Did You Know Not All Disabilities Are Visible?

This week (October 19–25) is Invisible Disabilities Week — a time to raise awareness and support for those living with non-visible conditions.

An invisible disability is a physical, mental, or neurological condition that may not be apparent from the outside but can significantly affect a person's daily life, movements, senses, or activities.

The Hidden Disabilities Sunflower is a simple yet powerful symbol that lets people discreetly share that they have an invisible disability and may need extra time, understanding, or support. The movement began in the United Kingdom and is now recognized across Great Britain, Ireland, and Scotland — and it's spreading worldwide.

If you notice someone wearing the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower, please show kindness, patience, and understanding. Displaying a sunflower symbol on your office door, reception area, or workspace helps communicate that people with hidden disabilities are welcome and supported.

Living with a hidden disability can make everyday life more challenging — and these challenges are not always easy to recognize or understand. Wearing the Sunflower is a way to promote empathy and inclusion.

The Hidden Disabilities Sunflower Program officially launched at UMBC in Spring 2025!

Hello Retriever Entrepreneurs!

Join us for our next event of the semester, which will be held Wednesday, November 5th from 12–1pm in the University Center Ballroom Lounge!

This workshop titled "Low Cost, High-Impact Branding: Tools & Tips for Entrepreneurs" will focus on practical, budget-friendly design strategies that can help elevate your startup's presence without breaking the bank. Led by Carson Becker '25, Creative Director at Gibbon Studio, this interactive workshop will introduce free design templates, AI tools, and best practices in design thinking. Attendees will learn how to effectively use industry-standard tools to create compelling visuals—no prior experience required. If you're looking to make a strong brand impact with limited resources, this session is for you.

Students, faculty, alumni, and members of the business community are welcome to attend! We hope to see you there!

Session recording and slides

Register and/or join event here

UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Usable String Matching by Humans through Overlaid Presentation: Turning Syntactic Tasks into Perceptual Tasks

12:00–1pm, Friday, October 31, 2025 via WebEx

Alan T. Sherman, CSEE Department, UMBC

Joint work with Enka Blanchard, Ted Selker, Ryan Robucci, Levi Gabasova, and Mehdi Bouhamidi

Comparing two strings of characters is a basic activity that occurs in innocuous contexts (checking that an email address was entered correctly) and critical ones (from bank wire transfers to nuclear codes), where it is not always possible to trust a machine to perform the task. Because human performance on this task has received limited attention, we explore the limits and capabilities of humans to compare strings when presented in various formats. I am especially motivated by the important application of checking audit data in end-to-end voting systems including Scantegrity.

We present results from two online experiments with a total of 178 human subjects who compared pairs of text strings to determine for each pair whether the two strings are identical. Each subject was asked to complete 20 trials, which presented strings of 5, 10, or 15 characters or short nonsense sentences. For each pair, the strings were either identical or differed by one character (randomly changed or changed to be difficult to detect).

Our main insight was to check the difference between strings shown side by side, or overlaid in two colors.  Our hypothesis is that, by turning complex syntactic tasks into simple perceptual tasks, such overlay formats can offer advantages in speed and accuracy in comparison with simple side-by-side presentations. Results show that, in comparison with side-by-side comparison, overlay offers a substantially faster method, with substantially improved accuracy for long strings, which has many applications including comparing fingerprints of cryptographic keys and establishing authenticity of authorization tickets.

Our work lays a foundation on which other new perceptual string-comparison strategies can be explored, such as using reflection to compare a string presented on a smartphone with one on a computer display monitor.

Dr. Alan T. Sherman is a professor of computer science at UMBC in the CSEE Department, associate director of UMBC's Cybersecurity Institute, and director of the Cyber Defense Lab.  His main research interest is high-integrity voting systems. He has carried out research in election systems, protocol analysis, algorithm design, cryptanalysis, theoretical foundations for cryptography, applications of cryptography, cloud forensics, and cybersecurity education. Dr. Sherman is also a private consultant performing security analyses and serving as an expert witness. Sherman earned the PhD degree in computer science at MIT in 1987 studying under Ronald L. Rivest.  His research accomplishments include contributions to the Scantegrity and VoteXX election systems and development and validation of the Cybersecurity Concept Inventory (CCI) and Cybersecurity Curriculum Assessment (CCA). This work has been presented at USENIX Security 2010 and E-VOTE-ID 2025, and won best research paper at SIGSCE 2023. Sherman received approximately $15 million in funding from NSF, NSA, and IBM.

Support for this event was provided in part by the NSF under SFS grants DGE-1753681 and 2438185. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1pm.  All meetings are open to the public.

GSA is looking for two dedicated graduate students to co-chair the Elections Committee and oversee the 2026–2027 GSA elections. This is a great leadership opportunity—especially for those graduating in 2026!

Eligibility:

• One co-chair must be a current GSA Senator or Executive Council member.
• One co-chair must be a graduate student not currently serving as a GSA officer, senator, or committee chair.
  Note: Serving on this committee means you cannot run for any other GSA positions in Spring 2026.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee all aspects of the election process.
• Establish and review election policies and eligibility criteria.
• Vet candidates and resolve election-related concerns.
• Ensure transparent publication of results.

Commitment:

• Start: November 15, 2025 | End: April 2026
• ~5 hours/week, including meetings every Tuesday (11 AM–12 PM, Commons 229) and 2nd Wednesday of each month (1–3 PM).
• Includes a stipend for your service.

Timeline:

• Q&A of Shortlisted Candidates: November 11, 2025
• Senate Vote Results: November 12, 2025
• Committee Formation: November 25, 2025
• Elections for GSA 2026-2027 Begin: February 2, 2026
• GSA 2026-2027 Election Results: First week of April 2026

How to Nominate Yourself: SELF NOMINATIONS ONLY
Submit your name, student ID, headshot, short bio (250 words), and statement of interest (500 words) by Wednesday, November 5, 2025, using the link below:
Nomination Form

You must be logged into your UMBC account to access the form.

 For any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out at gsapresident@umbc.edu