Join us for URCAD Online, April 19-25 at URCAD.umbc.edu

Sydney Fryer | Decriminalizing (and Re-Humanizing) the 'Squeegee Kid' | Dena Aufseeser | Geography and Environmental Systems

Ayra Hussain | Spiderwebs For Long-Term Air Quality Monitoring | Nava Rastegar | Geography and Environmental Systems

Sarah Jacobson | Addressing Food Insecurity Among College Students in Maryland | Margaret Holland | Geography and Environmental Systems

Victoria Joya Exceda | Overcoming the Pandemic: An Analysis of the Strategies of Latinx Immigrants in Maryland | Yolanda Valencia | Geography and Environmental Systems

Malaysia McGinnis | An Analysis of Black Women’s Health Geographies Resulting from the War on Drugs | Dawn Biehler | Geography and Environmental Systems

Mohsin Zaidi | Tornado Distribution, Seasonality, and Intensity Trends East of the Mid-Atlantic Appalachians | Jeffrey Halverson | Geography and Environmental Systems

Join us for URCAD Online, April 19-25 at URCAD.umbc.edu

Dariush Aligholizadeh | Optimizing in-situ longevity Of Silver Nanoplates | Mary Devadas | Towson University Department of Chemistry

Karis Barnett | Assay of an Antiparasitic Medication Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) | William LaCourse | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Toan Bui | Characterizing the Interaction Between A Eukaryotic Arginyltransferase 1 (ATE1) And An Aminoacyl-tRNA | Aaron Smith | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Tyler Carlyle | Synthesis Of Flex-Remdesivir Analogues As Potential Antiviral Therapeutics | Katherine Seley-Radtke | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Autumn Cook | Discovering And Characterizing New Functional Ferroelectric And Antiferroelectric Materials Using Computers | Joseph Bennett | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Faith Davis | USING PARAMAGNETIC TAGS TO ELUCIDATE THE STRUCTURE OF THE HIV-1 5' LEADER | Michael Summers | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Adilia Espinoza-Jones | Structural Characterization Of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type-1 RNAs | Michael Summers | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Aaliyah Khan | Systematic Route to Explore the Potential Energy Landscape of a New Family of Functional Materials | Joseph Bennett | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Joshua Leginze | Use Of Density Functional Theory And First Principle Thermodynamics In Understanding Lead Oxide Surface Transformations | Joseph Bennett | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Sean O’Sullivan | Probing Interactions Between Bacterial Ferrous Iron Acquisition Proteins FeoA And FeoB Through Peptide-Binding Studies | Aaron Smith | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Adam Ratajczak | A High-Throughput Arduino-Based TEER Meter With A Microfluidic Platform For Pharmacokinetic Studies | Chengpeng Chen | Chemistry and Biochemistry

David Shelly | Crystal Engineering For Non-Linear Optical Properties | Paul Smith | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Join us for URCAD Online, April 19-25 at URCAD.umbc.edu

Susan Afolabi | Regulation And Effects Of Ferritin In Border Cell Migration In D. Melanogaster | Michelle Starz-Gaiano | Biological Sciences

Shandon Amos | Investigation Of The Protein-Protein Interactions And Function Of The Chromatin-Associated Protein Set4 In S. Cerevisiae | Erin Green | Biological Sciences

Nahum Arefeayne | Role of Histone Gene Mutations in Tumorigenesis | Anita Corbett | Department of Biology, Emory University

Briah Barksdale | INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF RHO1 IN BACTERIAL CLEARANCE USING DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER | Jeff Leips | Biological Sciences

Maria Bieberich | Characterizing The Role Of Shep In Border Cell Migration In Drosophila Melanogaster | Michelle Starz-Gaiano | Biological Sciences

Dominique Brooks | Evidence For Conserved Mechanisms Of Neurulation in the Zebrafish Forebrain | Rachel Brewster | Biological Sciences

Allyson Caldwell | APICAL CONSTRICTION MOLECULAR MACHINERY WITHIN THE ZEBRAFISH MEDIAL HINGE POINT | Rachel Brewster | Biological Sciences

Isabella Salguero Cespedes | EFFECTS OF THE UV-FILTER OCTOCRYLINE IN D. MELANOGASTER | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Wujin Choi | “The Effect Of Different Gut Bacterial Environments On The Brain Of Fruit Flies” | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Tessa Clement | Regulation Of Proteasome Assembly Chaperone PAC3 In Human Cancer Cells | Achuth Padmanabhan | Biological Sciences

