As a Cyber Scholar at UMBC, Victoria Herr knows how important mentorship and direct, hands-on experience can be for young women in computing. Herr is graduating with an information systems degree this week, but she came to UMBC after receiving an English degree from the Community College of Baltimore County. Once at UMBC, she began to pursue her longstanding interest in IT and cybersecurity. To explore every angle of her new focus, she pursued internship after internship through UMBC’s Career Center.

That a student would be so eager to get early work experience, develop skills, and build their network is no surprise to the Career Center. Each year, thousands of UMBC students complete high-value internships, service-learning, and research, and those applied learning experiences have an impact. Surveys of UMBC graduates show that 90 percent head directly to a job, advanced degree, or both. Of those employed, a majority worked for or interned with their employer as a UMBC student.

Internships, internships

Herr has now completed four technical internships at Northrop Grumman, including three in the Cyber and Intelligence and Information Security divisions. Working in different roles and offices has enabled her to get exposure to research and development in areas from streaming data analytics to security provisioning and orchestration, as well as security monitoring, with Northrop’s Cybersecurity Operations Center.

This work complemented the skills that Herr developed in the classroom, particularly through UMBC’s cybersecurity informatics certificate program. “The classes that I took introduced me to cybersecurity-related topics, and I was able to apply this knowledge in a hands-on way in my internships,” she says.

In addition to her Northrop Grumman internships, Herr has also competed in cyber engineering events organized by Northrop Grumman and UMBC’s Center for Women in Technology (CWIT), with her team taking first place in 2017 and 2018.

Herr’s experience as a Cyber Scholar, through CWIT and the Center for Cybersecurity, has enabled her to build connections with other students and professionals in computing, at UMBC and in the industry. She has also had opportunities to share her experience and perspective with K-12 students, as part of outreach work to advance CWIT’s mission to increase the representation of women in engineering and computing fields. And she’s supported incoming transfer students as a peer facilitator, and her classmates as a tutor.

Ultimately, she says, one of the most important things she has taken away from these experiences is “lasting relationships.” She will begin a full-time position as a cyber systems engineer at Northrop Grumman in January.

Wealth of experience

For some students, like Herr, UMBC provides a way to get that first experience working in a new field. Others students, like Ari Rapkin Blenkhorn, come to UMBC with a wealth of industry experience and a clear vision for what new path they want to explore next.

Blenkhorn holds degrees from Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, and Carnegie Mellon, and she is receiving her Ph.D. in computer science from UMBC this week. She started her UMBC degree after making a name for herself as a software engineer in the film industry, working on Jurassic Park III and with Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects company behind Star Wars.

Blenkhorn used software to simulate fire, water, and smoke in films, and to show movement in characters on the big screen. Inspired by her love of skydiving, her Ph.D. dissertation focused on computer graphics to visualize jumping through clouds with sunlight on them.

In the months ahead, Blenkhorn will serve as the publicity chair for the Interactive 3D Graphics and Games symposium. The symposium is part of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She will also serve as the information director for Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Learning while leading

As the head of an active nonprofit organization, Erin Stauder completed her public policy Ph.D. on the go. “Being that part-time working person, meant that I worked on my Ph.D. anyplace there was WiFi—roller rinks, public pools, the public library,” she says.

Stauder leads the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), which supports people with communication challenges. “As the executive director and CEO of a midsize nonprofit, focusing on issues of equity, access, and economics is my job,” she recently wrote on the ASHA website. “The School of Public Policy at UMBC has given me the toolkit to be successful.”

In particular, her advanced degrees enable her to “advocate and teach from an objective and thoughtful perspective,” Stauder notes.

With the guidance of her Ph.D. advisor and mentor Chris Curran, assistant professor of public policy, Stauder has studied the impacts of early childhood programs, such as preschool and kindergarten. She worked to better understand how different schooling experiences influence outcomes like reading and behavior.

Throughout her studies, Stauder also served as a clinical faculty member in speech-language pathology and audiology at Loyola University Maryland.

Chance to explore

Like Herr, Blenkhorn, and Stauder, Alex Lee Mercado ‘18, mechanical engineering, sees his learning in the classroom and work in his field as directly supporting each other.

After an initial internship with the Consolidated Container Company, Mercado began interning at leading tool manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker at the beginning of his senior year. “My schooling at UMBC gave me all the tools I needed to survive and thrive as an engineer,” he says. “From the theoretical classes to the practical classes, I can say that I have used most of them here at my time at Stanley Black & Decker.”

