SFS cyberdefense scholarship applications due Noon Monday, April 15

The next application deadline for SFS cyberdefense scholarships at UMBC is 12:00 noon Monday, 15 April 2019, for possible scholarships beginning in the fall of 2019. See the Center for Information Security and Assurance site for details and application forms.

These major scholarships include tuition, generous stipend, and more, in return for government employment. Applicants must have at least junior status in fall 2019. BS, MS, MPS, PhD in any cyber-related field may apply (CS, CE, EE, IS, Cyber, and possibly others). SFS applicants must be citizens or lawful permanent residents capable of obtaining a secret clearance at federal, state, local, or tribal government. The annual stipends are $25,000 undergraduate and $34,000 graduate; in addition, each scholar will receive $6000 per year in professional development funds.

The scholarships are highly competitive (e.g., the median GPA of current SFS scholars at UMBC is 3.8) and favor students who have excelled in upper-level technical courses and who have demonstrated a passion and talent for cybersecurity through relevant accomplishments. We will consider applications from rising juniors and above with GPA over 3.0. All SFS scholars at UMBC are expected to engage in cohort and research activities. UMBC is in the first year of a five -year, $5 million NSF grant, which will support 34 students. For more information, see the SFS FAQ page.

Interested students should contact

Dr. Alan T. Sherman
Professor of Computer Science
Director, UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance (CISA)
*protected email*

The post SFS cyberdefense scholarship applications due April 15 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

SFS cyberdefense scholarship applications due Noon Monday, April 15

The next application deadline for SFS cyberdefense scholarships at UMBC is 12:00 noon Monday, 15 April 2019, for possible scholarships beginning in the fall of 2019. See the Center for Information Security and Assurance site for details and application forms.

These major scholarships include tuition, generous stipend, and more, in return for government employment. Applicants must have at least junior status in fall 2019. BS, MS, MPS, PhD in any cyber-related field may apply (CS, CE, EE, IS, Cyber, and possibly others). SFS applicants must be citizens or lawful permanent residents capable of obtaining a secret clearance at federal, state, local, or tribal government. The annual stipends are $25,000 undergraduate and $34,000 graduate; in addition, each scholar will receive $6000 per year in professional development funds.

The scholarships are highly competitive (e.g., the median GPA of current SFS scholars at UMBC is 3.8) and favor students who have excelled in upper-level technical courses and who have demonstrated a passion and talent for cybersecurity through relevant accomplishments. We will consider applications from rising juniors and above with GPA over 3.0. All SFS scholars at UMBC are expected to engage in cohort and research activities. UMBC is in the first year of a five -year, $5 million NSF grant, which will support 34 students. For more information, see the SFS FAQ page.

Interested students should contact

Dr. Alan T. Sherman
Professor of Computer Science
Director, UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance (CISA)
*protected email*

The post SFS cyberdefense scholarship applications due April 15 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

A degree from UMBC can take you anywhere — even a galaxy far, far away. Kimberly Patrick ’08, recipient of UMBC’s 2019 Outstanding Alumni of the Year award for Visual and Performing Arts, has a geek’s dream job, working as a sound editor and foley artist for Lucasfilm’s Skywalker Sound.

Just reading the experience section of this alumna’s resume will make you crave popcorn. In it are Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as the Marvel movies Captain Marvel and Thor: Ragnarok, all indelible parts of modern pop culture. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award for her sound editing for the animated series Star Wars Rebels.

Studying music technology at UMBC kick started Patrick’s interest in film sound.

“I realized how much I enjoy recording and adding sounds to moving images,” she says, and after graduation she went to film school at the University of Southern California to get her MFA in film and television production. She started as an intern at Lucasfilm in 2012 and advanced from there.

“I was able to make some fart sounds!”

For Patrick, a typical day as a foley artist might include shaking together rollerblades and running around to make the sounds of stormtroopers on the move. As a sound editor, she might be helping to decide the exact amount of fire sound in Captain Marvel’s superpowers.

In a documentary on YouTube about the making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Patrick can be seen making those sounds and talking about her experience with such a seminal franchise. “It’s really exciting to be a part of that and to know that you’re part of this future generation of Star Wars movies,” which are iconic for sound and filmmaking in general, she says.

