UMBC will help illuminate the third annual Light City Baltimore festival with art, ideas, and entertainment. Running April 14 – 21 in and around the Inner Harbor, the evening celebration of light and the Labs@LightCity companion series of daytime innovation conferences prominently feature UMBC faculty, staff, students, and alumni as artists and thought leaders.

Launched by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts in 2016, Light City Baltimore is the first large-scale international light festival in the United States, and it attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

Members of the UMBC community (alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends) are invited to an Alumni Social on Saturday, April 21, 7 – 10 p.m. at the Baltimore Visitor Center on Light Street. The space, right on the path of the BGE Light Art Walk, offers a stunning view of Light City. Attendees to this free event will enjoy complimentary food and drink, and can pick up glow-in-the-dark swag (first come, first served).

Featured Artist
UMBC artist Kelley Bell, associate professor and associate chair of visual arts, will present her installation The Herd on the BGE Light Art Walk, open nightly from 7 to 11 p.m., with extended hours until midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Sponsored by UMBC, The Herd will be visible between Piers 5 and 6.

“The Herd is a tribute to all the citizens of Baltimore City who continue to hope for a healthy city and healthy waterways,” says Bell. “It is a cluster of 400 luminous inflatable swim rings, similar in appearance to the floats used by swimmers at the seaside. The rings are laced together in a net to form a glowing multitude of creatures calmly bobbing in the shimmering ripples of the nighttime harbor. The empty ghostly rings of The Herd are a hope and a promise that someday they will be filled by happy bathers enjoying the Inner Harbor in a new, refreshing way.”

The Labs@LightCity
The daytime Labs@Light City, a series of innovation conferences dedicated to sparking social change, are organized in seven half day, topical labs: EduLab, SocialLab, GreenLab, HealthLab, ArtLab, MakerLab and FoodLab. The Labs will be held at the University System of Maryland (USM) Columbus Center on Pratt Street starting on Wednesday April 18. UMBC will be the supporting sponsor of MakerLab on Friday, April 20.

On Wednesday, April 18 at EduLab, Christine Mallinson, professor of language, literacy, and culture, and affiliate professor of gender and women studies, will take on code-switching in her talk, “Baltimore: An Incubator of Language Diversity.”

On Friday, April 20, at MakerLab, Foad Hamidi, a post-doctoral researcher and designer in Human Computer Interaction, will share his work in the talk “Transcending Invisible Lines.” Also at MakerLab, President Freeman Hrabowski will join Kathy O’Dell, associate professor of visual arts, special assistant to the dean for education and arts partnerships, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Richard Chisolm, ’82 interdisciplinary studies; and artist David Hess in the discussion “The Making of Gun Show.” Their conversation will reflect on the 2017 exhibition Gun Show at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture. The show was created to foster dialogue about gun ownership and gun violence.

Members of the UMBC community (students, faculty, staff and alumni) are encouraged to register for the Labs@LightCity at no cost here.

Spark II
Spark II, a pop-up gallery of engaging, projection-based artworks, will be open in the Harborplace’s Pratt Street Pavilion during Baltimore’s Light City Festival, April 14 – 21. Made possible through the support of PNC and curated by Ginevra Shay, the gallery features the work of UMBC faculty and graduate students, as well as artists from Towson University. Spark II also features a schedule of performances, events, and interactive activities.

Spark II will feature works by:

• Stephen Bradley, associate professor of visual arts, and Tagide deCarvalho, research assistant professor of biological sciences
• Lynn Cazabon, associate professor of visual arts
• Cathy C. Cook, associate professor of visual arts
• Eric Dyer, associate professor of visual arts
• Lisa Moren, professor of visual arts; Jaimes Mayhew ’10, IMDA MFA; Neja Tomšič, former UMBC artist in residence; and Martin Bricelj Baraga
• Timothy Nohe, professor of visual arts and director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts
• Corrie Francis Parks, assistant professor of visual arts
• Sarah G. Sharp, assistant professor of visual arts

Special events at the Spark II gallery will include a Visual Arts Alumni Reception on Wednesday, April 18, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. to which all visual arts alumni are cordially invited. Additional events featuring UMBC faculty, students, and alumni include:

Sunday, April 15, 4:15 p.m. — Krisztina Dér ’12, music, presents Light/Flute, focused on the integration of flute music and lighting art

Monday, April 16, 8 p.m. — Lisa Cella, associate professor of music, and Stephen Bradley present SHINE. Lisa Cella performs the flute works of four contemporary composers — Christopher Adler, Adam Greene, Christopher Burns, and retired UMBC professor of music Stuart Saunders Smith — and provides a sonic framework for Stephen Bradley’s time-lapse video work that explores a meditative perspective of quotidian events.

