A research team from UMBC and the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) has received a Rapid Response Research (RAPID) grant from the National Science Foundation to detect COVID-19 infections earlier through computing. Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor of information systems at UMBC, is PI on the grant. He explains that this work will use machine learning to improve the speed and accuracy of COVID-19 diagnosis, helping to limit spread of the disease.

Developing highly accurate screening tool and synthetic datasets

Through the year-long grant totaling approximately $150,000, researchers will design, build, and train deep neural networks to detect cases of COVID-19. Gangopadhyay says this approach has a proven track record. Deep neural networks have already been used effectively in diagnosing pneumonia. 

Aryya Gangopadhyay. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This research will combine the power of AI and medical imaging to solve a critical problem in infectious diseases with pandemic potential, including COVID-19 and others, explains Gangopadhyay. “Our focus for this research is COVID-19. The research is an example of multidisciplinary data science that combines expertise in different fields, such as medicine and computational research,” he says. 

Research team

Gangopadhyay notes that the research will benefit from the infrastructure, research strength, and industrial partnerships of UMBC’s Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA).

UMBC’s team includes Yelena Yesha, distinguished professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) and director of CARTA; Yaacov Yesha, professor of CSEE; Phuong Nguyen, research assistant professor of CSEE; David Chapman, assistant professor of CSEE; and computer science Ph.D. students Sumeet Menon and Jayalakshmi Mangalagiri. Eliot Siegel, professor and vice chair of radiology at UMSOM and chief of imaging service at the VA Maryland Healthcare System, will contribute to the research.

The team plans to work quickly and hopes to have some results available by August. Then, the researchers will work with clinicians to validate their models and data to ensure that the tools are highly accurate in predicting COVID-19.

“We are very committed to this work,” Gangopadhyay says, recognizing the incredible potential of the research. 

Collaboration during public health crisis 

This is UMBC’s second NSF RAPID Grant responding to COVID-19. In early March, UMBC’s Charissa Cheah, professor of psychology, and Shimei Pan, associate professor of information systems, and Cixin Wang, assistant professor of school psychology at University of Maryland, College Park, received a grant to examine the intensified discrimination experienced by Chinese-Americans in the time of COVID-19.

Cheah shared, “Knowledge from this RAPID grant will help educators, health care providers, and policymakers to proactively support targeted marginalized groups and the larger public during future emergency events.” 

Both UMBC awards demonstrate the necessity to move quickly and to collaborate strategically on research related to this public health crisis.

Banner image: UMBC’s Information Technology and Engineering building. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Retrievers Return Roadmap

• The campus remains accessible for emergency access only. This includes employees with a letter from their supervisor, researchers approved through the Access Exception process, and/or approved students. If you have a one-time emergency need to visit campus, call UMBC Police Deputy Chief Bruce Perry at 443-677-2195 or Lieutenant Derrick Johns at 410-207-0850.

UMBC Together

Looking at aerial photos from UMBC’s first several years—in this case, 1969—it’s hard not to think, “But where is everything?” Most of the distinctive landmarks of today’s campus are missing, and even our ubiquitous Hilltop Circle (then called Loop Road) is only half there.

As different as campus looks now, most of the buildings in this early photograph still serve their original function. This picture was taken the year after the opening of the library’s first wing—or “Phase I,” as it was called at the time, a nod to the planned expansion. Over the years, the building would be extended by two more phases, the last of which was completed in 1995.

In the upper-left-hand corner of campus, you can spot the school’s first dormitories under construction. The first residential hall was completed the year after this photo was taken and was named, unceremoniously, Dorm I. It, along with Dorms II and III, were finally given their current names—Susquehanna, Chesapeake, and Patapsco, respectively— in 1979.

Though the landscape of our campus has changed to be almost unrecognizable from this 1969 image, it has also been altered considerably in just the past few years. The aerial photo of UMBC in 2019 shows two new landmarks that did not exist in 2016, when members of this year’s graduating class were freshmen.

The Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building and the UMBC Events Center are only the latest additions to UMBC’s landscape. It’s likely that by the time today’s first-year students have their commencement in 2023, UMBC’s skyline will have shifted once more, making our “now” their “then.”

We are seeking a roommate to rent a room in a three bedroom house. It is 4min  drive to UMBC campus and 1min walk from the shuttle stop. The room is available now ! If you're interested. The house includes 2 and half bathrooms , a full kitchen with a dishwasher, and there are also laundry facilities In the house . 

