ACTiVATE Program Success Sparks National Award, Additional Funding

In just three years, UMBC’s ACTiVATE program has trained 70 female entrepreneurs who have formed 12 new companies. This success has just been acknowledged with a 2007 Innovation Award from The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) and a new $50,000 grant from one of the program’s original funders, the Maryland Technology Education Development Corporation (TEDCO). 

ACTiVATE (Achieving the Commercialization of Technology in Ventures through Applied Training for Entrepreneurs) trains women to take technologies developed by Maryland universities to market. The program was recognized by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) 2007 Government Results and Accountability Performance Assessment Report, which covers best practices and programs from all fields of science and engineering supported by the NSF.

“ACTiVATE gives opportunities to women who are underrepresented as entrepreneurs while strengthening tech commercialization from Maryland’s research universities,” said Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of the UMBC Research Park Corporation. Hemmerly, a past president of AURP, was instrumental in the establishment of ACTiVATE. She also recently received the Catonsville Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year award for her efforts to grow the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park, which includes a high-tech business incubator, accelerator, research park and other UMBC entrepreneurial ventures.

Companies started by recent ACTiVATE participants include: EncorePath, built on a unique rehab technology for stroke victims developed by University of Maryland, Baltimore physical therapists; Foligo Therapeutics, which has received significant funding as it focuses on new treatment therapies for ovarian cancer; and Traxion Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing new drugs for chronic pain. In October, EncorePath received $74,345 in funding from TEDCO, and Founder and President Kris Appel has won first prize in business plan competitions from the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington-Baltimore and the Rockville Economic Development, Inc.

Originally funded with a three-year NSF grant, ACTiVATE’s mission is to form start-up companies based on technologies developed at UMBC, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, Towson University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and the University of Maryland College Park.

For more information, visit www.umbc.edu/activate.

(11/6/07)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Team Rallies to Win �Final Four of College Chess�

With a final-round surge against its archrival, the UMBC chess team emerged once again as the undisputed kings of the collegiate game by winning the 2009 President’s Cup April 5.

UMBC defeated the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), which served as host for the tournament – better known as “the Final Four of College Chess.

The Final Four victory was UMBC’s fifth in the past nine years.

“This team had a very strong drive to win,” said Alan Sherman, director of the UMBC chess program and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. “It is nice that our intellectual athletes get the recognition they deserve for their impressive accomplishments.”

One might guess the squad celebrated in Dallas before returning to classes April 6 at UMBC. Instead, Board 2 player Sergey “the Stealth” Erenburg, a 4.0 student, returned to his hotel room after the tournament to study for an upcoming physics exam, Sherman said.

Erenburg won the final match, a 140-move encounter that lasted more than six hours.

The President’s Cup is comprised of the top four finishers from the Pan American Intercollegiate Championship (the “Pan Am”), held each year in late December.

Although Stanford and the University of Texas-Brownsville emerged from the Pan Am as the two other Final Four participants, these top-level competitions remain a UMBC-UTD grudge match.

At the 2008 Pan Am, the two teams tied for first place. UTD won the 2008 Final Four, held at UMBC, by the slightest margin.

While the UMBC team enjoys international prominence, it remains committed to supporting the growth of chess in Baltimore and throughout the state. UMBC hosts the Maryland Scholastic Chess Spectacular May 10, a scholastic chess tournament open to any students in grades 1-12.

The Chess Spectacular will have two sections, one for novice players and the other for those with more experience. The top four finishers in the latter classification are invited to compete in a playoff that features live, move-by-move commentary from an established player.

“It is important to the chess program that we include the community in our activities,” Sherman said. “It has been demonstrated that students who play chess perform better on math and reading tests. Chess is a concrete way to develop young minds.”

(4/6/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC�s Champion Twirler

The grace of a ballerina. The poise of an equestrian rider. The flexibility of a gymnast.

Those are the qualities baton twirlers like Stasi Kowalewski ’10 need to have, according to Stasi’s mother Mardel Kowalewski ‘81. And Stasi, who is the world and national two-baton champion, possesses not only those traits but also a desire to learn.

“You need to have time and patience for this sport,” Stasi said. “You need to want it bad enough to learn it. It still takes me a long time to perfect my routines.”

Stasi, who regularly performs at UMBC men’s basketball games, has been twirling since age seven. She picked up the sport as an alternative to soccer, a game in which she naturally excelled. Always wanting a challenge, Stasi decided to give twirling a try instead. Her mother Mardel, both a former twirler and coach, supported Stasi’s decision.

