This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

The annual Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey from the National Science Foundation again includes UMBC as a top recipient of federal research support. 

The most recent survey aggregates federal research and development expenditures for fiscal year 2018. The survey data combines total funding from all federal agencies and also provides information on research funding from non-federal and non-governmental sources. 

Overall, UMBC is ranked #148 in federal research funding for the 2018 fiscal year, and #173 in total research funding from all sources. The federal investment figures include funding from sources such as the Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, and NASA, among others. 

“The annual HERD Rankings represent a widely reviewed national comparison of institutional scholarly and research activities,” says Karl V. Steiner, vice president for research at UMBC. “The most recently released 2018 data represents the fourth consecutive year of growth in research expenditures for UMBC.”

A leader in studying Earth’s atmosphere 

UMBC is now ranked #13 nationally in NASA funding and #27 in federal funding for geosciences, atmospheric sciences, and ocean research more broadly. Among the projects included in that funding was UMBC’s Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) cubesat. 

Vanderlei Martins, Roberto Borda, and Dominik Cieslak with HARP at UMBC. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This small satellite, the size of a loaf of bread, was developed by a team of UMBC scientists, led by Vanderlei Martins, director of UMBC’s Earth and Space Institute. It was recently launched into space aboard a NASA rocket heading for the International Space Station. The satellite contains sensors that will collect information about Earth’s atmosphere, informing our understanding of pollution and climate.

Computing hardware to address infrastructure challenges

In computer and information sciences, UMBC ranked #69 in federal research support. Among awards in this area was NSF support for UMBC to lead a new $3 million research partnership to solve major infrastructure challenges with next-generation computing hardware. 

Yelena Yesha, right, alongside faculty and students who conduct research through CARTA. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Yelena Yesha, computer science and electrical engineering, serves as principal investigator for the five-year grant from the NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers. UMBC launched the Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics (CARTA) to complete computing hardware research supported by this grant. A portion of the NSF funds are also furthering collaborative research with partner institutions North Carolina State University; Rutgers University, Newark; Rutgers University, New Brunswick; and Tel Aviv University. UC San Diego and the University of Utah are also collaborating, and industry partners like Seagate and Morgan Stanley are engaged in this work as well.

Yesha explains, “CARTA will usher in the era of accelerated real-time analytics by effectively utilizing innovative technologies such as cognitive computing, machine learning, and quantum computing to address our nation’s global competitive challenges in health security, disaster mitigation, and the emerging artificial intelligence revolution.”

Social science research to address health disparities

In the social sciences, UMBC ranks #27 in federal research dollars among universities nationwide. UMBC psychology faculty received a particularly high number of federal grants in 2018, including Danielle Beatty Moody (NIH funding), Shawn Bediako (NSF funding), Chris Murphy (DHHS-NIH funding), and Shari Waldenstein  ( DHHS-NIH funding, as well as support from the VA Medical Center in Baltimore). Additionally, Christine Yee, economics, received a research grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Danielle Beatty Moody. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Beatty Moody is director of UMBC’s Social Determinants of Health Lab. In 2018 she was the PI on three NIH grants, funded through the National Institute of Aging. They all focused on the HANDLES study, which stands for Health Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span. Beatty Moody’s team examined health disparities among middle-aged and older residents of Baltimore. This includes the relationship between factors like structural discrimination and early life experiences with cognitive decline and cardiometabolic measures.

“We are proud of the broad impact of our work, from the social sciences, to computing, to our close relationship with NASA Goddard,” says Steiner. “I am pleased with the continued efforts and growing success of our entire research community.”

Banner image: Research team of Vanderlei Martins, professor of physics, with a model of the HARP satellite. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC

UMBC’s Hilltop Institute, with its partners ServBeyond Solutions and A-G Associates, has just been awarded a $2 million contract from the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) to develop a multi-payer claims analytic tool (MCAT). In 2019 with federal approval, Maryland launched the Total Cost of Care Model, which is transforming the state’s long-standing all-payer hospital rate-setting system towards a model that holds the state accountable for the total cost of care for Medicare participants. The state’s goal is to achieve $300 million in annual total Medicare spending by 2023. The MCAT will support performance and quality monitoring under the Total Cost of Care Model by automating data aggregation, visualization, and report generation. The MCAT may eventually be expanded to include data from other payers.