And then there is her work that slightly less auspicious — like the fart noises she made for Despicable Me 2. “There’s an end credit sequence with three of the minions and you know how… they’re always doing crazy things, one of them pulled out a trumpet and they wanted the trumpet to sound like a fart.” Patrick put her musical background to work and made it happen. “It definitely makes my parents super proud,” she says, “all those trumpet lessons. I was able to make some fart sounds!”

“Is it going to be lasery?”

Most of what she does, however, is edit previously-recorded sounds together to achieve the right effect. For the recent Captain Marvel, Patrick was given about a third of the movie to work with and tasked with deciding what sounds needed to go where.

“With these movies, you do get direction from the directors of what they have in mind, how they imagine it to sound, and then you have to sort of translate back.” Sometimes they might ask, “Can you do a woosh kind of thing? Or it should go like vroom pow!” Other times they use emotional direction, like “This needs to be powerful but have weight to it,” and then she might use a low-end sound.

For the superpower effects used in Captain Marvel, “You have to decide is it going to be like electrical, it is going to be fiery, is it going to be lasery? You generally give a bunch of options to the directors like, here’s this version where it’s very fiery and here’s this version where it’s a lot of electricity,” she says.

Star Wars fans will recognize her work from an eerie scene in The Last Jedi in which the main character Rey snaps her fingers in a hall of mirrors. For that effect Patrick had to use cloth and snapping sounds to create an echo. “I couldn’t just copy-paste the same sound over and over again; it would sound mechanical. There had to be a distinct rhythm, as well as a sense that her reflection repeated indefinitely away from her into the cave, so the quality of the sound would need to change as it got further and further away.  It was a bit of a painstaking process to cut each individual repeated sound and sculpt it all into a believable performance that had some nuance, but it ultimately became a pretty cool sound moment in the film,” she says.

“You have to be an experimenter.”

UMBC may seem like it’s pretty far from that world of Jedi and superheroes, but Patrick says she uses her time as a Retriever to inform her work. “Having a degree in music from UMBC has been beneficial in so many ways. The music tech program emphasizes both the creative and technical sides of music-making which prepared me for the work I now do every day,” she says.

Patrick credits Professor Alan Wonneberger with encouraging her to pursue a career in film sound and the Linehan Scholars program with giving her much needed financial help and an introduction to artistic collaboration. “It exposed me to a large group of artists that I got to work with, which ultimately is what I do every day now — I get to work with a bunch of different artists from different departments and… we can just make beautiful things together.”

To give back to the school, Patrick coaches current students on how to get into the business. She has gone back to UMBC to speak to music classes and did a foley recording exercise with Professor Wonneberger’s class. She also spoke with Dr. Lisa Cella’s professional development classes about her career path. Recently, current student Jenna Polignone ’19, information systems and music technology got to pick her brain via Skype about applying for a summer internship at Skywalker.

To succeed, Patrick says, “I think you have to be an experimenter. And you have to have an ear for what things work and what things don’t and be able to describe why things work and why they don’t.” It can be rewarding artistically when it all comes together, she says, particularly when she works on a documentary with social impact like the 2016 film Looking at the Stars. But being part of blockbusters brings Patrick’s work to the hearts of geeks the world over.

“It’s really awesome that I get to work on these movies that are well known — I think that’s part of what makes my job very exciting… you get to be a part of this thing that’s bigger than you and say, yeah, I contributed to that.” 

— Karen Stysley

All photos courtesy of Kimberly Patrick. 

Learning to Ground Natural Language Instructions to Plans

Nakul Gopalan, Brown University

2:30-3:30pm Thursday, 21 March 2019, ITE 346, UMBC

In order to easily and efficiently collaborate with humans, robots must learn to complete tasks specified using natural language. Natural language provides an intuitive interface for a layperson to interact with a robot without the person needing to program a robot, which might require expertise. Natural language instructions can easily specify goal conditions or provide guidances and constraints required to complete a task. Given a natural language command, a robot needs to ground the instruction to a plan that can be executed in the environment. This grounding can be challenging to perform, especially when we expect robots to generalize to novel natural language descriptions and novel task specifications while providing as little prior information as possible. In this talk, I will present a model for grounding instructions to plans. Furthermore, I will present two strategies under this model for language grounding and compare their effectiveness. We will explore the use of approaches using deep learning, semantic parsing, predicate logic and linear temporal logic for task grounding and execution during the talk.

