This article was first published here and was written by Sarah Hansen.

Right now, almost 500 SmallSats—spacecraft from the size of a refrigerator to a golf ball—are orbiting 200 miles above Earth’s surface, and 78 percent of them launched after 2013. In The Conversation,Vanderlei Martins explains the skyrocketing numbers of SmallSats and the important contributions they are making to scientific research focused on Earth and beyond.

“These SmallSats are poised to change the way we do science from space,” says Martins, professor of physics at UMBC. They are more affordable than larger satellites, and the most basic are almost within reach for serious hobbyists. The lower price tag has allowed countries such as Poland, Pakistan, Colombia, and others to launch their space programs for the first time and contribute to the global quest for knowledge.

The first SmallSat launch in 1999, by a team at Stanford University, was a proof of concept to demonstrate that something so small could survive in space. “Like all space explorers, [SmallSats] have to contend with vacuum conditions, cosmic radiation, wide temperature swings, high speed, atomic oxygen, and more,” explains Martins.

Since the first launch, and particularly in the last few years, SmallSats have become much more sophisticated. Now they not only survive in space, but also carry complex scientific instruments to collect all kinds of data and send it back to Earth. SmallSats currently in orbit “aim to answer specific science questions, covering a broad range of sciences including weather and climate on Earth, space weather and cosmic rays, planetary exploration and much more,” says Martins. They also “serve as pathfinders for bigger and more expensive satellite missions.”

Martins leads the team responsible for the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) SmallSat, scheduled to launch in June 2017. HARP “observes interactions between clouds and aerosols—small particles such as pollution, dust, sea salt, or pollen, suspended in Earth’s atmosphere,” explains Martins. These interactions affect cloud formation and precipitation, which affect Earth’s global water cycle, energy balance, and climate.

HARP’s capabilities reflect rapid improvements in SmallSat technology. “It’s an example of the kind of advanced scientific instrument it wouldn’t have been possible to cram onto a tiny CubeSat in their early days,” says Martins.

Still, SmallSats do have limitations. Although HARP could conceivably collect data continuously, a compact power supply limits how much data it can send back to Earth. Researchers at a new interdisciplinary center at UMBC will analyze and interpret the data it does send back, which, though limited, is still expected to be robust and insightful.

As SmallSat technology continues to improve, “seeing what works and what doesn’t will help inform larger space missions and future operations,” says Martins. In their pathfinding role, “the next generation of nanosatellites will advance the frontiers of science.”

As of this posting, SmallSat revolution: Tiny satellites poised to make big contributions to essential science has been read more than 25,000 times across 16 publications.

This article was originally published here and written by Megan Hanks.

With a new administration in the White House, securing the president’s smartphone is a national security priority, but exactly what steps are taken to secure the phone are not made public. In a new article in The Conversation, Anupam Joshi, professor and chair of computer science and electrical engineering, and director of the Center for Cybersecurity at UMBC, discusses several likely ways President Trump’s security team is building protections into his phone, through everything from hardware to settings to app restrictions.

Limiting the number of people who have the president’s new phone number and keeping the unique International Mobile Equipment Identity number guarded can prevent potential attackers from accessing confidential information stored on the phone. This method is called “security by obscurity,” says Joshi.

Joshi also says the device Trump will use was likely made by a trusted manufacturer with carefully created and checked parts, explaining that this minimizes the “risk that the hardware would have any vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit.”

Customizing the operating system, and allowing the phone to connect only with predetermined networks that are regularly monitored can also help protect against attacks, says Joshi. “Limiting its contact with the internet would, of course, by key,” he notes, “though that would also significantly limit the phone’s usefulness to a president whose routine involves constant connection.” Joshi says that limiting the number of apps on the phone, reducing the ability for additional apps to be downloaded and installed, and disabling automatic updates to the phone could keep the device even more secure.

While it is not certain which methods have been employed to secure the presidential smartphone, Joshi says that Trump trading in his commercial-grade phone for a government-secured device is an important first step in protecting the U.S. from hacks and attacks.

In another article in The Conversation, Rick Forno, assistant director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity and director of the Cybersecurity Graduate Program at UMBC, addresses the importance of addressing both short-term and long-term cybersecurity issues. He explains that ignoring underlying problems and only addressing small, attention-grabbing issues does not lead to lasting progress.

“Cyber-fatigue,” explains Forno, is an “inability to think critically about what needs to happen for meaningful, lasting cybersecurity improvements while focusing only on near-term problems.”