At Stanley Black & Decker, Mercado has focused on computer aided design work to support an engineering team that is exploring possible new products. “I’ve worked closely with both industrial designers as well as engineers on tools such as compressors, grinders, fasteners, and vacuums,” he explains. “I have done multiple projects, which include failure mode analysis and testing, creating new product prototypes, and doing tolerance analysis on new products.”

Looking back at his time as an intern, Mercado says that finding the balance between school and work was challenging. “There was a ton of commuting back and forth,” he shares, while noting, with gratitude, how flexible the company was in scheduling his work around his class schedule.

He also enjoys thinking back to his experience in Stanley Black & Decker’s Summer Internship Innovation Challenge, which brings together interns from across the company to develop ideas for new products. “We essentially had the whole Towson Stanley Black & Decker campus at our disposal for creating prototypes of these products,” he recalls.

Mercado looks forward to working full-time with the company in the new year.

Across all fields—from mechanical engineering to public policy to computer graphics—UMBC students reflect on the value of connecting with knowledgeable faculty and industry professionals. These relationships, they say, help them learn and grow, and give them essential insight into their future careers.

Of her Ph.D. experience, Stauder shares, “The ability to interact and learn from a diverse set of professionals is an experience that I will carry with me forever.”

December commencement ceremonies will be livestreamed through both the UMBC Commencement website and UMBC Facebook page. Share well wishes for our grads using #UMBCgrad and #UMBCproud.

Banner image: Victoria Herr, left, connecting with CWIT’s Cindy Greenwood at an event. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC’s Office of the Vice President for Research recently presented awards to support the work of two dozen UMBC faculty examining topics from health disparities among people with diabetes to natural language processing.

UMBC offers a range of research awards to help faculty launch new research projects, advance ongoing work, and effectively compete for external funding as their projects progress and grow. Strategic Awards for Research Transitions (START) offer up to $25,000. These awards allow faculty to pursue new areas of research and compete for external funding. Summer Research Faculty Fellowship (SURFF) awards offer up to $6,000 in summer funding to non-tenured, tenure-track faculty. Current SURFF awardees received funding for summer 2018, and START awardees will begin their funding cycle in July 2019.

Health and aging

Christine Mair, associate professor of sociology, anthropology, and health administration policy, and a faculty member in the gerontology Ph.D. program, received START funding to complete foundational research visits in global regions that are underrepresented in aging research, across Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, South America, and Asia. She is working to clarify research questions and strengthen relationships with potential research collaborators for a proposal to the National Institute of Aging (NIA).

With START funding, Sarah Chard, associate professor of sociology, anthropology, and health administration policy, is studying the activity levels of older African-American adults in Baltimore who have diabetes. She is conducting interviews and observing patients to better understand how they experience and manage their illness, their social and physical environments, and how they maintain physical activity routines. This work is helping Chard to develop more effective programs to address health disparities among people with diabetes.

“The aim of my START-funded project is to identify how belief systems and social processes work together to inform physical activity routines among older adult African Americans with diabetes. The project builds on my earlier research on diabetes, which identified many barriers to physical activity for older adults living in Baltimore,” Chard says. “Through START funding, I’m able to shift my focus to look at persons who are engaging in physical activity to see how they create support systems and navigate local barriers. The findings will help address a critical gap in the literature regarding successful community-based physical activity.” Chard will use data from this research for an NIA grant proposal.

Tasneem Khambaty, assistant professor of psychology, is using her SURFF award to continue research studying the symptoms and biomarkers of type 2 diabetes, which disproportionately affects African Americans. Khambaty examined how depressive symptoms and executive function impact these biomarkers in the long term, utilizing data from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) study, which was conducted in Baltimore. Khambaty is using this research to build a proposal for an NIH Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award.

Jiaqi Gong, assistant professor of information systems, is developing innovative ways to understand cognitive and neural systems, specifically in people with multiple sclerosis and ACL injuries. Wearable sensors don’t all work equally well for all people. Previously, Gong developed wearable sensors that perform better in people with multiple sclerosis at different stages. Through his SURFF-funded work, he is utilizing those sensors to study brain mechanisms that control automatic and unconscious motor action, to inform his teaching and further research.

Drew Holladay, assistant professor of English, utilized SURFF funding to continue revisions of his 2017 dissertation “Articulating the New Normal(s): Mental Disability, Medical Discourse, and Rhetorical Action” for publication as a book. Holladay studies online discussion board posts written by people diagnosed with autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, and schizophrenia. He is expanding his earlier writing to include more linguistic analysis, analyzing how the medical community talks about these diagnoses, as well as adding in illustrations to complement the text.

