Didn’t have a chance to see the 2013 winter commencement ceremonies? UMBC has recorded the Graduate Ceremony on Thursday, December 19 and the Undergraduate Ceremony on Friday, December 20.

Undergraduate Commencement

Graduate Commencement

The Ludei and Goo Technologies partnership now offers WebGL games with high-end HTML5 graphics to mobile platforms including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Thousands of WordPress users now rely on the automated genius of ShrinkTheWeb for their automated screenshot needs.

Professor Marie desJardins received a research award from the National Science Foundation focused on increasing the expertise of Maryland high school teachers for teaching computer science, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of computer science classes offered in Maryland and the number and diversity of students taking them.

The project, CS10K: Collaborative Research: A Structured CS Principles Approach to Professional Development for Maryland High School Teachers, is led by Dr. desJardins and will involve collaborators from the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and high school teachers from Charles County and Baltimore County. The NSF award will provide $845,000 in funding over a three year period and is part of the Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21) program, which aims to build a robust computing research community, a computationally competent 21st century workforce, and a computationally empowered citizenry.

The project is also part of the CS 10K community, which works to make computer science accessible in high schools. The nationwide effort has a goal of getting rigorous academic computer science courses into 10,000 schools taught by 10,000 well-prepared teachers. The project pays careful attention to the inclusion of women and minorities–groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in computing.

The project will develop and evaluate professional development activities focused on increasing the expertise of Maryland high school teachers for teaching computer science. Experienced higher education faculty and highly effective high school teachers will collaborate to train other high school teachers to develop and offer a college preparatory CS curriculum. In the first year, an initial cohort of 12 master teachers will collaborate with the project leadership team to develop standardized classroom materials based on the CS Principles curriculum and then offer the CS Principles course in their home schools. In the second year, the project staff will train less experienced teachers in the CS Principles curriculum, and in the third year, the leadership team will demonstrate scalability by supporting the delivery of multiple independently funded regional workshops. The project’s ultimate goal is to achieve significantly increased interest of Maryland students in studying and pursuing careers in computer science.

Greg Couturier, a Peaceworker Fellow affiliated with UMBC’s Shriver Center, recently wrote an op-ed published in The Baltimore Sun about the current state of Baltimore’s juvenile services. In his commentary titled “A plea for moral imagination,” Couturier argues more needs to be done than simply spending money to combat juvenile crime.

“Instead of putting delinquent youth in facilities that have been proven to exacerbate violent behavior, many researchers are now calling for a push toward evidence-based, family-centered and community-based interventions, such as multi-systemic therapy, functional family therapy and various types of social education programs,” he writes.

Couturier is currently earning his Master’s of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and works with the UMBC-Lakeland project as his service placement. He has also spent time as a Shriver Center Choice Fellow, and credits his experience during that time with inspiring him to find solutions for youth development. In his column, he calls on Baltimore City officials to think more creatively about peace-building initiatives in the new year while increasing funding for youth development programs.

“Such a resolution would be a proactive investment in the social capital of our city’s youth, an untapped asset that would bring boundless returns,” he writes.

You can read the full op-ed in The Baltimore Sun here.

Professor Charles Laberge, director of UMBC’s undergraduate Computer Engineering program, was recently recognized by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RCTA) for more than thirty years of service helping to develop technical standards critical to aviation safety. RTCA is a private, not-for-profit association founded in 1935 to provide a public-private partnership venue for developing consensus among diverse, competing interests on critical aviation modernization issues in an increasingly global enterprise.

Dr. Laberge’s work was cited in an article the December issue of the RTCA digest, Spotlight on Volunteers: Communications Expert Advances Aviation Safety, for his leadership and contributions to standards for aviation communication. “Chuck has been invaluable to RTCA’s work for many years – we could not have accomplished what we have without his expertise and the long hours he has spent advancing aviation safety,” said RTCA President Margaret Jenny.

“Chuck LaBerge serves as Chair of RTCA’s SC-222, Inmarsat AMS(R)S, which has been working since October 2008 to produce several guidance documents focused on satellite systems capability. Chuck is known industry-wide for his expertise in radio signal processes and interference and brings a wealth of knowledge to the Committee’s work. Chuck has a long and active history of contributing to RTCA products and first became involved with RTCA in the late 70s, helping to produce DO-177, a MOPS document focusing on Microwave Landing System (MLS) Airborne Receiving Equipment. He has made substantial contributions to 20 RTCA documents, not including document updates.”

Dr. LaBerge describes the the work of the RTCA Special Committee 222 as defining the standards for satellite communication services that allow aircraft passengers to place telephone calls and access the Internet while in flight, especially in oceanic airspace. His previous RTCA work had focused on the special constraints that support pilot and controller communications related to the safety and regularity of flight along national and international air routes.

Professor LaBerge began working on RTCA standards at the Honeywell Aerospace Research & Technology Center, where he worked from from 1975 to 2008, achieving the position of Senior Fellow. While there, he completed a PhD in Electrical Engineering at UMBC in 2003. In 2008, he joined UMBC as Professor of the Practice, where he currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in computer engineering, helps teach the popular Introduction to Engineering class (ENES 101) and directs the undergraduate computer engineering program.

In December it was revealed that Target suffered a data breach that involved more than 40 million credit and debit card accounts. The unauthorized access may impact guests who made credit or debit card purchases in our U.S. stores from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15, 2013.

Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity and CSEE Professor Anupam Joshi discussed the possible consequences of the breach in video reports by local affiliates for both ABC and NBC. Dr. Joshi outlined some of the possible ways that the data breach might have happened and pointed out that while the lost data could be used to make illegal charges to the accounts, it was unlikely to lead to larger identity theft problems.

In an op-ed published in The Baltimore Sun, media and communication studies assistant professor Rebecca Adelman describes how pictures and video of chemical weapons casualties in the Syrian civil war did not follow the traditional model for war images.

In her op-ed titled “Atypical images of war,” Adelman writes about how the images required extensive explanation and interpretation due to what they were depicting:

The amateur photos and videos of the victims of the attacks do not follow the familiar model of the war casualty image. They were recognizable as such primarily in their quantitative aspects: the number of images and the astonishing volume of casualties (many of them grouped together) that they depicted. The scale of death bespoke militarized violence, but the qualitative dimension of those images was a bit more equivocal.

Adelman also notes how many of the images raise concerns and confusion as it relates to how they will be viewed in the future.

“Myriad uncertainties hover around these pictures. We cannot know how they will function or signify in the future, especially because changing dynamics in the region might compel the United States to negotiate with the Assad regime to prevent a jihadist takeover of the country,” Adelman writes.

You can read the full op-ed in The Baltimore Sun here.