The MURF program aims to increase the participation of underrepresented students (such as African American, Hispanic, and Native American; females who are underrepresented in their discipline; or first-generation college students) in science and engineering Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. programs and to make Caltech's programs more visible to students not traditionally exposed to Caltech.

Eligibility: Students must be current sophomores through non-graduating seniors and must be U.S. citizens or U.S. permanent residents. A minimum GPA of 3.2 is required.

Competitive applicants will have completed sophomore-level courses in desired research field, have demonstrated through academic and/or co-curricular activities a passion for research, and can articulate how their research interests align with Caltech's research areas. The most competitive applicants will have prior research experience.

Support: MURF students will receive a $6000 award for the ten-week program. An additional $500 housing and travel supplement will be provided.

Application: Online applications are due January 8, 2014.

Web design is an adventure. Creating awesome projects requires time, creativity, and a lot of hard work. 

And sometimes you need a little help, so every month we bring you a selection of our favorite tools, resources, fonts and assets, all designed to make your working life a little easier.

This month we have 45+ freebies for your delectation. Among them you’ll find themes, icons, UI kits, code experiments, plugins, fonts and much more. All free to download right now…

Figa

A geometric font for abstract projects.

Mountain Creek

A dark minimalist theme for multiple purposes.

Grux

A nice handwritten web font.

Blurred backgrounds

5 backgrounds with blur effects and glare

Retro calendar

A nice calendar for 2014 as AI and EPS.

Cool flat iPhone 5S

PSD free for commercial use

Perennial splatters

Cool Photoshop brush set.

Fairview

Condensed sans-serif inspired by the industrial lettering of the 20th century.

Incredible loading effect created in pure CSS

A text filling with water animation, for preloaders and such.

SVGeneration

A cool pattern creator with editable options.

Warm and soft color background

Blue and yellow high resolution background.

Colorful long shadow app icons

Minimal icon set featuring a camera, calendar, weather app and file manager icons.

Nexus 5 mockup

3D PSD file for great presentations.

BillyDroid

Sleek WordPress theme for Android enthusiasts

Animated SVG icons

Using Snap.svg to animate SVG icons.

Tua

A geometric and condensed uppercase free font for headlines.

Vintage label PSD

Template suitable for a wide range of purposes.

Alternative iOS7 UI concept

Clean circle and flat styled colorful buttons.

WeddingPlanner

Responsive theme in HTML5 and CSS3.

Businessman vector character set 1

Vector character set containing 7 cheerful guys.

Sixteen

An artistic and responsive theme suitable for most blogs.

Basiliq freehand UI kit

Nice wireframe for revamping a website.

3D Cubes

An awesome code experiment to create squares in 3D with CSS

Stroke vectors

A free vector pack for you to play with.

Animated checkboxes

Proof-of-concept for adding fancy “check” animations to form inputs.

Aldehyde

A minimal responsive theme with parallax header.

Pattern Lab

Create atomic design systems.

Bitters

A dash of predefined style for your bourbon stylesheets.

Engrave

A visually stunning dark styled theme.

Flat modal window

A nice flat modal window for notifications.

Newsletter PSD template set

3 great templates for email marketing.

iModal

The best modal ever made.

LampLighter

Color effects for focusing readers’ attention on text.

Magazine UI kit #2

A flat, modern UI kit for designing your own website.

PC tech icons

150 free vector computer icons for commercial projects.

iOS7 home screen

Shape layers mockup (free PSD).

Elastic Stack

Elastic dragging interaction for animating websites.

Free iPad mini

Fully scalable PSD mockup templates.

PNChart

A simple and beautiful chart lib with animations for iOS.

Lime color background

Green and yellow PSD HD background.

Nice Things icon set

128 Icons, PNG + AI sources.

Frozen 2013

Movie wallpapers & facebook timeline covers.

Apple devices

A full set of outline apple device icons in PSD format.

Link

Bootstrap 3 agency theme.

Flat UI elements

Fully scalable PSD with UI elements for your projects.

Newton

Easy to use and feature-rich physics engine designed in JavaScript.

Singolo

Flat, single-page website layout freebie.

Hipter-ish

Animated dashed shadow in pure CSS.

Chrome browser PSD mockup

Clean and flat freebie for beautiful presentations.

Quasith

Outline uppercase font, free for personal use.

Which of these resources is your favorite? Have we missed one you rely on? Let us know in the comments.

Remachine Script Retro Font – only $15!

Sony and Microsoft release their first video-game consoles in seven years, but they’re battling for a world of play that is rapidly changing.

This month marks a milestone in the turf war for the space beneath our television sets: it’s the first time that Sony and Microsoft have released new video-game consoles within a week of one another. The PlayStation 4 launched in the U.S. a week ago (and launches in Europe next week), while Microsoft’s Xbox One is available around the world as of today. Both systems are Blu-ray-playing supercomputers squeezed into similar-looking black plastic casing; both are designed to usher in a new era of high-definition, online-enabled video games.

Delivered to help you do what you do, create web apps with a sophisticated and highly polished user experience.

Mixins help make your CSS rules less repetetive by allowing you to define reusable code snippets that can be interspersed throughout your stylesheets. At release time, the Mixins-enhanced code is compiled into pure CSS. In today's article, Rob Gravelle explains the basics of Mixins syntax as well as how to use them in your stylesheets.

Storyboard Suite 3.2 Provides Better Workflows and Increased Usability Features for Creating Seamless UIs Faster

With the upcoming release of their second CD, we decided to catch up with two alumni members of UMBC’s Down and Dirty Dawg Band (DDDB) (Matt Basch ’08, information systems and ’10 M.S., information systems, Director of the DDDB and Paul Swenson ’06, computer science, Producer) to see why they love being a part of the nationally recognized pep band.

Q: What is the DDDB and why is it important?

Paul: The pep band [also known as the DDDB] is a musical and marching ensemble sponsored by Athletics that provides its members with a chance to perform fun tunes, become engaged with school spirit at UMBC sporting events and even earn some money through part-time employment opportunities.

Matt: The mission is to support the Athletic Department and the university through music and spirit. Whether it’s 20 degrees and snowing during one of the winter basketball games, or 100 degrees with the sun blazing during the Catonsville and Arbutus 4th of July parades, you’ll experience unbridled enthusiasm and exceptional playing from this band.

Q: Why do you (and others) continue to play even as alumni?

Paul: The UMBC Spirit Group [band, drumline, cheerleaders, dance team, fever retrievers and tumbling squad] sponsors an alumni day each year. It’s a great way to connect with past and present members of the group – and to reconnect with a group that played an important role in one’s undergraduate/graduate career.

Matt: Getting to hop on the drumset and play music with the [UMBC Spirit] Group is one of my favorite parts of the season. The Down and Dirty Dawg band is like a big extended family.

Q: Why is the support of alumni and the rest of the UMBC community so important?

Matt: It’s amazing to see the connection between current members, alumni, parents, faculty, and the community as a whole. The support means the world to the band – and helps validate what we’re doing!

Q: What are some of the benefits of staying involved as alumni?

Matt: The best part about being a DDDB alum is that you get to keep playing with us!

Paul: Having the opportunity to volunteer my time for an organization that I strongly believe in has been truly amazing.  I sincerely hope UMBC is always able to maintain its reputation of having the best pep band and most spirit in America East!

Help the Dawg Band Put Out Their New CD
Consider making a gift to the Down and Dirty Dawg band to help them produce their second CD.

This project is a part of UMBC’s Giving Tuesday campaign.

Should I Require My Student to Adhere to House Rules While They’re Home Visiting Over Breaks?