The Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena will host commencement ceremonies for a variety of institutions, including UMBC, over the next four weeks. 

Graduation ceremonies will bring additional visitors to the campus and this will bring a greater demand for spaces around the arena. Please plan to arrive to work a little early in case your normal lot is not available. 

Commencement ceremonies are scheduled for:

May 18, 19, 24, 25, 26
June 2, 7, 9

Ample parking is available for all through this time. If you have questions regarding parking during this time, please call 410-455-2551 or email parking@umbc.edu.

Performers of the music piece “Corporel,” by the French-Slovenian composer Vinko Globokar, must use their own body as a percussion instrument. They beat, scratch, smack, and tap themselves. They chatter their teeth, snore, and cluck their tongue. The composition’s “patterns of sound and gesture” are arresting, “keeping us transfixed even as we flinch,” the L.A. Philharmonic website says in its description of the piece.

To Brandon Gouin ’23, music performance, learning the work was a highlight of his time at UMBC. “This work is a discovery of self and musical potential that resonates deeply within me,” he says. He performed the piece at his senior recital this year, when members of the music community at UMBC were celebrating the opportunity to once again gather in practice spaces and concert halls after the isolation of COVID-19.

Gouin credits his teachers and mentors, especially Tom Goldstein, associate professor of music,and Patrick Crossland, affiliate artist, with helping him reach that moment on stage—as well as with helping him find his path as an artist.

Gouin’s experience is reflective of the experience of many members of the class of 2023. Although each individual has unique talents, passions, and goals, they are brought together by a feeling of gratitude to the UMBC community for helping them find their way. Faculty, staff and fellow students helped them open their minds to new possibilities, and mentored them on their journey to discovering a career path that fits.

Challenging preconceptions

When Gouin arrived at UMBC, he thought performance jobs for percussionists were mostly limited to professional orchestras—a highly competitive and difficult career path for any musician to pursue. However, as he dove into the local music scene, his eyes were opened to other possibilities.

“I began to see opportunities as a contemporary performer by attending the Livewire festival of New Music that UMBC holds every year and watching many performances of music I had never heard of before,” he says. He also attended local experimental music shows at the Red Room in Baltimore and the Rhizome in D.C.

“Audiences at these shows are very engaged, and that is exciting to me as a performer,” he says.

Mentors illuminate new possibilities

Gouin’s professors introduced him to new styles of music and showed him the vibrancy of the contemporary music world. Tom Goldstein directs the UMBC Percussion Ensemble of which Gouin was a member. Goldstein says he often programs works by lesser-known composers, and sometimes pieces by UMBC faculty and student composers.

“I think if the students perform a piece composed by someone they know, they may start to think ‘Hey, I could do something like that, too,’” he says.

Gouin appreciated the exposure to a variety of music and says he has adopted the inclusive mindset of his music professors as he pursues career opportunities after graduation. “My teachers aren’t only in love with one or the other kind of music but commit themselves fully to working with all kinds of music,” he reflects. “I think that kind of mindset is healthier and has more longevity for an artist’s life.”

Other Class of 2023 graduates say they encountered similar opportunities for growth and expression at UMBC. Shaniah Reece ’23, information systems, discovered a love of research and a way to connect her technical skills to her passion for social justice. Hala Algrain, M.P.S. ’23, health information technology, reconnected with a love of teaching, and switched her career plans from industry to academia. Elijah Mugabe ’23, chemistry, threw himself into lab work and a quest to investigate unanswered scientific questions. And Connor McPherson’23, history, found a way to connect his interest in the humanities with a career in the Navy.

Community builds confidence

In addition to finding their path at UMBC, these students also found communities that encouraged them to excel on their academic and personal journeys. They found student groups, faculty mentors, peer advisors, and scholars’ programs that pushed them to succeed and provided the support they needed.

“Undoubtedly, the most enriching part of my time at UMBC has been the remarkable sense of community I have experienced here,” Reece says “It has provided me with opportunities for personal growth, enabling me to evolve holistically. As I reflect upon my experiences, I feel confident and prepared to take on any obstacles that may lie ahead.”

Algrain agrees that the culture of UMBC and the level of support were the best parts of her experience at UMBC.

For Gouin, the chance to connect with mentors who were dedicated performers, as well as enthusiastic teachers, was life changing. He even joined a percussion quartet with fellow and former students that they named “Hi Tom,” in honor of Tom Goldstein.

Goldstein shares that for him the honor goes in the opposite direction.

“I love working with the students—it’s a fantastic part of my life,” he says. “It’s an honor and a privilege to get to know them.”

