Cleopatra Borel had no athletic aspirations when she arrived in Baltimore from Trinidad and Tobago in 1997. She enrolled at what was then Coppin State College on the advice of her high school math teacher, a Coppin alum. Powerfully built and an eager learner, Borel quickly developed in the throwing events and broke Coppin’s shot put record early in her tenure there.

After the Eagles’ coach left the program, UMBC offered Borel an athletic scholarship and she made the move to Hilltop Circle.

Borel ’02, interdisciplinary studies, flourished both academically and athletically at UMBC. She earned All-America honors (top eight) in the shot put both indoors and outdoors in the 2000 – 01 season. However, she would have only one more crack at the NCAAs, with one year of indoor track and field eligibility remaining. 

On March 9, 2002, Cleo, as she was known at UMBC, took to the shot put circle at the University of Arkansas. On her next-to-last throw, she uncorked a personal best of 17.50 meters (57’5”), putting her in first place. When the last shot had landed, the black-and-gold clad Retriever had outdistanced the field and captured UMBC’s first Division I national title. 

In her first year of eligibility (2006 – 07), the UMBC Athletic Hall of Fame Committee tabbed Borel for induction. However, some events on her calendar kept getting in the way of her returning to campus—namely the 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympics. At 37 years old, she produced her best finish, placing seventh at the 2016 Rio Games. Her final Olympic moment occurred as she served as Trinidad and Tobago’s flag bearer at the closing ceremonies.

Borel returned to the United States in January 2022 to coach the throwers at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. And, in October 2023, she finally made the journey back to Hilltop Circle to be inducted into the UMBC Athletics Hall of Fame. 

We asked Borel to reflect on her incredible journey.

Q: You arrived at UMBC under unusual circumstances and remain the only Retriever to win an individual NCAA Championship. Reflecting on your time here, what did it mean for you to be a Retriever and how did your UMBC experience assist you in all of your endeavors?

Borel: I walked away from a very good situation at Coppin State College, not knowing how things would evolve at UMBC. However, I have to say, taking a chance on UMBC is still among the top three best decisions I have made thus far. My UMBC student-athlete experience prepared me for life as an Olympic athlete, essentially taking on the world. 

I believe I was prepared to navigate life on the professional track and field circuit because of [UMBC Athletics Director] Dr. Charles Brown’s sports management class and because my event Coach Brian King and track and field Head Coach David Bobb ’97 taught me to work hard, be confident, and play to my strengths. 

UMBC’s academic accomplishments, artistic expressions, community outreach initiatives, and of course athletic triumphs reflect the unwavering commitment we all share in making our school a truly exceptional place—a special place where a young person can take a chance and, through hard work and dedication, rise to the top of their field.

Q: What did it mean for you to represent Trinidad and Tobago in international competitions, including four Olympic Games?

Borel: Trinidad and Tobago is a small, developing nation in the Caribbean with a population of less than 1.4 million individuals on two islands. As a result, I felt like one of a few sporting ambassadors representing my country. I am proud to have been responsible for the playing of my national anthem at stadiums across the globe.

Q: What prompted you to develop the Cleopatra Borel Foundation and what is its mission?

Borel: The mission of the Cleopatra Borel Foundation is to facilitate the development of youth through sport and education. We believe this can be accomplished at the grassroots level in Trinidad and Tobago by assisting with coaches’ education, gear, and equipment distribution.

Q: Anything else you would like to share with the UMBC community?

Borel: It was indeed an honor to represent you at the NCAAs and on a global level. I am a proud Retriever, excited to see how UMBC will continue to positively influence Maryland and the world.

By Steve Levy ’85

View on myUMBC 

John Velkey, 
'24 Chemical Engineering - traditional track, Mathematics minor

Where was your Research?

ATOMS lab with Dr. Josephson

When did you start your Research?

January 2023

What is the focus of your Research?

Writing programs in Lean 4 that perform scientific calculations, and have verifiable mathematics

What are you looking forward to the most about your Research? 

Opportunities to present research to broader audiences at conferences

What was the best part of your Research OR What was the biggest learning moment of your Research ?

I have really enjoyed the process of learning a new programming language.

What advice do you have for students who are interested in getting involved in research or an internship?

Apply early and often, and tailor applications to individual opportunities. 

