Key Features for Students

Students have the ability to search and apply for all types of NASA internship, fellowship, scholarship opportunities in one system. A single internship or fellowship application places students in the applicant pool for consideration by mentors for all NASA internships or fellowships.

Students may search other opportunities at the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute here:  http://gphi.umbc.edu/

Meet Max, a Teaching Assistant who loves climbing mountains, swing dancing, and Artificial Intelligence.

“I’ve never been bored in my life,” says Maksym Morawski (call him Max), a Computer Science graduate student who spends most of his free time scaling mountains.

Originally from Silver Spring, Max moved to Baltimore in 2006 to study Computer Science as an undergraduate. In the 4th grade, while others kids were busy building volcanoes for their science projects, Max and his computer scientist dad were putting together a computer that compared different algorithms for computing prime numbers. So choosing his major in college, explains Max, was a no-brainer.

Now a second year graduate student pursuing a Master’s in Computer Science, Max is working on a thesis that looks at predicting connections in social networks, like Facebook. A computer scientist with a sociological streak, Max’s project uses computers to understand how people interact with one another based on e-mail data sets taken from corporations.

Max’s foray into teaching began in 2010 when he became a Teaching Assistant for CMSC 202. He says his favorite part about being a TA are the discussions—where he actually gets to get up and teach and get his students excited about Computer Science. His dose of teacherly advice is as follows: “Program for fun.” If you don’t practice and enjoy programming, he explains, you will never be as good as someone who lives and breathes it.

Throughout his years at UMBC, Max’s on-campus involvement has extended past teaching. An avid dancer (he frequents Mobtown Ballroom in Baltimore City), he founded UMBC’s Swing Dancing club. He also helped conceive Project X, the club that sponsored a campus-wide scavenger hunt in 2008 and 2009 that included tasks like jumping into the Inner Harbor and high-fiving Freeman Hrabowski (which prompted a not-so-enthusiastic e-mail from the UMBC president). The prize for the hunt was an amalgamation of candy that was procured from the “Spot” using late-night meals over a series of weeks, explains Max.

But, Max’s favorite thing to do is the hobby he took up in high school: exploring mountains. A frequenter of Earth Treks—a climbing center in Columbia–Max had plans to climb frozen waterfalls in New York State this winter. His dream job, he says half-jokingly, is to be a mountaineering guide. Though, he may also consider a job in academia: “I would love to be a teacher,” he says.

• ICAT Logistics, Inc. -- Administrative Assistant -- ID# 9249809
• State Farm Agency -- State Farm Financial Services Specialist -- ID# 9249767
• Frog Tutoring -- Tutor -- ID# 9247469

• UMBC Division of Student Affairs -- Office Assistant -- ID# 9249688
• UMBC Training Centers -- Receptionist -- ID# 9249800

The Missile Defense Agency recently (Feb/Mar 2012) hired 40 entry level engineers into the Missile Defense Career Development Program (MDCDP).  We intend to hire an additional 29 entry level engineers to report to work in July 2012.  That brings our MDCDP to a total of 290 entry level individuals, working toward a career with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) or 10% of our workforce.  The MDCDP is a deliberate, strategic,  plan, implemented by MDA leadership, to “grow” the next generation of Missile Defense leaders.  With all sincerity, we are not offering jobs, we are offering careers!

The opportunity we offer is for graduating engineers (Bachelor, Master and PhD) in all engineering disciplines, to compete for a position within the MDCDP.  This is a two year, rotational, career development program (through three major engineering areas) culminating in the offer of a non-competitive placement within MDA upon an applicant’s successful completion of the program.  The two year program is full of coursework, real Missile Defense engineering on real Missile Defense issues and lots of on the job training.  You will have a supervisor and a mentor throughout the program who will assist you in planning your training and career progression.   The position is fully salaried and has an extensive benefits package.  Of the 29 positions, there will be many positions in Huntsville AL (www.asmartplace.com) and perhaps a very few in other locations.

The USA Jobs announcement for the 29 positions will be published on USA Jobs in March or April of 2012.  We will post it as soon as we are 100% assured of funding for the entire two year program for each selectee.  That means you need to set up a search on USA Jobs now, using the words “Entry Level Engineer”  and / or, “Defense Missile Defense Agency” as your key words.  We will also post a link to the announcement at www.MDACareers.com at the Entry Level/ Career Development tab.

MDA is offering video teleconferencing to colleges and universities who have over five interested and qualified students facilitated by at least one career services officer.  We will make current MDCDP engineers (volunteers) in the program, the program “Champion” (Project Manager) and Human Resource Specialists available to answer your questions during teleconferencing activities.  Simply ask your career services officer to get in touch with me to set up a date in the second week of March through the first or second week in April.

AARP Foundation Announces Sixth Annual Women's Scholarship Program Call for Applicants

The AARP Foundation has announced a call for entries for its sixth annual Women's Scholarship Program. The program provides funds to low-income women age 50 and older who are seeking new job.

Military personnel are facing an increasing security threat posed by their smart phones and other mobile devices, argues an article on DefenseSystems.com. While the potential of mobile devices to leak personal secrets has been a cause for concern for all, the issue has the potential to be devestating for soldiers who could unwittingly leak crucial information to the enemy through compromised networks.

In the article, our very own Richard Forno, graduate program director for cybersecurity, shares his own concerns about cloud safety:

“One key area of emerging concern is data-in-motion within a cloud — i.e., ensuring that data is protected as it transits and/or exists in multiple servers at the same time, and by extension, the issue of ‘availability’ of data in a cloud environment,” Forno said. “The more moving parts you have to deal with, the easier it is to gum up the works, inadvertently cause self-inflicted problems, or make it easier for an adversary to do the same thing.”

Check out the entire article: "Smart phones pose emerging security threat."

Congratulations to CSEE Professor Tulay Adali, who has been named a 2012 IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer. Nominated by the Machine Learning for Signal Processing Technical Committee, Dr. Adali is one of only five Distinguished Lecturers appointed this year.

The position commits Dr. Adali to travel around to world to present her current research, which focuses on data-driven and complex-valued signal processing and their applications in medical image analysis.

Her lectures will revolve around the following topics:

• Data-driven Analysis and Fusion of Medical Imaging Data
• Complex-valued Adaptive Signal Processing: When and How to Take Noncircularity into Account
• ICA, ISA, and IVA: Theory, Connections, and Applications in Medical Image Analysis
• Optimization in the Complex Domain using Wirtinger Calculus: Applications to ICA
• Joint Blind Source Separation: Applications in Medical Image Analysis

“My research group,theMachine Learning for Signal Processing Lab [MLSP-Lab], has been conducting research in two of the most active areas in my field: data-driven signal processing and medical image analysis and fusion,” explains Dr. Adali. “I am looking forward to telling a wider audience than I have in the past about the exciting research results we have, as well as better introducing these important areas to new audiences.”

The appointment will last from January 1, 2012 until the end of December 2013.