Unique research experiences open doors for UMBC’s Class of 2020

Danilo Symonette, Robin Bailey, and Hye-Jin Park are earning their UMBC degrees this month having researched in top labs and being invited to present their findings to colleagues across the country. They sound like phenomenal Ph.D. students, but they’re actually all undergraduates.

Symonette ‘20, computer science, has earned one of the most prestigious graduate fellowships in the U.S. after completing years of research in artificial intelligence. Bailey ‘20, biological sciences, conducted research at Harvard Medical School’s Joslin Diabetes Center. Hye-Jin Park ‘20, psychology, researched the experiences of Asian immigrants in the United States, including discrimination and resilience. 

Their interests vary greatly, but each celebrates the impact that UMBC mentors have had on their college careers, including the chance to access incredible opportunities.

Finding a community

When Symonette transferred to UMBC from the College of Southern Maryland in La Plata, Maryland, he knew he wanted to study computer science and conduct research on artificial intelligence, which he sees as a “revolutionary” field. He quickly found a supportive community of friends and mentors at UMBC, and became a McNair Scholar. 

UMBC’s McNair Scholars program is a Federal TRIO program that supports students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups in preparing for graduate education. The program emphasizes intensive research experiences and mentoring. Symonette’s McNair mentors helped him define and achieve his goals and navigate challenges along the way.

“Being a McNair Scholar has entirely shaped my experience at UMBC and given me the community I needed to support my ambitions and pursue opportunities,” says Symonette. The program also introduced him to some of his favorite people at UMBC.

The value of mentorship

Don Engel, assistant vice president for research, is Symonette’s advisor on the award that supports his artificial intelligence work. He has been one of his most impactful mentors over the years. “Don Engel gave me the freedom to explore any and all of my ideas,” says Symonette. “He advised me on career decisions, wrote countless letters of recommendation, and always supported and believed in me no matter how lofty my goals seemed.” 

Engel connected Symonette with the neuro-AI lab at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, where Symonette is currently interning. Symonette accepted a full-time job offer to work at APL starting in June. This allowed him to explore his interests at the intersection of computer science, neuroscience, and psychology, and further refine his graduate school career goals. 

“Danilo is one of the most talented and motivated students with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work. He has been a wonderful teammate to a broad range of student, faculty, and external research collaborators,” shares Engel. “I’m looking forward to following Danilo’s career, which I’m sure will be exciting and impactful.”

Symonette has also found mentors outside his discipline who have helped him develop a well-rounded perspective. They include Simon Stacey, director of the Honors College; former UMBC professor Marie DesJardins, now a dean at Simmons College; and Christy Ford Chapin, associate professor of history. Symonette says that Chapin helped him elevate his grad school essays and fellowship applications “to the highest level they could be.”

Exploring opportunities beyond UMBC

In addition to connecting Symonette with mentors, the McNair Scholars program also provided him with travel funding to visit several graduate schools across the country. 

In 2018, he completed the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) summer research program and focused on machine learning. The following year, he attended the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program at the Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, which was sponsored by the Southern Regional Education Board. “I saw a slew of Ph.D. students from underrepresented backgrounds come on stage and encourage me to pursue graduate education,” Symonette shares.

In 2019, he headed to MIT and studied models that detect confusion in features that rely on voice. His work was used as a foundation to develop sensors for a teacher education platform, to make it more effective. 

“That experience equipped me with the inspiration, motivation, and knowledge to plan my next steps,” he says. Over the next 18 months, Symonette explains, “I was accepted to the top computer science Ph.D. programs in the world and won the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.” 

Today, he describes the LSAMP and McNair programs as “the vehicles through which I arrived at many of the pivotal moments in my journey.”

Inspiring younger students

While focusing on his courses and research at UMBC, Symonette also enjoyed gaining early experience as an educator. He served as a teaching assistant for Computer Science 202, inspired by his own earlier challenges with the course. 

“I struggled a lot in CS202 when I came from community college,” Symonette recalls. “Seeing all the errors and mistakes troubling students during office hours and being able to help them through those same situations…was extremely rewarding.” 

Symonette also found ways to connect with younger students, to encourage them to pursue degrees and careers in computing. He served as the head of outreach for UMBC’s Computer Science Education Club, establishing strong partnerships with local high schools.

“I wanted to expand our outreach efforts so that more people could volunteer,” he says. He connected with Lori Hardesty, associate director for applied learning and community engagement at UMBC’s Shriver Center, to ensure the program would have the structure to be successful in the long term. 

