Q: What is your year and major at UMBC?

A: I am a second year graduate student in the Intercultural Communication Master's program.

Q: How is your major applicable to diversity education?

A: Well…in my program we discuss and apply the concepts and definitions within culture to current events, personal experiences, and many other places.  What I am learning in my program directly relates to diversity and the conflicts that arise and what can be done.

Q: Why did you decide to apply for the Diversity Educator Internship?

A: I applied for two main reasons: (1) to apply the skills I have learned in my master's program to the facilitation and presentation of diversity concepts and campus workshops.  (2) to contribute to an environment that is accepting, appreciative, and understanding of diverse populations.

Q: How would you define diversity?

A: For me, diversity is a state, a state that is composed of many different races and ethnicities functioning and working together.  Within these different races and ethnicities exists distinct practices, behaviors, and customs.  In turn, functioning in a state of diversity signifies enrichment of knowledge and information that would not otherwise be known, recognized, or acknowledged.

Q: How does UMBC foster an appreciation for diversity?

A: Many offices and departments at UMBC provide opportunities for observation, participation, and leadership in a multitude of programs.  The Office of Student Life creates and implements programs, events and workshops, in which students and faculty can take part.  In addition, this office serves to educate and involve all departments on campus, such as the Modern Language department and the Gender studies department, to host events that encourage appreciation and discussion of diversity topics and issues.              

Q: What are ways that students can participate in advocacy for diversity?

A: The opportunities to act as an advocate are endless.  Students who desire to participate but do not want to take on the responsibility that being a leader entails can attend any dialogue, workshop, or event that is hosted.  However, being an advocate does not simply imply attending and participating in specific events.  Being an advocate is a daily act that is fulfilled everywhere someone goes.  An advocate is a representative of and model for diverse appreciation and understanding.  An advocate stands up for the beliefs, practices, and customs of others in that no one individual should be discriminated against or stereotyped.  Therefore, being advocate means having a security in one's own beliefs but a simultaneous mindfulness and appreciation for the beliefs of others, and the acting upon this.

Q: After graduating how will you continue to be an advocate for diversity?

A: Of course, whatever field I go into should have something to do with Intercultural Communication.  I would love to be a diversity trainer or a Spanish teacher.  Either way, I will carry out what I have learned while at UMBC and during this internship into all aspects of my life after graduation.  I will continue to act as an advocate no matter who I am with and where I am.  In my opinion, every situation and every moment provides a possibility for diversity education, however small the lesson.

If you are interested in entrepreneurship and the local startup community, especially in information technology, you should take a look at the Greater Baltimore Technology Council. This is a local organization of people devoted to "expanding the region’s technology community and supports technology companies with innovative programming, resources, links to capital markets and connections."

One useful new resource is the GBTC's event calendar, which lists technology events in and around Baltimore. If you have will be of interest to the GBTC community you can submit them easily via a simple form.

Self-sustainable Cyber-physical System Design

Dr. Nilanjan Banerjee
University of Arkansas Fayetteville

1:00pm Tuesday 13 March 2012, ITE 325b UMBC

Renewable energy can enable diverse self-sustainable cyber-physical systems with applications ranging from healthcare to off-grid home energy management. However, there are several challenges that need to be addressed before such systems can be realized. For instance, how do we balance the small and often variable energy budgets imposed by renewables with system functionality? How can we design sensitive physical sensors and efficient harvesting circuits for mW energy sources such as sound and indoor light? For systems such as off-grid homes that interact with humans, how do we balance demand and supply while being cognizant to usability needs?

In this talk, I will present techniques that address these challenges. Specifically, I will propose a Hierarchical Power Management paradigm that combines platforms with varied energy needs to balance energy consumption and functionality, the design of an efficient harvester for sound scavenging, and sensitive ECG sensors. I will also present a measurement study that reveals the energy management challenges faced by off-grid home residents. Finally, I will conclude with the design of a solar replayer platform that allows immense flexibility in evaluating solar panel driven systems, and works for a wide range of panels.

