Postdoctoral Morning Coffee with Dr. Chariz Peñalber-Johnstone

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

10 AM – 12 Noon @ UMBC Campus

Commons Building, Room 329

ALL University System of Maryland Postdocs are invited to attend. Please comment on the comments section with your name, campus affiliation and department to RSVP.

The Office of Postdoctoral Affairs is extending an invitation to attend our Postdoctoral Morning Coffee breakfast session on Wednesday, September 13, 2017, from 10 AM to noon. Please take the opportunity to assist, come and meet the extended community of scholars working at USM campuses. 

Dr. Chariz Peñalber-Johnstone will be the speaker of the session; she will be speaking about her postdoctoral work at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology at UMBC, her participation in discipline-specific conferences, and her continued engagement in the field. She will mainly share information on applying for travel funding to disseminate research. 

Dr. Chariz Peñalber-Johnstone received a B.S. degree in Chemistry (Cum Laude) from The University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines in 2006, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA in 2012. Her graduate work was in the area of physical chemistry with a specific focus on the use of nonlinear optical spectroscopy for molecular-level structural analysis of ionic liquid surfaces. She has conducted studies at various interfaces to explain the physico-chemical properties of imidazolium and phosphonium-based ionic liquids relevant to their applications in catalysis.

With her current appointment as a post-doctoral research associate at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, she contributes to both system design and protein expression sub-teams. She works cross-functionally in the development of a device that will produce, purify, and quantitatively determine a ready-for-delivery therapeutic protein in a few hours. The project includes the design of innovative mammalian in vitro protein expression and purification technologies combined with advances in microfluidics and microelectronics to produce biologics on-site. 

Hot breakfast will be provided. Please RSVP to attend the session in the comment section below. 

Emergency Health Services Major or Minor?

We at the Graduate Assistant Advisory Committee (GAAC) would like to give all graduate assistants (returning and new) a warm welcome to UMBC! For those that do not know, the GAAC is the body comprised solely of UMBC graduate assistants that meets with Graduate School Administration to relay any employment concerns. We also work with administrators to amend and enact policies that benefit graduate assistants at UMBC.

Last year, our main focus was keeping an affordable Graduate Assistant health insurance plan that would adequately meet the needs of graduate assistants. Through your participation in online surveys and willingness to share your stories, we were able to convince the graduate school to keep our current plan at no cost to us. (The departmental chairs and graduate program directors played a crucial role in finding the money to pay for the continued coverage, so please thank them!) We are willing to work with a broad range of groups, but we need your input in order to determine where the need lies.

If you have a concern that you would like to bring to our attention, you may do so by sending an email to GAAC@umbc.edu. All correspondence through this email remains confidential and is only viewed by GAAC members, with all identifying information removed before bringing it to other parties should the need arise.

Also, we're always looking for new members, so feel free to send an email to GAAC@umbc.edu if you're interested in joining the GAAC.

Good luck this semester! Below are some helpful links for Graduate Assistants. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help.

Sincerely,

The Graduate Assistant Advisory Committee

Helpful Link 1: The Graduate Assistant Handbook. This contains all the policies that govern your assistantship, including vacation time, sick leave, tuition remission, and ways to address workplace complaints.

http://gradschool.umbc.edu/funding/assistantships/handbook/

Helpful Link 2: Link to GA Forms. These are the forms that we need to fill out periodically, such as forms for tuition remission, health insurance, and completion of duties (equivalent of the timesheet).

http://gradschool.umbc.edu/funding/assistantships/forms/

Helpful Link 3: The GAAC myUMBC Group. This is where we post things of importance, including our current progress on different issues.

https://my.umbc.edu/groups/gaac

Reading Frankenstein, Reading the 21st Century

Morgan State University - April 12, 2018

2018 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of one of the most influential works of British literature. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been the subject of interpretation from every critical perspective, from Marxism to Psychoanalysis and Gender Studies to Critical Race Theory. Since its original publication, stage and film adaptations have been legion, from Presumption in 1823 to James Whale’s classic 1931 adaption and on through Abbott and Costello, the Hammer Films productions of the 1950s to ’70s, and more recent versions by Kenneth Branagh, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, and Daniel Radcliffe. Beyond the realm of the creative arts, though, Frankenstein has entered the public psyche as a symbol of humanity’s disruption of the perceived natural order. References to this story can be found in discussions of bioethics and genetics, race relations, politics, religion, and foreign policy.

Upon the occasion of the novel’s bicentennial, papers are solicited for a one-day interdisciplinary symposium to be held on the campus of Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Presenters are encouraged to explore the continuing impact of the novel and its associations in today’s society. Please consider examining this theme through the perspective of any of the following disciplines:

• English or American Literature
• Philosophy
• Business
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Anthropology
• Computer Science
• Women’s and Gender Studies
• Economics
• Fine and Performing Arts
• Health and Physical Education
• History
• Geography
• Medical Technology
• Multimedia Journalism
• Social Work
• Psychology
• Public Health
• Screen Writing and Animation
• World Languages

Please submit 250-word abstracts as MS Word attachments to adam.mekler@morgan.edu by October 1, 2017. Both faculty and students are encouraged to submit and participate.
Please feel free to visit our website: http://l-adam-mekler.com/reading-frankenstein.htm