Cynthia Matuszek, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE), was granted START funding to advance her work on robots that assist senior citizens in daily life and enable them to continue to live independently. She is collaborating with eldercare professionals to develop a library that will outline specific examples of how seniors can utilize assistive robots in daily life. Matuszek also received SURFF funding to develop a networking event at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference, to connect junior faculty and postdoctoral researchers with mentors in robotics.

Art, history, and society

Kathryn Bell, associate professor of visual arts, is using START funding to create Metempsychosis, a series of interactive digital video installations that combine art with science, technology, engineering, and math. She is shifting her work from project mapping art to art that is more accessible and less expensive to stage in galleries. Bell will travel to the United Kingdom to study under automata artist Matt Smith, who has exhibited at museums around the world.

Anne Rubin, professor of history, was awarded START funding to visualize the landscape of slavery and freedom in Early Baltimore. Rubin is building a virtual 3D prototype of early Baltimore between 1815 and 1820, in collaboration with UMBC’s Imaging Research Center.

Kathy Marmor, associate professor of visual arts, received START funding to create two new art installations called Mid-Life, inspired by the practice of compiling a book based personal knowledge, which has been common from the seventeenth century through modern times, and is based on one’s “habit of mind.” She is collaborating with faculty in UMBC’s English and computer science and electrical engineering departments. The installations will bring together digital and computer-based imagery, and analog drawings and fiber art to depict women facing mid-life challenges.

A photo from The Glass Knife exhibition, by Kathy Marmor and Stephen Bradley, which ran in 2016. Image by Stephen Bradley.Sarah Sharp, assistant professor of visual arts, is using START funding for her new project Off the Press. Sharp will look at small presses and self-published media from the women’s, gay rights, and environmental movements in the 1970s. She will examine the differences and similarities between common practices of that period and contemporary self-publishing practices, such as through social media and other online platforms. Sharp is combining traditional art practices, like quiltmaking and embroidery, with digital video, augmented reality, and 3D modeling.

Earl Brooks, assistant professor of English, utilized a SURFF award to continue his project Black Sonority: Rhetoric and Black Music. This work examines the intersections of Black music, life, and culture. Brooks explores the rhetorical nature of Black music and the various roles it had has in shaping public discussion.

Cross-cultural understanding

Kindel Nash, associate professor of early childhood education, has received SURFF funding to study the relationship between culture, language, and literacy development for young children in the United States and Peru. Nash is examining highly effective literacy practices in U.S. and Peruvian primary schools, which both include populations that are historically underserved in educational settings. She will work to determine the practices’ commonalities and underlying principles, and whether the approaches would be transferable across cultures.

Salem Abo-Zaid, assistant professor of economics, studied attitudes toward immigrant and minority populations in a sample of European countries between 2002 and 2016. He used longitudinal data from the European Social Survey to understand how economic conditions have impacted tolerance toward people in these groups. Abo-Zaid found that economic conditions, in addition to security, political, and cultural tensions, impacted countries’ tolerance of immigrant and minority populations.

Melissa Bailey Kutner, assistant professor of ancient studies, used SURFF funding to complete her book about economics in the Roman Empire. As a part of this work, Kutner studied coins, measured instruments, and wrote accounts of documents found at specific archaeological sites. She looked at how communities used these tools to trace how they shared information and negotiated economic value. Kutner found that how Romans represented value depended on social context, and she developed a model to examine related historical changes across multiple regions.

Technology and environment

Dillon Mahmoudi, assistant professor of geography and environmental systems, used SURFF funding to create a machine-learning algorithm to identify spaces for urban agriculture on single family tax lots. Mahmoudi will study whether urban agriculture plots are more frequently located in richer or poorer neighborhoods. This work focuses on the food production potential of lots in Seattle and Baltimore, expanding on prior research that analyzed lots through satellite images of Portland.

Tim Nohe, professor of visual arts and director of UMBC’s Center for Innovative Research in the Creative Arts, received START funding to use 360 degree immersive video and surround-sound technology to give people a deeper look into the environment through his project “Water Flowing Underground: Immersive Sound and Immersive Video Imaging.” His work will allow viewers to understand sources of pollution that impact Baltimore’s watershed. The research will reveal streams that have been used to collect raw sewage, or have been paved over, impacting the flow of water.

“This grant has allowed me to begin fieldwork and research on the fractured interface of Baltimore’s watershed and its sanitary sewer system. That breakdown is evident in my neighborhood, and throughout the city,” explains Nohe. “When the sewer system was nearing completion in 1909 it was called an ‘unexcelled marvel of the engineering world,’ but today sanitary sewers routinely spew waste into our streams, the bay, and city basements.”