Arushi Dalal, Julia Warfield | Grasshopper Sparrow Song Diversity in the Caribbean | Bernard Lohr | Biological Sciences

Ayushi Dave | Investigating The Role Of Effete In Border Cell Migration In D. Melanogaster | Michelle Starz-Gaiano | Biological Sciences

Alexandra Erazo | ASK1 May Be A Therapeutic Target For Burn Injuries | Manik Ghosh | TLST

Bailey Godwin | Analyzing The Effect of NPF Dependent Chronic Pain on Ethanol Preference in Drosophila Melanogaster | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Mitra Harrison | Deciphering The Function Of The rlsA Gene In The Multicellular Green Alga, Volvox Carteri | Stephen Miller | Biological Sciences

Joana Hernandez | Assessing The Function Of Human Amyloid Precursor Protein And Its Fly Homolog APP-Like In Drosophila | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Malika Hitam | Effects Of Zinc Exposure On APPL-dependent Neurodegeneration In Drosophila Melanogaster | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Kathryn Hogan | Bioinformatics Modelling Of MicroRNA-mRNA Interaction Network Perturbation Using Nanostring RNA Expression Data | Jeffrey Robinson | USG TLST

Nneamaka Iwobi | Oral Exposure to Arsenic Through Food Consumption | Christopher Bradfield | University of Wisconsin-Madison

Jafira Johnson | Establishing Zebrafish As A Model To Study Genetic Components Underlying Neural Tube Defects Using Genetic Components | Rachel Brewster | Biological Sciences

Rahul Kamdar | Assessing Mutant P53 Levels Via Stable Expression And Molecular Screening In Ovarian Cancer Cells | Achuth Padmanabhan | Biological Sciences

Emma Kartalia | Conservation Genetics of the Endangered Bahama Oriole | Kevin Omland | Biological Sciences

Ziam Khan | Drosophila Melanogaster As A Model To Study Autism Genes At The Cellular And Behavioral Level | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Se Rin Lee | Understanding Nucleus Accumbens Synaptic Plasticity In Regulating Reward-related Behaviors | Tara LeGates | Biological Sciences

Se Rin Lee | Investigating The Divergence And Structure Of Chromatin Modifiers Set3 And Set4 In Budding Yeast | Erin Green | Biological Sciences

Yiwei Ma | Testing For A Species Concept In Betta Splendens | Tamra Mendelson | Biological Sciences

Sahar Mahate | The Significance Of ACE2 Receptor For SARS-CoV-2 Entry On Relationship Between Vaping And COVID-19 Risk | Weihong Lin | Biological Sciences

Olufolake Majekodunmi | Examination Of Flavor Vanillin In E-liquid On Mouse Models Using Comparative Chemosensory Behavioral Experimentation | Weihong Lin | Biological Sciences

Luz Martinez | Comparison Of Autism Linked Genes, SHANK3 And DLGAP2, In Humans With Its Fly Orthologs, Prosap and Vulcan | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Alexandra Misciagna | Identification Of Critical Iron Transporters Via RNAseq in the Gram-negative Bacterium Cellvibrio Japonicus | Jeffrey Gardner | Biological Sciences

D'Juan Moreland | Acoustic Similarity Between Yearling And Adult Males In Orchard Orioles | Kevin Omland | Biological Sciences

Nithya Navarathna | Establishing A Cell-Based High-Throughput Screen To Identify Pathways Targeting ZNF217 Levels In Ovarian Cancer Cells | Achuth Padmanabhan | Biological Sciences

Oluwateniayo Ogunsan | Automatically Generated Phase Portraits For Understanding Biological Systems | Daniel Lobo | Biological Sciences

Crystal Parry | Effect Of Lisinopril Dosage On Level Of ROS & A

Join us for URCAD Online, April 19-25 at URCAD.umbc.edu

Varsha Pudi | Neural Structure-function Analysis For Connectome Biomarker Identification | Marisel Villafane-Delgado | Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory

Join us for URCAD Online, April 19-25 at URCAD.umbc.edu

Dariush Aligholizadeh | Optimizing in-situ longevity Of Silver Nanoplates | Mary Devadas | Towson University Department of Chemistry

Iman Asfari | Reflection.( A Short Animation) | Corrie Parks | Visual Arts

Karis Barnett | Assay of an Antiparasitic Medication Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) | William LaCourse | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Benjamin Brown | Electro-optic Polymers For Wideband THz Sensing | Michael Hayden | Physics

