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Kramer Installation: Fine Art Services
Immediate need of full-time experienced Art Installer / Handler based in Baltimore, MD. Competitive pay.
Packing / Transporting / Installing Artwork
This position will be responsible for residential and commercial installations with some museum work.
The Office of the Vice President for Research has awarded Strategic Awards for Research Transitions (START) and Summer Faculty Fellowship (SFF) awards to 24 UMBC faculty representing a broad range of departments across all UMBC colleges. START awards offer up to $25,000, beginning in July 2017, to faculty who wish to pursue new areas of research and compete more effectively for external funding and support SFF awards offer up to $6,000 to non-tenured, tenure-track faculty pursuing research and projects during the summer.
Chris Swan, professor of geography and environmental systems, was awarded START funding to study the role of plant diversity in ecosystem services on urban vacant land. He is interested in understanding which native plants existed in Baltimore before modern seeding practices in the City began, and how plants native to Maryland can thrive in urban settings.
“Resources from the START award will go a long way in supporting our research into answering questions about how best to green vacant land in Baltimore City in order to meet sustainability action goals,” says Swan.
Michael Lane, assistant professor of ancient studies, will use START funding to study Mycenaean Northeast Kopaïs stratigraphy, adding to a body of research on the chronology of mainland Greece, the Greek islands, and the west coast of Turkey during the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean period. Lane will collaborate with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports in Greece.
Aaron Smith, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, received START and SFF funding to study how infectious bacteria gain iron, which is essential for the organisms to grow in the human body. His research may have impacts for people with gingivitis and cystic fibrosis.
“The UMBC START and SFF awards are invaluable to myself and my laboratory, as it provides us with funding for additional lab equipment necessary to decipher the atomic-level details of iron-transport proteins that are utilized by pathogenic bacteria to establish infection within human hosts,” Smith explains. He adds, “the return on investment to UMBC of this award should ultimately prove high, as the START funding mechanism will allow us to generate a critical mass of results necessary to bring in greater external funding to support our research program for the long term.”
Ed Larkey, professor of modern languages, linguistics and intercultural communication, was awarded START funding to study the transcultural orbit of Israeli television through the adaptation of a comedy series. Larkey will use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to study that ways heterosexual couples’ private interactions are depicted in modern Israeli society.
Corrie Parks, assistant professor of visual arts, will use START funding to create Black Butterfly, a multi-media work of art that will help viewers visualize the impact violent crime can have on communities. She will use statistics from a Baltimore City homicide map from 2017, and develop an animated portrait of a single grain of sand to represent each point on the map.
Sarah Shin, professor of education and special assistant to the provost for academic initiatives, was awarded START funding to study student and volunteer success through an intergenerational partnership. Volunteers from the Charlestown Retirement Community will tutor students at Lakeland Elementary/Middle School who are struggling with learning English. Shin will assess whether the students show gains in their literacy skills, and will examine what the tutors gain through the partnership.
Deepa Madan, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, will use START and SFF funding to design and produce “a flexible generator that runs on waste heat and generates enough power to replace batteries used in wireless sensor networks.” She explains that the funding will allow her to enhance the properties of the thermoelectric materials.
“An important objective of my current research is to generate necessary data to demonstrate my readiness for undertaking externally funded major projects,” says Madan. “With the support of START and SFF awards, it now appears realistic that I will start writing these grant applications as soon as this summer.”
Brian Kaufman, assistant professor of music, received START funding to conduct research on and release recordings of three pieces composed by newer artists in wind ensemble music. Kaufman will work with each composer, a recording team, and the UMBC Wind Ensemble to complete the project.
Tom Cronin, professor of biological sciences, will study the brains of mantis shrimp, known for their highly complex sense of vision and unique behaviors.
Peggy Re, associate professor of visual arts, will use START funding to create “A Designed Life,” an exhibit made out of containers and packaging materials. The exhibit, which will open at UMBC’s Center for Art Design and Visual Culture in October 2018, will show the possible political connections to people and their activities, experiences, needs, desires and attitudes.
Bedrich Sousedik, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, will use SFF funding to develop algorithms to address problems in physical sciences and engineering that can be modeled by partial differential equations. Sousedik works to develop new methods that use computers to solve the equations using computers.
Christopher Tong, assistant professor of modern languages, linguistics and intercultural communication, received SFF funding for the project “Torrents of Revolution: The Writing of Environmental Disasters in Modern China, 1930-1949.” Tong will study highly complex environmental disasters in early 20th-century China through literature, environmental history, and disaster studies.
Greg Szeto, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, was awarded SFF funding to develop self-engineering drugs that can quickly break into the outer surface of immune cells to enhance the function of these cells in patients who are using immunotherapy to combat cancer.
Jane Arnold Lincove, associate professor of public policy, will use SFF funding to study how charter schools affect student achievement and teacher retention rates in Maryland. This will be the first study of charter schools in Maryland, where traditional public schools with unionized faculty and charter schools coexist by state law.
Jennifer Callaghan-Koru, assistant professor of health administration and policy, will study the validity of client exit interviews to assess programs. The SFF funding will allow Callaghan-Koru to develop methodologies for monitoring programs.
Jules Rosskam, assistant professor of visual arts, will use SFF funding to create “Paternal Rites,” an essay film that explores the unique challenges facing American families through personal narrative. The film will explore addiction, abuse, and mental illness through some of Rosskam’s historical family narratives and will incorporate the context of the interstate highway system as a factor impacting family and community structure and access to resources.
Maria Bernedo Del Carpio, assistant professor of economics, will use SFF funding to study the long-term effects of water conserving technologies.
Mejdulene Shomali, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, was awarded SFF funding to study how femininity and sexuality is represented in Arab and Arab American literature and art. She is interested in how Arab and Arab American writers and artists are struggling against racism and Orientalism to represent Arab cultures in their work.