Hilltop’s contract is for phase one of MCAT development. Hilltop will develop and test the MCAT platform and visualization tools using Medicare claims for all beneficiaries in Maryland and a sample of Medicare beneficiaries nationwide. Hilltop will model the MCAT after its existing data visualization platforms.

MCAT development is being directed by Jim Clavin, MBA, Hilltop’s Chief Technology and Compliance Officer. Under the guidance of Senior Policy Analyst Chuck Betley, MA, Hilltop will advise the HSCRC on performance and quality measure development. 

Flavors enhance e-cig appeal

How flavors themselves may be toxic

What about long-term vaping?

This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

UMBC’s Interactive Systems Research Center (ISRC) has obtained new equipment designed for the precise study of human movement, perception, and emotion. The User Studies Lab, which includes the Motion Lab and the Perception Lab, has installed new technology through a National Science Foundation grant including a Vicon motion capture system. The Vicon system records a subject’s movement using infrared cameras and small, wearable markers affixed with tape that the cameras can track. Andrea Kleinsmith, principal investigator, explains that with this system, tiny, lightweight reflective markers illuminate when the cameras flash. The cameras then capture the reflected light and transmit the information so location and movement can be extrapolated and researchers can study a subject’s movement.

Briana Norwood ’20, dance, wearing the markers that allow infrared cameras to capture the subject’s position in space.

This lab is a shared research space, primarily used by the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT), but also open to others across the university. Other equipment includes wearable research tools such as virtual reality headsets, wristbands that record physiological signals, and eye-tracking sensors that are both fixed and wearable. 

Glasses that allow eye-tracking data to be collected.

Kleinsmith, an assistant professor of information systems, explains that the newly outfitted User Studies Lab will enable students and faculty to expand the collaborative research being done across COEIT departments. 

Andrea Kleinsmith gives a tour of the Perception Lab to attendees.

Helena Mentis, associate dean for academic programs and learning in COEIT, and associate professor of information systems, anticipates that the 793 square foot space will also be valuable resources for students and faculty university-wide. In particular, she sees the labs as helping faculty to integrate teaching and research, and to think more expansively about their work. 

These spaces “will help increase interdisciplinarity and build bridges across ideas,” Mentis said at the kick-off celebrating the new equipment. 

Helena Mentis, left, and Erin Lavik, associate dean for research and faculty development in COEIT.

During the event, Briana Norwood ’20, dance, demonstrated how the motion-capture system works. Affixed to her clothes were 39 small, wearable, retroreflective markers. Around the room, near the ceiling, 12 infrared cameras tracked the 3D position of the markers as Norwood moved throughout the space. 

As Norwood danced in the room, a colorful model of a person moved in unison on a computer screen in the adjacent control room. Kleinsmith explained how the precise 3D coordinate data transmitted to that computer could be analyzed in any number of ways. 

Briana Norwood ’20, dance, at the opening of the ISRC.

During the opening event, Foad Hamidi, assistant professor of information systems, and his students also provided tours of another ISRC-affiliated lab, the Designing pARticipAtory futurEs (DARE) lab. They offered an overview of the 3D printing tools in the lab, also available for use by other researchers on campus, and explained current research that utilizes those tools.

This new equipment in the User Studies Lab represents a next step in the ongoing growth of interactive systems research infrastructure in the Interactive Systems Research Center (ISRC) at UMBC. Prior to this recent award, faculty received NSF funding in 2007 for biometric research equipment and a COEIT Strategic Plan Instrumentation Grant in 2016 to revitalize the User Studies Lab. 

“Motion and sensing of motion is all around us,” says Vandana Janeja, interim chair and professor of information systems. “This lab enables us to harness the precise study of movement and perception, which will open up doors of collaborations across many different disciplines that are interested in its study. Collaborative work through this lab will bring us closer in our joint pursuit of knowledge of human behavior and interaction with and through technology.”

Banner image: Briana Norwood demonstrates the newly-installed technology during the User Studies Lab event. All photos by Britney Clause ’11.

This story was written by Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has honored UMBC with its distinguished Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. This classification acknowledges UMBC faculty, staff, students, and community partners for their deep commitment to strengthening the bonds between campus and community. 

UMBC is one of only 67 public colleges and universities in the U.S. just announced as receiving this honor. To date, 359 U.S. institutions hold this classification. These institutions “are doing exceptional work to forward their public purpose in and through community engagement that enriches teaching and research while also benefiting the broader community,” says Mathew Johnson, executive director of Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Engagement, the administrative and research home for the classification. 

