UMBC has again been named a Best Value College for 2017 by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, appearing on both the Best Value Public University list and “top 300” national Best Value University list.

Kiplinger has honored UMBC as a Best Value College for eight consecutive years. This ranking recognizes four-year schools with the essential combination of outstanding academics and affordability. It is based on a range of factors, including admission rates, student-faculty ratio, four-year graduation rates, and financial aid.

In addition to this university honor, U.S. News and World Report has just specifically recognized UMBC’s online master’s degree in information systems as one of the top 25 in such programs the nation. The degree program, through UMBC’s department of information systems, appears on the publication’s 2018 Best Online Information Technology Programs list, released January 9, 2018.

“UMBC’s online master’s offers a convenient way to learn from exceptional faculty working in the bold and innovative context that is UMBC. Our programs and faculty are consistently successful in delivering an education to our students that enable them to be just as successful in jobs with major companies and government, as with startup companies and non-profits,” said Keith Bowman, dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology.

The online master’s program is designed for students who are advancing their education while balancing commitments to careers, family, and military service. Students and faculty in this field often complete research in areas such as health information technology, human-centered computing, data mining, artificial intelligence, and software engineering.

Learn more about applying to UMBC at the undergraduate and graduate admissions websites.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

A discovery by UMBC theoretical physicists could improve the performance of one type of quantum computer enough to stimulate major progress in its development, enabling more practical uses of quantum computers in the future. Classical computers (the kind we use every day, from fitness trackers to desktops) compute by toggling their building blocks, or “bits,” between zero and one, so each bit has only two possible states. But the bits that make up quantum computers, called “qubits,” take advantage of quantum mechanics to access many more possible states, allowing faster and more secure computations.

Quantum computers can be constructed from a range of materials. Those based on superconducting materials have made great strides in recent years, but those based on semiconducting materials lag behind because they are plagued by noise: Even extremely small disturbances in the area surrounding their qubits can render an entire system useless. The new finding from UMBC introduces a set of conditions under which the qubits are not negatively affected by noise. Using those conditions could increase computational precision from a maximum of 90 percent to as high as 99.9 percent, pushing the computers closer to a critical threshold of usability.

The new finding “is attacking the bugaboo of this whole class of possible quantum computers,” says Jason Kestner, assistant professor of physics at UMBC and final author on the new paper in Physical Review B. And yet, Michael Wolfe ’17, physics, and first author on the paper, says the finding “is something we stumbled across almost by accident.”

Kestner didn’t expect anything Earth-shattering when he assigned Wolfe an undergraduate research project cataloging the errors caused by noise in a model of semiconductor-based quantum computers. Wolfe says his results were suspicious when they came back predicting a “sweet spot”—a set of parameters where the qubits weren’t affected by noise. After a careful look, however, they realized the sweet spot was indeed predicted by the model, which had been developed by Fernando Calderon-Vargas, Ph.D. ’16, physics. At that point, “I just told [Michael] to drop everything and to look into this,” Kestner says.

Further examination confirmed Wolfe’s initial results indicating the existence of the sweet spot. Controlling the qubits, which in semiconducting quantum computers are microscopic structures made of pairs of electrons, in a certain way prevented noise from disrupting the computer’s computations, but didn’t interrupt the interactions between qubits that are necessary for the computer to function. Using this sweet spot, a computer could complete anywhere from 10 to 100 times more computations before it accumulated too many errors to continue operating accurately.

That kind of improvement gives semiconductor-based quantum computers a chance at catching up to their superconductor-based peers, which don’t suffer as much from the same challenges associated with noise. That’s why the superconductors are “miles ahead right now,” says Kestner, even though semiconductors come with their own set of advantages. “We’re really hopeful that this ends up being a really useful technique for people with this particular type of qubit.”

Next, it’s up to experimental physicists to test out the sweet spot with physical qubits. Wolfe is making sure he’s one of them. On a Fulbright Fellowship at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, Wolfe says, “I’m convincing our team to search for this mysterious sweet spot, despite initial doubts.” If they find it, semiconducting quantum computers could “get comparable attention from big companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Intel who are investing millions of dollars into other qubit platforms,” says Wolfe, so that the true potential of this quantum computing platform could be explored more fully, potentially even surpassing superconductor-based quantum computers for certain uses.

One of the best aspects of the new finding is that it doesn’t require experimentalists to do anything fundamentally differently—only to choose the parameters wisely for experiments they’re already doing. That should make implementation much easier. Next steps for Kestner’s lab include refining Calderon-Vargas’ model to pinpoint “some of the more nitty gritty details,” says Kestner, which is likely to slightly alter the recommended parameters. “We want to try to make sure we get the details right,” he says. “That’s the next step.”

Image: From left to right, Fernando Calderon-Vargas, Ph.D. ’16, physics; Jason Kestner, assistant professor of physics; and Michael Wolfe ’17, physics, in Kestner’s office. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Job Title: Community Arts Manager

Classification: Part-Time, Exempt

Reports to: Deputy Director

Date Revised: January 4, 2018

SINGLE CARROT THEATRE SEEKS PART TIME EDUCATION DIRECTOR

UMBC has again been named a Best Value College for 2017 by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, appearing on both the Best Value Public University list and “top 300” national Best Value University list.

Kiplinger has honored UMBC as a Best Value College for eight consecutive years. This ranking recognizes four-year schools with the essential combination of outstanding academics and affordability. It is based on a range of factors, including admission rates, student-faculty ratio, four-year graduation rates, and financial aid.

