• make ongoing/never-ending payroll deductions
• more easily change the amount and account designations; and
• track your giving online.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab

Workshop on Usable Security

Nikola K. Blanchard
10am-4pm, Tuesday, 18 December, 2018, ITE 228, UMBC

We invite people interested in cybersecurity to join us for research conversations with Nikola Blanchard, an expert in usable security. Visitors are welcome to participate in any or all of the workshop.

How do we make better codes and passwords? As security constraints increased at the expense of usability, we saw no real improvement in practical performance. This session will introduce some basic notions of usability of security (with applications to voting technology), and the first mental-only password management algorithm. Participants will then be presented with the problem of evaluating such algorithms, and will have a brainstorming activity on designing alternative methods.

Biographical Sketch. After an initial training in mathematics and informatics at ENS Paris, Nikola K. Blanchard started a PhD at IRIF, supervised by Nicolas Schabanel and Ted Selker. In 2015, they joined the Random Sample Voting Project to develop voting protocols, prevent vote selling and improve the deployment of new voting technologies, organizing multiple test elections. They recently started doing research on usability of security with Ted Selker, initially for secure voting technologies but expanding into the field of password research. As e-democracy research requires not just security or usability but also political science, they joined the Chôros think tank and teamed up with Géza Tessényi to co-found the Public Opinion Platform, adding the deliberation aspect needed for any e-democracy project. They are currently in the process of publishing a book on the use of randomness in political institutions.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, *protected email*

Biweekly Cyber Defense Lab meetings will resume in the spring term, 12noon-1pm on Fridays

This event is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS Grant 1241576

The post Workshop on Usable Security, 10-4 Tue 12/18 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

When Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, was asked to lend his expertise in 19th-century U.S. history to help understand a unique artifact found during the Walters Art Museum renovation of the 1850s mansion at 1 West Mount Vernon Place (known to many as the Hackerman House), he was intrigued. 

The item in question was a letter dated December 6,1861, and written by Sybby Grant, a highly skilled cook enslaved at the house, to her owner John Hanson Thomas. Casper joined the exhibition’s academic advisory committee – including experts from Morgan State University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and independent researchers – in studying the letter within the contexts of enslaved people, 19th-century Baltimore, and domestic spaces.

“We also looked at approaches to telling the stories of enslaved and employed people and how to connect particular works and artifacts in the Walters collection with the lived history of the house,” explains Casper, whose previous research includes examining the lives and experiences of enslaved African Americans in domestic settings, as well as the uses of historical evidence and memory in excavating and interpreting the lesser-known stories of historic homes.

Grant’s letter paved the way for the Walters to shift the way they present not only the history of the house but also the stories that are subtly and directly represented by the art displayed at the museum. The letter is now part of a larger exhibit by ceramicist Roberto Lugo, who is known for creating fine art ceramics using traditional techniques and incorporating portraits of people of color in history to help the world remember their contribution to society and become accustomed to seeing people of color’s faces in fine art. Grant’s letter inspired Lugo to create a series of works about working women of color.

The Walters researchers once again found a partner in UMBC at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Special Collections, which houses photography, books, and archival collections, as they searched for images of freed, working class, Black women in Baltimore. 

“Researchers from all over the world work with us to use digital copies of our collections,” said archivist Lindsey Loeper ’04, American studies, who helped with the request. “Our original works are also available for exhibit and have been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. The Walters request was a challenge because in the 1800’s even working class white women were not being photographed or documented.” 

The answer was found in The Baltimore African American Family Album, which contains professional portraits of African Americans from the 1860s and 1870s. The people are unidentified, and most of the photographers are also unidentified, as well. One in particular caught the eye of the Walters researchers: a portrait of a woman in a dress. The photograph inspired two fine arts ceramic tiles that now hang above the fireplace at 1 West, in what used to be the main dining room, as a tribute to Baltimore’s working women of color.

“Although I don’t know these women’s names, I know the history of my own family and they, too, are nameless, as we only have records going back a few generations, because my family used to be property,” shares Lugo. “My work in ceramics is an effort to include a community that has yet to find a place of prominence in ceramics. I’m thankful to UMBC for having such an important collection and being such an asset to our community culture and history.”