Are you a member of any clubs/campus organizations?

I am a teaching fellow for ENCH 300 - Chemical Process Thermodynamics.

What are your goals after graduation?

I am looking forward to getting into the workforce and taking a bit of a break from school, (for now)

Learn more about John Velkey: 

@_Velkey on X (FKA Twitter), LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-velkey

A new study using data from the CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET)instrument on the International Space Station has found evidence for nearby, young sources of cosmic ray electrons, contributing to a greater understanding of how the galaxy functions as a whole. 

The study included more than seven million data points representing particles arriving at CALET’s detector since 2015, and CALET’s ability to detect electrons at the highest energies is unique. As a result, the data includes more electrons at high energies than any previous work. That makes the statistical analysis of the data more robust and lends support to the conclusion that there are one or more local sources of cosmic ray electrons. 

“This is one of the primary things that CALET is made to look for,” says Nicholas Cannady, an assistant research scientist with UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology, a partnership with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a leader on the study. With this paper, he adds, “We were really able to push into the realm where we have few events and start to look for things at the highest energies, which is exciting.”

A better understanding of the galaxy

Current theory posits that the aftermath of supernovae (exploding stars), called supernova remnants, produce these high energy electrons, which are a specific type of cosmic ray. Electrons lose energy very quickly after leaving their source, so the rare electrons arriving at CALET with high energy are believed to originate in supernova remnants that are relatively nearby (on a cosmic scale), Cannady explains. 

The study’s results are “a strong indicator that the paradigm that we have for understanding these high-energy electrons—that they come from supernova remnants and that they are accelerated the way that we think they are—is correct,” Cannady says. The findings “give insight into what’s going on in these supernova remnants, and offer a way to understand the galaxy and these sources in the galaxy better.”

CALET is a collaborative project built and operated by groups in Japan, Italy, and the United States, led by Shoji Torii. The lead contributors to this work in Japan are Torii, Yosui Akaike, and Holger Motz at Waseda University in Tokyo, and Louisiana State University is the lead institution in the U.S. The findings were published in Physical Review Letters.

New data lead to new cosmic ray sources

Previous work found that the number of electrons arriving at CALET decreased steadily as energy increased up to about 1 teravolt (TeV), or 1 trillion electron volts. The number of electrons arriving with even greater energy was extremely low. But in this study, CALET did not see the expected dropoff. Instead, the results suggest that the number of particles plateau, and then even increase, at the highest energies—all the way up to 10 TeV in a few cases. 

Previous experiments could only measure particles up to about 4 TeV, so the highest energy event candidates above that in this study are a crucial new source of information about potential nearby sources of cosmic ray electrons. Cannady led the effort to individually analyze each of those events to confirm they represent a real signal, and a deeper dive into those events is forthcoming. 

Addressing challenges

It’s difficult to distinguish between electrons and protons at high energies, and there are many more protons arriving than electrons, which poses challenges to an accurate analysis. To tell the particles apart, a program developed by the researchers analyzes how the particles break down when they hit the detector. Protons and electrons break down differently, so comparing the cascade of particles they create in that process can filter out the protons. However, at the highest energies, the differences between protons and electrons decrease, making it harder to accurately remove only the protons from the data. 

To address this, Cannady led the CALET team’s effort to simulate the breakdown patterns of both protons and electrons coming from the exact direction each of the high-energy events arrived from. That increased the team’s ability to determine whether the events are electrons or protons as accurately as possible. 

Based on that work, “We believe we are evaluating the likelihood of events being protons in a realistic fashion,” Cannady says. Enough presumed electrons remain in the dataset after that careful analysis to conclude there is a real signal. 

Pushing boundaries

T. Gregory Guzik, professor of physics at LSU and the U.S. CALET collaboration lead, is excited that further analysis of the data suggested that electrons coming from the three best candidates for nearby supernova remnants can explain the high-energy arrivals.

“These CALET observations open the tantalizing possibility that matter from a particular nearby supernova remnant can be measured at Earth,” Guzik shares. “Continued CALET measurement through the life of the International Space Station will help shed new light on the origin and transport of relativistic matter in our galaxy.”

