As criticism emerges surrounding a $758,000, no-bid contract the city of Cleveland awarded to a Texas company for a racial disparity study, The Plain Dealer asked UMBC professor George La Noue, political science and public policy, for his take on the situation. La Noue is director of the Project on Civil Rights and Public Contracting.

The newspaper says La Noue believes Cleveland’s study is the most expensive study to-date of a city’s race- and gender-based contracting programs and legitimate studies can be done for as little as $250,000. “Typically these studies overwhelm the cities’ capacity to understand them,” La Noue said. “They’re too long and complex. City Council members are not going to read them. A mayor is not going to have time. But it’s like buying an insurance policy. If you’ve spent enough money and have a long enough study, your program will stand up pretty well against a court challenge.”

La Noue went on to delineate what he perceives as flaws in the study’s methodology. Read the full article for details.

The UMBC ACM student chapter is pleased to announce that Metron Aviation will be presenting, next Wednesday (2/27, 12.00 pm in ITE 241), as part our Tech Talk Series. Headquartered in Dulles, VA, Metron Aviation (the ATM subsidiary of Airbus) has pioneered the advancement of Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM), working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to develop the industry’s first Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) platform for optimizing system-wide traffic flow. Metron Aviation fuses advanced science and mathematics with unparalleled air traffic management expertise to provide ground-breaking optimization and collaborative decision making solutions for the world’s leading Air Navigation Service Providers, Airports, Airlines, Logistics and other Service Providers to the Air Transport Industry.

Engineers and Recruiters from Metron Aviation will talk about some of the new and interesting projects they are working on, in the domain of aviation and the airline industry. Further they will also touch upon technical skills as well as soft skills students need to acquire (and be prepared) with to do well in interviews. Topics covered will include, but are not limited to, programming languages students should focus on, resume tips, what to say (and what to not!) in an interview.

More about the speaker : David Rojas, an Systems Engineer / Systems Analyst with Metron Aviation will be presenting at the tech talk. David will give an overview of Metron Aviation and specifics on their key product 'Harmony'. Metron Harmony is an advanced, Integrated Air Traffic Flow Management (I -ATFM) solution with capabilities that provide strategic, pre-tactical and tactical efficiency, post operations metrics and performance analysis of air traffic operations for Air Navigation Service Provider s (ANSP) , aircraft operator s and airport authorities. He will touch upon topics like ATM Modeling and Simulation, Air Traffic Flow Management and Departure Flow Management analysis and system development. David holds an BS in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University. David has over 9 years of experience in Air Traffic Management (ATM) related research, analysis, and product support.

Metron Aviation is especially interested to talk with students in the fields of Computer Science, Aeronautical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Physics. Bring your resumes! Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP on our events page on Facebook.

The UMBC ACM student chapter is pleased to announce that Metron Aviation will be presenting, next Wednesday (2/27, 12.00 pm in ITE 241), as part our Tech Talk Series. Headquartered in Dulles, VA, Metron Aviation (the ATM subsidiary of Airbus) has pioneered the advancement of Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM), working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to develop the industry’s first Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) platform for optimizing system-wide traffic flow. Metron Aviation fuses advanced science and mathematics with unparalleled air traffic management expertise to provide ground-breaking optimization and collaborative decision making solutions for the world’s leading Air Navigation Service Providers, Airports, Airlines, Logistics and other Service Providers to the Air Transport Industry.

Engineers and Recruiters from Metron Aviation will talk about some of the new and interesting projects they are working on, in the domain of aviation and the airline industry. Further they will also touch upon technical skills as well as soft skills students need to acquire (and be prepared) with to do well in interviews. Topics covered will include, but are not limited to, programming languages students should focus on, resume tips, what to say (and what to not!) in an interview.

More about the speaker : David Rojas, an Systems Engineer / Systems Analyst with Metron Aviation will be presenting at the tech talk. David will give an overview of Metron Aviation and specifics on their key product 'Harmony'. Metron Harmony is an advanced, Integrated Air Traffic Flow Management (I -ATFM) solution with capabilities that provide strategic, pre-tactical and tactical efficiency, post operations metrics and performance analysis of air traffic operations for Air Navigation Service Provider s (ANSP) , aircraft operator s and airport authorities. He will touch upon topics like ATM Modeling and Simulation, Air Traffic Flow Management and Departure Flow Management analysis and system development. David holds an BS in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University. David has over 9 years of experience in Air Traffic Management (ATM) related research, analysis, and product support.

Metron Aviation is especially interested to talk with students in the fields of Computer Science, Aeronautical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, Physics. Bring your resumes! Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP on our events page on Facebook.

The Laboratory for Aerosols, Clouds and Optics (LACO) is seeking a motivated junior, senior or master's level computer science student to assist in software development. This is a paid position that will constitute 10 to 20 hours of work per week. Responsibilities of the position will include designing and writing control code for airborne and ground based atmospheric instrumentation. Knowledge of C/C++ is required and experience controlling external hardware is preferable.

LACO is a laboratory in the UMBC physics department composed by faculty, staff, post docs, graduate and undergraduate students, and associated members that participate in activities between UMBC and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Our main interests focus on the optical properties of aerosols as well as their effects on cloud formation, development, and lifetime. We have developed several novel pieces of instrumentation to support these research goals and we are frequent participants in a wide variety of air quality and climate science missions. Examples of some recent flight campaigns we have participated in include

• DISCOVER-AQ
• PODEX
• DC3
• DEVOTE

The data we have collected during a few of these campaigns can be found on our data website, http://laco03.umbc.edu/pineph/ (password: qwop89). We are also looking to expand this database to include other instruments (MySQL and web design skills are also a plus).

Please submit your Curriculum Vitae and/or Resume to Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. for consideration.

Photographs from associate professor of visual arts, Lynn Cazabon’s project Uncultivated will be on display in the exhibition, Ecological Reflections: Artistic Collaborations with the Long Term Ecological Research Network, at the National Science Foundation (NSF) headquarters in Arlington, VA. The exhibition features the work of artists who have produced art work in collaboration with NSF’s Long Term Ecological Network sites. Cazabon was the 2012 Artist-in-Residence for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study.

Ecological Reflections will be on display February 28 through June 15. Find out more about the exhibition at the NSF’s website.