Nilanjan Banerjee is an Assistant Professor in the department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at University of Arkansas Fayetteville. He graduated with a M.S. and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2009 and a BTech. (Hons.) from IIT Kharagpur in 2004. He has won the Yahoo! Outstanding dissertation award at UMass, a best undergraduate thesis award at IIT Kharagpur, and an Outstanding Researcher award at University of Arkansas. He is a 2011 NSF Career awardee and has won three other NSF awards (including the NSF I-Corp grant). His research interests span renewable energy driven systems, healthcare systems, and mobile systems.

Host: Anupam Joshi
See http://csee.umbc.edu/talks for more information

Analytics for Detecting Web and Social Media Abuse

Dr. Justin Ma, UC Berkeley

1:00pm Friday 16 March 2012, ITE 325, UMBC

The Web and online social media provide invaluable communication services to a global Internet user base. The tremendous success of these services, however, has also created valuable opportunities for criminals and other miscreants to abuse them for their own gain. As a result, it is both an important yet challenging problem to detect, monitor, and curtail this abuse. However, the large scale and diversity of these services, combined with the tactics used by attackers, make it difficult to discern one clear and robust signal for detecting abuse. One approach, relying on domain expertise, is to construct a small set of well-crafted heuristics, but such heuristics tend to rapidly become obsolete. In this talk, I will describe more robust approaches based on machine learning, statistical modeling, and large-scale analytics of large data sets.

First I will describe online learning approaches for detecting malicious Web sites (those involved in criminal scams) using lexical and host-based features of the associated URLs. This application is particularly appropriate for online algorithms as the size of the training data is larger than can be efficiently processed in batch and because the features that typify malicious URLs evolve continuously. Motivated by this application, we built a real-time system to gather URL features and analyze them against a source of labeled URLs from a large Web mail provider. Our system adapts in an online fashion to the evolving characteristics of malicious URLs, achieving daily classification accuracies up to 99% over a balanced data set.

Next I will describe our ongoing efforts for creating analytics for detecting social media abuse. Deciding on a universal definition of social media abuse is difficult, as abuse is often in the eye of the beholder. In light of this challenge, we explore a more formal definition based on information theory. In particular, we hypothesize that messages with low information content are likely to be abusive. From this, we develop a measure of content complexity to identify abusive users that shows promise in our early evaluations.

In addition to our own experiments in the lab, this work has found success in practice as well. Companies serving hundreds of millions of users have adopted these ideas to improve abuse detection within their own services.

Justin Ma is a postdoc in the UC Berkeley AMPLab. His primary research is in systems security, and his other interests include applications of machine learning to systems problems, systems for large-scale machine learning, and the impact of energy availability on computing. He received B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Maryland in 2004, and he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC San Diego in 2010.

Host: Anupam Joshi
See http://csee.umbc.edu/talks for more information

Raytheon Pikewerks is a high-tech cybersecurity business with locations in Washington DC, Seattle WA, Huntsville AL, and San Antonio, TX. Our primary focus is on the development of software protection / anti-tamper solutions, insider threat protection, and information operations. The company formed in 2003 and is built on the commitment to undertake the hardest cyber security problems and apply creativity and innovation to push the limits of technology. For more information ab.out the company, please visit our website: http://pikewerks.com

Raytheon Pikewerks is currently seeking talented, motivated, and forward-thinking INTERNS, who enjoy systems-level security engineering - especially Windows/Linux/VxWorks kernel development, hypervisors, forensic and anti-forensic techniques, rootkit analysis, anti-reverse engineering, embedded systems development, and information operations. Our ideal candidate is someone with great technical and problem-solving skills, an outgoing and energetic personality, and a high degree of creativity!