Naghmeh Karimi, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, was awarded SFF funding to study the stability and aging resiliency of physical systems that can be evaluated but are challenging to predict.
Nianshen Song, assistant professor history, will use SFF funding to continue researching the histories of the Sino-Korean boundary and the Korean diaspora community in China for his book project, “Transforming Frontier in East Asia: the Tumen River Demarcation, 1880-1919.”
Nkiru Nnawulezi, assistant professor of psychology, was awarded SFF funding to research the health and resource needs of intimate partner violence survivors whose partners are in abuser intervention programs.
Shimei Pan, assistant professor of information systems, received SFF funding to study self control and impulsiveness of people by using social media analytics to monitor their behavior on social media, such as Facebook posts and likes.
For more information about UMBC’s START and SFF programs, visit the UMBC Research website.
]]>Researchers and campus leaders from UMBC and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) convened at bwtech@UMBC South on April 12 to celebrate ongoing research partnerships and announce a new round of Research and Innovation Seed Grants. The awards provide one or two years of funding for interdisciplinary projects with collaborators from both institutions, and are available to faculty in every college at UMBC and every school at UMB.
UMB President Jay Perman, who is also a physician, thanked the researchers for tackling challenging issues that transcend the boundaries between fields. “Your collaborative work empowers people like me to help improve the human condition,” he shared. “You need to know that your work is critically important.”
Wendy Perrow, CEO of AsclepiX Therapeutics, also emphasized the connection between research and clinical work in her keynote address. She encouraged attendees to “bring your technology to the market to help patients,” while acknowledging the many challenges along the way. Perrow’s wealth of experience includes launching a now-mainstream high-blood pressure drug and the first-ever chicken pox vaccine. Most recently, she played a key role in a breakthrough celiac disease drug entering stage three clinical trials.
Following Perrow, five teams who received funding last year presented updates on their progress. Xudong Ge, assistant director of the UMBC Center for Advanced Sensor Technology, and Richard Pierson, professor of surgery at UMB, presented the improvements they’ve made to a non-invasive respiration sensor for adults, children, and even babies. The device would be a boon for intensive care units. Its accuracy parallels that of traditional methods, without the potential to cause burns, a pitfall of current respiration monitoring technologies.
Tonya Santaus, Ph.D. student in Chris Geddes’ lab at UMBC, shared the development of a rapid, low-cost test for cholera. The lab is applying the same technology to tests for sexually-transmitted infections. “The goal is to get this to rural Africa and rural Haiti,” shared UMB collaborator Colin Stine, professor of epidemiology and public health. Geddes, professor of chemistry, added that while he and Stine have known each other for 15 years, it is “because of this grant [that] we’ve actually been able to work together.”
Elsa Garcin, UMBC associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, presented her work with Patrick Wintrode, UMB associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences. Their research seeks to better understand how a molecule naturally found in cells, called GAPDH, is able to either activate or shut down another molecule known to contribute to autoimmune conditions and cancer. Eventually, that knowledge could be used to harness GAPDH to treat those conditions.
Soobum Lee, UMBC assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Mary Melo, UMB clinical assistant professor of dentistry, explained how they intend to use the movement of people’s own jaws to provide the energy for deep brain stimulation, a proven treatment for some neurodegenerative diseases. The proposed new method would avoid the need for repeated surgeries to replace the battery.
Christine Mair, UMBC assistant professor of sociology, and Amanda Lehning, UMB assistant professor of social work, examine the relationship between neighborhood environments and cardiovascular health in Baltimore City to identify social determinants of health inequality such as violent crime and low social cohesion.
Don Engel, UMBC assistant vice president for research, and Terry Rogers, assistant dean of research affairs at the UMB School of Medicine, announced this year’s cohort of awardees. “We’re delighted to see this program reaching across many areas of both universities,” shared Engel. The new projects include research on oyster herpes, opioid addiction, and non-invasive neonatal glucose monitoring.
Closing the program, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski reiterated the value and strength of the UMBC-UMB relationship. The $1.5 million invested so far in UMBC-UMB partnership grants has led to $15 million of external grant funding, a return on investment that indicates the effectiveness of the program. In a challenging federal funding climate, it is more important than ever to creatively collaborate to demonstrate the importance of scientific research and generate new funding sources, Hrabowski explained.
“We want to be strong in our commitment to investing in and supporting” collaborative work, said Hrabowski, of uniting inquisitive minds across the institutions. “Our very future, not just in Maryland, not just in America, but of humankind, in large part depends on [this] kind of work.”
Our advising offices are located in ITE 202-206. Email and telephone contact information is available here.
Name:Ankit Monga
Internship, Co-op or Research Site:1776
Position Title: Operations Intern
Major: Information Systems
Tell us about your internship, co-op, or research opportunity, including your day-to-day responsibilities.
On a daily basis i'm responsible for making sure the whole 1776 campus is clean and operating at its full potential. This responsibility ranges from making sure the kitchen is fully stocked with the right materials to working with the CEO, Evan Burfield, to make sure important documents are prepared the correct way to help companies advance into rounds of seed funds. I'm also responsible of projects that I'm given which can range from help desk tickets on some weeks to using excel to document sales for the DC region of the company.
Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.
I obtained my internship through networking with a family friend who had previously interned with 1776.
What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?
I enjoy that i'm doing vastly different projects so that I can get a wide range of experience in different things.
What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?
Network with any family and friends to help get leads on jobs or internship. Also use the resources we are given at UMBC such as UMBCworks and the job fairs.
Please provide a short reflection or quote about what you liked most about your position.
My ability to get experience through this internship is very important to me since it is helping me decide what I want to do with my career after college.
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