“I’m forging partnerships with journalists, water quality scientists and nonprofit groups like Blue Water Baltimore to hunt down and expose these breakdowns,” says Nohe, “using the tools of archival research, and documentary immersive video and surround sound.”

Data and computing

Frank Ferraro, assistant professor of CSEE, used SURFF funding to advance his work in natural language processing. He studied how information extraction systems can help deconstruct and summarize highly complex documents. Over the summer, Ferraro developed, trained, and evaluated these systems to determine how they can be effectively used to can help people understand themes within dense and complicated texts.

Haibin Zhang, assistant professor of CSEE, developed an efficient, secure and scalable system that helps prevent compromised sensors from shifting aggregated data results based on polluted data. The system that Zhang designed and put in place helps solve the problem by keeping individual sensor inputs private.

Sisi Duan, assistant professor of information systems, used SURFF funding to study the scalability of blockchains—blocks of data linked using cryptography, that are resistant to tampering. She identified challenges that blockchain researchers sometimes face, and then redesigned and reimplemented a blockchain protocol called BChain, which she developed. Duan implemented BChain as part of the Hyperledger project, a global collaborative project aimed at advancing blockchain technologies across industries.

Curtis Menyuk, professor of CSEE, is working with collaborators at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology and at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center to develop a model that can help explain what contributes to white matter deficits in the brain.

New directions in science

Theodosia Gougousi, professor of physics, received funding to address the shortage of semiconductor-compatible nonlinear optical materials. She will investigate the nonlinear properties of dielectric thin films and nanolaminates formed by atomic layer deposition. Her project is interdisciplinary, bridging the fields of electronics materials and nonlinear optics, with the goal of developing a broader materials toolkit that could be utilized for optoelectronic applications.

Gougousi explains that the funding will support the collaboration of her research group and that of Anthony Johnson, professor of physics. “Our groups have been working together for over a year,” she says. “We expect the award will enable us to complete the characterization of the structure and composition of these films, which is required for competitive proposals to national funding agencies.

Mercedes Burns, assistant professor of biological sciences, studied sexual reproduction in Japanese harvestman, an arachnid with long legs compared to other species. This work, supported by SURFF funding, allowed Burns to collect female Japanese harvestman in order to conduct genotyping analysis. During the summer, she attended the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution scientific meeting to collaborate with fellow biologists from around the world.

Kathleen Cusick, assistant professor of biological sciences, received SURFF funding to characterize the role of an intracellular signaling molecule in bacteria that regulates cellular function, cell movement, intracellular communication, and how cells respond to the environment. The molecule (called c-di-GMP) has unique trails that make it a particularly good fit for this research into signaling networks.

For more information about UMBC’s START and SURFF programs, visit the UMBC Research website.

Banner image: Anne Rubin, standing, during the 2018 Frederick Douglass transcribe-a-thon. Banner image by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

As a Cyber Scholar at UMBC, Victoria Herr ’18 knows how important mentorship and direct, hands-on experience can be for young women in computing. Herr is graduating with an information systems degree this week, but she came to UMBC after receiving an English degree from the Community College of Baltimore County. Once at UMBC, she began to pursue her longstanding interest in IT and cybersecurity. To explore every angle of her new focus, she pursued internship after internship through UMBC’s Career Center.

That a student would be so eager to get early work experience, develop skills, and build their network is no surprise to the Career Center. Each year, thousands of UMBC students complete high-value internships, service-learning, and research, and those applied learning experiences have an impact. Surveys of UMBC graduates show that 90 percent head directly to a job, advanced degree, or both. Of those employed, a majority worked for or interned with their employer as a UMBC student.

Internships, internships

Herr has now completed four technical internships at Northrop Grumman, including three in the Cyber and Intelligence and Information Security divisions. Working in different roles and offices has enabled her to get exposure to research and development in areas from streaming data analytics to security provisioning and orchestration, as well as security monitoring, with Northrop’s Cybersecurity Operations Center.

This work complemented the skills that Herr developed in the classroom, particularly through UMBC’s cybersecurity informatics certificate program. “The classes that I took introduced me to cybersecurity-related topics, and I was able to apply this knowledge in a hands-on way in my internships,” she says.

In addition to her Northrop Grumman internships, Herr has also competed in cyber engineering events organized by Northrop Grumman and UMBC’s Center for Women in Technology (CWIT), with her team taking first place in 2017 and 2018.