He says that while it is important to evaluate the benefits, conveniences and savings that new products and services may offer, the potential risks and problems should be considered, too. “So instead of repeating the same guidelines and recommendations of the past, it’s time to take a new and unconventional look at our approach to technology and how we secure it,” Forno explains. “Unless we’re willing to go beyond our traditional cybersecurity ‘comfort zone’ and explore new solutions, our cyber-fatigue will worsen.”

Read “How to secure a smartphone for the tweeter-in-chief” and “Overcoming ‘cyber-fatigue’ requires users to step up for security” in The Conversation. Joshi’s piece also appeared in Mashable and Channel Newsasia, and together the articles have already been read over 36,000 times.

Images: Anupam Joshi (top), and Rick Forno (bottom). Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The UMBC men’s Swimming and Diving team has earned its third Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA) championship in a row, just one week after the UMBC women’s team captured another America East championship. UMBC finished with 1522 points, more than 300 points ahead of the rest of the field.

“We are so proud of our men this weekend,” said head coach Chad Cradock ’97, psychology, after the meet. “This year gave us many challenges, and we faced them all head on and believed in each other.”

UMBC’s Ilia Rattsev ’20, bioinformatics and computational biology; Jared Vance ’18, business technology administration; Connor Ganley ’19, chemical engineering; and Gregor Spoerlein ’17, environmental science, won gold in the 400 freestyle relay, with a time of 2:58.21. Rattsev and Spoerlein also finished in first and second place in the 100 freestyle, with Rattsev earning a NCAA B cut. Spoerlein picked up another gold in the 200 freestyle, with a time of 1:37.32.

Cradock share that after a strong start to the meet, “seeing Gregor take a big win helped us keep our momentum.”

The Retrievers swept the 200 backstroke field, with Alexander Gliese ’19, mechanical engineering, winning gold (1:44.59); Ahmed Wahby ’19, engineering, earning silver (1:46.06); and Garrett Wlochowski ’20 earning bronze (1:47.40). Both Gliese and Wahby had times strong enough to earn NCAA B cuts.

Wahby also earned silver in the 200 fly (1:48.61) and Philip Adejumo ’18, biochemistry and molecular biology, won silver in the 100 fly (0:48.53). Kyle Paxton ’18, financial economics, and Connor Ganley earned silver and bronze, respectively, in the 200 breaststroke.

On day three of the championship, Nikola Trajkovic ’18, economics, set a new school record while winning silver in the 400 IM, earning an NCAA B cut with a time of 3:53.68.

“We are extremely proud of Nikola,” said Cradock. “All his hard work and dedication paid off with a school record.”

At the conclusion of the meet Cradock was named CCSA coach of the year, matching his team’s coaching staff of the year honor earned at the America East Championship earlier in the month.

Photos courtesy of the CCSA.

This article was first published here and written by Megan Hanks.

Josiah Dykstra, Ph.D. ‘13, computer science, has received the prominent Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE) for his work on digital forensics cloud computing, with applications in tackling cybercrime.

While he was a graduate student at UMBC, Dykstra worked full-time at the National Security Agency, where he remains a cybersecurity researcher, but for his dissertation took a fresh path and selected an area of research very different from his projects at the agency. Dykstra worked in UMBC’s Cyber Defense Lab with Alan Sherman, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, and studied how crimes using computers are tracked through information stored on the computers themselves and in email accounts.

To determine whether and how a crime occurred, Dykstra explains, a law enforcement official may need to extract data from a phone or computer using a third party vendor. He looked at whether law enforcement could trust that the data they are having analyzed to have not been manipulated. The legal and trust issues associated with accessing such data, and the technical and legal challenges associated with information stored on electronics, formed the central focus of Dykstra’s graduate work.

Reflecting on his PECASE award, Dykstra shares, “I didn’t know when I was doing the work at UMBC that it was a possibility” to receive this kind of recognition. He hopes his achievement offers encouragement for students currently working through their dissertations, tackling challenging research questions. “It’s helpful for students to see people who have done work like this,” he says.

The PECASE is one of the highest honors the federal government can bestow on early-stage science and engineering researchers. PECASE award recipients are presented with their awards during a ceremony at the White House, which will be held in the coming months.

Other recent PECASE recipients from UMBC include Kafui Dzirasa ‘01, chemical engineering, now an assistant assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, who received the award in spring 2016, and Justin Jacobs ‘14 Ph.D., statistics, who was recognized in spring 2014. Rachel Brewster, associate professor of biology, also received a PECASE in 2006.