JOB SUMMARY
Manage day-to-day operations of the orchestra with presence at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore, MD, and the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, MD. Ensure that all concerts/events transition seamlessly from rehearsals at JMSH to Strathmore
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
• Act as the primary operations liaison between BSO staff and the Music Center at Strathmore, including approximately one day per week working at Strathmore
• Advance BSO concerts, programs, and events as assigned

The Simons Foundation and its sister organization, Simons Foundation International, have pledged $2.5 million over five years to support the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. Continued partnership between UMBC and Simons will also generate opportunities for program alumni and support Meyerhoff replication efforts at other institutions.

For almost 30 years, the Simons Foundation has worked to support advances in mathematics and basic science by funding external scientists and, more recently, through research at its own Flatiron Institute in New York City. Simons has also done outreach work through the Math for America program, which seeks to enhance the math and science literacy of children in New York City public schools. The gift to UMBC, however, represents a new emphasis on supporting the development of a diverse pipeline of STEM professionals.

Partnering to diversify STEM

“I have long admired the UMBC Meyerhoff program for its significant impact on training outstanding students from diverse backgrounds. It is an important model for other universities, and its alumni are at the forefront of scientific research,” says David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation and Simons Foundation International. “I am proud that the Simons Foundation and Simons Foundation International can partner with UMBC through support of this program.”

Craig Wesley, manager of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Simons Foundation, has also been following President Freeman Hrabowski’s work for years. When Wesley started in his role a little over a year ago, he undertook a study to see what programs existed that were already successfully helping diversify the STEM pipeline. The Meyerhoff Scholars program jumped out as a leader in that space.

“The vision became, how could we replicate that model here in the New York area?” Wesley says. “We needed to find the right institutional partner to launch this work.” As it turned out, UMBC was the perfect fit.

Immediate impact

The new partnership will also create summer research opportunities for Meyerhoff Scholars at the Flatiron Institute. Naiyah Lewis ’23, M31, computer science,is already in New York for a summer internship with Natalie Sauerwald, a Flatiron Research Fellow with a focus on computational techniques in genomics.

This new grant will support scholarships for Meyerhoff Scholars and serve as a dedicated funding source for Summer Bridge, a cornerstone of the Meyerhoff experience undertaken by Scholars before their first year at UMBC. During Summer Bridge, Scholars bond as a community and internalize what it means to be a Meyerhoff Scholar. This includes the values of collaboration, leadership, service, professionalism, and academic excellence—alongside hard work and grit.

Meyerhoff alumni will also benefit. They will be invited to apply for Transition to Independence Awards through the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain and the Simons Collaboration on Plasticity and the Aging Brain. These large awards target Ph.D. and M.D./Ph.D. scientists from underrepresented groups who are currently in training positions and seeking tenure-track roles. Postdoctoral positions may also be available for Meyerhoff Scholar alumni at the Flatiron Institute.

“UMBC and Meyerhoff are excited to partner with the Simons Foundation in advancing our efforts to promote inclusive excellence and diversify the nation’s STEM workforce,” says Keith Harmon, director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program.

Ripple effect—amplified

In addition to helping individual students and alumni, the growing partnership between UMBC and Simons will also advance a larger, shared goal of both institutions: launching more programs modeled on the Meyerhoff Scholars. UMBC staff and faculty involved with Meyerhoff will work with SUNY Stony Brook to create a Meyerhoff-like program within the public university system in New York.

“We are committed to helping increase the diversity of the STEM workforce,” Spergel says. “We see our collaboration with UMBC as key to helping us reach that goal through partnerships, in part by helping to adapt the Meyerhoff model at Stony Brook.”

As the partnership between UMBC and the Simons Foundation develops, the institutions hope their collaborative work will amplify the ripple effect already occurring across the country as Meyerhoff alumni advance in their careers. As more students get to experience the support offered by Meyerhoff and programs like it, they, too, will join the ranks of these alumni and make their own impact.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, recently awarded nine research consortia a total of $577 million to create Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) Centers for Pathogens of Pandemic Concern. UMBC’s Katherine Seley-Radtke, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is contributing her innovative work on more flexible antiviral compounds to this effort.