Herr’s experience as a Cyber Scholar, through CWIT and the Center for Cybersecurity, has enabled her to build connections with other students and professionals in computing, at UMBC and in the industry. She has also had opportunities to share her experience and perspective with K-12 students, as part of outreach work to advance CWIT’s mission to increase the representation of women in engineering and computing fields. And she’s supported incoming transfer students as a peer facilitator, and her classmates as a tutor.

Ultimately, she says, one of the most important things she has taken away from these experiences is “lasting relationships.” She will begin a full-time position as a cyber systems engineer at Northrop Grumman in January.

Wealth of experience

For some students, like Herr, UMBC provides a way to get that first experience working in a new field. Others students, like Ari Rapkin Blenkhorn, Ph.D. ’18, come to UMBC with a wealth of industry experience and a clear vision for what new path they want to explore next.

Blenkhorn holds degrees from Johns Hopkins, the University of Virginia, and Carnegie Mellon, and she is receiving her Ph.D. in computer science from UMBC this week. She started her UMBC degree after making a name for herself as a software engineer in the film industry, working on Jurassic Park III and with Industrial Light and Magic, the visual effects company behind Star Wars.

Blenkhorn used software to simulate fire, water, and smoke in films, and to show movement in characters on the big screen. Inspired by her love of skydiving, her Ph.D. dissertation focused on computer graphics to visualize jumping through clouds with sunlight on them.

In the months ahead, Blenkhorn will serve as the publicity chair for the Interactive 3D Graphics and Games symposium. The symposium is part of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). She will also serve as the information director for Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Learning while leading

As the head of an active nonprofit organization, Erin Stauder, Ph.D. ’18, completed her doctorate in public policy on the go. “Being that part-time working person, meant that I worked on my Ph.D. anyplace there was WiFi—roller rinks, public pools, the public library,” she says.

Stauder leads the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), which supports people with communication challenges. “As the executive director and CEO of a midsize nonprofit, focusing on issues of equity, access, and economics is my job,” she recently wrote on the ASHA website. “The School of Public Policy at UMBC has given me the toolkit to be successful.”

In particular, her advanced degrees enable her to “advocate and teach from an objective and thoughtful perspective,” Stauder notes.

With the guidance of her Ph.D. advisor and mentor Chris Curran, assistant professor of public policy, Stauder has studied the impacts of early childhood programs, such as preschool and kindergarten. She worked to better understand how different schooling experiences influence outcomes like reading and behavior.

Throughout her studies, Stauder also served as a clinical faculty member in speech-language pathology and audiology at Loyola University Maryland.

Chance to explore

Like Herr, Blenkhorn, and Stauder, Alex Lee Mercado ‘18, mechanical engineering, sees his learning in the classroom and work in his field as directly supporting each other.

After an initial internship with the Consolidated Container Company, Mercado began interning at leading tool manufacturer Stanley Black & Decker at the beginning of his senior year. “My schooling at UMBC gave me all the tools I needed to survive and thrive as an engineer,” he says. “From the theoretical classes to the practical classes, I can say that I have used most of them here at my time at Stanley Black & Decker.”

At Stanley Black & Decker, Mercado has focused on computer aided design work to support an engineering team that is exploring possible new products. “I’ve worked closely with both industrial designers as well as engineers on tools such as compressors, grinders, fasteners, and vacuums,” he explains. “I have done multiple projects, which include failure mode analysis and testing, creating new product prototypes, and doing tolerance analysis on new products.”

Looking back at his time as an intern, Mercado says that finding the balance between school and work was challenging. “There was a ton of commuting back and forth,” he shares, while noting, with gratitude, how flexible the company was in scheduling his work around his class schedule.

He also enjoys thinking back to his experience in Stanley Black & Decker’s Summer Internship Innovation Challenge, which brings together interns from across the company to develop ideas for new products. “We essentially had the whole Towson Stanley Black & Decker campus at our disposal for creating prototypes of these products,” he recalls.

Mercado looks forward to working full-time with the company in the new year.

Across all fields—from mechanical engineering to public policy to computer graphics—UMBC students reflect on the value of connecting with knowledgeable faculty and industry professionals. These relationships, they say, help them learn and grow, and give them essential insight into their future careers.

Of her Ph.D. experience, Stauder shares, “The ability to interact and learn from a diverse set of professionals is an experience that I will carry with me forever.”

December commencement ceremonies will be livestreamed through both the UMBC Commencement website and UMBC Facebook page. Share well wishes for our grads using #UMBCgrad and #UMBCproud.

Banner image: Victoria Herr, left, connecting with CWIT’s Cindy Greenwood at an event. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.