Hi everyone,

I'm writing to give everyone an update regarding the UMBC HPCF and other Research Computing projects currently undertaken by DoIT. 

Summary

• Critical Vulnerabilities Patched

• Users Can Configure Email Notifications from Slurm

• Coming Soon: “develop” Partition on chip

• Performance Improvements on RRStor

• ada Volumes Being Sunset by June 30

• Reminder: chip Maintenance Period on June 2nd

Critical Vulnerabilities Patched

In May, a few major vulnerabilities were disclosed that affected all major Linux distributions. In short, these flaws could allow a standard user to improperly gain full administrative control of a system. Our team quickly installed the necessary security patches and protective mitigations to prevent malicious users from taking advantage of these exploits.

Users Can Configure Email Notifications from Slurm

Users can now supply additional sbatch/srun/salloc flags to their normal slurm scripts or commands to instruct slurm to send notification emails to specified email addresses. These notifications can trigger based on job status and other slurm allocation metrics, e.g., Job Start/End or Job 90% through timelimit. Please see the “--mail-type” and “--mail-user” flags in the “man” pages for these slurm commands for more information. 

Coming Soon: “develop” Partition on chip

In an effort to better support the development and testing of slurm jobs on chip, we will be adding a new “develop” partition. This dedicated partition is specifically designed for users who need to test code interactively, allowing users to quickly check if changes worked without waiting in the main job queues. Jobs running on this partition will have a short time limit (up to 90 minutes) to keep queue times low and maximize availability for rapid troubleshooting.

We aim to make this available following the chip maintenance period on June 2nd.

Performance Improvements on RRStor

This past month, the team has been fine-tuning the RRStor ceph storage cluster behind the scenes to make it faster, more stable, and self-healing. In particular, we have automated how the system handles disconnected users to prevent file lockups, and improved our early-warning monitoring to catch hardware issues before they cause issues that could lead to widespread slowdowns.

For more information, check out this myUMBC post: Storage System Performance Update.

If you have noticed performance changes that may be related to storage, please submit a descriptive RT ticket, and DoIT Research Computing Staff will work with you to investigate and suggest ways to speed-up your workflows.

ada Volumes Being Sunset by June 30

Given the age of the ada NFS sever, the 170TB spread across 42 volumes will be migrated to RRStor in careful coordination with those volume owners. Please keep an eye out for emails from DoIT Research Computing Staff to kick-off this process ahead of June 30.

Reminder: chip Maintenance Period on June 2nd

This is a reminder that on Tuesday June 2nd, chip will be inaccessible during business hours (ET) to undergo maintenance. Refer to this post for more information: 20260602 Downtime Announcement

Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster, please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website. 

Need Help?
As always, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research Computing RT Queue (hpcf.umbc.edu > User Support > Request Help).

--
Gregory Ballantine
HPC Specialist
UMBC DoIT

Current external funding opportunities for Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences, with deadlines from June through December 2026, are available here: https://mailchi.mp/umbc/funding-opportunities-humanities-humanistic-social-sciences-summer-fall-2026?e=[UNIQID]

CARAT (Creative Achievement and Research Administration Team) assists CAHSS faculty with research development and pre- and post-award services. CARAT offers a range of support activities for faculty seeking extramural funding, including drop-in sessions, individual consultations, workshops, and co-sponsored sessions. Check our website and myUMBC group for upcoming activities.

Faculty seeking to develop extramural grants and fellowships should submit a CARAT Consultation Request form for research development support, or a CARAT Proposal Development Request form for help in preparing and routing an application for a known opportunity. To request a consultation or to begin a proposal, visit our pre-award assistance webpage (you must be logged-in to myUMBC to complete CARAT request forms). The lead time for fellowship proposal development is 2-3 business weeks, and at minimum 4 business weeks for grant proposal development. CARAT reserves the right to decline proposal requests that do not include adequate lead time. External grant and fellowship applications must be routed for university approval in either UMBC's Kuali system or through the CAHSS internal routing form before submission. Plan additional time (5-7 business days) for routing.