Toan Bui | Characterizing the Interaction Between A Eukaryotic Arginyltransferase 1 (ATE1) And An Aminoacyl-tRNA | Aaron Smith | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Isabella Salguero Cespedes | EFFECTS OF THE UV-FILTER OCTOCRYLINE IN D. MELANOGASTER | Fernando Vonhoff | Biological Sciences

Autumn Cook | Discovering And Characterizing New Functional Ferroelectric And Antiferroelectric Materials Using Computers | Joseph Bennett | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Faith Davis | USING PARAMAGNETIC TAGS TO ELUCIDATE THE STRUCTURE OF THE HIV-1 5' LEADER | Michael Summers | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Mikaila Donaldson | Utilizing Evidence-Based Argumentative Writing - Preparing Students To Engage In College, Career, and Civic Life | Timothy Johnson | Education

Sydney Fryer | Decriminalizing (and Re-Humanizing) the 'Squeegee Kid' | Dena Aufseeser | Geography and Environmental Systems

Ayra Hussain | Spiderwebs For Long-Term Air Quality Monitoring | Nava Rastegar | Geography and Environmental Systems

Mohammed Khalid | Assessing Potential Indicators of Online Radicalization | Anupam Joshi | Computer Science and Electrical Engineering 

Aaliyah Khan | Systematic Route to Explore the Potential Energy Landscape of a New Family of Functional Materials | Joseph Bennett | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Thomas Kiley | A Qualitative Analysis of Business Decisions Under the Roberts Court | Jeffrey Davis | Political Science

Gerson Kroiz | Improving Accuracy In Deep Learning Methods on Compton Camera Based Prompt Gamma Imaging for Proton Radiotherapy | Matthias Gobbert | Mathematics and Statistics

James Lefkowitz | Speech Development in German | David Beard | Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication

Danylo Leshchyshyn | Legacies Of The First-Called: Saint Andrew And Claims To Apostolic Succession In The Rus’-Byzantine World | Sufian Zhemukhov | History

Lexie Mathis | A Review Of The Efficacy Of Treatments For Comorbid PTSD And Chronic Pain Across Sociodemographic Characteristics | Raimi Quiton | Psychology

Sebastian McNary | Under-employment And Abuse Intervention Response | Christopher Murphy | Psychology

Rachel Morin | Charge Transfer From Semiconductor Nanorods | Matthew Pelton | Physics

Harini Narayan | A Picture Paints a Thousand Words: Examining Linkages Between North Korean Propaganda and U.S.-Bilateral Relations | Kyung-Eun Yoon | Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication

Ouriel Ndalamba | Determination of Selectivity And Diffusion Coefficients for Ammonium Recovery by Donnan Dialysis | Lee Blaney | Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering

Paul Ocone | Dis/join: Unification Of Sound, Music, Narrative, And Animation In Liz And The Blue Bird | Steven McAlpine | Individualized Study

Katherine Poteet | Building A Nation: How National Service Requirements Affect Patriotic Sentiment | Carolyn Forestiere | Political Science

Varsha Pudi | Neural Structure-function Analysis For Connectome Biomarker Identification | Marisel Villafane-Delgado | Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab

Maila Raphael | Analyzing The Role Of Convents In Medieval German Society | Susanne Sutton | MLLI

Adam Ratajczak | A High-Throughput Arduino-Based TEER Meter With A Microfluidic Platform For Pharmacokinetic Studies | Chengpeng Chen | Chemistry and Biochemistry

Dominique Ross | Public Health in Northern Brazil's Refugee Borderlands | Felipe Filomeno | Political Science

Alexandra Seas | Development of a Pharmacokinetic Model of the Sustained Subconjunctival Delivery of Timolol Maleate | Erin Lavik | Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering

Fatimah Shaalan | “Flexing” Anything But Muscles: An Analysis Of Social Media Trends And Conspicuous Consumption | Liz Stanwyck | Mathematics and Statistics

Franklin Sun | Stimulus Equivalence | Mirela Cengher | Psychology

Micah Thorpe | Binder-Free Manganese Dioxide Cathode Performance In Flexible Batteries | Deepa Madan | Mechanical Engineering

Dante Washington | Meta-Analysis Of Sexual Conflict In Temperate And Tropical Biomes | Mercedes Burns | Biological Sciences

Kateryna Yakusheva | The Role Of Leadership And National Factors In Building An Effective COVID-19 Response | Brigid Starkey | Global Studies

Save the Date: April 19-25, 2021

Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) features research, scholarship, and creative work carried out by UMBC undergraduates. Student work is shared through oral presentations, posters, artistic exhibits, performances, and film. Over 300 presenters participate annually. Researchers work with faculty mentors on independent research, or research that is part of the mentor’s on-going projects.  They are from all disciplines, and can be working on a thesis, capstone project, part of a scholars or honors program, or they can be unaffiliated.This campus-wide celebration of achievement affirms UMBC’s commitment to the twin goals of research and a distinctive undergraduate experience.