This achievement required a rigorous self-study of UMBC’s work with communities in Greater Baltimore and beyond. That process involved more than 120 members of the UMBC community as well as dozens of community partners. 

Joby Taylor (in yellow coat), Ph.D. ’05, language, literacy, and culture, director of UMBC’s Shriver Peaceworker Program, participates in a leadership development activity with Shriver Peaceworker Fellows. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Keniston, MFA ’14, intermedia and digital art, associate director of the Peaceworker Program.

This recognition is a testament to UMBC’s unwavering support for increasing equity in the Baltimore region and in communities nationally and internationally through work that honors existing sources of community strength, fosters investments in communities, and actively works to address disparities in health outcomes, education, and other core issues. 

Preparing public servants

The Shriver Center has stood at the center of UMBC’s community engagement work for decades, preparing and connecting faculty, staff, and students from all academic programs with community partners. The Shriver Center’s applied learning experiences have helped thousands of students to develop as community-minded agents of change and hundreds of partner organizations to meet their goals. 

2018-19 UMBC France-Merrick Scholars. Photo by Raquel Hammer ’20.

“Carnegie’s definition of community engagement emphasizes the importance of reciprocity and mutual benefits in the partnerships that are created,” explains Michele Wolff, director of the Shriver Center. “Shriver Center programs ask us to think about how we can make our partnerships more authentic, to effectively meet the needs of all involved. In this way, the longstanding approach of the Shriver Center also reflects the Carnegie Foundation’s principles of reciprocity and mutuality.”

Maggie Holland (center, back row), associate professor of geography and environmental systems, interviews a group of farmers in the Amazon about the forests on their properties. Photo courtesy Maggie Holland.

Investing in change

BreakingGround is one long-standing UMBC community engagement initiative with significant impacts, both on and off-campus. This initiative supports work by students, staff, and faculty to address issues they care about, as innovative coalition builders, problem solvers, and agents of social transformation. Examples of projects funded by BreakingGround include environmental justice initiatives and work to improve Baltimore City’s aging water infrastructure.

The work of BreakingGround now fits within UMBC’s Center for Democracy and Civic Life, launched in late 2018.

David Hoffman (left), director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life, with UMBC students in a class on democracy and civic engagement.

The Baltimore Traces project, a collaborative teaching initiative in the arts and humanities, amplifies the community voices of Baltimore residents and neighborhoods through various media. This key example of community-engaged teaching, which has been recognized by the National Humanities Alliance, has produced short video documentaries, a website, an interactive map, and radio programming that aired on Baltimore’s WEAA 88.9 FM.

Baltimore community members and UMBC students participate in the Baltimore Traces Mapping project. Photo courtesy of UMBC’s New Media Studio.

Scholarship and teaching rooted in community engagement also play a significant role in the social sciences at UMBC. In the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program, for example, students spend years honing their skills as future public servants and advocates in local, national, and international communities. Recent UMBC graduate Maheen Haq, global studies and economics, is a Sondheim Scholar who has worked to support communities facing discrimination, from Syria to Baltimore.

Maheen Haq (left) giving out toys to children in a Syrian refugee camp. Photo courtesy of Haq with permission from Helping Hand for Relief and Development.

UMBC also trains future scientists and engineers to conduct community-based research. The National Science Foundation-supported Bahama Oriole Project, a collaborative research initiative with Bahamian scientists and conservationists, works to save the critically endangered Bahama Oriole. An affordable infant incubator that originated in a UMBC engineering course is now in clinical trials in India and recently won the 2019 Global Health Research Award from the Academic Pediatric Association. And UMBC’s Engineers Without Borders student group has taken trips to Kenya and Costa Rica, working collaboratively with local communities and local university students to improve access to clean water. 

Maggie Holland (far left); Lee Blaney (second from right), associate professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering; and UMBC students prepare to plant trees in Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of Maggie Holland.

UMBC is also invested in the local community immediately surrounding campus. Recently, the university celebrated the opening of OCA Mocha, the brainchild of students in an entrepreneurship class. OCA stands for Opportunities for Community Alliances. The coffee house and community activity space is located a few minutes from UMBC’s main campus and has already found success hosting UMBC and non-university groups and bringing them together in conversation.

