• Candidate should be a full-time, degree-seeking student at UMBC, enrolled in her/his sophomore year with a 3.0 cumulative GPA.
• Candidate will be required to submit a resume and an unofficial transcript.
• Candidate should submit a 500-word essay explaining actions that she/he has participated in that have contributed to improving the lives of Baltimore City youth.

Application Materials can be submitted to:

Application Deadline:

Questions?

Contact Lori Hardesty at lhardesty@umbc.edu

Reverse Engineering of Dynamic Regulatory Networks
from Morphological Experimental Data

Prof. Daniel Lobo, Biological Sciences, UMBC
3:00pm 11:00am April 7 6th,  ITE Building, Room 325b

Many crucial experiments in developmental, regenerative, and cancer biology are based on manipulations and perturbations resulting in morphological outcomes. For example, planarian worms can regenerate a complete organism from almost any amputated piece, but knocking down certain genes can result in the regeneration of double-head phenotypes. However, the inherent complexity and non-linearity of biological regulatory networks prevent us from manually discerning testable comprehensive models from patterning and morphological results, and existent bioinformatics tools are generally limited to genomic or time-series concentration data. As a consequence, despite a huge experimental dataset in the literature, we still lack mechanistic explanations that can account for more than one or two morphological results in many model organisms. To bridge this gulf separating morphological data from an understanding of pattern and form regulation, we developed a computational methodology to automate the discovery of dynamic genetic networks directly from formalized phenotypic experimental data. In this seminar, I will present novel formal ontologies and databases of surgical, genetic, and pharmacological experiments with their resultant morphological phenotypes, together with artificial intelligence tools based on evolutionary computation and in silico simulators that can directly mine these data to reverse-engineer mechanistic dynamic genetic models. We demonstrated this approach by automatically discovering the first comprehensive model of planarian regeneration, which not only explains at once all the key experiments available in the literature (including surgical amputations, knock-down of specific genes, and pharmacological treatments), but also predicts testable novel pathways and genes. This approach is readily paving the way for understanding the regulation (and dis-regulation) of complex patterns and shapes in developmental, regenerative, and cancer biology.

Daniel Lobo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research aims to understand, control, and design the dynamic regulatory mechanisms governing complex biological processes. To this end, his group develops new computational methods, ontologies, and high-performance in silico experiments to automate the reverse-engineering of quantitative models from biological data and the design of regulatory networks for specific functions. They seek to discover the mechanisms of development and regeneration, find therapies for cancer and other diseases, and streamline the application of synthetic biology. His work has received widespread media coverage including Wired, TechRadar, and Popular Mechanics.

The Shriver Center coordinates this undergraduate scholarship program, funded by the France-Merrick Foundation. After 20 years, this scholarship remains available for students who demonstrate an exemplary commitment to service, leadership, and civic engagement on the UMBC campus and in Baltimore City.   The France-Merrick Scholarship Program seeks to combine service and reflection, build relationships, and strengthen networks to affect meaningful change.

Fellows are awarded a scholarship that goes towards tuition, mandatory fees, and room and board expenses.  This will not exceed $15,000 for Maryland students, $22,000 for out-of-state students.  In 2015-16, Fellows will engage in service connected with Baltimore City;  serve in leadership roles (which includes convening meetings for the France-Merrick Scholarship Program), support meaningful professional development, and serve as ambassadors of service at UMBC.  For 2016-17, two Fellows will be selected.

Scholars are awarded a scholarship of up to $1,500.  In 2015-16, Scholars will engage in service connected with Baltimore City, support meaningful professional development, participate in meetings, and serve as ambassadors of service at UMBC.  For 2016-17, five Scholars will be selected.

Applications for the 2016-17 cohort is in the FINAL week.  As a reminder, the timeline is:

Monday, March 7, 2016 – On-line applications open 

Monday, April 4, 2016 – Applications will close at 5 pm

Monday, April 18 – Friday, April 22, 2016 – Selected students invited for interviews

Monday, April 25, 2016 – Recipients notified

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

All participants must be aged over 18, have several years of IT security experience, and use a mobile device (e.g. smartphone). All collected data is anonymized.

If you are interested and meet the requirements, please contact the researcher (flynn.wolf@umbc.edu). Your participation is very important for our research and will be highly appreciated.

All participants must be aged over 18, have several years of IT security experience, and use a mobile device (e.g. smartphone). All collected data is anonymized.

If you are interested and meet the requirements, please contact the researcher (flynn.wolf@umbc.edu). Your participation is very important for our research and will be highly appreciated.

The Baltimore Sun and Washington post ran stories on efforts by the University System of Maryland to help faculty and students turn their research into growing businesses. The stories cite work being from at UMBC by CSEE faculty Nilanjan Banerjee, Ryan Robucci and Chintan Patel and their research students.

“UMBC professors Nilanjan Banerjee and Ryan Robucci relied heavily on the university to help them commercialize two types of wearable sensors they invented. One of the sensors, called RestEaze, measures leg movements during sleep, which may help identify if people have restless leg syndrome, ADHD or even cardiac problems. The other, called Inviz, is for people with limited mobility, who can use the sensor to call 911 or turn on a TV.

University and state officials helped walk the professors through the process of obtaining grants, patenting the technology and creating a business. Banerjee said the university is increasingly stressing that its researchers focus on commercializing their discoveries.

‘UMBC also definitely wants to place itself as a university that is helping the community around it as well as the state,’ Banerjee said. ‘It’s one of our responsibilities to make sure we have societal impact, and commercializing is one way of doing it.’

Resteaze is a wearable system that can non-intrusively monitor sleep quality in a home setting. It is being developed in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with funding from the TEDCO Innovation Commercialization Program, which provides funding to support the commercialization of qualified university technologies. Inviz is a low-cost gesture recognition system that uses flexible textile-based capacitive sensors that can be embedded in fabric.  It is being developed with funding from the National Science Foundation and a gift from Microsoft.  Both projects are collaborative efforts between of faculty and students from UMBC’s computer science and computer engineering programs.