All current undergraduates who have conducted research, scholarship or creative work in the last year may apply to present their results at URCAD. Mentors, fellow students, friends, family members, high school teachers and students, graduate school recruiters, and the general public are invited to attend.

Apply Now!!

Remember.... YOU ARE research!

ur.umbc.edu

Autumn is a senior Meyerhoff Scholar (M29), pursuing a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies dual degree, a member of the Honors College and currently a student staff member at the Women’s Center.

I need to make a disclaimer! I think that it is important to know from the forefront that I am both a STEM student and a humanities student, but the primary focus of my career will be in STEM. Here at UMBC I am pursuing both a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies (GWST), and I am a Meyerhoff Scholar so it puts me in a bit of an interesting and unique place to write this blog post critiquing the institution of STEM (by STEM, I am referring to the collection of established scientists that shape the major trajectory of the larger infrastructure of research) from a critical humanitarian perspective because I have a foot on both sides of the channel separating science from humanities and humanities from science. I firmly believe that institutions need to be constantly critiqued and changed in order to remain effective at generating knowledge and not stagnant. After graduation, I plan on pursuing a PhD in a chemistry related field and a career in STEM research, but it is extremely important to me that i do not abandon the framework of thought that I developed within my GWST studies. 

Just focusing on UMBC, it is pretty clear to me that our school heavily values its science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) students. A recent editorial in The Retriever detailed the large inequity in funding and resources between UMBC’s STEM programs and UMBC’s non-STEM programs. Just going by raw money, “The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science (CAHSS) total budget was $39,796,930” compared to “the Engineering and Information Technology and Natural and Mathematical Sciences [Colleges] (COEIT and CNMS respectively) had a total combined budget of $46,064,518,” the editorial goes on to say that the differences in budgeting do not reflect the number of majors offered by COEIT/CNMS and CAHSS. the problem with undervaluing arts and humanities in favor of valuing STEM research and institutions isn’t a problem that is isolated to UMBC or the University System of Maryland’s budgeting process. 

Image Description: This historical engraving, which depicts a large statue of a man straddling an entryway to a harbor, of what artist Martin Heemskerck believed the Colossus of Rhodes looked like with the superimposed text reading “STEM” on one side of the entrance, “HUMANITIES” on the other, and “ME” on top of the statue itself.

This budgetary discrepancy between STEM and non-STEM fields is indicative of a larger problem within society and STEM in general, where science is valued at a higher level than arts and humanities. This disparity gives rise to attitudes of STEM elitism within the science communities.

One of the most pervasive effects of this STEM elitism is the self-imposed isolated mindset. STEM often believes that it is on its own quarantined island, insulated from politics, social issues, and personal biases. The common belief is that STEM research is pure, factual, and just an analysis of how physical phenomena interact with each other. STEM is growing bacteria cultures or doing an electrochemical experiment and just being focused on the chemistry behind it. I mean, how can these bacteria or this newly synthesized compound be impacted by humanities or social science research? 

 This concept is unique amongst the STEM fields as other fields such as social sciences or humanities are often required by the nature of their research to account for and adjust on behalf of external and internal biases. However, STEM research, despite popular belief, is not immune to these biases. What can STEM learn from the humanities in terms of addressing these issues?

The Notion of STEM Superiority 

Accessibility

At UMBC, STEM students are somewhat isolated from the rest of the campus. Whether it is by the student’s own choice or just the actualized reality of their academic career, STEM students usually have to go out of their way to meaningfully interact with non-STEM students. This is, of course, due to the nature of STEM classes being extremely regimented, time intensive, and exclusive. Granted, every single major will separate as the classes become more specialized and start requiring more prerequisites to take, but the extent to which STEM classes separate is not the same as within humanities classes such as GWST courses. For example, many upper level GWST courses only require one or two prerequisite courses to take. For instance, I can take Queer Theory, a 400-level course that is crosslisted as a graduate level course within the GWST department here at UMBC after only taking one prerequisite class (Intro to Critical Sexuality Studies, a 200-level class). This is compared to a 400-level CHEM course, Inorganic Chemistry, which requires more than four prerequisite classes that take over two years to complete following the normal and recommended 4-year plan.