Co-founders of OCA Mocha (l-r): Krishna Gohel ’18, biological sciences; Deep Patel ’19, biological sciences and financial economics; and Michael Berardi ’19, media and communications studies, with community leaders.

“Thanks to the Carnegie application process, we know the extent and the depth of the community-engaged work that UMBC students, faculty, and staff have achieved over the last five decades,” shares Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “The Carnegie classification is an opportunity to celebrate that work. It’s also an opportunity to keep growing—coordinating this work to understand better the impacts of our community-engaged partnerships for our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and our partners.”

Jennifer Mata-McMahon (third from left), associate professor of early childhood education, working with Baltimore City teachers at the Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities’ summer institute.

“Community engagement and a strong sense of purpose are at the heart of UMBC teaching, learning, and research,” says President Freeman Hrabowski. “The Carnegie Community Engagement Classification is a reflection of our values and our character. It affirms that together we can achieve great things locally, nationally, and internationally.”

Featured photo: Sherman STEM Teacher-Scholar, Vanessa Gonzalez ’19, American studies, works with Lakeland Elementary/Middle School students. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC unless noted.

AcademyHealth Blog Post Highlights Findings of Virginia/Maryland Substance Use Disorder Waiver Evaluation

This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

After patients with breast cancer finish their treatment, they are prescribed daily medications to prevent cancer recurrence. There are many factors that impact whether patients take their medications as prescribed, from medication cost and access to ability to keep track of a complex medication schedule. 

“Despite the life-saving benefits of these medications, rates of adherence are low,” explains Jiaqi Gong, assistant professor of information systems at UMBC. He’s trying to change that and, in turn, to reduce rates of cancer recurrence.

Understanding behaviors

Gong is working with researchers at the University of Virginia and San Diego State University to study the links among a broad range of factors that can influence medication-taking behavior in breast cancer survivors. The research is being funded by a four-year grant that totals more than $1 million from the National Institutes of Health.

The goal of the project is to design an intelligent, wearable sensor system for breast cancer survivors to help them more closely follow their prescribed medication routine, he explains. The study homes in on the times patients take medications each day. Why? Patients who do not take their medications at the same time each day can develop health issues in the future, such as kidney disease.

Jiaqi Gong. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

“This interdisciplinary team will develop a new paradigm in dynamic monitoring and modeling of medication adherence,” says Gong. “We will focus on understanding the links between environmental, personal, and behavioral contexts of medication-taking behavior.”

“Since coming on board I have been involved in data analysis and preliminary literature reviews. I have focused on analyzing data derived from previous questionnaires and sensor monitoring,” explains Akiri Surely, M.S. ‘22, human centered computing. “Eventually, the hope is that this research will provide an innovative way to improve medication adherence among breast cancer survivors in years to come.” 

Identifying patterns

The project includes three phases. First, the team will develop a system to monitor when patients take their medication. The system will rely on wearable sensors that are connected to each patient’s smartphone. Gong explains that the system will provide researchers with continuous data that will help them to identify patterns related to taking the medications. 

The wearable sensors being used in Jiaqi Gong’s research. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Once the system has been developed, a small group of breast cancer survivors will begin phase two: using the devices to track when they take their medications. This will give the researchers an opportunity to identify and analyze patterns in how they take medications using real data. After the pilot, phase three will begin: testing the system with a larger number of breast cancer survivors. 

This work is one of the first attempts to deliver personalized interventions to increase medication adherence. Although the study focuses on breast cancer survivors specifically, Gong hopes the findings will have a broader impact. He explains, “By increasing our understanding of medication adherence in breast cancer survivors, we hope this study will provide a general framework that can apply to chronic diseases beyond breast cancer.”

Banner image: Jiaqi Gong, right, working with Dae-young Leroy Kim, Ph.D. ’25, information systems, and Xishi Zhu ’23, information systems. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

UMBC’s Hilltop Institute and UMB SOM’s Department of Emergency Medicine to Develop Algorithm to Augment 30-Day All-Cause Readmission Measure

The Hilltop Institute at UMBC, in partnership with the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMB SOM’s) Department of Emergency Medicine, has just received funding to develop and test a measure of hospital quality that assesses hospitals based on the frequency of downstream clinically relevant readmissions (DCRR) as opposed to blanket 30-day all-cause readmissions.