Thursday, April 19, 7 p.m. — Shelly Purdy ’10, music, and Jason Charney ’20 IMDA MFA, perform improvised music for electronics and percussion, in an event featuring selections from Timothy Nohe‘s When People Become Verbs composed for a dance by Renée Brozic, ’99 dance.

Friday, April 20, 6:30 p.m. — The Umbilicus Percussion Ensemble will perform. Umbilicus was founded in 2012 in reaction to the generic contemporary percussion quartet, with the intention of promoting and performing a more experimental repertoire, much if it composed by its members. Umbilicus (containing the letters UMBC) consists of UMBC associate professor of music Tom Goldstein and three UMBC alumni: Paul Neidhardt, Michelle Purdy and Will Redman. Their performance will feature works by composers Will Redman, John Cage, Joseph Cello, and Brian Johnson.

Saturday, April 21, time to be announced — Puppet event by Colette Searls, associate professor and chair of theatre

On Demand
Videos by UMBC artists are featured in On Demand, a Light City curated program of time-based digital content displayed on a 12 by 20 foot LED screen. Featured are works by Vin Grabill, associate professor of visual arts; Timothy Nohe, also participating in Spark II; Jeffrey L. Gangwisch ’18, IMDA MFA; and Justyna Kurbiel ’18, visual arts.

For complete information on UMBC’s presence at the 2018 Light City Baltimore festival, visit UMBC’s Light City webpage. More information about the entire festival is available through Light City.

Header image: Visualization of Kelley Bell’s “The Herd,” courtesy of the artist.

UMBC welcomed 50 IBM executives and research leaders to campus on Friday, April 6, for a day-long event designed to broaden the robust research relationship between the two organizations and introduce students to emerging career opportunities at IBM. Nearly 250 faculty, staff, students, and partners participated in IBM-UMBC Day.

UMBC’s work with IBM began nearly 25 years ago and has branched across a wide range of topics. The university’s most recent research collaboration with IBM connects artificial intelligence with cybersecurity, explained Keith J. Bowman, dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology. Two new areas of likely future collaboration include quantum computing and blockchain.

Dave McQueeney, vice president of Corporate Technology and Community and Global University Programs at IBM (and UMBC’s executive champion), gave welcoming remarks for the company. Bowman introduced Anupam Joshi, chair and professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) at UMBC, who has completed two sabbaticals at IBM. He also welcomed Yelena Yesha, distinguished professor of CSEE, and Andy Rindos, head of IBM’s RTP Center for Advanced Studies, who were instrumental in organizing IBM-UMBC Day. The welcoming speakers set the tone for the event, highlighting a shared commitment to combining diverse perspectives to explore cutting edge research areas in new and exciting ways.

Michelle Browdy, IBM’s senior vice president for legal and regulatory affairs, and general counsel, delivered the keynote talk about the intersection of law, technology, and public policy. “It takes a village,” she said, noting that this phrase is especially important in the science and technology space, where collaboration is crucial.

Browdy emphasized that her legal team regularly works with business teams and engineers, particularly when technologies are being moved from the lab to the public. She shared how she sees engineers as developing products for people to use and enjoy, and her legal team as an essential complement, managing everything from patents to ensuring compliance with regulations.

Following the keynote, technical experts from UMBC and IBM gave brief talks on areas such as quantum computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the internet of things, and blockchain. UMBC professors Todd Pittman, physics, and Sam Lomonaco, CSEE, joined Andrew Wack, Q platform architect at IBM, in the first technical talk of the day, discussing recent developments in quantum computing and how the field is impacting other industries.

Next, Jeff Crume, distinguished engineer at IBM, and Joshi explored how institutions are making strides in addressing the kinds of cybersecurity concerns that are now making headlines worldwide. Joshi discussed his lab’s work connecting artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and he also described how combining the expertise of people from different fields is essential to creating effective and lasting solutions to cybersecurity challenges. Speaking in the realm of cyber attack prevention and response, he commented, “We have economists on our faculty who are looking at what the attack costs…and we have public policy colleagues who look at the barriers of adoption of cybersecurity.”

Also highlighted in Crume and Joshi’s talk was the Accelerated Cognitive Cybersecurity Lab, which opened in 2016 as a collaboration between UMBC and IBM. The lab is one of many ways in which UMBC and IBM are continuing to grow their partnership, breaking ground in new research areas by combining the creativity and expertise of UMBC faculty and students with the extraordinary technical capabilities of IBM, and together preparing the next generation of computing professionals.