Rachel Brubaker, CARAT’s Associate Director for Research Development, retires on June 1, 2026. Contact CARAT Director Dr. Marc Ruppel (mruppel@umbc.edu) with questions about CARAT’s pre-award services. Consult with your department chair or program director before beginning any funding application!

PI Eligibility: UMBC uses Kuali, a cloud-based research administration tool, for proposals and awards. UMBC faculty, who are identified as a Principal Investigator (PI), Co-Investigator, or Key Person on proposals and awards, must obtain and then maintain PI eligibility in order to develop external funding proposals and receive awards at UMBC. This includes all faculty on the tenure track. Teaching Professors may also become PI Eligible through an exception process. Becoming PI Eligible involves completing the following trainings in CITI: Principal Investigator Research Administration Training and Education (PIRATE), and the Research Security Combined Module, as well submitting a PI Eligibility request form via DocuSign (after trainings are completed). PI applicants must also obtain PeopleSoft Finance and PAW Access. Both CITI trainings are required to apply for any external funding, including from non-federal sponsors. NOTE: Faculty will need to re-take and renew their PIRATE certification three years from the date of completion.

Visit CARAT's website for FAQs on proposals and research policies and procedures at UMBC: https://carat.umbc.edu/support-for-pis/faqs/.

Hailey Turney, M.A. ’21, first came to UMBC as a student pursuing an academic passion in the text, technologies, and literature program. She connected right away with faculty and other community members. Now, as an undergraduate academic advisor in the College of Engineering and Information Technology and an instructor teaching introductory English and university orientation classes, she helps current UMBC connect and find their own path, too. 

Hailey shares what she loves about UMBC and her advising job. Take it away, Hailey!

Q: Tell us about yourself. 

A: I am a COEIT academic advisor. I mostly work with mechanical engineering students now. I also teach a section of ENGL 100 each semester and UNIV 101 in the fall semesters. I love being able to help students and engage in my community, so advising and teaching feels like a great way to reach students on different levels. 

When I was an undergrad, I did not have the best advising experience, so being able to make a difference as an advisor now feels like an interesting, but great, twist of fate. I also like to play Volo soccer in Baltimore and do Dog’s Day Out at BARCS outside of work!

Q: Who are some of the people at UMBC who have most supported you?

A: My amazing boss Emily Abrams-Stephens is spectacular. She supports me and my fellow advisors every day. She is always advocating for us and showing us how much she cares everyday. Working with her, I never doubt that I am valued here. She always listens to our ideas and is a fantastic (and popular) morning chat partner.

I had a previous job that weighed on me every minute of the day—even outside of work. I missed the activities I loved to do because of it. At UMBC, I have a trusting team—my boss and my fellow advisors—that supports me. If I am ever away, I know my students will be taken care of by my colleagues. The trust I have in my team is something I will never be able to replace. The most remarkable thing about UMBC is the people.

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: There will always be someone in your corner. I did my master’s here and it was the first time I immediately felt seen in my academic career. When I came to work here, I immediately felt wanted and supported. There are so many resources available to the UMBC community and there is always someone there to help you find them. As an advisor, it is now my job and honor to help students find those resources and their own supporting community.

Q: What part of your job do you enjoy the most and why?

A: I love interacting with students and helping them find their way. Being that person that they can turn to when they don’t know where to go is the most important part of our job. We want students to succeed and feel secure in their place here at UMBC.

Q: What brought you to UMBC in the first place? 

A: I came to UMBC because I wanted to expand my knowledge on a topic I was passionate about. The faculty in the English department had so many interesting areas of study that I knew I would be well-supported in finding my own. After meeting with some faculty members for a graduate assistantship, I felt hopeful that this would be an interactive community. The faculty responded to my emails right away, were interested in what I had to say, and were encouraging from the beginning. I came for the academics and stayed for the community. This continued as I found a job here at UMBC as well—I was hesitant to leave. 

