As most of you are aware, all University invoices are paid by the General Accounting Division (GAD) for the State of Maryland after the UMBC Accounts Payable Department reviews and processes invoices.  The Accounts Payable Departments in GAD and UMBC are both operating with a skeleton staff, which impacts the volume of invoices that can be processed each day. 

Given the decrease in staff physically in the office who are able to issue checks, GAD is only processing payments that are mission critical or essential for research.

The University has not been provided with clear guidelines as to the determination of a mission critical payment.  Leases, utilities, network expenses, library serials, and construction payments are clear examples of mission critical payments, as well as any research payments due to COVID-19 related projects. 

Invoices that are not mission critical will be paid when GAD resumes normal operations or when the University receives guidance from GAD to process these invoices.  The processing of employee reimbursements will also be delayed due to the decreased staffing. 

In the meantime, recurring monthly pcard payments should continue to be made.  Procurement and Accounts Payable is also working to move invoices to be paid using a pcard whenever possible.

We recognize that many invoices do not fit within one of the above categories.  Each invoice is being reviewed on a case by case basis to determine the criticality of payment during this unique moment of limited staff resources.  If you believe that an invoice is critical, please forward the request to Covid19purchases@umbc.edu. Please provide all details regarding the criticality of the request to allow processing of these essential payments to move forward as efficiently as possible.

Thank you for all of your patience and understanding during this difficult time.

Congratulations to URA Scholars Danilo Symonette, and Jeremy Rubin, who have been selected for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The GRF provides financial support for three years within a five-year fellowship period, comprising a $34,000 stipend per twelve-month fellowship year.

Danilo is a McNair Scholar and LSAMP participant. His research, "Towards the Automatic Assessment of Student Teamwork" explores how universities are increasingly using discussion platforms such as GroupMe and Slack to work virtually. However, little has been done so far to understand how to use the data these platforms generate to analyze student teamwork behaviors, and so to support or improve those behaviors. By building a model to automatically predict a student’s performance as a team member based on their exchanges with teammates is itself a significant contribution. Danilo has published several papers with his research mentor, Dr. Don Engel, in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department. He will present his project at URCAD 2020 (online), April 22-29th. In addition to the NSF GRFP which will financially support Danilo's graduate studies, Danilo has been admitted to the Computer Science Ph.D. programs at MIT and Stanford, and has also been offered a position at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.

Jeremy received offers of admission from the University of Pennsylvania (Biostatistics, PhD), Columbia University (Biostatistics, PhD), Johns Hopkins University (Biostatistics, PhD), North Carolina State University (Statistics, PhD), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Biostatistics, PhD) and has accepted the offer of admission for the University of Pennsylvania. His research, "The Linear Maximal Sequence Kernel Association Test for Neuroimaging Studies" is directed by his mentor, Dr. Russell Shinohara, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics.  This work was continued as a part of the UMBC MARC U*STAR Program, and will culminate in a senior thesis with UMBC's Department of Mathematics and Statistics this Spring. Jeremy is a Meyerhoff Scholar and member of the Honors College, and was a 2018-19 URA Scholar and URCAD presenter (Mentor: Dr. Erin Green). Ultimately, Jeremy aspires to pursue a career in academia as a research professor at a leading medical institution to further research in high-dimensional data analysis for biomedical imaging and allow for more accurate diagnosis and prevention of medical conditions.

Congratulations, Danilo and Jeremy!