URCAD 2017
Wednesday, April 26

For information on how to participate at URCAD contact:
Ms. Susan Hindle
Assistant Director, Internships and Employment, Career Center
shindle@umbc.edu | 410-455-2216
OR
Dr. April Householder
Director, Undergraduate Research and Competitive Scholarships, Office of Undergraduate Education
aprilh@umbc.edu | 410-455-5754

Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) features research, scholarship, and creative work carried out by UMBC undergraduates. Student work is shared through oral presentations, posters, artistic exhibits and performances, and film.

This campus celebration of achievement affirms UMBC’s commitment to the twin goals of research and a distinctive undergraduate experience.

All current undergraduates who have conducted research, scholarship or creative work in the last year may apply to present their results at URCAD. Mentors, fellow students, friends, family members, high school teachers and students, graduate school recruiters, and the general public are invited to attend.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Meet Stephanie,

She is a double major student working on her degrees in Computer Science and Psychology. She is a member of the Honors College, the Vice President of the Computer Science Education club, a member of the Retriever Robotics Club, a CWIT affiliate, and the Curriculum Development Coordinator for the Creative Coders Program. She is also a Research Assistant for CS Matters in Maryland and a Research Assistant for the Multi-Agent Planning and Learning (MAPLE) lab. Previously, she was the Secretary of QUMBC. Her future ambitions are to continue researching Artificial Intelligence or a related field and to continue with outreach in computer science education.

Stephanie's research will explore a recently developed method of hierarchical planning: a hierarchy of abstract Markov decision processes (AMDPs). AMDPs seek to address the immensely challenging problems that decision-making agents face when operating in large environments to solve complex tasks. A hierarchy of AMDPs provides a framework for decomposing such problems into distinct, related subtasks. Her previous tasks for research in this area were to design an AMDP hierarchy for a house-building domain and to collaborate with her lab members to research and write a paper combining the R-MAX algorithm with AMDPs. Currently, she is working with her lab members to research and write a paper on constructing and reasoning over composite objects.

Read more about her research here…

URA

She is a Biology major with a History and Chemistry minor and an URCADian*. She was also a presenter at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS). When she is not attending class or in Dr. Summers research lab, she is an Organic Chemistry Learning Assistant and Supplemental Instructor. Her future plans will include pursuing her MD/Ph.D. after obtaining her undergraduate degree.

Carly's research will explore the non-coding RNA molecules found in the 5’-untranslated region (5’-UTR) of mRNAs called RNA thermosensors (RNATs). RNATs are the regulated expression of the downstream gene as a function of temperature. She is interested in the RNAT found in the 5’-UTR of prfA, a transcriptional activator that regulates the expression of a number of virulence genes in Listeria monocytogenes, which is an important human pathogen. Other well-characterized RNATs, such as 4U, ROSE, and css, all have elucidated mechanisms. The stem of these RNATs gradually melts as a function of increasing temperature, resulting in a gradient of protein expression.

Read more about her abstract here...

*An URCADian is one who presents at URCAD.

The Society of Toxicology (SOT) Annual Meeting is in Baltimore, Maryland, March 12-16, 2017. This is a special opportunity for students to participate in a large interdisciplinary science meeting at minimal cost. Undergraduate registration is complimentary and SOT will waive registration for faculty (non-SOT members) who accompany a group of undergraduates attending the meeting. A special program on Sunday, March 12, for undergraduates includes a special set of lectures and breakout sessions to introduce students to toxicology, graduate studies, and the opportunity to meet one-on-one with directors of academic toxicology programs and internship hosts. Although we especially encourage undergraduates to attend on Sunday, complimentary registration provides access at any time during the meeting.