An Dang ’24, chemical engineering, an international student from Vietnam, arrived at UMBC in 2021 as a transfer student from Montgomery College. When switching colleges, she also switched majors: from biology to chemical engineering. She quickly became involved in activities in the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering and this year helped the student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) pull together a major student conference for the first time. 

Q: What drew you to UMBC?

A: I talked to Mark Marten, the chair of the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering (CBEE), and I got the sense that the department is small and they really support their students. That caring environment is what I wanted. It’s also, honestly, an affordable option.

Q: Who were some of your mentors?

A: I’m working in the lab of Lee Blaney, one of the environmental engineering professors. He’s my research advisor and really helped me navigate the process of applying to grad school. In the fall, I’m going to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to pursue my Ph.D. And Neha Raikar, a senior lecturer in the department, devotes so much of her time to making sure students are supported. She’s like a motherly figure for a lot of us.

Q: What clubs and activities were you involved in?

A: I was a CBEE student ambassador. We went to high schools and community colleges to advertise the department and answer student questions. I’m also involved in the AIChE student chapter. At first I was the service chair and I mostly helped with planning K-12 outreach events. This year, we hosted the AIChE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference and I was on the planning committee. I was in charge of corporate and university relations—I helped secure sponsors for the conference, and made sure we had funding.

Q: What were some of the skills you developed serving in these roles?

A: I’m not an extrovert, and being in these roles forced me to go out of my comfort zone. I learned how to speak professionally with people in higher positions, so they take me seriously, and maybe even want to give us money. The other big thing I realized is that no matter how well I prepare, sometimes things will go wrong, and that’s okay. We all need to give ourselves grace.

Q: How did it feel to host a big conference?

A: It was a lot of hard work! The student organizers spent a lot of time together, and we really got to know each other well and develop close relationships. There are only 28 people from the department in my graduating class, and many of them are in AIChE. When the conference went well, it felt great!

Q: What other places did you find community at UMBC?

A: I am an international student, and I worked for International Student and Scholar Services (ISSS). I got to know some of the staff in the office really well. One problem that I ran into while I was here is that I lost my social security card. I had a lot of challenges getting a new one because there was a mix-up in the social security office with my middle and first name. ISSS helped me write a very good letter to justify my case, and I finally got my card. I’m very grateful that I got that help from them because it’s an important piece of documentation.

Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: I’m continuing in chemical engineering and plan to go to grad school to study catalysis engineering, which is studying how to speed up chemical reactions. I’d like to work in industry, particularly in the field of renewable energy. Anything that helps with the environment—that’s what I want to focus on.

Beginning on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 through Friday, August 16, 2024, Bio Science / Schwartz Hall Breezeway, adjacent plaza and pathways will be temporarily closed for construction. This closure is expanding upon the areas impacted by the Lecture Hall 1 renovations and outlined here. Signage will be in-place to guide pedestrians through the area via accessible routes. Please refer to the accompanying graphic for additional information.

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Facilities Management

“A recent Gartner poll shows that while 55% of organizations are experimenting with generative AI, only 10% have put generative AI into production. One of the biggest barriers to productionizing LLMs is dealing with their tendency to produce bogus outputs known as hallucinations, which precludes their use in applications where correct outputs are necessary (i.e., most applications)! Despite this, some organizations have deployed these unreliable LLMs, sometimes with catastrophic results. Air Canada’s chatbot hallucinated refund policies, eventually resulting in the airline being held responsible for the misinformation and being ordered by a tribunal to refund a customer; the chatbot has since been taken down. A federal judge fined a law firm after their lawyers used ChatGPT to draft a brief full of fabricated citations. New York City’s “MyCity” chatbot has been hallucinating wrong answers to business owners’ questions about local laws.”

https://cleanlab.ai/blog/trustworthy-language-model/

Do we have any hopes of overcoming this? One startup claims they have a good answer.

"LLMs will always have some hallucinations, but by providing a trustworthiness score with every output, Cleanlab TLM lets you identify when the LLM is hallucinating."

 https://cleanlab.ai/blog/trustworthy-language-model/