(Un)Biased Knowledge Making?

I think one of the fundamental and one of the most pervasive beliefs surrounding the concepts of “STEM Superiority,” can stem from the fine distinctions between the research environments. STEM research focuses primarily on discovering knowledge pertaining to how the natural world exists, and to explain why natural phenomena happen and how they interact with each other. On the other hand, humanities research details how humans react to the world, and how humans interact with each other. Some scientists believe  that because they are studying the fundamental phenomenon of the universe, the social sciences and potential impacts of human biases play no role in their research. At first glance, this might seem like a reasonable understanding of the situation because bacteria, solutions and spectrophotometers aren’t human and cannot be discriminated against! On the surface, this may be true but there are very significant factors that scientists should consider while doing their research. Scientists are human, and therefore have human biases, opinions and prejudices, whether they are well defined or not. Nobody can truly live an apolitical existence, and that includes scientists.

Who is Doing the Research?

These biases, opinions and prejudices can have an impact on the so-called “impartial research” of the scientist. One of the most obvious forms can be analyzed by asking “who is doing the research?” The vast majority of researchers are male, white, and were educated in Western Countries. This can be seen extremely clearly in the breakdown of Nobel Prize winners. As of 2020, no Black scientists have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry or in Physiology or Medicine, and only five women have won the prize in Physics (2.2%), nine in Chemistry (4.7%) and twelve in Physiology or Medicine (5.4%). While the demographics of the recipients of the Nobel Prize are not the most representative study of diversity within STEM (or a good signifier of the diversity in STEM because it is a cherry picking of the scientists with the “most significant” research) further evidence of the imbalance within STEM can be signified by the existence of both the Meyerhoff Scholars and Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) Scholars programs at UMBC, with both programs’ main goals being to increase the diversity of underrepresented minorities in STEM. Even within UMBC where the overall student body is composed of 52.1% racial minorities, only 29.1% of our faculty are a part of racial minorities. 

Is Science Apolitical?

The lack of diversity can probably, at least, be blamed for the long, storied history of severe ethical breaches. From the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where the Public Health Service non-consensually experimented on Black men by infecting them with syphilis and subsequently refusing to treat their symptoms all in the name of science, or the continued use of Henrietta Lacks’s cervical cancer cells without proper consent of the Lacks or the Lacks estate to the use them in medical research, science sometimes fails to address how real people are affected by the research that is performed. A lot of research is innocuous and will never affect the layman, but these potential ethical violations are not just historical. Even now, the eugenics implications of being able to selectively edit genes through CRISPR-CAS9 are being hotly debated, especially since two of the major scientists behind finding the enzymes just received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry! Further discussion also needs to be had about the gross amount of waste that chemical and biochemical research produces in both the forms of single use plastic and chemical waste and the numerous pressures that scientists face to capitalize on and make money from their research.

Now, I’m not saying that gross injustices and ethical violations will stop if scientists saw the need to incorporate social science and critical social justice methodologies into their research paradigms, but I do believe that scientists would be more likely to think of the implications of their methods and results within the larger context of the social-political system. While this problem is endemic of the entire system of knowledge-development in science, I think the problem of scientific research not acknowledging the larger work of humanities research and how they intersect can be traced back to how scientists are trained to be scientists. If primarily undergraduate institutions put more of a focus on building bridges between the pure science majors and the humanities majors instead of exclusively focusing on hard science, the students would be much more likely to carry this understanding of the wider world onto graduate school and the rest of the careers as scientists, hopefully eventually changing the entire research ecosystem acknowledge the greater impact of their scientific research.

America’s higher education institutions are historically built upon white supremacy and colonialism, and universities have a vested interest in maintaining their large endowments and reputation within the larger world. Regardless of the feelings and opinions of the people who are actually doing the research at the institutions, a large part of research is funded by the government to promote and further the oppressive agendas of the imperialistic state; for example millions of dollars are being pumped into research and development of the components of novel weapon systems for the military every day. 

While a single researcher or lab cannot change the entire institution, I believe that if enough of the STEM academy educate themselves and their colleagues about how science is much more than just looking at imagery data and making conclusions from a graph, STEM will be able to acknowledge and take from humanities and social sciences research to enrich methodologies and be more readily held accountable for its actions and digressions.