is core to bringing home the point that anyone can code, and that coding can open doors to creative careers.“I had some students tell me that coding was much more fun than they thought it’d be,” she said. “That was precisely the purpose of our event: to show the UMBC community that they, too, can code!”

Read “City students get early exposure to computer careers at UMBC” in The Baltimore Sun.

Adapted from an article on UMBC News by Megan Hanks

The post In Hour of Code, UMBC students give Baltimore youth hands-on intro to computing careers appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

By Connected World Staff | 11/30/2016

Empowering the IoT

One of the areas that has benefitted immensely from the IoT (Internet of Things) is healthcare, because the technology has revolutionized the way patients are monitored and taken care of by doctors. Considering the huge strides already taken, Professor Govind Rao wants to take it even further by ensuring patients aren’t just given the right medicine or treatment, but are left with a feeling of empowerment.

Govind Rao professor of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

As part of Rao’s career that has spanned 35 years and 35 patents in manufacturing and environmental solutions, the past eight years have been dedicated to positively disrupting the personal healthcare space. As a professor of biochemistry and engineering at theUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County, Rao’s research is aimed at giving patients better control over their personal health and enabling solutions that are specific to patients’ needs.

Normally when patients are evaluated on things like blood pressure or heart rate, these results are typically compared to the average mean statistic of the population. Since the individual profile and body type of the patient may differ than the average person, the aforementioned technique does not always accurately demonstrate where a patient needs to be in terms of his or her results. To accommodate for this, Gao and his research team have developed next-generation sensors that assess oxygen, pH, and pCO2, as well as glucose and glutamine to get better readings that will allow for more personalized treatments.

Rao is also working to ensure the latest solutions in healthcare reach the widest population possible, rather than being restricted to those who have the means to afford them. His work in non-invasive sensor technology for neonatal monitoring and the CAST initiative to deliver devices that operate in low-resource settings saves patients in rural areas time and money when getting the healthcare they need. In addition, Rao does not shy away from challenging the industry to address privacy and confidentiality problems that hinder patient empowerment.

“Much of the information tends to be firewalled, so there needs to be a way where you can access big data after stripping off personal identifies, as that will allow better decisionmaking to take place,” says Rao. “There has to be a balance; it’s great to encourage connectivity and this amazing interconnected cloud-to-reality space, but if it’s not done with security in mind, then potentially every note becomes a weak link.”

Though he has been part of the system for many years, Rao also challenges the paradigm of education. He makes it his job to encourage students to be flexible and to familiarize themselves with other industries, as they may never know where their research will be needed in the future. By exposing his students to research and development, Rao allows them to get the experience they need, while also supporting future innovation.

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From Professors to IoT Pioneers, Connected World 2017 Honorees

Carol Stream, Ill (PRWEB) December 06, 2016

The IoT (Internet of Things) biggest trailblazers are setting out to help a new generation navigate the road from the classroom to a connected society across the globe.

That is why, Connected World magazine is pleased to name the 2017 Pioneers Award winners, celebrating the leaders in research and education who are responsible for laying down the foundation to some of today’s greatest breakthroughs in IoT and M2M.

These 10 scholars, selected by the editorial staff of Connected World magazine, are heading up groundbreaking labs and organizations at some of the country’s most prestigious universities, yet their determination to push the limits of the IoT extends far beyond any university or college campus. Whether they are collaborating with big business on the latest platforms or devices, undertaking years’ worth of research, or simply extending guidance to a young student, each one of this year’s pioneers aims to enrich the lives and the world around them.

“This year’s pioneers are a great representation of where the IoT started and where it is headed,” says Peggy Smedley, editorial director, Connected World magazine. “Each one of these individuals brings his or her unique level of sincerity, creativity, and tutelage that will make their contributions to the IoT shine for years to come.”

The 10 recipients of the 2017 Pioneers Award are:

• Ted Herman, University of Iowa
• Behrokh Khoshnevis, University of Southern California
• Chandra Krintz, UC Santa Barbara
• Vivian Loftness, CMU
• Govind Rao, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• Carlo Ratti, SENSEable City Lab, MIT
• Sanjay Sarma, MIT
• Sabine Seymour, Parsons, The New School
• Joshua Smith, University of Washington
• Greg Thomas, University of Kansas

The list, along with an in depth analysis of this year’s honorees, is featured in the December 2016 issue of Connected World.

About Connected World magazine
Connected World is the business and technology publication that provides the intelligence industry titans need and the guidance consumers crave. It’s all about M2M and IoT. connectedworld.com

Meet Sean,

He is a Visual Arts major and an URA Scholar. He is a proponent of research funding... "You have nothing to lose except the potential of how far $1500.00 can push you in your career. You can do almost anything you want with the funds as long as you just prove that it’s worth doing." His future goals is to freelance as a photographer and to continue to visually tell the stories of people who can’t tell their own.

Sean's creative project will document the "invisible citizens" of Baltimore City. Homeless individuals are visible casualties of racial and socio-economic class divisions, yet as individuals they are often invisible to much of society. In an effort to make some of these individuals visible, Sean will interview and make individual photographic portraits of select homeless persons with whom he has become acquainted in the past year. This work will personify the individual. Homeless people who participate will be able to take credit for helping others who share their struggle.

Read more about his research here…