I know it's so late now, and its probably thrown away :(

May 16 I had stayed up late, so May 17 I was pretty sleep deprived. I had an exam May 18, so I wanted to get some more studying in before sleeping. I met up with a classmate and studied until 2/3 AM, but when I studied with them, I asked for a pencil. Basically, I showed up without my pencil case, and assumed I left it in my partner's car, who was the one who dropped me off on campus. But it wasn't there. So I'm wondering whether I was so out of it that I just asked my classmate for a pencil when I had it.

SO
I'm wondering if someone had found a grey pencil case on the fourth floor lobby of erikson ?east wing? (sorry I'm a commuter, so I'm not so familar with the dorms, but its the side facing harbor hall with the horrible sounding elevator)

It's probably thrown out, but I had it since highschool and I hate being wasteful :( 

Manikanta Sirumalla is an MS student in the UMBC Data Science program who recently released RepTrack Pro, an AI-powered fitness and nutrition app for iPhones. He’s currently building it out through an award from the UMBC Launchpad Accelerator 10-week, cohort-based summer program that helps student founders validate their ideas and launch early-stage ventures. Hosted by the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, it awards up to $8,000 in non-dilutive seed funding.

Read more here and watch his interview with Dennise Cardona.

Congratulations are in order for the following researchers!

Sean Foley (616/Morgan) attended the EarthCARE 2026 Science and Validation workshop, hosted by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and ESA (European Space Agency) in early June 2026 in Oxford, UK. For his poster presentation, "PACE / EarthCARE Matchups (PEM): An intercomparison library in Python for the NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) and EarthCARE missions,” Mr. Foley won the EarthCARE MAAP-PAL Challenge award, along with a scale model of the EarthCARE spacecraft. (EarthCARE refers to ESA's Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite mission; MAAP-PAL refers the ESA's Multi-mission Algorithm and Analysis Platform - Product Algorithm Library.) 

James Irons (610/UMBC) and Eric Vermote (619/NASA) recently were selected as "winners of the 2025 William T. Pecora Award for their outstanding leadership and pioneering research that revolutionized the Landsat program and advanced global, land-change monitoring." According to the USGS site, "The prestigious award is sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA. The award recognizes outstanding scientific contributions toward understanding the Earth through remote sensing, which is the science of gathering information about Earth’s surface from satellites and aircraft. Remote sensing can be used to manage forests, monitor agriculture, track water quality and availability, support natural or human-induced disaster response, and more. This annual award has been presented since 1974, and honors the memory of William T. Pecora, former USGS director and Under Secretary of the Interior." The in-person awards presentation will be held in August at the 2026 IGARSS Symposium.

Cheng-Hsuan Lyu (617/Morgan) was recognized in early June with an Outstanding Teamwork Award from NOAA's NESDIS Office of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Observations to the Sounder for Microwave-Based Applications (SMBA) Team: "Given in recognition of their exceptional cohesion, resilience, and dedicated partnership in navigating programmatic challenges to perfect a revolutionary microwave instrument and successfully release the SMBA final RFP." The Office of LEO Observations includes two programs: the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) and the Near Earth Orbit Network (NEON). 

Happy summer everyone!

Asian Studies is pleased to release our 2nd newsletter for the program filled with student/faculty achievements, upcoming events, and more.

Big shout out to our Publicity and Student Program Coordinator, Michelle Yang, for helping us put this together!

Hello everyone!

For the remainder of the summer, we will be at The Gathering Space in the Center for Wellbeing

Please plan your trip accordingly, and we apologize for any incovneinces.

UMBC CBEE professor Tyler Josephson received an Amazon Research Award to improve the accuracy of scientific computing. His “Autoformalization for Scientific Computing in Lean” project will help bridge the gap between complex scientific theories and the computer code used to simulate them by building AI agents in Lean programming that extract mathematical equations from papers and translate them into formally verified code. Read more here.

All,

The UMBC Institute of Extended Learning (IXL) will be offering a practical course for Optimizing a Basic T-Lymphocyte Flow Cytometry Panel with the Beckman Cytoflex S (4-color) at the University of Shady Grove Campus in August. The course will be limited to nine participants and these courses generally have a fee for participation. Additional courses and workshops can be found here: https://ixlcourses.umbc.edu/umbc/course/course.aspx?catId=12. 

As we prepare to close out the 2025–2026 GSA year, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we have accomplished together and thank the graduate student community for allowing us to serve.

Over the past year, GSA has worked to advocate for graduate student needs, strengthen communication and transparency, and create more opportunities for graduate students to engage with one another and with university leadership. Through Meet & Confer, college and campus-wide town halls, weekly office hours, committee representation, advocacy meetings, grant funding, Graduate Student Appreciation Week, community-building events, and partnerships across campus, we have worked to ensure that graduate student voices are represented in conversations that impact student life and success at UMBC.