“We managed to get a consistent group of students volunteering at Landsdowne High School last semester and supporting the high school’s computer science and robotics club,” says Symonette. “It’s been great to connect with high school students, especially at a school like Landsdowne. There are students from similar backgrounds as me that I have a chance to inspire. It continues to motivate me to do research in AI and education.” 

After working at APL for a year, Symonette will begin a Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University in fall 2021, with the goal of becoming a professor. “I’m looking forward to broadening my perspective, accessing opportunities, and developing as a researcher and educator—everything that comes with studying in a top-tier Ph.D. program,” he says. “I can’t wait to bring all of that back to my community.” 

You can read more about Robin Bailey and Hye-Jin Park in the UMBC News article from which this was excerpted. Adapted from a UMBC News article written by Megan Hanks.

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Students, Faculty, and Staff,

The University System of Maryland's Women's Forum has opened their application for Scholarships, professional development and research awards. Please consider applying and/or sharing with your networks!

Visit http://www.usmwomensforum.org/awards for application information. 

Applications are due by May 31, 2020.

Awards are open to any female or female-identified USM student, faculty or staff member.

$ git remote <graduation>

Here is an opportunity for students (undergrad and grad) who will graduate anytime in 2020 (i.e., May, August, or December) and use GitHub. 

$ git remote <graduation> is an online graduation ceremony being held by GitHub to celebrate recent (and planned) graduates of the Class of 2020.  If you have a GitHub account, you can apply to participate by midnight (PDT) Monday, May 25.

If you do, you’ll be recognized by GitHub, get some swag mailed to you, and may be selected for highlighting during the live-stream event on the GitHub Education Twitch Channel at Noon ET on Monday, 15 June 2020.

You can apply on GitHub by following the detailed instructions in this GitHub repository. There are three ‘tiers’ to the celebration.

Tiers reward the effort graduates make for this celebration. By adding yourself to the yearbook and writing a post on DEV, you will get access to extra benefits. Make sure you submit your pull request before midnight Monday, May 25th PDT.

Tier 1 ✉: Add yourself to the Yearbook by submitting a pull request to this repository and filling the swag shipping form.

Tier 2 : Follow the steps on Tier 1 and write a post on DEV about a project you’ve built while being a student. You can use this template to get started!

Tier 3 : The best project posts on DEV will be highlighted live on stream during the graduation.”

We thank Computing Engineering alumna Sarah Khalife (BS ‘14) who now works at GitHub for sharing this opportunity with us.

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If your internship or research plans for the summer have changed due to the pandemic, you are probably thinking, what can I do now? Don’t worry, you are not alone! Beyond internships, there are many ways for you to build skills and experience over the summer.

Use this time to become career ready.

• Build your network. Take advantage of various career events offered by the Career Center such as virtual workshops, webinars and information sessions. Use LinkedIn to find alumni who have career paths of interest and conduct informational interviews. This will allow you to gain insight on how to be successful in this path, what you can do now to prepare, as well as how to build your network.

• Build your interview skills. You want to be ready to nail that virtual interview. Big Interview is a resource available to you through the Career Center that can be used for learning and practice. This will also ensure that you are comfortable with technology and video/remote interviews.

You may be thinking, how can I gain experience without an internship? This is your opportunity to think about creative ways to use your skills and passion.

• Develop your passion and interests into an independent project. For example, if you are an English major and enjoy writing, you may want to consider writing a blog about a topic of interest.
• Consider a micro-internship or professional project for an employer. Parker Dewey is one website where you can find these opportunities.

• Acquire online certifications that will help you progress in your career. Consider platforms such as LinkedIn Learning.(Don’t forget to be mindful of the costs associated! Some online programs are free, and some are not.)

• Volunteer remotely with a non-profit within your community.  For example if you are a media and communication studies major, you may offer to lead social media efforts over the summer. If you are a computer science major, you may offer to redo their website. Volunteering will not only be rewarding, but can also help you acquire experience while developing references you can use in the future.

Use this time wisely so that you are ready to shine and hit the ground running as future opportunities become available. Remember, the Career Center is here to assist and support you. You can reach us at internships@umbc.edu.

May 6, 2020, Interview by Cheryl Dunigan

Balaji Viswanathan started his career at Microsoft, and moved from there to develop startups in such diverse areas as robotics, education and finance. He has embraced the true calling of an entrepreneur, using long term goals to develop companies that actively seek to make a global impact. This is exemplified by his Bengaluru-based company, Invento Robotics, which is currently using its humanoid robots to provide a myriad of services, from taking temperatures to collecting patient information to bringing medications and food to patients in isolation wards, in an effort to fight COVID-19.