Nakul Gopalan is a graduate student in the H2R lab at Brown University. His interests are in the problems of language grounding for robotics, and abstractions within reinforcement learning and planning. He has an MSc. in Computer Science from Brown University (2015) and an MSc. in Information and Communication Engineering from T.U. Darmstadt (2013) in Germany. He completed a Bachelor of Engineering from R.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore, India (2008). His team recently won the Brown-Hyundai Visionary Challenge for their proposal to use Mixed Reality and Social Feedback for Human-Robot collaboration.

Host: Prof. Cynthia Matuszek (cmat at umbc.edu)

The post talk: Learning to Ground Instructions to Plans, 2:30 Thr 3/21, ITE346 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Mar 20, 2019, 12:58 PM

In this email you will find UMBCworks postings for jobs and internships as well as other events hosted by UMBC Career Center. These positions, events and workshops are tailored just for you!

Please note you MUST have your resume approved by a Career Center staff member to apply to postions posted in UMBCworks. To schedule an appointment, click on "Schedule Appointment" from the UMBCworks homepage or call 410-455-2216. 

We are located in Math/Psychology Room 201. Appointments can be made by calling 410-455-2216. We now haveonline scheduling too!

Please visit our website to find further information: careers.umbc.edu.

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Having trouble with our links? Please LOG IN directly to UMBCworks before clicking the links in this email.

Jobs New Internships and Jobs in Science!: Supervisory Administrative Program Manager (9306500) National Institutes of Health (NIH) - National Heart, Lung and Blood Insitute - Bethesda, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Experienced POSTING DATE: Mar 18, 2019 END DATE: Jul 16, 2019 Implementation Specialist- grad student or recent grad (9306487) UMBC University Counseling Center - Catonsville, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: On-Campus: UMBC student employment, Part-Time, Temporary/Seasonal, Graduate School Opportunities/Fellowships POSTING DATE: Mar 17, 2019 END DATE: Jul 15, 2019 Assistant Scientific Project Manager (9306460) IMS, Inc. - Beltsville, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Entry-Level, Full-Time - Experienced POSTING DATE: Mar 15, 2019 END DATE: Apr 14, 2019 Health Physicist Trainee (9306450) Maryland Department of the Environment - Baltimore, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Entry-Level POSTING DATE: Mar 14, 2019 END DATE: Mar 28, 2019 IT Project Engineer (9303267) Wipro Technologies - Nationwide United States POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Entry-Level POSTING DATE: Mar 14, 2019 END DATE: Jul 12, 2019 Summer Intern - R&ED Bioanalysis (ELISA) (9306441) REGENXBIO - Rockville, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Internship Opportunities POSTING DATE: Mar 14, 2019 END DATE: Jul 12, 2019 Research Associate (9306352) Medix Scientific - Rockville, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Entry-Level, Full-Time - Experienced POSTING DATE: Mar 13, 2019 END DATE: Jul 11, 2019 Science Intern (9306353) Imagilin Technology, LLC - Frederick, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Internship Opportunities POSTING DATE: Mar 13, 2019 END DATE: Jul 11, 2019 Technical Marketing and Sales Intern (9306354) Imagilin Technology, LLC - Frederick, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Internship Opportunities POSTING DATE: Mar 13, 2019 END DATE: Jul 11, 2019 Medical Imaging Software Engineer Internship (9306351) Segami Corporation - Columbia, Maryland United States POSITION TYPE: Internship Opportunities POSTING DATE: Mar 12, 2019 END DATE: Jul 10, 2019 Teach English in Japan with AEON (9306350) AEON CORPORATION - Multiple Locations POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Entry-Level, Full-Time - Experienced POSTING DATE: Mar 12, 2019 END DATE: Apr 15, 2019 Proteomics Scientist (9306080) Complete Omics - Multiple Locations POSITION TYPE: Full-Time - Entry-Level, Full-Time - Experienced POSTING DATE: Mar 11, 2019 END DATE: Jul 02, 2019

