BEYA STEM Career Fair and Conference

FREE!!!!

Open to All Students (undergraduate and graduate). If you haven’t already registered, registration is still open!

Connect with Organizations seeking Interns and Full-time Hires along with Graduate Admissions Representatives

BEYA STEM Conference - February 8-10, 2018

STEM Career Fair - Saturday, February 10, 2018 (10 am - 4 pm)

Washington Marriott Wardman Park
2660 Woodley Road NW
Washington DC, 20008

The BEYA STEM Conference sponsored by Career Communications Group will be held February 8-10, 2018 as part of this large annual conference, representatives from several major corporations and universities will be on hand to meet with students pursuing careers in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields as well as Business, Finance, and Marketing.  Why you should attend:

·         FREE Career Fair

·         Career exhibits

·         50 + seminars and workshops

·         On the spot job offers

·         Networking with recruiters

·         Job readiness certification for college students.

The Career Fair portion of the conference, on Saturday, is free of charge for UMBC students and alumni with an active UMBC email address. All students are welcome to attend. Dress to impress and bring plenty of updated resumes!

Registration is required.

To register and for additional information, go to:

http://careers2.umbc.edu/calendar/fairs/beya2018.php

Deadline to pre-register is Feb. 5 (Career Fair) and Feb. 2 for the entire Conference

Contact Diane Crump-Fogle (crump@umbc.edu) or Chrisi Giannakaris (chrisig@umbc.edu) of the UMBC Career Center for additional information.

Free Shuttle Bus

There will be a free shuttle bus to transport students to and from the career fair on Saturday. If you will need transportation, be sure to complete the shuttle bus registration form at the bottom of the BEYA registration page: http://careers2.umbc.edu/calendar/fairs/beyabus.php. Please note that the free shuttle bus is available on a first-come, first-serve basis. The free shuttle will run only on Saturday between 8:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Transportation to and from other conference events (such as the BEYA Gala held Saturday evening) is on your own.

For a list of some of the employers, see:  List of Employers

Are you ready to get moving toward better health in 2018? American Public Health Association's 1 Billion Steps Challenge helps build excitement for National Public Health Week 2018 and is the perfect opportunity to promote health and well-being in our community.  

The Steps Challenge officially kicks off on Jan. 1 and runs through April 8. To help you get moving, all Challenge participants receive free access to Stridekick’s fitness-tracking platform.

Ready to get stepping? Join our UMBC Wellness Initiative Team (code: 77zm2) here.  You'll need to sign up for an account and select your tracking device.  This tracking platform is compatible with most fitness tracking devices and your iPhone or Android smartphone.  

Start tracking those steps and let's shoot for 1 billion!  

For any questions, please contact us at wellness@umbc.edu.  

Applications for the 2018-19 Undergraduate Research Awards (URA) are being accepted now!

Undergraduate Research Awards provide up to $1,500 to undergraduate students to support their research or creative work with a UMBC faculty mentor on an original project. UMBC students of all years and disciplines are invited to apply, as long as they will remain enrolled at UMBC long enough to complete the proposed work.  Eligible students are degree-seeking undergraduates who will conduct mentored-research or creative work, June 2018- May 2019. The URA may be used to support work being done as part of a capstone project, honors thesis, ongoing lab project, scholars program, art exhibit or performance, or an independent project.  

Application deadline: Feb. 16, 2018.

For more info and to apply:

ur.umbc.edu/ura

Workshop this Wednesday, January 31^st from 12-12:50 p.m. Sondheim 103:  How to Apply for a URA

New research by Sander Goossens, associate research scientist at UMBC’s Center for Space Science and Technology, and colleagues offers a fresh perspective on a question of universal importance. The study, published in Nature Communications, employed a novel method to learn more about the Sun and further confirmed the constant G, the mainstay of Einstein’s theory of general relativity that predicts how extremely large masses warp space-time.

To address such big ideas, “You need the solar system as your laboratory,” says Goossens. The research team, led by Antonio Genova, research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, used data collected by NASA’s MESSENGER satellite, which orbited Mercury from March 2011 to April 2015 and carried out “flyby” observations in 2008 and 2009. By tracking and analyzing the orbits of Mercury and MESSENGER over several years, the team was able to separate out the various causes of tiny changes in their orbits.

The Sun’s gravity is the biggest factor that keeps the planets in orbit. As the Sun slowly loses mass from interior processes and the solar wind—which constantly rips particles away from the upper atmosphere of the Sun—its gravity weakens, the planets’ orbits creep away from the Sun, and the solar system expands. The team found that the Sun is losing mass at a rate of 0.1 percent per 10 billion years, causing the planetary orbits to shift by 1.5 cm per year per astronomical unit (the distance between Earth and the Sun).

Other factors also affect the planets’ orbits, such as the Sun’s “oblateness” (how much it bulges in the middle, rather than being a perfect sphere) and how much it warps space-time by virtue of its goliath size, which is described by relativity theory. The team was able to estimate relativity-related parameters, confirming Einstein’s theory beyond what previous studies have found.

This study also further constrained the value of the constant G, which governs gravity’s effect on objects. Scientists continue working to demonstrate that G remains constant in as many contexts as possible. This adds evidence for the hypothesis that G is constant across the universe and hasn’t changed since the Big Bang.

“To some people it might sound like, ‘Well, there’s another confirmation of Einstein’s theory,’ but those are important because we have no idea at what level things might deviate,” says Goossens. He explains, “It’s a constant, so people expect it to be constant, but it’s always been a question whether or not G varies with time, and we’ve been able to put quite tight constraints on that.”

This work is an example of the wide range of questions that can be addressed with a NASA mission like MESSENGER. “This study demonstrates that charting the orbits of planets, such as Mercury, may provide simultaneous new findings in different disciplines,” says Genova, from heliophysics—the study of the sun and its effects on the solar system—to theoretical physics, which includes the study of gravity.

This study is the first to calculate the Sun’s mass loss and oblateness based on observation as opposed to theory alone. Also, previous studies had taken Mercury’s orbit as fixed, based on data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and actively measured only the satellite’s orbit. Genova, Goossens, and colleagues used an innovative approach, yielding more accurate results.

“In this case, we modeled both the orbit of Mercury and the orbit of the satellite,” explains Goossens, “and in a similar way that we normally determine the satellite orbit, we now simultaneously determined Mercury’s and the satellite’s orbit.”

Eventually, Goossens would like to see this type of analysis expanded even further, to consider more than two celestial bodies at once—perhaps even the entire solar system. Even looking at other pairs of bodies, such as the Sun and a different planet, would be a boon for general relativity experts who have a range of ideas about Einstein’s theory, he says. “Perhaps this could show a way forward for testing those theories as well.”

Find the complete research article, “Solar system expansion and strong equivalence principle as seen by the NASA MESSENGER mission” by Genova et al. in Nature Communications.

For more on Goossen’s work with NASA, including the GRAIL mission, see coverage of his research on a massive Moon crater, published in Science.

Image: An artist’s conception of the MESSENGER satellite as it orbits Mercury; photo provided by NASA.

UMBC’s San Francisco Bay Area alumni got together last week for drinks and a warm welcome from their East Coast Retriever friends. Dr. Anupam Joshi, Director, UMBC Center for Cybersecurity Professor and Chair, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, and UMBC’s Office of Alumni Relations staff greeted more than 50 alumni January 22 at Steins Beer Garden in Mountain View, CA. We hope you enjoy these photos from the event.

Learn more about upcoming alumni events here!