For the UMBC community, perhaps the most interesting fact about Mr. Viswanathan is that he is an alumnus of UMBC, graduating with an MS in Computer Science in 2007.

How did UMBC prepare you for your career as an entrepreneur?

I learned robotics and AI at UMBC with Professors Finin, Oates, DesJardins and Peng. I took masters level courses in the topic (AI, Artifical Neural Networks and Robotics) published a workshop paper on Swarm robotics 15 years ago that we are now implementing in the field.

A lot of ideas talked about at the Ebiquity lab by Finin, Joshi et. al. were years later implemented in the industry, only under different names. UMBC’s work was quite ahead of its time.

Please talk a bit about any faculty or staff that had a positive impact on your experience as a student at UMBC.

I was a TA for 2 years at UMBC. This gave me exposure to a variety of faculty and their teaching methods. I liked the laid back approach of Yun Peng, the very energetic approach of Tim Oates and the to-the-point approach of Marie desJardins.

What’s one piece of career advice you would give to current UMBC engineering, biotech and/or IT students?

What Universities think of now, industries will plan 10 years from now. Don’t forget to dream and don’t be guided by what industries want now. You have to pull the industry rather than allow industry’s mediocrity to pull you.

What was your biggest takeaway from your time at Microsoft?

I have never encountered as many smart people as I did at Microsoft. And despite that, the company was struggling at that time. My biggest takeaway was it takes far beyond just having talent to succeed in business. I saw so many great ideas — like App Store, multi touch interfaces get buried only to be used later by Apple and other companies.

You are the most followed writer on Quora, a question-and-answer website. Of the thousands of questions you have answered, which one sticks in your mind the most?

My favourite one that I have also pinned is recounting my experience of meeting my childhood idol — the famed scientist Dr. Abdul Kalam, who was President of India at the time.

On Quora, you discussed how aspiring entrepreneurs can convert crises into opportunities. Can you discuss the role a widespread problem or crisis played in the development of your startups?

We were building healthcare related tech for over 3 years, but until COVID hit there was no demand for them. Thus, we put it in cold storage. However, when COVID hit China we thought it was time to pull those ideas from cold storage and revive the company with it. We were heavily dependent on events & hospitality industry and our customers came to a grounding halt. We had to execute a fast pivot.

You have developed many robots to help in the fight against COVID-19. Mitra provides patient screening, and Astra is remote-controlled and can disinfect a standard-sized room in 15 minutes using UV rays. What is the timeline for bringing these kinds of robots to the commercial market?

The Mitra is already commercial in the market and getting deployed in hospitals across India. The Astra is going through testing and certification and should be commercial by end of May. The RoboDoc — our dream product — might take about 6 months to be commercial.

In addition to being used for patient screening at hospitals, the temperature sensor attachment that your team has developed has enormous distribution possibilities (in airports, sporting facilities, etc…).  Which functions of your robots, either current or in production, do you think will potentially have the greatest impact on public health in the future?

The ability to have Level 2 autonomy with 80% of the time the robot moving around in predictable, low risk environments and using the help strategically in 20% of the risky situations is the core of what we build at Invento. These could be used in a range of situations including disinfection, surveillance patrol, takeout from restaurant etc. While people always think of robot or human, this approach puts a robot+human like you in front of your PC.

Are you interested in using your robots in biosafety level 4 research facilities for vaccine development?

We don’t yet have the capability.

In a former interview you stated, “As an entrepreneur in the mid-20s, we are more prone to the “shiny object syndrome” where a lot of different things look attractive. Age and wisdom bring more focus and stability.”Has the COVID-19 crisis caused you to rethink the long term direction of Invento Robotics or any of your other ventures?

One thing I have learned is that most people including investors cannot predict the future of technology. Almost every futuristic prediction has been wrong in its entry time or their impact. That means we have to stick to our vision for the long term ignoring the noise. At the same time we have to look for sudden route changes along the way.

I will give this example. Imagine you are driving to the Niagara Falls. Along the way, you should not change your destination, but can take small detours and re-plan the route based on traffic conditions and accidents.

You have said that some of your robots will become affordable for the average consumer in 5 or so years. What do you see-2030 looking like in terms of the roles of robots in everyday life?

In 2030, I see robots as common as computers and smartphones now. You might have a dozen of them in your home doing everything from clean, engaging children, taking care of the elderly, and cooking.

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