Read the full story here: https://hilltopinstitute.org/bulletin/umbcs-hilltop-institute-and-umb-soms-department-of-emergency-medicine-to-develop-algorithm-to-augment-30-day-all-cause-readmission-measure/

This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Data science has rapidly grown at UMBC, and faculty are now working to enhance data science courses, research, and student experiences. The goal is to ensure they are inclusive, empowering, and effective in preparing students to tackle the urgent problems our society is working to solve, and can scale up to meet student and workforce demands.

Faculty in both information systems, and computer science and electrical engineering have recently received two grants from the National Science Foundation to conduct research toward this aim.

Making data science more inclusive

NSF awarded funding to a team of researchers at UMBC; the University of California, Berkeley; and Mills College in California through the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program. This funding will support the Undergraduate Data Science at Scale project at UMBC, including the development and implementation of a unique data science education program for undergraduate students in STEM and non-STEM disciplines, says Vandana Janeja, professor and interim chair of information systems (IS). 

Vandana Janeja. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The data science field is relatively new as compared to the more established computing education, Janeja explains, and there are very few studies examining how these topics are taught to students. “This project will generate new knowledge about a data science curriculum and pedagogy designed to promote learning among diverse undergraduate students, many from groups underrepresented in STEM,” she says. 

This novel approach to teaching data science will also “empower students as generators of new knowledge rather than passive recipients of existing information,” Janeja explains. 

Another component of the project is the data scholars program, which will include students from traditionally underrepresented groups in STEM fields.

With these changes, Janeja anticipates that data science at UMBC will continue to expand. She’s working with UMBC’s Division of Information Technology to explore how UMBC, and other universities, will need to adapt and scale up offerings to meet the changing needs of students over time. “The findings will drive a community transformation in undergraduate data science education that can scale with student demand, and ultimately broaden participation in data science across multiple and diverse institutional settings.” 

Janeja and UMBC colleagues are excited to develop a model that can have a nationwide impact, bringing new students into the field, and shaping how they approach work in data science. She expects that this work will set a foundation for colleges across the country looking to implement data science programs and better support the learning of data science students.

High-impact, team-based student research

Outside of the classroom, undergraduate students in computer science, information systems, and business technology administration will have the opportunity to work with government agencies in Baltimore City to tackle real challenges through a new NSF-funded program. Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor of information systems, has received support for the new program through the Data Science Corps under NSF’s Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) initiative. 

HDR is one of NSF’s 10 “Big Ideas”: bold, visionary, national-scale activities to open up new frontiers in science and engineering. This program allows researchers to answer fundamental questions through new modes of data-driven discovery, Gangopadhyay explains. On this project, he will work with colleagues and students to collect and analyze data for projects that seek to improve Baltimore residents’ quality of life. 

Gangopadhyay will partner with UMBC faculty including Anupam Joshi, professor and chair of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE); Tim Oates, professor of CSEE; Nirmalya Roy, associate professor of IS; and Sanjay Purushotham, assistant professor of IS. The UMBC team will collaborate with faculty at Bowie State University, Towson University, and the University of Baltimore. Gangopadhyay and his team will work with UMBC’s Faculty Development Center to evaluate student learning outcomes for this project. 

The researchers working on the HDR grant. Photo courtesy of Aryya Gangopadhyay.

“The goal of the project is to develop a team-based data science program for undergraduate students in computing,” explains Gangopadhyay. Both undergraduate and graduate students will contribute to this research, gaining hands-on experience with the complexity of addressing urban infrastructure challenges, such as traffic congestion. 

Students will also examine a range of ethical considerations, including data privacy, as they process information. Street sensors, for example, can collect sensitive information on peoples’ patterns of daily life. Students will come to better understand their role as researchers in protecting privacy, and other ethical considerations, as they cull through the data, says Gangopadhyay. 

“Data science is poised to change the world by improving the quality of life through smart technologies,” explains Gangopadhyay. “Our students will play a part in bringing about some of these changes. Through their projects, students will develop analytical and coding skills and learn how to collaboratively work in real life projects with industry, government and academia, under the guidance of faculty mentors.”

Banner image: A student using a computer. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Today, a paper published in Science documents for the first time the global wind circulation patterns in the upper atmosphere of a planet, 120 to 300 kilometers above the surface. The findings are based on local observations, rather than indirect measurements, unlike many prior measurements taken on Earth’s upper atmosphere. But it didn’t happen on Earth: it happened on Mars. On top of that, all the data came from an instrument and a spacecraft that weren’t originally designed to collect wind measurements. 