Q: What would you tell someone who is considering a career at UMBC?

A: You will find a great community here. You will also find ways to continue to improve and learn no matter where you end up.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

UMBC has established a new M.S. graduate program in Artificial Intelligence in the CSEE Department. Designed for students seeking to go beyond a general computing degree, the program offers a focused, rigorous pathway into AI research, development, and deployment, equipping graduates to drive innovation across industry, government, and academia. Read more about the new AI MA program here.

This program is now enrolling for the fall 2026 semester! Apply by August 1 here.

As many of you already know, today marks the last day of UMBC employment for CAHSS's longtime research development anchor and lifelong arts & humanities advocate, Associate Director of CARAT Rachel Brubaker. 

Over the course of Rachel's nearly 30 years at UMBC, she has helped faculty (and the college) to shape, hone, and find funding for their research in ways that were both fundamental to their career and equally fundamental to the stature and standing of CAHSS as a whole.

Put simply, Rachel knows the funding landscape and how to navigate it better than anyone I've ever worked with. 

Her work was often quiet: collating and curating targeted funding opportunities for faculty, consulting with PIs to strategize and nudge their project ideas along (or slow them down if they needed more thought!), helping projects to create programming, content, and educational goals, scaffolding funding across a research arc rather than just in a single project, and navigating the many internal processes and protocols so that faculty didn't need to do so themselves. 

I honestly could spend another 1000 words recounting her work here, but I think that a much simpler summation captures her career far better than the specifics do:

Rachel believed that the work of CAHSS faculty was of R1 stature long before the university itself received that designation. 

She believed that the depth and breadth of the work that is done by faculty here was essential not only to the university, but to the larger fields and communities they serve.

And, most vitally, she believed in the critical need to foster and elevate the arts and humanities in everything we do here at UMBC (and in this country), arguing throughout her career that we should proudy place the research and projects done in these fields on equal footing to anything else this university produces. 

We will do everything we can to keep Rachel's work alive here in CARAT but, truthfully, she's one-of-one, and we can only hope to dutifully follow her the path she blazed during her tenure. 

The good news is that these paths have now been paved by her many successes and are simply the ways things are done now in CAHSS. It is and will be impossible to conduct sponsored research here in the college without touching upon some approach or process or strategy that Rachel helped to pioneer. 

On behalf of everyone here in CARAT, we congratulate Rachel on her incredible career and wish her all the best in every single moment of her well-earned retirement. She will be missed!

Thanks for everything, Rachel! Off you go!

Marc & The CARAT Team

===

Rachel can still be reached at her current email address:

rbruba1@umbc.edu

If you've been working with Rachel on a project, or have a question you would normally send her way, please feel free to reach out to me directly at mruppel@umbc.edu. 

Over the past semester David and Ciara hosted a number of UMBC Talks forums at which participants have had the opportunity to share their stories, pool their wisdom, and offer feedback on the Division of Institutional Equity’s draft framework for inclusive excellence at UMBC.

They hope that anyone who did not have a chance to participate in the UMBC Talks forums will take some time to review the draft framework and offer feedback by completing this form by next Friday, June 5?

We appreciate anyone taking the time to lend their voice to this effort.  Each voice is valued and appeciated.   

Dr. Özgür Çapraz, Associate Professor, CBEE, was invited to showcase his contributions to the field of electrochemistry in a new publication in the Journal of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage titled "Emerging Investigators in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage 2025."

The article is available here:
Emerging Investigators in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage 2025 - ASME

https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4071726

Editorial:

This special issue features the 2025 Emerging Investigators in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage. Twenty-three emerging investigators were invited to this special issue to showcase up-and-coming scientists and engineers in the field of electrochemical energy conversion and storage. Emerging investigators are typically in the early stages of their independent careers (within about 12 years following graduation with a doctorate degree) and have demonstrated potential for high impact in the field. The purpose of this special issue is to highlight emerging scientists and engineers making outstanding contributions to the field of electrochemical energy conversion and storage. 