Read more Class of 2023 stories.

Tyler Josephson’s lab sits off a main corridor in the department of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering at UMBC. Open the door, though, and you’ll see nary a beaker, chemical closet, or lab coat. Inside, a few computers sit on tables. You might see equations scrawled on the white board or a few students poring over lines of code.

Using this modest setup, Josephson has launched an ambitious project to equip computers to make scientific discoveries—starting in the realm of chemistry. This March he won a prestigious NSF CAREER award to advance the project.

The goal of the work is ultimately to speed up the process of science, which should in turn give humanity new knowledge and tools to face down big challenges such as climate change and environmental degradation.

As Josephson and his students dive into the work, they are bringing together techniques from across mathematics, computer science, and chemical engineering. Their first step is to translate chemical theories into a rigorous mathematical language that a computer can understand.

Math as the language of science

In 1623, the Italian natural philosopher Galileo Galilei wrote an essay in which he described nature as a book written in “the language of mathematics.” Many scientists since have puzzled over the mysterious power of math to describe physical phenomena.

Josephson and his students are tapping into this power. They are using a tool developed by researchers at Microsoft called the Lean theorem prover. Lean is both a computer language and a program for checking each step of a rigorous mathematical proof.

“Formal proofs, which are verified by a computer, differ from the informal, handwritten versions often used by scientists,” says Josephson. Informal proofs are easier to write, but they usually skip logical steps, assuming a human reader will have the knowledge and skill to follow along. This means that errors can creep in undetected.

On the other hand, if a proof has been written and checked in Lean, it is guaranteed to be correct as long as the stated assumptions are true.

A community of Lean programmers

Lean has a dedicated community of volunteer developers who have built a large library of mathematical proofs, each of which can then serve as a building block for more complicated proofs. They aim to digitize mathematics, starting with the entirety of the undergraduate math curriculum, which will lay the foundation for formal proofs in advanced modern mathematics.

Josephson plans to build a similar library with formally correct derivations in science and engineering, starting with chemical concepts such as the thermodynamic behavior of gases and of molecules sticking and unsticking from surfaces.

He and his students describe their approach in a first paper on the subject, and are in the process of submitting it to journals.

The power of the work will multiply as more of the foundations of science are translated into Lean, so a large part of the team’s work will also be to recruit, inspire, and train fellow proof creators. They will hold workshops to showcase Lean for scientists and engineers, and they plan to create fun and educational games that will teach Lean-programming skills to newcomers.

“I’m really excited to share this tool with students and the scientific community,” Josephson says.

Building better scientific computing tools

Josephson’s goal to formally verify scientific theories isn’t just an intellectual exercise—it’s a means of building better tools for better science. One such tool he plans to create with NSF CAREER award support is Lean-based computer software that can simulate the behavior of molecules under a range of conditions. 

Scientists often use such software to test theories as an alternative to physical experiments. It can be easier to run simulations of reactions on a computer, for example, than to mix real chemicals again and again, and some molecular phenomena may happen so fast, or under such extreme conditions, that current experimental tools cannot capture them.

However, bugs can mar the performance of the software. For example, starting in 2011, a hidden coding error fueled a seven-year “war over supercooled water,” in which two scientific groups disagreed about what happens to ultrapure water when it is cooled significantly below the freezing point of normal water, and then suddenly crystallizes.

Code written in Lean is unique from that written in the programming languages commonly used in scientific computing, since it can be provably free of such math errors, Josephson says. 

As more scientists and engineers learn to write code and proofs in Lean, others will be able to write bug-free software for applications as diverse as weather forecasting, drug discovery, and predicting material performance.

“AI scientists” who reason on their own

Ultimately, Josephson hopes to use a Lean-based library of scientific knowledge to train computers as fellow scientists. For example, large language models, such as the recently popularized ChatGPT, might be trained on a library of scientific proofs and gain the ability to “autocomplete” proofs on their own, translate informal proofs from the literature into formal ones, and even discover entirely new scientific theories, which could then be checked for correctness by Lean.

A tool like this might revolutionize science. In Galileo’s time, a single person could master large portions of human scientific knowledge, but now scientists usually go to school for decades to become experts in a tiny subfield, Josephson says.

AI scientists capable of digesting a database of thousands of scientific proofs in multiple disciplines might draw connections across them to reveal new discoveries. “Such a tool could lead to an AI-powered Renaissance in interdisciplinary scientific discovery,” says Josephson.

While such lofty goals remain in the future, Josephson and his students are energized by the possibilities. As they embark on an exciting scientific journey, they are thrilled to bring as many people as possible along on the ride.