Workshops Upcoming Events: National Collegiate Virtual Career Fair SESSION START: Mar 21, 2019, 10:00 AM SESSION END: Mar 21, 2019, 3:00 PM LOCATION: Online Bio Technical Institute of Maryland, Inc. Job Fair SESSION START: Mar 21, 2019, 2:00 PM SESSION END: Mar 21, 2019, 6:00 PM Intern Success Practicum Workshop SESSION START: Mar 25, 2019, 12:00 PM SESSION END: Mar 25, 2019, 1:00 PM LOCATION: Commons 329 Career Month Kick-Off SESSION START: Mar 27, 2019, 11:30 AM SESSION END: Mar 27, 2019, 1:30 PM Mid-Atlantic Science & Technology Showcase SESSION START: Mar 27, 2019, 12:30 PM SESSION END: Mar 27, 2019, 7:30 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Reverse Career Fair SESSION START: Mar 29, 2019, 11:30 AM SESSION END: Mar 29, 2019, 3:30 PM Career Paths for Graduate Students SESSION START: Apr 03, 2019, 4:30 PM SESSION END: Apr 03, 2019, 6:30 PM LOCATION: Skylight Room, The Commons UMBC School of Public Policy Information Session SESSION START: Apr 04, 2019, 4:30 PM SESSION END: Apr 04, 2019, 6:00 PM LOCATION: Public Policy 438 Sweeten Up Your Network: Alumni-Student Networking Event SESSION START: Apr 04, 2019, 5:30 PM SESSION END: Apr 04, 2019, 8:00 PM LOCATION: Skylight Room, The Commons Dining Etiquette Dinner SESSION START: Apr 09, 2019, 5:30 PM SESSION END: Apr 09, 2019, 8:00 PM LOCATION: Skylight Room, The Commons Grit & Greatness SESSION START: Apr 11, 2019, 12:00 PM SESSION END: Apr 11, 2019, 1:00 PM LOCATION: Commons 331 The Aspen Institute Career Open House SESSION START: Apr 11, 2019, 4:00 PM SESSION END: Apr 11, 2019, 6:00 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Biotech Industry Day SESSION START: Apr 11, 2019, 5:00 PM SESSION END: Apr 11, 2019, 7:00 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Arts with a Purpose: Create Your Career SESSION START: Apr 11, 2019, 6:00 PM SESSION END: Apr 11, 2019, 8:00 PM LOCATION: Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery Cultural Competence in the Workplace SESSION START: Apr 12, 2019, 12:00 PM SESSION END: Apr 12, 2019, 1:00 PM LOCATION: Commons 331

Info Sessions Upcoming Information Sessions: Chesapeake Bay Foundation START DATE/TIME: Apr 04, 2019, 10:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 04, 2019, 2:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street The Choice Program at UMBC START DATE/TIME: Apr 11, 2019, 10:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 11, 2019, 2:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration START DATE/TIME: Mar 27, 2019, 10:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Mar 27, 2019, 4:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street Window Nation START DATE/TIME: Apr 03, 2019, 10:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 03, 2019, 2:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street Larkin University START DATE/TIME: Apr 15, 2019, 10:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 15, 2019, 4:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street WHSCareers (DoD) START DATE/TIME: Mar 26, 2019, 5:00 PM END DATE/TIME: Mar 26, 2019, 7:00 PM LOCATION: Commons 329 Playstation START DATE/TIME: Apr 09, 2019, 4:00 PM END DATE/TIME: Apr 09, 2019, 5:30 PM LOCATION: University Center 310 Kennedy Krieger Institute START DATE/TIME: Apr 05, 2019, 8:30 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 05, 2019, 1:00 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Campbell & Company, Inc. START DATE/TIME: Apr 05, 2019, 11:15 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 05, 2019, 4:00 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory START DATE/TIME: Apr 12, 2019, 8:30 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 12, 2019, 1:00 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Oceaneering International, Inc. START DATE/TIME: Apr 19, 2019, 8:30 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 19, 2019, 1:00 PM LOCATION: Off-Campus Employers in the Sciences START DATE/TIME: Apr 10, 2019, 11:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 10, 2019, 2:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street Employers in the Humanities and Social Sciences START DATE/TIME: Apr 17, 2019, 11:00 AM END DATE/TIME: Apr 17, 2019, 2:00 PM LOCATION: Commons: Main Street

Whether she’s in Jordan or Baltimore, UMBC’s Maheen Haq brings a deep sense of duty to her work with communities facing discrimination. Now, Haq ‘20, global studies and economics, a Sondheim Public Affairs Scholar, has been named a Newman Civic Fellow in recognition of her work.

