The UMBC Chess Team is training for the 2012 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship (“The World Series of College Chess”), which will take place December 27-30, in Princeton, NJ. The Pan-Am determines the top college or university team in North, South, and Central America, and the Caribbean. In its current form, it has been held annually since 1946. The Retrievers have won or tied for first place a record nine times (96,98,99,00(tie),01(tie),02,05,08(tie),09).

The top four USA schools will advance to the President’s Cup (“Final Four of College Chess”), which will take place in early April in Herndon, VA. Started in 2001, the Final Four determines the top USA college team. The Retrievers have won the Final Four a record six times.

Whereas the Pan-Am is a six-round team Swiss tournament scored by team points, the Final Four is a three-round team round robin tournament scored by individual points. Dr. Alan Sherman, Director of the UMBC Chess Program, considers team Swiss tournaments the most exciting form of college chess because each player must act in the best interest of the team, which might be in conflict with what is in the best interest for his or her individual game. For example, if the team needs a win, a player who normally might settle for a draw in an even or worse position in his or her game might have to assume the risk of playing for a win.

This year’s team includes two new players: International Grandmaster Niclaus Huschenbeth (FIDE rating 2536) from Hamburg, Germany, and International Woman Grandmaster Nazi Paidikze (2394) from the Republic of Georgia. Grandmaster Huschenbeth became the 2012-2013 UMBC Champion when he won the UMBC Chess Championship September 15-16 with an undefeated score of 4.5 points out of 5.

The two women on the team––International Women Grandmasters Paidikze and Sabina Foisor––are the fifth and sixth highest rated women in the USA. In early September, Foisor played on the USA Women’s Chess Team at the Chess Olympiads in Istanbul.

Last year, the University of Texas at Dallas won the Pan-Am, and Texas Tech won the Final Four. This year, however, the favorite is Webster University in St. Louis, MO, a newcomer to chess. Webster recruited the entire Texas Tech Team and its coach International Grandmaster Susan Polgar. Investing heavily in chess, they also recruited some of the top young rising stars, including Ray Robson.

The UMBC Team comprises Giorgi Margvelashvili (Captain), Niclas Huschenbeth, Sasha Kaplan, Sabina Foisor, and alternates Nazi Paikidze, Adithya Balasubramanian, and Benjamin Krause.

When UMBC political science professor Carolyn Forestiere moved to Catonsville, she and her husband knew they wanted to fill their new home with local art. After thinking about it some more, they decided to take their curatorial endeavor up a notch — and open their home as a part-time gallery.

Their first show, “UMBC Through the Lens,” will feature five UMBC visual arts alumnae — Brittney Danielle ’12, Chrystal Smith ’12, Marlayna Demond ’12, Stephanie Ellis ’12, and Kimberly M. Haines ’12 — who will present photography related to their time as students at UMBC.

Forestiere said she was pleased to have five “wonderful photographers,” explaining she hopes “that the artists will receive exposure and further their professional credentials.”

The first show will be on Friday, October 5th, from 5 to 7 p.m. Read more about the show and get the gallery address here. The community is welcome.

On Thursday, September 27, the Humanities Forum will present the annual Robert K. Webb History Department Lecture with Judith Walkowitz of Johns Hopkins University.

Walkowitz will speak on “Schleppers and Shoppers: Jews, Street Markets, and the Selling of Ready-to-Wear Fashion in London in the 1920′s and 1930′s” at 5 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery.

The lecture will spotlight a Jewish street market that emerged as the cutting edge retail space for mass market fashion in the West End. Whereas journalists described the smartly-dressed, fast-talking shop assistants locally known as “schleppers,” and the working-class female patrons they pulled into gown shops as straying from the class codes and styles of established English culture, Jewish Sohoites told hilarious tales of the “schlepper” as a Jewish street character, alternately resembling a red hot mama and a flashily dressed fellow emulating the dress of celluloid gangsters. Their memories recall a safe and modern space of ethnic settlement, simultaneously tied to Soho’s irregular world of sex, crime, and entertainment.

More information can be found here.

The Pitch Across Maryland Tour rolled into UMBC yesterday and the Daily Record was on hand to cover it.

“The statewide Pitch Across Maryland tour targets dozens of hopeful entrepreneurs from the Eastern Shore to Western Maryland. At each stop, participants meet and receive feedback from top business leaders and have the opportunity to record a four- to six-minute business pitch inside the bus studio,” wrote Daily Record reporter, Alissa Gulin in her story, Startup Maryland and its studio bus rolls into UMBC. “A panel of business professionals will judge the entries and choose several to advance to the next round. The winners will fine-tune their pitches for showcase at the Entrepreneur Expo, an event on Nov. 13 sponsored by the Maryland Technology Development Corp., or TEDCO.”

UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller has tough news for Americans frustrated with government gridlock. In his latest Baltimore Sun column, Schaller writes:

Americans sent divided governments to Washington in both 2006 and 2010, and will likely do so again this November. Since the conventions, President Obama’s lead over Republican nominee Mitt Romney has widened, and almost no sane analyst thinks the GOP will lose the U.S. House this November. So buckle up for two more years of stalemated, sometimes ugly governance in the nation’s capital.

The one remaining toss-up for Schaller is the Senate race, which might offer election night’s greatest excitement. However, he concludes, “Whichever party emerges this November with a Senate majority…the inability of the two national parties to solve major national problems is almost certain to continue for another biennium.”

David H. Murray ’14, economics, is hard at work campaigning for a seat on the Prince George’s County Board of Education, reports The Baltimore Sun‘s Explore Howard, and his chances look good.

Murray is speaking with as many voters as he can before the election, commenting, “Any time I’m not in school, I’m rushing back here to talk to people.” Next week he will participate in a forum sponsored by the Prince George’s County branches of the League of Women Voters and NAACP, alongside candidate Zabrina Epps. Murray was the front-runner in the April 2012 primary, garnering 56% of the total votes and receiving 1,500 more votes than Epps.

Responding to queries about his age, Murray notes that voters he meets seem pleasantly surprised that “they have a young person growing up in the county, deciding they’re not going to leave, or wait till they get older to solve problems, that they’re willing to jump in now and do that.”

Alumna Jeehye Yun ’97, computer science, was profiled along with her cybersecurity company Secured Sciences Group (SSG) by The Baltimore Business Journal’s Jack Lambert in an article published on September 7th.
Read the full story here.
Yun told Lambert that SSG–a member of UMBC’s Research and Technology Park, and which is in the process of working with the research park on a plan to attract investors–is particularly adept at cutting through red tape and redundancies which can occur in government applications, saying, “We can take a lot of disparate policies and figure out where the overlaps are.”
The alumna, who is CEO/President of SSG as well as a former teacher at her alma mater from the late-90′s, also told Lambert that the company’s upcoming technology will new technology will hopefully cut through the quantity of material companies have to sift through from government grant applications and contracts by finding the overlaps between for organizations like the Department of Defense, the Navy and the Marines.
Yun also noted that her company’s products also have value for colleges, management consultants and small businesses, saying, “The biggest rule of thumb for us is, actually, are we solving a problem where we would want to use the product?”
This story originally appeared in UMBC Insights.

Alumna Jeehye Yun ’97, computer science, was profiled along with her cybersecurity company Secured Sciences Group (SSG) by The Baltimore Business Journal’s Jack Lambert in an article published on September 7th.

Read the full story here.

Yun told Lambert that SSG–a member of UMBC’s Research and Technology Park, and which is in the process of working with the research park on a plan to attract investors–is particularly adept at cutting through red tape and redundancies which can occur in government applications, saying, “We can take a lot of disparate policies and figure out where the overlaps are.”

The alumna, who is CEO/President of SSG as well as a former teacher at her alma mater from the late-90′s, also told Lambert that the company’s upcoming technology will new technology will hopefully cut through the quantity of material companies have to sift through from government grant applications and contracts by finding the overlaps between for organizations like the Department of Defense, the Navy and the Marines.

Yun also noted that her company’s products also have value for colleges, management consultants and small businesses, saying, “The biggest rule of thumb for us is, actually, are we solving a problem where we would want to use the product?”

This story originally appeared in UMBC Insights.

The department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE) announces its new NSF Scholarship for Service (SFS) CyberCorps program scholars.

According to CSEE,

“Four students in UMBC’s Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering have been selected for major scholarships to study cybersecurity in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Scholarship for Service (SFS) CyberCorps program.   Each student will receive full tuition, fees, and a nine-month stipend ($20,000 for undergraduates, $25,000 for MS/MPS students, and $30,000 for PhD students) for up to  two years (three years for PhD).  For this first year of the program at UMBC, recipients are Oliver Kubik (BS student in computer science), Brendan Masiar and Brandyn Schult (MPS students in cybersecurity), and Mary Mathews (PhD student in computer science).

While in the program at UMBC, each student will participate in paid summer internships and have opportunities to engage in mentored research opportunities at the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance (CISA) and its partners from industry and government.  Following graduation, each student must work for the government (for pay) for one year for each year of scholarship received.  Drs. Alan T. Sherman and Richard Forno direct the program using support they received from their recently awarded $2.5 million NSF grant.  The CyberCorps program will produce highly-qualified professionals to meet the increasing need to protect American’s cyber infrastructure.

Each year students may apply for SFS CyberCorps scholarships at UMBC, with application deadline in mid January.  For details, see www.cisa.umbc.edu.  In each of the next three years, UMBC expects to make six new awards.   Applicants must be accepted to a full-time degree program in a cybersecurity-related field (CS, CE, cyber, EE, IS, math, physics, education, public policy).”

Meet the scholars