Seley-Radtke is a member of the consortium led by University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, which will receive a total of $65 million over five years to work on five separate projects. UMBC is guaranteed $2.2 million for the first three years, with another $1.3 million to come for the final two years if the projects are making satisfactory progress.

The unique consortium structure includes an international, interdisciplinary team of academic researchers in virology, immunology, chemistry, and biology, and corporate partners. Their goals are ambitious, with increased urgency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

“Many people in the antiviral field had been pushing for many years, warning people that this kind of viral pandemic could happen,” says Seley-Radtke, who is also president of the International Society for Antiviral Research. “We have to be better prepared. And that’s the point of the AViDD program—to quickly get us to the point where we have broad spectrum, small molecule antivirals that can be stockpiled, can be orally administered, and can be shipped to every corner of the Earth.”

Flexible fighters

Seley-Radtke is in a strong position to contribute to the development of compounds that can fight a wide range of viruses. She first invented compounds called fleximers in 2000. Fleximers are modified forms of an established class of antiviral drugs called nucleoside analogues—with a very useful twist.

“The thing that’s clever about the fleximers, is because they’re flexible, they can adjust to a binding site to obtain better binding than a normal rigid nucleoside analogue would,” Seley-Radtke says. That means they can be more effective against a virus that has accumulated some mutations, or even against different viruses that have similar, but not identical, structures.

For example, acyclovir is an antiviral drug used against herpes. Acyclovir itself isn’t effective against any viruses of pandemic concern, but a fleximer based on its basic structure “shows incredible activity” against several viruses of interest, Seley-Radtke says. A drug that can target multiple viruses is exactly the kind of “broad spectrum” treatment researchers are seeking.

Beyond generating a single drug that can tackle multiple viral threats, the consortium is also working toward combination therapies. In these treatments, multiple drugs are packaged together, as is common for HIV medications.

“Combination therapy is critical,” Seley-Radtke says. Because these therapies attack several parts of a virus at once, she explains, they can “exponentially cut down the chances of the virus developing resistance to the treatment. That’s why we’re looking for not just one broad spectrum inhibitor, but a combination of things that can be used together to fight whatever rears its ugly head.”

Fast-tracked progress

The structure of the consortium makes it uniquely suited to address the team’s goals efficiently. Having academic researchers and industry partners working together “will facilitate things moving much faster than the normal process,” Seley-Radtke says. “There’s a workflow.”

Her lab will “decide what the target’s going to be. Then we design the compounds, we make the compounds, and then we send them off to the next lab to be tested for activity” against viruses of interest, she explains. 

If the initial testing detects any winners, another consortium partner will produce the compounds at scale so they can run more tests. If after that the compounds are still showing promise, they’ll be sent on to clinical trials through the pharmaceutical company partners. It all happens in a coordinated, pre-planned sequence.

“I’m really grateful to be able to participate in such high-impact work,” Seley-Radtke says. “It’s an amazing opportunity and it’s a brilliant concept.”

Proactive approach

Seley-Radtke will work on two of the five projects in the consortium. One will focus on SARS-Cov2, dengue fever, and other viruses in the flavivirus family. These RNA viruses are most often spread by ticks and mosquitoes. Another project focuses on filoviruses, which include diseases like Ebola and Marburg virus disease, known for causing severe hemorrhagic fevers.

The members of the different projects will meet with each other and with NIH regularly to gauge progress and keep everyone on track. The goal is to develop individual drugs with activity against many viruses, and combination therapies, quickly. 

“It is definitely within reach, and not just with my compounds,” Seley-Radtke says. “The AViDD centers are a fantastic effort. I applaud NIH for putting the money into this program and recognizing we’ve got to stop being reactive and be proactive.”