HELP US COMPETE!

https://gritstarter.umbc.edu/p/mocktrial/

This past year, UMBC Mock Trial had its most successful season and we were able to compete at the National Championship in Los Angeles, California. This year, we are excited to be able to compete at Duke, William and Mary, Rutgers, and Yale just during our Fall Invitational season. Between registration fees and hotel room expenses, the cost for the season exceeds the budget that UMBC is able to provide. With your help, we can make sure that this season is even more successful than last season!

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017 

9 a.m. – 10 a.m. 

685 W. Baltimore Street, Medical School Teaching Facility (MSTF) Building, Room 316

The Graduate School, The Office of Postdoctoral Scholars (OPS), The Office of Research Career Development and the PROMISE Program at University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) Campus extend an invitation to all the Postdoctoral Fellows and Associates to attend this event.

Today, data of all kinds is generated at a nearly incomprehensible rate, creating endless opportunities for advances in fields from health care to education. Yet plucking meaningful insights out of an overwhelming amount of information can be challenging, leading many researchers to seek out a firmer understanding of data science.

“On one hand, we have tons and tons of information, and on the other hand, we get lost in this information,” explains Zhibo Zhang, associate professor of physics, “so the question is how we can get something meaningful, something useful, from this ocean of data.”

Zhang and three UMBC colleagues will help researchers address this issue head-on with a unique interdisciplinary course for graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty that will launch in spring 2018. The project is funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant, with the expectation that after an initial on-campus test run, the program will be refined and expanded to reach researchers nationwide.

The students in the course will spend at least one-third of their time working on interdisciplinary research projects with colleagues from other fields, under the mentorship of one of the faculty.  “In this program, we are teaching the latest technology to the students, but also letting them do research together,” explains Jianwu Wang, assistant professor of information systems and the principal investigator on the grant.

“Often we use a siloed approach, where each discipline sticks to itself,” says Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor and chair of information systems. Instead, this team’s approach creates opportunities “to leverage the multidisciplinary nature of problem-solving that is required” to address challenging, complex questions in the real world.

The new course will accept students studying atmospheric physics, information systems, and applied mathematics with a focus on high-performance computing. Moving forward, the team hopes to include a wider variety of researchers, with the goal to complement training in their disciplines with stronger computing and complex data analysis skills.

“Data and computing are becoming two more pillars of science in all fields,” explains Wang, who sees strengthening collaborations across disciplines as beneficial to all. “We need each other,” he says. “For us, in information systems, we can get more concrete challenges to solve, and for scientists in other fields, they can learn from the techniques. Together, we can solve the multi-pronged challenges the world is facing today.”

In atmospheric physics, for example, pulling climate trends out of mountains of data from NASA and other sources is important, but it’s impossible to process vast quantities of complex climate data effectively and efficiently with outdated tools and training. “I used to be able to do everything on my laptop,” remembers Zhang, “but now you can’t put your data on a laptop. You have to put it on a huge data server.”

That’s where collaborations with information systems researchers and high-performance computing experts come in. “In traditional analytics, data is loaded in the memory of a computer, but in big data analytics, the data might be much larger than the machine can handle,” explains Gangopadhyay. “So how do you deal with that? New algorithms must be designed.”

The fourth participating faculty member, Matthias Gobbert, professor of mathematics and faculty lead of UMBC’s High-Performance Computing Facility inititaive, notes that NSF’s full funding of the grant proposal indicates this area is a priority for the agency, and his collaborators agree and see why. “There are no such training programs nationwide,” says Wang. “For scientific research, we have specific challenges.” Gangopadhyay adds, “Big data analytics is arguably one of the most sought-after skill sets in today’s IT world.”

“In a way, we are training a new type of scientist, a new generation of scientists,” Zhang says. These scientists will access and analyze data in new ways, often relying on computing techniques previously unnecessary in their fields. And now that the four colleagues have begun working together, Zhang sees future collaboration opportunities in every new paper he reads. “They’re just popping up everywhere.”

The team acknowledges that there will be hurdles along the way to changing how researchers understand and utilize data science, first and foremost teaching a group of students who are already all highly trained, but in vastly different fields. Zhang shares, “I think the challenge will be fitting it all together.”

Still, the team is excited and optimistic. “This type of work is only possible by people who have an adventurous spirit,” says Gangopadhyay. “Sometimes, taking risks is the only way to do something meaningful. And we are ready for the challenge.”

Check cybertraining.umbc.edu for updates on the program.

In 2012, following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Baltimore artist David Hess felt compelled to accelerate the construction of an unusual series of sculptures: life-size mock assault rifles fashioned from everyday ordinary objects.

