Experian and the Hispanic Heritage Foundation are thrilled to invite you to the 2024 Financial Empowerment Summit at the University of the District of Columbia on Monday, April 15^th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. 

This free opportunity is designed for Latino students and young professionals to take control of their future by learning about investing, credit building, and understanding taxes, among other financial education skills.

The 2024 Financial Empowerment Summit will bring together a diverse group of financial experts, including:

Jully Taveras, Founder of Investing Latina

Kimberly Hamilton, Founder of Beworth Finance

Pamela Sams, Financial Advisor at Jackson Sams Wealth Strategies

Veronica Fuentes, Wealth Management Advisor, CFP

Angela Neira, Chief Operations Officers, DAPA Multiservices Advisors LLC

Diana Avellaneda, Senior Accountant (MBA) at DAPA Multiservices Advisors

Whether you are in college or starting your career, this event will help you gain culturally relevant financial literacy knowledge on how to take control of your finances, jump-start your path to financial wellness, and build generational wealth. 

Do not let this opportunity pass you by! Register NOW to secure your spot.

Hundreds of East Coast chemical engineering students to gather at UMBC for regional conference

 By: Catherine Meyers | Published: Mar 29, 2024 | UMBC NEWS

Over the weekend of April 6 – 7, the UMBC student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) will host the 2024 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference on campus. The event will feature workshops, research presentations, and a career fair with companies such as AstraZeneca and Astek Diagnostics and schools including Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, the University of Delaware, and Lehigh University. It will also feature the conferences’ two signature competitive events: Chemical Engineering Jeopardy and ChemE Car—a competition to build and operate a car powered and stopped by chemical reactions.

Organizers expect more than 350 attendees from more than 30 universities across the region. UMBC students are encouraged to register to attend, even if they aren’t chemical engineering majors. “As the premier student chemical engineering conference in the region, this event will offer great opportunities for networking, presenting research, landing internships and jobs, and general professional development,” says Terra Miley ’25, chemical engineering, who is serving as the communications chair for the student organizing committee.

Photo credit: The UMBC campus will host hundreds of chemical engineering students in early April for a regional meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Evalynn Ellison, ‘25 chemical engineering, secured the title of top junior presenter in the engineering, physics, and mathematics category for presenting the poster based on her summer research project titled, "In-Frame Cloning of Chimeric Antigen Receptors to Improve Cancer Therapeutic Discovery" at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) conference held in November 2023.

Poster title: In-Frame Cloning of Chimeric Antigen Receptors to Improve Cancer Therapeutic Discovery 

Authors: Evalynn Ellison (1), Azady Pirhanov (2,3), and Brandon DeKosky (2,3)

¹Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)

²Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

³The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard

Abstract: Chimeric Antigen Receptors (CARs) are being used to create promising cancer immunotherapies; however, high-throughput CAR discovery remains a challenge due to the many possible proteins that must be screened for activity. In particular, creating very large and diverse CAR gene libraries for effective CAR discovery has been a limitation. This research project focused on developing and optimizing a system to identify productively inserted CAR genes after cloning into expression vectors. To accomplish this, we developed a high-throughput in-frame CAR clone identification strategy based on a fluorescent protein mCherry assay. The changes in fluorescent reporter mCherry expression levels would signal that a potential CAR was expressed in-frame. After cloning test genes, samples were analyzed by flow cytometry to measure the level of fluorescence and percentage of cells expressing fluorescent protein mCherry. We concluded that the designed mCherry-based fluorescent reporter system was sensitive and specific, making it a successful validator of cloned CAR genes. These CAR platforms can be used for cancer therapeutic discovery toward cell-based immunotherapies, such as CAR-Ts. Our new approach to identify CAR candidates will make therapeutic development more streamlined and efficient. 

Photo credit: Evalynn Ellison

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