In 2016, Mehdi Benna and his colleagues proposed to the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) project team that they remotely reprogram the MAVEN spacecraft and its Natural Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) instrument to do a unique experiment. They wanted to see if parts of the instrument that were normally stationary could “swing back and forth like a windshield wiper fast enough,” to enable the tool to gather a new kind of data. 

Initially, the MAVEN project team was reluctant to implement the modifications Benna and his colleagues requested. After all, MAVEN and NGIMS had been orbiting Mars since 2013, and they were working quite well collecting information about the composition of the Mars atmosphere. Why put all that at risk? Benna and his colleagues argued that this project would collect new kinds of data that could shape our understanding of the upper atmosphere on Mars, inform similar studies on Earth, and help us better understand planetary climate. 

Mehdi Benna. Photo courtesy of Mehdi Benna.

Benna, a planetary scientist operating out of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center with the UMBC Center for Space Sciences Technology (CSST), came up with the windshield-wiper idea while brainstorming how to create an instrument that could collect information about global circulation patterns in Earth’s upper atmosphere. It occurred to him that, together, MAVEN and NGIMS could do the same thing on Mars—and they were already in space.

With some persistence and a lot of preliminary analyses, Benna and his colleagues convinced the MAVEN mission leadership to give their idea a try, after Lockheed Martin, the spacecraft manufacturer,  determined the modifications might be possible without damaging the satellite. “It’s a clever reengineering in flight of how to operate the spacecraft and the instrument,” Benna says. “And by doing both—the spacecraft doing something it was not designed to and the instrument doing something it was not designed to do—we made the wind measurements possible.”

Ripple effect

The new paper was completed in collaboration with Yuni Lee, also of UMBC’s CSST, and colleagues from the University of Michigan, George Mason University, and NASA. It is based on data collected two days per month for two years from 2016 to 2018. Some results were expected, and others were big surprises. “The refreshing thing is that the patterns that we observed in the upper atmosphere match globally what one would predict from models,” says Benna. “The physics works.”

Overall, the average circulation patterns from season to season were very stable on Mars. This is like saying that on the East Coast of the United States, throughout the year, weather systems generally flow from the West to the East in a predictable way. 

One surprise came when the team analyzed the shorter-term variability of winds in the upper atmosphere, which was greater than anticipated. “On Mars, the average circulation is steady, but if you take a snapshot at any given time, the winds are highly variable,” Benna says. More work is needed to determine why these contrasting patterns exist.

The NGIMS instrument undergoes final preparations before heading to Mars on MAVEN. Photo courtesy of NASA.

A second surprise was that the wind hundreds of kilometers above the planet’s surface still contained information about landforms below, like mountains, canyons, and basins. As the air mass flows over those features, “it creates waves—ripple effects—that flow up to the upper atmosphere” and can be detected by MAVEN and NGIMS, Benna explains. “On Earth, we see the same kind of waves, but not at such high altitudes. That was the big surprise, that these can go up to 280 kilometers high.”

Benna and colleagues have two hypotheses for why the waves, called “orthographic waves,” last so long unchanged. For one, the atmosphere on Mars is much thinner than it is on Earth, so the waves can travel farther unimpeded, like ripples traveling farther in water than in molasses. Also, the average difference between geographic peaks and valleys is much greater on Mars than it is on Earth. It’s not uncommon for mountains to be 20 kilometers tall on Mars, whereas Mt. Everest is not quite nine kilometers tall, and most terrestrial mountains are much shorter. 

“The topography of Mars is driving this in a more pronounced way than it is on Earth,” Benna says.

Forging ahead

Continuing to analyze the data from this study may help scientists figure out whether the same basic processes are in action on Earth’s upper atmosphere. Ironically, “We had to go take these measurements on Mars to eventually understand the same phenomenon on Earth,” Benna says. “Ultimately the results will help us understand the climate of Mars. What is its state and how is it evolving?”

But the team isn’t satisfied with the current data set. “We want to keep measuring. We have two years of data, but we’re not stopping there,” Benna says. Even with the data set they already have, “We have many years of modeling and analysis ahead of us.” It’s a trove of information that can be examined in ways not yet imagined, to learn even more about how planets work.

Banner image: The MAVEN spacecraft orbits Mars (artist’s concept), courtesy of NASA.