“This body of work is my personal awakening to the American obsession with weapons and the abstraction of violence,” says Hess. Taking discarded bits of things (“rescued” objects, he calls them) that most people would consider trash — a vacuum cleaner, the handle of a saw, an old black sneaker, a pink Barbie bike frame, a raggedy crutch, the body of an electric guitar, a turquoise sewing machine — Hess fashioned strikingly realistic-looking “guns” for exhibition, to prompt conversations about violence in America.

Hess’ work came to the attention of Kathy O’Dell, special assistant to the dean for education and arts partnerships, and associate professor of visual arts, art history and museum studies, who has organized an exhibition, simply titled Gun Show, of all 112 of Hess’ gun sculptures at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, opening on September 4 and continuing through October 14. An opening reception with the artist will be held on Thursday, September 7, from 5 to 7 p.m.

The exhibition displays the sculpture on the floor, laid out on tarpaulins, recalling the presentation of bodies awaiting identification following disasters, or the arrangement of confiscated weapons at police headquarters. Ranging in weight from 8 to 44 pounds, the mock guns include no shooting mechanism.

“The reason I felt strongly about convincing David Hess to hold this exhibition at UMBC is that it’s a research institution,” says O’Dell, “and research is what has driven David’s entire project, starting in the early 1990s through the present: What is a gun? What does it mean to hold one? What does it mean to make one? Who does or does not own them? Who should or should not own them? What are sensible reasons and safe ways to use them? What are the ramifications of their use or misuse? How do issues of race, class, gender identity, and age impact these questions?”

O’Dell continues, “Research is about asking questions and then attempting to answer them — as individuals and as groups working together to make sense of the world and to advance thinking.”

O’Dell notes that the power in Hess’ use of “rescued” objects is their familiarity. “Every object fits into a story with which each viewer can relate,” she says. “Yet each story is personal. A Barbie bike seat will have a different meaning to me than it will for a young man whose sister had a bike like that. Contemplating a personal story leads to contemplating one’s personal position on what the bike seat has been made to represent — a gun. The ‘rescued’ objects allow us to ‘rescue’ memories and, on the basis of memories, build thoughts and positions in the here and now.”

David Hess’ work has been exhibited at Goya Contemporary in Baltimore and the John Elder Gallery in New York. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections, including the American Visionary Art Museum, Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Sinai Hospital, Montgomery College, Kaiser Permanente, and the Emerson Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition, he has completed over twenty public art commissions in and around Baltimore, Rockville, and Germantown, and Washington, D.C.

Kathy O’Dell, curator of Gun Show, teaches and writes on modern and contemporary art, with a focus on performance and global art. The author of Contract with the Skin: Masochism, Performance Art, and the 1970s (University of Minnesota Press, 1998), she has published numerous articles and reviews in Art in America, Artforum, Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, Women & Performance, and other journals. Currently, she is writing a book titled The Dot: A Small History of a Big Point and is co-writing, with Duke University Professor Kristine Stiles, a survey text titled World Art Since 1933. She serves on the Board of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance and the Maryland State Commission on Public Art.

Read more about Gun Show on UMBC’s Arts and Culture Calendar.

This post was written by Special Collections Student Assistant Jagruti Chinchwadkar.  

Special Collections is pleased to introduce the new Scannx Book ScanCenter to our researchers. Researchers will now be able to scan books and documents on their own and save it to their USB drive free of charge!

The Scannx Book Scanner is a drop edge (or zero edge) scanner that allows you to scan documents flat or to scan bound materials like books without damaging the spine. Please show the items you wish to scan Special Collections staff who will evaluate the condition of the material.  If it’s not too fragile, we’ll show you how to do the scanning – it’s easy!

I have had the opportunity to use the Scanner and I found it user-friendly, quick and easy to use. Its large friendly buttons guide the user through scan process from choosing file formats, to scan quality, color depth, file naming and destinations. It has ample flatbed surface and every page comes back is crisp and clear. It provides high quality scans and converts scanned images into PDF, searchable PDF, Word, TIFF, or PNG file formats automatically. We’ll show you how to scan things without damaging them and making sure they stay in their proper order, and instructions for its use can also be found next to the workstation.  Make sure to bring your own USB drive!

Don’t have time for using the scanner?  Need scans of photographs? No need to worry, we can do it for you for a fee.

Special Collections is open Monday - Wednesday 1 - 4pm, Thursday 1 - 8pm and Friday 1 - 4pm, also by appointment Monday - Friday from 9:00am - 4:30pm. Contact: speccoll@umbc.edu | 410.455.2353

Thanks Jagruti!