901 Saint Charles Ave, Baltimore, MD 21229

1 furnished room for rent, about 1.6 miles from UMBC (around 4 minutes by car).

Parking available
UMBC campus shuttle stop right outside the door
Furnished room
Kitchen access
Move-in ready
WiFi and utilities shared

If interested, please text 667-786-9042 to schedule a viewing. Thank you!

The REX 2.0 Analytics Portal is currently unavailable. We are working to resolve the issues with accessing Tableau and will update you when it is available again.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

Dhruva Kathuria (618/UMBC) is a Co-Investigator on the recently funded NASA ROSES-Ecohydrology proposal “Enhancing flash drought prediction by quantifying vegetation responses to rainfall and heatwave pulses.” This three-year grant is led by Dr. Yanlan Liu (UCLA), with Drs. Kai Zhu (Univ. of Michigan), Alexey Shiklomanov (GSFC), and Kathuria, as the Co-Is.

The United States has been experiencing frequent flash droughts in recent decades, resulting in severe ecological and socioeconomic impacts. While normal droughts occur over two to three months with below-normal rainfall, flash droughts intensify over weeks, with a combination of little rain, high temperatures, and strong winds, resulting in water loss from evapotranspiration (ET). Current land surface models struggle to accurately predict flash droughts due to unclear ecohydrological mechanisms that drive the initiation and intensification of a flash drought. Mega-droughts typically are driven by climate oscillations, while flash droughts are substantially influenced by subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) land-atmosphere interactions mediated by vegetation. Following rainfall and heatwave pulses, soil and atmosphere dry-downs can trigger a cascade of ecohydrological feedback within the soil-plant-atmosphere system (SPAS). Under certain vegetation and atmospheric conditions, a positive feedback loop could emerge.

Dr. Kathuria explains, “The positive feedback can arise in some cases when a rainfall event is followed by a heatwave pulse. After rainfall pulses, large ET contributes to soil dry-downs, which can be further accelerated by the heatwave. When the soil dries out and the air heats up, plants can sometimes (though not always) respond by "shutting down" and releasing less water. This then backfires: less water released into the air means even hotter, drier conditions, which dries the soil further, triggering a vicious cycle that can rapidly spiral into a flash drought. We hypothesize that this happens more frequently in areas with higher biomass and in arid climates. To improve flash drought prediction, it is critical to mechanistically quantify the ecohydrological dynamics within the SPAS, which are co-regulated by vegetation and the physical environment, and to clarify their roles in driving flash droughts; hence, this forms the overarching goal of the project. This research will be among the first to mechanistically quantify how vegetation responses after rainfall and heatwave pulses regulate flash droughts.”

“The proposal has three stages, moving from data-driven insight toward improved forecasting. First, we will use a data-driven approach to explore the causal relationships between vegetation dynamics, climate conditions, and flash drought indicators across a wide variety of biomes. We plan to do this using causal machine learning methods applied to a broad mix of field and remote sensing data. Second, we will feed this understanding into a computationally efficient physical model, the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere System (SPAS), to test which physical mechanisms (soil drying, water movement within plants, and so on) contribute the most to accurately predicting flash droughts. We start with SPAS because it is computationally light and easy to run experiments on. Finally, we will use what we learn from SPAS to develop better parameterizations for the land surface model (Noah-MP) within NASA's Land Information System (LIS), improving its ability to forecast flash droughts. Noah-MP is computationally expensive, so the logic of the workflow is sequential: data-driven causal ML informs the efficient SPAS model, and SPAS in turn informs Noah-MP in LIS. Ultimately, the project will produce a large-scale model-data toolkit to improve flash drought prediction across the western U.S. The outcome will contribute to enhanced S2S hydroclimate forecasts and support mitigation strategies for future flash drought events.”