*****

Artwork by Roberto Lugo and Sybby’s letter, courtesy of the Walter’s Art Museum. Archived photography, UMBC Special Collections. 

Lauren and Vibha sit in a conference room deep in the middle of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. They wait patiently as faculty and staff from UMBC; the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB); the University of Maryland, College Park; Baltimore City government officials; and staff from Baltimore-based non-profit organizations fill the round tables.

This is the Research Summit on Violence Prevention and Community Engagement hosted by UMBC and UMB. In a room of about fifty attendees ready to discuss the impact of violence prevention efforts in Baltimore, Lauren and Vibha look at each other, knowing they bring a different voice. Both recent UMBC alumni and graduate presidential fellows at UMB, they are here to speak as young Baltimore researchers, who care deeply about their communities and want to be involved in the research aimed at making their city safer.

“I am the community”

Lauren Highsmith ‘15, education, introduces herself to the room after a conversation about the need to work with the community. “I am the community. Please remember me,” she says. “I am a master’s student in social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I was born in West Baltimore and continue to live in the area. Don’t assume the community is just what you see on television. The community are also people like me who are working in the field and doing research.”

Vibha Rao ‘14, biological sciences, M22, claps after her friend’s statement. She is from Gaithersburg, Maryland, but lives, studies, and works in Baltimore. In the last decade, she has earned her undergraduate degree and a medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and she is currently pursuing an M.S. in clinical research.

Rao has been deeply affected by the experiences of her undergraduate and graduate peers from Baltimore whose family members have been killed by gun violence. “Their experience having grown up and gone to college and medical school in Baltimore is starkly different than students outside of Baltimore,” she says. She worries about the normalization of gun violence and wants to be part of research to address it from a medical perspective. She shares, “I don’t want violence to be normal anymore.”

Human- and community-centered research

The research summit was organized by Christine Mallinson, director of UMBC’s Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) and professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture, and Kate Tracy ‘03 Ph.D. and ‘01 M.A., psychology and human services, who is associate professor of epidemiology and public health and director of The Richard and Jane Sherman Center for Health Care Innovation at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. As one focus for the day’s work, Mallinson and Tracy asked participants to explore both immediate and long-term supports for communities served through the UMB Community Engagement Center. During the breakout sessions, they asked attendees to identify how they might engage more undergraduate and graduate students from Baltimore, like Highsmith and Rao, in community-facing research on violence prevention.

“We wanted to purposefully use this summit to convene as many researchers as possible to examine, discuss, and share expertise and data,” Mallinson says. “Our intent is increasing collaboration and resources beyond this room, between institutions and the community, to create tangible, applicable and responsive human- and community-centered research in violence prevention with and for Baltimore.”

During the day-long event, UMBC faculty and staff representing the School of Public Policy, media and communication studies, visual arts, The Hilltop Institute, The Shriver Center, Division of Student Affairs, emergency health services, and psychology gathered for group discussion in different areas of violence prevention research. They met as cohorts focused on data, community involvement, K-12 and higher education, clinical interventions, and the intersection of the correctional and health systems.

Responding to the call from the morning discussion, the groups developed ideas for how to support the UMB Community Engagement Center through each of their focus areas, particularly building on existing work by community members. They also identified a timeline to continue the cohort work beyond the conference. 

“Collaboration between academic and community partners is key for successful violence prevention research, and developing the next generation of innovators by harnessing the talents of our undergraduate and graduate students in this process is essential,” shared Lucy Wilson, M.D., graduate program director of emergency health services at UMBC.

As everyone spoke with the artists, and with each other, reflecting on the day, Mallinson took this opportunity to connect with Lauren Highsmith and Vibha Rao. She wanted to hear their perspectives, and their advice, on how to engage and include more undergraduate and graduate students from Baltimore in violence prevention work, to ensure it tackles the most pressing issues, recognizes community work already underway, and can have a lasting impact.

Banner image: Event organizer Christine Mallinson (r) speaks with summit participants. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Effective immediately, the hiring exception process will no longer be required to fill staff positions.  

Please see the email below sent to UMBC leadership on December 14, 2018.