INTERNS Software, & Firmware Engineer
Locations: Huntsville, AL; Alexandria, VA; San Antonio, TX;

Skills Required:

Familiar with 'C' development
Some knowledge/experience with x86 or ARM assembly
Understanding of kernel, Memory Management and File System Filter Drivers
Understanding of computer architecture
Understanding of information security practices (cryptography, privilege separation, root kits, packers, etc.)
Technical writing skills

Education required: Computer Science/Engineering or Electrical Engineering is preferred

Clearance required: Qualified applicants may be subject to a security investigation and must meet minimum qualifications for access to classified information.

INTERESTED CANDIDATES SHOULD APPLY ON-LINE:

Go to:  www.raytheon.com/campus

Click on Search Campus Jobs on left side

Under By Location Choose: United States, Alabama, Virginia, Texas

Under Cities choose:  Austin, Huntsville, Alexandria

Click Search

Jobs will appear for all levels

The UMBC Circle of OMICRON DELTA KAPPA
National Leadership Honor Society is currently accepting applications!

Applications due: by Noon on Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Applications must be submitted online at http://odk.org/audience/prospective_members/membership_application_form

The UMBC Circle of Omicron Delta Kappa (ODK), the national leadership honor society, is seeking applications for its student memberships. Founded at Washington and Lee University in 1914, ODK currently has more than 250 Circles on campuses throughout the United States. The UMBC Circle began in 1981 and was recharged in 2007! Come join our circle and help invigorate the UMBC community!

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE UMBC CIRCLE OF ODK?

The purpose of the Omicron Delta Kappa Honor Society is threefold.

1. To recognize those who have attained a high standard of leadership in collegiate activities and to aspire to higher achievements.
2. To bring together the most representative students in all phases of collegiate life and thus to create an organization which will help to mold the sentiment of the institution on questions of local and intercollegiate interest.
3. To bring together members of the faculty and student body of the institution on a basis of mutual interest, understanding and helpfulness.

WHO IS ELIGIBLE?

• Undergraduates of at least Junior standing (by credit level) with cumulative GPAs in the top 35% of their respective classes
• Juniors must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.10
• Seniors must have a cumulative GPA of at least 3.27
• Graduate students with at least a 3.500 cumulative GPA
• Graduate students must have completed at least 12 credit hours at UMBC
• Currently enrolled as students at UMBC
• Transfer students must have completed at least two full semesters at UMBC
• Exhibited exemplary academic and leadership achievement
• Excellence in one or more of the following areas of campus life:
• Scholarship
• Athletics
• Campus or community service/social/religious activities/campus government
• Journalism/speech/mass media
• Creative/performing arts

WHY APPLY TO THE UMBC CIRCLE OF ODK?

• You become part of lifelong campus and national network of ODK members
• You become part of a select group that promotes leadership on our campus
• People take notice of " leaders among leaders"
• Job recruiters and graduate school admissions look for ODK members

WHAT HAPPENS IF I AM INVITED TO JOIN ODK?

Invited members will be notified via e-mail by Wednesday, April 11, 2012. If you accept your invitation for membership, you must complete a member information form and return it with your initiation fee of $80.00 on or before 4pm on Thursday, April 12, 2012. You must attend the initiation ceremony on Sunday, April 29^th from 3-4pm in order to become a part of ODK.  More information will be provided at a later date to those invited to join ODK.

IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER
(dates are subject to change) 

• Wednesday, March 14 – Applications due by Noon. Applications must be submitted online
• Wednesday, April 11 (or before) - E-mail notification concerning application
• Thursday, April 12 - Mandatory membership form and $80 initiation fee due
• Sunday, April 29; 3pm-4pm– Initiation Ceremony in Commons Skylight Room (MANDATORY)
• Friday, May 4 – First General Membership Meeting

APPLICATIONS DUE: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 14, 2012 by Noon.

• Applications must be submitted online at http://odk.org/audience/prospective_members/membership_application_form by Noon on Wednesday, March 14, 2012.
• Paper or e-mailed applications will not be accepted.
  
  

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Jackie Aliotta
Facilities Coordinator & Omicron Delta Kappa Advisor
Commons Operations
The Commons, Suite 335
410-455-1438
jaliotta@umbc.edu