For Cannady, “The most exciting part is seeing things at the highest energies. We have some candidates above 10 TeV—and if it is borne out that these are real electron events, it’s really a smoking gun for clear evidence of a nearby source,” he says. “This is essentially what CALET was put up to do, so it’s exciting to be working on this and to finally be getting results that are pushing the bounds of what we’ve seen before.”

A new study using data from the CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET)instrument on the International Space Station has found evidence for nearby, young sources of cosmic ray electrons, contributing to a greater understanding of how the galaxy functions as a whole. 

The study included more than seven million data points representing particles arriving at CALET’s detector since 2015, and CALET’s ability to detect electrons at the highest energies is unique. As a result, the data includes more electrons at high energies than any previous work. That makes the statistical analysis of the data more robust and lends support to the conclusion that there are one or more local sources of cosmic ray electrons. 

“This is one of the primary things that CALET is made to look for,” says Nicholas Cannady, an assistant research scientist with UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology, a partnership with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a leader on the study. With this paper, he adds, “We were really able to push into the realm where we have few events and start to look for things at the highest energies, which is exciting.”

A better understanding of the galaxy

Current theory posits that the aftermath of supernovae (exploding stars), called supernova remnants, produce these high energy electrons, which are a specific type of cosmic ray. Electrons lose energy very quickly after leaving their source, so the rare electrons arriving at CALET with high energy are believed to originate in supernova remnants that are relatively nearby (on a cosmic scale), Cannady explains. 

The study’s results are “a strong indicator that the paradigm that we have for understanding these high-energy electrons—that they come from supernova remnants and that they are accelerated the way that we think they are—is correct,” Cannady says. The findings “give insight into what’s going on in these supernova remnants, and offer a way to understand the galaxy and these sources in the galaxy better.”

CALET is a collaborative project built and operated by groups in Japan, Italy, and the United States, led by Shoji Torii. The lead contributors to this work in Japan are Torii, Yosui Akaike, and Holger Motz at Waseda University in Tokyo, and Louisiana State University is the lead institution in the U.S. The findings were published in Physical Review Letters.

New data lead to new cosmic ray sources

Previous work found that the number of electrons arriving at CALET decreased steadily as energy increased up to about 1 teravolt (TeV), or 1 trillion electron volts. The number of electrons arriving with even greater energy was extremely low. But in this study, CALET did not see the expected dropoff. Instead, the results suggest that the number of particles plateau, and then even increase, at the highest energies—all the way up to 10 TeV in a few cases. 

Previous experiments could only measure particles up to about 4 TeV, so the highest energy event candidates above that in this study are a crucial new source of information about potential nearby sources of cosmic ray electrons. Cannady led the effort to individually analyze each of those events to confirm they represent a real signal, and a deeper dive into those events is forthcoming. 

Addressing challenges

It’s difficult to distinguish between electrons and protons at high energies, and there are many more protons arriving than electrons, which poses challenges to an accurate analysis. To tell the particles apart, a program developed by the researchers analyzes how the particles break down when they hit the detector. Protons and electrons break down differently, so comparing the cascade of particles they create in that process can filter out the protons. However, at the highest energies, the differences between protons and electrons decrease, making it harder to accurately remove only the protons from the data. 

To address this, Cannady led the CALET team’s effort to simulate the breakdown patterns of both protons and electrons coming from the exact direction each of the high-energy events arrived from. That increased the team’s ability to determine whether the events are electrons or protons as accurately as possible. 

Based on that work, “We believe we are evaluating the likelihood of events being protons in a realistic fashion,” Cannady says. Enough presumed electrons remain in the dataset after that careful analysis to conclude there is a real signal. 

Pushing boundaries

T. Gregory Guzik, professor of physics at LSU and the U.S. CALET collaboration lead, is excited that further analysis of the data suggested that electrons coming from the three best candidates for nearby supernova remnants can explain the high-energy arrivals.

“These CALET observations open the tantalizing possibility that matter from a particular nearby supernova remnant can be measured at Earth,” Guzik shares. “Continued CALET measurement through the life of the International Space Station will help shed new light on the origin and transport of relativistic matter in our galaxy.”

For Cannady, “The most exciting part is seeing things at the highest energies. We have some candidates above 10 TeV—and if it is borne out that these are real electron events, it’s really a smoking gun for clear evidence of a nearby source,” he says. “This is essentially what CALET was put up to do, so it’s exciting to be working on this and to finally be getting results that are pushing the bounds of what we’ve seen before.”