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This fall, UMBC will bid farewell to one of its senior leaders as Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS), departs the university to assume the presidency of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS). His new position speaks not only to his administrative skills, but also to his national eminence as a scholar of 19th-century U.S. history. 

“We are very proud of our colleague Scott Casper, and know he will do a superb job as president of the American Antiquarian Society,” says President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. “He is one of UMBC’s most admired leaders—as a scholar, academic administrator, and human being, and he has done a masterful job as dean of our College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.” 

“Most important, Dean Casper lives the values we consider most significant in the humanities, including intellectual curiosity, compassion for others, and an abiding commitment to social justice,” Hrabowski says. “He will always be part of the UMBC community.”

“I want to express my gratitude to everyone at UMBC,” Casper shares. “This extraordinary community has changed me in deep, powerful ways, and UMBC’s values will go with me on this next step in my journey.”

Transformative leadership

Under Dean Casper’s leadership, UMBC received the distinguished Community Engagement Classification from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in January 2020. This achievement required a rigorous campus-wide self-study of UMBC’s work with communities in Greater Baltimore and beyond, a process that involved more than 120 members of the UMBC community as well as dozens of community partners.

During Casper’s tenure as dean, CAHSS scaled up research in significant ways, including the creation of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. The college’s commitment to community engagement and civic agency has been notable, reflected in UMBC’s most recent Mellon Foundation grant, in hosting the Imagining America conference in 2015, in establishing studios and a classroom at the Lion Brothers building in downtown Baltimore, and in the new Community Leadership MPS and Public Humanities minor. 

And, in the time since Dean Casper’s arrival, CAHSS has hired one third of its current faculty, enriching the campus with the addition of an extraordinary, diverse cohort of brilliant scholars and artists, and outstanding teachers.

“Everything we’ve accomplished these past seven years has come from collective effort by so many people—faculty and staff and students across the college and the university,” says Casper. “We have an exceptional college—broad and diverse and also truly collegial and supportive. It’s been a privilege and a joy to serve it and UMBC.”

Building community relationships

Dean Casper has also worked to develop robust relationships with external organizations. Under his guidance, UMBC signed an MOU with The Walters Art Museum. And Casper served on the advisory committee for the reinstallation of The Walters’s 1 West Mount Vernon Place. He also serves on the boards of Maryland Humanities and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.

“In my former role as executive director of Maryland Humanities, I saw the impact of Scott’s many community contributions,” says Phoebe Stein, president of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. “He was consistently generous, level-headed, and a real cheerleader for the work.”

“His commitment also extends to other nonprofits,” says Stein. “On the board of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, there too he is a generous contributor and colleague who brings intellectual rigor, a passion for the humanities, and common sense.”

Eminence as a scholar

Casper, who received his Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, joined the UMBC community in 2013, after many years on the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno. 

A historian of the nineteenth-century United States, he is the author of Sarah Johnson’s Mount Vernon: The Forgotten History of an American Shrine (Hill & Wang, 2008) and Constructing American Lives: Biography and Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (University of North Carolina Press, 1999). He is the co-author, editor, or co-editor of seven other books, most recently The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Casper’s commitment to teaching is also evident through his publications. He edited the annual “Textbooks and Teaching” section of the Journal of American History from 2008 to 2018, and was acting editor of the William and Mary Quarterly in 2008–09. He has worked extensively with K–12 history and social studies educators through the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, the Center for Civic Education, and the Northern Nevada Teaching American History Project.

The American Antiquarian Society

Dean Casper will become the 8th president in the 208-year history of the American Antiquarian Society. “At a time when deepened understanding of our past has never been more important, I look forward to leading an institution that fosters the essential work of telling America’s complex, contested stories,” says Casper, reflecting on his upcoming role.

The American Antiquarian Society was founded in 1812 by Revolutionary War patriot and printer Isaiah Thomas, and is both a learned society and a major independent research library. The AAS library, with some four million items, today houses the largest and most accessible collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, periodicals, music, and graphic arts material printed through 1876 in what is now the United States. It also houses manuscripts and a substantial collection of secondary texts, bibliographies, and digital resources and reference works related to all aspects of American history and culture before the twentieth century. AAS was presented with the 2013 National Humanities Medal by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House.

“We are thrilled that Scott Casper has agreed to become the next President of the American Antiquarian Society,” says John Herron, Jr., chair of the AAS Council. “Our nation’s past is as present as ever in this important time in our civic life. As a scholar, administrator, mentor and more, Scott is unusually well prepared to further leverage the Society’s long-standing commitment to evidence-based history and to preserving and sharing the stories of all Americans.” 

Images by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.