After a lunch break featuring technical demos, networking opportunities, and student research presentations, participants regrouped for a discussion about the Watson computer system and cloud computing. Presenters included Mac Devine, vice president of IBM Watson and Cloud Platform; Tim Finin, professor of CSEE, an expert on cloud computing; and Yesha, who has worked with IBM on computing research since the 1990s. Yesha is director of the new Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics, a $3 million NSF partnership. She described how the center will deploy next-generation computing hardware to solve significant infrastructure challenges, such as protecting massive data sets in the cloud.

Nilanjan Banerjee, associate professor of CSEE, next discussed the internet of things and cyber-physical systems, specifically his lab’s work on small sensors. His team’s sensors can be used to monitor whether people operating vehicles are drowsy, and can be used by people with mobility challenges to control devices in their environment. Tim Hahn, distinguished engineer and chief architect of internet of things security at IBM, shared how his team is addressing security issues associated with now-ubiquitous cyber-physical technologies.

Roman Vaculin, IBM research, concluded the technical talks with a discussion of how IBM is developing blockchain solutions that can be used across industries.

Throughout the day, speakers returned time and again to a core idea emphasized at the start of the day: that bringing together different perspectives is key to success in creating new technologies with the potential to change people’s lives. “We need lawyers and we need engineers,” said Browdy, in her keynote address. “We are shaped and we get opportunities to grow by being exposed to people in a lot of different areas.”

Video recordings from IBM-UMBC Day can be found on the UMBC YouTube channel.

Featured image: A student poses with Pepper, a humanoid robot, at IBM-UMBC Day. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Come to URCAD on Wednesday, April 25, Information Systems major Yasmin Graham will present her research "Rethinking Telerehabilitation: It’s Not The Metrics".

Telerehabilitation is providing rehabilitation services outside of a formal rehabilitation center through information and communications technology (ICT). Currently, emphasis is placed on the computational work – recognizing movement and quantifying it for use in home-based rehabilitation systems. For this study we wanted to further understand what information a rehabilitation specialist (occupational therapists and physical therapists) currently use, and how they would use that information in a telerehabilitation context when providing care to stroke survivors living in low-resource communities. 

Read the rest of her abstract here... 

UMBC welcomed 50 IBM executives and research leaders to campus on Friday, April 6, for a day-long event designed to broaden the robust research relationship between the two organizations and introduce students to emerging career opportunities at IBM. Nearly 250 faculty, staff, students, and partners participated in IBM-UMBC Day.

UMBC’s work with IBM began nearly 25 years ago and has branched across a wide range of topics. The university’s most recent research collaboration with IBM connects artificial intelligence with cybersecurity, explained Keith J. Bowman, dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology. Two new areas of likely future collaboration include quantum computing and blockchain.

Dave McQueeney, vice president of Corporate Technology and Community and Global University Programs at IBM (and UMBC’s executive champion), gave welcoming remarks for the company. Bowman introduced Anupam Joshi, chair and professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) at UMBC, who has completed two sabbaticals at IBM. He also welcomed Yelena Yesha, distinguished professor of CSEE, and Andy Rindos, head of IBM’s RTP Center for Advanced Studies, who were instrumental in organizing IBM-UMBC Day. The welcoming speakers set the tone for the event, highlighting a shared commitment to combining diverse perspectives to explore cutting edge research areas in new and exciting ways.

Michelle Browdy, IBM’s senior vice president for legal and regulatory affairs, and general counsel, delivered the keynote talk about the intersection of law, technology, and public policy. “It takes a village,” she said, noting that this phrase is especially important in the science and technology space, where collaboration is crucial.

Browdy emphasized that her legal team regularly works with business teams and engineers, particularly when technologies are being moved from the lab to the public. She shared how she sees engineers as developing products for people to use and enjoy, and her legal team as an essential complement, managing everything from patents to ensuring compliance with regulations.

Following the keynote, technical experts from UMBC and IBM gave brief talks on areas such as quantum computing, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, the internet of things, and blockchain. UMBC professors Todd Pittman, physics, and Sam Lomonaco, CSEE, joined Andrew Wack, Q platform architect at IBM, in the first technical talk of the day, discussing recent developments in quantum computing and how the field is impacting other industries.

Next, Jeff Crume, distinguished engineer at IBM, and Joshi explored how institutions are making strides in addressing the kinds of cybersecurity concerns that are now making headlines worldwide. Joshi discussed his lab’s work connecting artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, and he also described how combining the expertise of people from different fields is essential to creating effective and lasting solutions to cybersecurity challenges. Speaking in the realm of cyber attack prevention and response, he commented, “We have economists on our faculty who are looking at what the attack costs…and we have public policy colleagues who look at the barriers of adoption of cybersecurity.”

Also highlighted in Crume and Joshi’s talk was the Accelerated Cognitive Cybersecurity Lab, which opened in 2016 as a collaboration between UMBC and IBM. The lab is one of many ways in which UMBC and IBM are continuing to grow their partnership, breaking ground in new research areas by combining the creativity and expertise of UMBC faculty and students with the extraordinary technical capabilities of IBM, and together preparing the next generation of computing professionals.

