Yes, Los Angeles is famous for celebrity sightings, traffic and smog. But its lesser known sustainability achievements are what drew AASHE to the City of Angels for this year's conference. Take a look at a few reasons why L.A. is a great place for a national sustainability conversation:

• L.A. is home to more than one million college students

• Thanks to the recent LEED Gold certification of the University of California, Los Angeles' Clinical and Translational Research Center, the University of California system has hit a milestone of 100 LEED-certified facilities.

• Through the Mayor’s Office of Energy, Environment and Sustainability, L.A. met the Kyoto targets for reducing greenhouse gases four years ahead of schedule; has taken over 2,000 dirty diesel trucks off the road; met the first target of getting 10 percent of energy from renewable sources; and put into place a far-reaching green building program.

• L.A.'s Green Business Program works to increase sustainability among businesses. Partners include the Mayor’s Office, Los Angeles Community College, Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, Green Globe, and Green Seal.

• The LEED Gold-certified Los Angeles Convention Center was recently welcomed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a national Green Power Partner, and is now a qualified member of the EPA’s national WasteWise program.

• The host hotel for conference attendees, Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, was the first L.A. hotel to earn Green Seal Silver Certification, and was acknowledged by the Mayor’s Office for leading the way in sustainable hotel practices.

• 6 STARS Participants and 5 AASHE member institutions are located in the L.A. area

For more reasons to visit L.A. for AASHE 2012, visit the conference website. Hotel discounts end September 22 and registration ends October 8 so register soon! For any conference questions, contact conference@aashe.org.

Alumna Jeehye Yun ’97, computer science, was profiled along with her cybersecurity company Secured Sciences Group (SSG) by The Baltimore Business Journal’s Jack Lambert in an article published on September 7th.

Read the full story here.

Yun told Lambert that SSG–a member of UMBC’s Research and Technology Park, and which is in the process of working with the research park on a plan to attract investors–is particularly adept at cutting through red tape and redundancies which can occur in government applications, saying, “We can take a lot of disparate policies and figure out where the overlaps are.”

The alumna, who is CEO/President of SSG as well as a former teacher at her alma mater from the late-90′s, also told Lambert that the company’s upcoming technology will new technology will hopefully cut through the quantity of material companies have to sift through from government grant applications and contracts by finding the overlaps between for organizations like the Department of Defense, the Navy and the Marines.

Yun also noted that her company’s products also have value for colleges, management consultants and small businesses, saying, “The biggest rule of thumb for us is, actually, are we solving a problem where we would want to use the product?”

This story originally appeared in UMBC Insights.

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• Graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Dec. 2013 or later