A new study using data from the CALorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET)instrument on the International Space Station has found evidence for nearby, young sources of cosmic ray electrons, contributing to a greater understanding of how the galaxy functions as a whole. 

The study included more than seven million data points representing particles arriving at CALET’s detector since 2015, and CALET’s ability to detect electrons at the highest energies is unique. As a result, the data includes more electrons at high energies than any previous work. That makes the statistical analysis of the data more robust and lends support to the conclusion that there are one or more local sources of cosmic ray electrons. 

“This is one of the primary things that CALET is made to look for,” says Nicholas Cannady, an assistant research scientist with UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology, a partnership with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a leader on the study. With this paper, he adds, “We were really able to push into the realm where we have few events and start to look for things at the highest energies, which is exciting.”

A better understanding of the galaxy

Current theory posits that the aftermath of supernovae (exploding stars), called supernova remnants, produce these high energy electrons, which are a specific type of cosmic ray. Electrons lose energy very quickly after leaving their source, so the rare electrons arriving at CALET with high energy are believed to originate in supernova remnants that are relatively nearby (on a cosmic scale), Cannady explains. 

The study’s results are “a strong indicator that the paradigm that we have for understanding these high-energy electrons—that they come from supernova remnants and that they are accelerated the way that we think they are—is correct,” Cannady says. The findings “give insight into what’s going on in these supernova remnants, and offer a way to understand the galaxy and these sources in the galaxy better.”

CALET is a collaborative project built and operated by groups in Japan, Italy, and the United States, led by Shoji Torii. The lead contributors to this work in Japan are Torii, Yosui Akaike, and Holger Motz at Waseda University in Tokyo, and Louisiana State University is the lead institution in the U.S. The findings were published in Physical Review Letters.

New data lead to new cosmic ray sources

Previous work found that the number of electrons arriving at CALET decreased steadily as energy increased up to about 1 teravolt (TeV), or 1 trillion electron volts. The number of electrons arriving with even greater energy was extremely low. But in this study, CALET did not see the expected dropoff. Instead, the results suggest that the number of particles plateau, and then even increase, at the highest energies—all the way up to 10 TeV in a few cases. 

Previous experiments could only measure particles up to about 4 TeV, so the highest energy event candidates above that in this study are a crucial new source of information about potential nearby sources of cosmic ray electrons. Cannady led the effort to individually analyze each of those events to confirm they represent a real signal, and a deeper dive into those events is forthcoming. 

Addressing challenges

It’s difficult to distinguish between electrons and protons at high energies, and there are many more protons arriving than electrons, which poses challenges to an accurate analysis. To tell the particles apart, a program developed by the researchers analyzes how the particles break down when they hit the detector. Protons and electrons break down differently, so comparing the cascade of particles they create in that process can filter out the protons. However, at the highest energies, the differences between protons and electrons decrease, making it harder to accurately remove only the protons from the data. 

To address this, Cannady led the CALET team’s effort to simulate the breakdown patterns of both protons and electrons coming from the exact direction each of the high-energy events arrived from. That increased the team’s ability to determine whether the events are electrons or protons as accurately as possible. 

Based on that work, “We believe we are evaluating the likelihood of events being protons in a realistic fashion,” Cannady says. Enough presumed electrons remain in the dataset after that careful analysis to conclude there is a real signal. 

Pushing boundaries

T. Gregory Guzik, professor of physics at LSU and the U.S. CALET collaboration lead, is excited that further analysis of the data suggested that electrons coming from the three best candidates for nearby supernova remnants can explain the high-energy arrivals.

“These CALET observations open the tantalizing possibility that matter from a particular nearby supernova remnant can be measured at Earth,” Guzik shares. “Continued CALET measurement through the life of the International Space Station will help shed new light on the origin and transport of relativistic matter in our galaxy.”

For Cannady, “The most exciting part is seeing things at the highest energies. We have some candidates above 10 TeV—and if it is borne out that these are real electron events, it’s really a smoking gun for clear evidence of a nearby source,” he says. “This is essentially what CALET was put up to do, so it’s exciting to be working on this and to finally be getting results that are pushing the bounds of what we’ve seen before.”