UMBC was also named as one of the nation’s top colleges “for students seeking a superb education with great career preparation and at an affordable price,” notes an announcement by The Princeton Review. The 2018 edition of Colleges That Pay You Back: The 200 Schools That Give You the Best Bang for Your Tuition Buck highlights universities across the United States that Princeton Review believes do a particularly good job of balancing excellent academics, affordability, and career services.

“For many years, UMBC has consistently provided our firm with hundreds of exceptionally talented students that we have hired across all areas of our business.  UMBC students are well rounded and diverse in their experiences and skills which make them strong assets to our firm year over year,” said Mindy Silverman, manager of talent acquisition at T. Rowe Price.

In addition to these university honors, U.S. News and World Report has just specifically recognized UMBC’s online master’s degree in information systems as one of the top 25 in such programs the nation. The degree program, through UMBC’s department of information systems, appears on the publication’s 2018 Best Online Information Technology Programs list, released January 9, 2018.

“UMBC’s online master’s offers a convenient way to learn from exceptional faculty working in the bold and innovative context that is UMBC. Our programs and faculty are consistently successful in delivering an education to our students that enable them to be just as successful in jobs with major companies and government, as with startup companies and non-profits,” said Keith Bowman, dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology.

The online master’s program is designed for students who are advancing their education while balancing commitments to careers, family, and military service. Students and faculty in this field often complete research in areas such as health information technology, human-centered computing, data mining, artificial intelligence, and software engineering.

Learn more about applying to UMBC at the undergraduate and graduate admissions websites.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Note- this story was updated on 1/23/18 to include The Princeton Review rankings.

A new degree program developed jointly by UMBC and Montgomery College (MC), and soon to be offered at The Universities at Shady Grove (USG), will create opportunities for students of all backgrounds to pursue high-demand careers in the life sciences. The four-year Translational Life Science Technology (TLST) program, which leads to a bachelor of science degree from UMBC, will train students in the fundamentals of biochemistry, cell biology, epidemiology, statistics, lab instrumentation, and biochemical engineering, as well as give students opportunities to develop sought-after skills such as analytical thinking, teamwork, and data evaluation. The TLST program is accepting students now, and courses will begin in fall 2018.

“As the biotechnology industry translates basic research from ‘bench to bedside,’ it needs a well-trained workforce,” says Dean Bill LaCourse, of UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, within which the TLST program resides. “The TLST program is designed from the ground up to meet that need through a flexible and interdisciplinary approach with intensive industry-inspired laboratory skills training.”

Students begin coursework for the TLST program at Montgomery College, taking classes at the new, state-of-the-art Bioscience Education Center on its Germantown, MD campus for the first two years. Successful completion of that curriculum results in an A.A.S. in biotechnology or other associate’s tracks from Montgomery College.

The Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Education Building at The Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville, MD is scheduled for completion in 2019, and will then host the third and fourth year courses of the TLST program.  Both the USG and MC facilities are in the heart of Maryland’s technology corridor and offer well-equipped classrooms and labs where students can master techniques commonly called upon in the biotech industry, such as polymerase chain reaction, gel electrophoresis, gene cloning, mass spectroscopy and chromatography.

The need for workers with these skills is especially great in Maryland, which is one of the top-ranked regions in the nation for its concentration of technology-related jobs. Of the more than 2,300 biotech companies in the state, more than 75 percent are found in Montgomery County, the location of both MC and USG.

“The Universities at Shady Grove is pleased to bring UMBC’s Translational Life Science Technology degree program to Montgomery County,” says Stewart Edelstein, executive director of The Universities at Shady Grove, a regional higher education center in Rockville, MD that hosts courses offered by nine Maryland institutions. “This degree program is the first of its kind in Maryland and is specifically designed to provide the skilled talent needed to support the region’s growing bioscience and biotechnology industry.”

UMBC’s collaboration with Montgomery College adds to the university’s growing list of active partnerships with Maryland community colleges that support the success of Maryland students. “The collaboration between two great institutions, Montgomery College and UMBC, provides a national model for developing a pathway to a bachelor of science degree,” explains Sanjay Rai, senior vice president for academic affairs at Montgomery College. MC has offered A.A.S. degrees in biotechnology and biomanufacturing for more than 20 years, and the new, joint program with UMBC will expand opportunities for students in Montgomery County interested in the field.

“Students will graduate with a combination of ‘know-what’ and ‘know-how’ for in-demand careers,” from developing therapies for disease and next-generation materials, to inventing and refining wearable sensors and cutting-edge forensics techniques, says LaCourse, “supporting the economic growth of Maryland and offering students a novel STEM career path to a bright future.”

More information is available at the Translational Life Science Technology website. The TLST program was featured on I-270 News and the Maryland Department of Commerce blog, MDBizNews.

Image: Erin Green, assistant professor of biological sciences at UMBC, and Khoa Tran, a Ph.D. student in her lab, examine experimental plates. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

• A 13-week paid fellowship at either an environmental grantmaking foundation, or at one of their grantees. Past placement sites include: Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment; Earthjustice; Toxics Action Center, New England Grassroots Environment Fund, and many more!
• Fellows will receive a stipend of $10,000 plus a travel allowance.
• Last year's cohort worked on a wide variety of issues: environmental health, clean energy, marine conservation, transit solutions, energy justice, to name just a few!  
• Fellowship placement sites are available in a range of places included but not limited to: New York City, Boston/New England region, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, MI, Grand Rapids, MI  

2018 Re-Imagining Black Girls' and Women's Health Symposium and Workshop at Towson University