Haq follows in the footsteps of public service-minded Retrievers who have earned the Newman Civic Fellowship across the nine-year history of the Campus Compact program. They include Stephanie Milani ‘19, computer science and psychology; Sophia Lopresti ‘17, global studies; Maxwell Poole ‘18, computer science; economics; and Kelly Cyr ‘12, biological sciences, and M.S. ’13, applied molecular biology.

With support from the Shriver Center, Haq has engaged with local organizations that work to help communities negatively impacted by social and political issues. As a volunteer at the Esperanza Center, she helped teach English to recent immigrants. She has organized clothing and food drives and distributions for people facing homelessness in Baltimore City. Haq has also been able to work with youth managing social and economic challenges and helped organize protests around issues she cares deeply about, combating hate speech, racism, Islamophobia, and fighting for the rights of immigrants.

Internationally, she’s participated in relief efforts for Syrian refugees in Jordan, working closely with UMBC’s study abroad office to connect with local service organizations. She’s also supported women who are survivors of violence in Pakistan. 

Discrimination and privilege

“Because I experienced discrimination growing up, it has opened my eyes to the experiences of other communities who face discrimination,” says Haq.

Haq was born in Maryland after her parents immigrated to the United States from Pakistan. As a Muslim American, she grew up experiencing both subtle and direct Islamophobia, but was also in a position to help others. “In high school, a Syrian refugee visited my mosque asking for support,” says Haq. “I became aware of my own privilege within the United States. I still have access to education, food, and general safety, even while I face discrimination.”

As a student at Smithsburg High School in Hagerstown, this awareness flourished. Haq served as president of the International Awareness Club, Spread the Love Club and the CoExist Club to support students facing any type of discrimination. She also traveled to Pakistan to help with Depilex Smileagain Foundation, a Pakistani organization that helps women who are survivors of acid attacks and ostracization with medical support and workforce development skills.

Recently, Haq advocated against exclusion and prejudice through op-eds in the Baltimore Sun. Her first piece focused on her experience living as a Muslim in the United States, and her faith that the Declaration of Independence’s promise of freedom for all will be fulfilled. Her second piece, written as a letter to the Hagerstown’s mayor, reflects on Islamophobia she experienced growing up in the town. Haq followed her op-eds by helping to organize a community town hall and a rally against hate speech.

Amanah is a word in Arabic that means trust. For me this means that if I have knowledge of oppression, I have been trusted with the task of standing up against it,” explains Haq. “I study very hard so that I can develop the best skills to serve communities dealing with grave injustices because they deserve the best.”

Research for the greater good

Haq has used her time at UMBC to develop research skills and a greater understanding of global issues. Through a course on globalization with Felipe Filomeno, assistant professor of political science and global studies, she developed a research study to better understand the role of faith in helping refugees cope with the challenges of daily life. Haq traveled to Jordan to conduct her study, working with Helping Hand for Relief and Development, an organization that provides services to Syrian refugees.

Through qualitative interviews, I found that the majority of refugees did not leave their faith, but drew strength from it to manage daily survival,” shares Haq. She hopes to use her findings to develop literature to enhance the way aid is provided to the refugee community.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski has recognized Haq’s leadership and commitment to social justice as emblematic of UMBC values and the goals of the fellowship program. “Maheen is a charismatic and dedicated leader with a sustained commitment to promoting intersectional activism locally and globally,” he shares. “She is an ideal recipient of the Newman Civic Fellowship.”

Banner image: Maheen giving out toys to children in a Syrian refugee camp.  

All photos courtesy of Maheen Haq with permission from Helping Hand for Relief and Development.