After a lunch break featuring technical demos, networking opportunities, and student research presentations, participants regrouped for a discussion about the Watson computer system and cloud computing. Presenters included Mac Devine, vice president of IBM Watson and Cloud Platform; Tim Finin, professor of CBEE, an expert on cloud computing; and Yesha, who has worked with IBM on computing research since the 1990s. Yesha is director of the new Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics, a $3 million NSF partnership. She described how the center will deploy next-generation computing hardware to solve significant infrastructure challenges, such as protecting massive data sets in the cloud.

Nilanjan Banerjee, associate professor of CBEE, next discussed the internet of things and cyber-physical systems, specifically his lab’s work on small sensors. His team’s sensors can be used to monitor whether people operating vehicles are drowsy, and can be used by people with mobility challenges to control devices in their environment. Tim Hahn, distinguished engineer and chief architect of internet of things security at IBM, shared how his team is addressing security issues associated with now-ubiquitous cyber-physical technologies.

Roman Vaculin, IBM research, concluded the technical talks with a discussion of how IBM is developing blockchain solutions that can be used across industries.

Video recordings from IBM-UMBC Day can be found on the UMBC YouTube channel.

Featured image: A student poses with Pepper, a humanoid robot, at IBM-UMBC Day. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

March for Our Lives will go down in history as one of the largest protests in the United States, organized by a generation of students that are still below the voting age. With approximately 800,000 attendants, it is the most populous protest to date, with the Women’s March of 2017 a close second with nearly 500,000 in attendance. Across the entire nation, and estimated 1.2 million marched at locally organized events.

Although the march was organized by students, for students, advocates from all walks of life flocked from all over the nation. Below are some of the people who volunteered, demonstrated, or made a profit:

Insecure, Small Penis White Guys for Trump

Jim Garden, the communications director of the satirical gun control group, National Small Penis Association, came to the march early that day at 8:30 a.m. to grab a spot in front of the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue before it became too crowded.

“We are a gun-rights advocacy group, that seeks to enhance the self-esteem of insecure small-penis white guys, through the possession of pointlessly powerful firearms,” he said.

Garden has been with the group for several years; their main goal is to criticize gun rights advocates. During the 2016 election, the association narrowed in on president Trump, as they found his rhetoric the most reprehensible.

Since the election, the association has gone to numerous Trump rallies to give their “support,” and the rallies of other politicians considered friends of the association, like Secretary of Energy and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, and Kentucky Senator and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Activist who memorializes the dead

Maureen Glover, a computer programmer from Asbury, New Jersey, first became involved in impact art after a cousin died in 9/11. Bothered by the repetition of statistics in the news cycle, Glover started her first project by sewing nearly 3,000 shirts together, to emphasize how many lives were lost.

“Numbers can just too easily roll off people’s tongues, so I started stringing shirts together to show what 3,000 people looked like,” said Glover.

Glover quickly became involved in protesting the Iraq War, where she created a mile-long sign with the names and faces of 4,000 fallen soldiers.

After the Pulse nightclub shooting, where Omar Mateen killed 49 and injured 58, Glover methodically went through the history of all gun shootings in the United States and began the month-long project of printing out the names and faces of victims. The rows of over 200 panels, zip-tied together, span the length of a football field.

“I want to put a name and face so people, instead of saying a number, they can look at the kids. We really need to make a change now,” said Glover.

The first victims in her display are from the 1966 University of Texas shooting, where Charles Whitman killed 16 and wounded 31 while firing from a tower, and ends with the Maryland Great Mills High School shooting, where two students including the shooter died and one was wounded.

On April 20, Glover plans to create luminaries for the victims of Columbine, and gave away one of the panels on her project to the friend of the mother of Ben Wheeler, a 6-year-old victim in the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting.

The same organization of March for Our Lives has started a new project, Town Hall for Our Lives, to continue the momentum of the gun control by lobbying local politicians. THFOL is specifically cites funding gun violence research; increasing power of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; national universal background checks; and limit circulation of firearms.

Come to URCAD on Wednesday, April 25 where Ancient Studies student, Julian Tash will present his creative research project "Bodies of Devotion: The Display of Buddhist Statues".

Statues of the Buddha are seldom created for museums. They are instead intended to be displayed in temples, where they might be distanced from viewers by partitions or obscured in darkness — a stark contrast to well-illuminated museum spaces in which visitors can closely approach displays. Despite this distance, however, the temple context is intimate. Before entering a temple, physical rituals, such as wafting incense smoke over one’s head, physically connect devotees to Buddhism.

Read the rest of his abstract here...