At the same time, we have continued to listen. Every email, office hour conversation, survey response, town hall discussion, committee report, and student concern helped guide the work we pursued this year. None of our accomplishments would have been possible without the students who chose to engage, ask questions, provide feedback, challenge us, and help us identify ways to improve the graduate student experience.

As one leadership team prepares to pass the torch to the next, I am excited to introduce the 2026–2027 GSA leadership team, which will begin serving on July 1:

Executive Council

• President: Ahmet Kaan Aydin

• Vice President: Kennedy Davis

• Chief of Staff: Xixëllonjë Nebihu

• Secretary: Tori LaChapelle-Sproat

• Treasurer: Milind Ramesh Rampure

• Speaker of the Senate: Diane Placide

• GRP Chair: Aminah Amjad

• GEARS Chair: Gaurav Shinde

• GAAC Chair: Rishav Gupta

• EoF Chair: Pavan Raj Ravi

Student Affairs Senators

• Dharani Nadendla

• Diane Placide

• Aaryaa Rajendra Gaikwad

COEIT Senators

• Sreeja Lakkakula

• Krish Mehta

• Suma Ronanki

• Monika Battula

CNMS Senators

• Vaibhavkumar Ginoya

• Chelsea Hook

CAHSS Senators

• Elle Hook

• Carole Njoroge

• Alfred Boakye

Directors

• Director of Events: Bethel Gabriel Beyene

• Director of Communications and Marketing: Saad Ahmad Khan

Please join me in congratulating these student leaders and supporting them as they begin their service to the graduate student community. I know they will bring new ideas, energy, and perspectives while continuing GSA's mission of advocacy, service, and community building.

While the individuals serving in GSA may change, our commitment to graduate students does not. GSA will continue to advocate for your needs, amplify your voices, and work toward making graduate student life at UMBC the best it can be.

We are also still seeking graduate students interested in serving as GSA Senators. If you are passionate about representing your peers and helping shape the future of graduate student life at UMBC, we encourage you to get involved.

Interested in serving as a GSA Senator? Sign up here                               

Serving as your GSA President has been one of the greatest honors of my graduate journey. Thank you for your trust, your support, your feedback, and your willingness to work alongside us. I hope that, through our efforts this year, we helped make GSA a little more visible, a little more accessible, and a little more connected to the graduate students we serve.

With gratitude,

Aminah Amjad
GSA President, 2025–2026

Dear Students,

We have learned that Canva is raising its enterprise version pricing to a level that is not sustainable; as a result, we will not be renewing our Canva enterprise contract for the coming academic year. 

What this means for you is that access to the Canva enterprise account will end on Thursday, August 6, 2026, andafter this date, unfortunately, you will no longer have access to any of the designs you’ve created.

If you wish to keep your existing designs from the enterprise version of Canva, you must download or transfer your content before Thursday, August 6. With this in mind, there are two options to preserve your work:

Transfer your projects to a free, standard Canva account

If you want to continue editing your designs independently, you can transfer them to a free, standard Canva account:

• Create or log into a personal account: Go to Canva.com and sign up for a free account using a personal email address (or log in if you already have one).

• Share your designs from your student account: Log back into your Canva enterprise account, open the design you want to keep, and click Share in the top right corner.

• Invite your personal account: Enter your personal email address, ensure the permissions are set to "Can edit," and click Send.

• Accept the invite and copy the design: Log into your personal Canva account, open the shared design, go to File, and select Make a copy. This creates a permanent version in your personal account that you own completely.

If you only need static copies of your work for a portfolio or safekeeping, follow the steps below:

Download your designs

• Open your design in your Canva Enterprise account.

• Click Share in the top right corner, then click Download.

• Choose your preferred file type (e.g., PDF Print for documents/presentations or PNG for high-resolution images) and click Download.

Export project files separately

• If you created custom logos or vector graphics, download them explicitly as SVG files with transparent backgrounds so you can repurpose them in free editors later. 

Please note that the storage included with your free Canva account will be capped at 5GB. If your accumulated projects exceed 5 GB, delete heavy video files or unneeded drafts to ensure your account doesn't freeze when it migrates to the free tier. 

If you have any questions, please contact canva@umbc.edu. We are here to help.

Thank you,

The Canva Team

Dear members of the Ancient Studies Community,

Res Classicae for Spring 2025-2026 is now available on the UMBC Ancient Studies Website (https://ancientstudies.umbc.edu/).

You can also download Res Classicae attached to this post.

Hardcopies of the issue will be mailed to those on the mailing list at the end of June. If you are not on the mailing list and would like to be added, please contact Lydia DeRidder (lderidde@umbc.edu).

Happy Reading!

The UMBC Ancient Studies Department