“Being a former coach, I have the opportunity to help Stasi as both a mother and a coach. But learning when to be a coach and when to be a mom is important,” Mardel said. “Sometimes she just needs me to be her mom.”

Stasi took to twirling immediately and her once-a-week practices at age seven turned into 40 hours a week in the gym today, when she’s not in school. Her normal routine consists of stretching, working on “tricks” and running routines. When she’s not twirling, she works as a coach, providing individualized support to young twirlers. Her rigorous schedule and continuous dedication have resulted in her winning the title of World and National Two-Baton Champion not once – but three times, receiving awards in 2008, 2006 and 2005. She’s performed both in individual and group settings, winning awards throughout categories.

But twirling has its setbacks. Stasi has dislocated her knee three times and has literally lost her teeth in the gym. She once caught the baton and the momentum of the catch forced her hand directly to her mouth.

“I was standing there with my teeth in my hand,” Stasi said. “I was hysterical. It was one of the scariest things that ever happened to me.”

“I never pushed Stasi,” said Mardel. “But I always told her when you’re done, you’re done. She just kept on going.”

The continuous practice, recovery from injuries and love for the sport has only enforced Stasi’s dedication to perform – that and that fact that most twirlers “hang up their shoes” at the early age of 25. But both Stasi and Mardel have twirling plans for the future.

“One of the things we’re looking to establish is a scholarship for twirling,” said Mardel. “We need to get the sport out there.”

Stasi hopes to eventually pursue a law degree. She’s currently working on her bachelor’s in political science and American studies. When it comes to studies at UMBC, both Stasi and Mardel are in agreement.

“UMBC is the best kept secret in Maryland,” said Mardel. “It’s a public school with a private feel. You have to be smart to go to UMBC.”

“I came to UMBC because I wanted a challenge,” said Stasi. “You get what you want out of this school.”

But she also hopes to continue her work as a coach.

“Every twirler’s dream is to coach,” said Stasi. “I would love to pass on my knowledge and someday teach a national title holder.”

Stasi’s immediate plans for the future include twirling for the Washington Mystics and a AAA baseball team. She will also be competing with the seven-time reigning world championship team (the Dynamics) in the 2009 twirling competition in Belgium.

To see a video of Stasi’s half-time performance, click the play button below.

(1/23/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Venus, If You Will

Many theatre companies are born out of a mixture of inspiration and frustration. Take The Venus Theatre in Laurel, for instance.

When its founder, Deborah Randall ’94, theatre, graduated from UMBC, she pursued a career as a playwright and a performer in Washington, D.C. Like many recent graduates, Randall had a desire to succeed in a challenging profession. But she also found some of the roles she played and the theatrical atmosphere that surrounded her to be stifling her creativity. She craved a theatre that valued women and living playwrights.

Randall recalls UMBC theatre professor Wendy Salkind’s advice to her. “Every time I would gripe to her,” Randall recalls, “she’d say: If it doesn’t exist, create it. That was her mantra to me.”

The theatre company that Randall founded in 2001 is dedicated to filling what she sees as a gap in the Baltimore-Washington region, presenting shows with a decidedly female perspective and recent work by contemporary playwrights.

The company is in the middle of its current season, which features new plays that include a fresh look at the experience of women characters in Shakespeare and a contemporary retelling of Medea set in Los Angeles. The series concludes this coming fall with a new World War II memory play called Why’d You Make Me Wear This, Joe? by acclaimed writer Vanda and a comedic look at a very difficult Helen of Troy in a new play called Helen of Sparta.

Randall says that the emphasis on new work – especially by women playwrights – is important to her. A steady cultural diet of reality television and revisiting the classical repertoire, she observes, has meant that “there are so many writers who are not getting an opportunity.”

Finding and nurturing new work, she says, “is part of the life of the theatre…. Finding the pulse in a new work is kind of what I wake up in the morning to do.”

Creating what ultimately became Venus Theatre took time, however. Randall started small, crafting one-woman shows for herself that played in various venues in Washington, D.C. She also started a reading series for women writers and tried her hand at children’s theatre before settling on more adult fare.

After a series of misadventures and mishaps, including one show that had its last week in a D.C. theater interrupted by a street explosion that rendered the space unusable, Randall decided that she needed to find a more permanent home.

The constant scrapping and hustling for space to rent “was not cute anymore,” says Randall, especially after the street explosion. After a long search, she finally settled on a storefront space just off Laurel’s Main Street, which she dubbed “The Venus Theatre Play Shack.” She and a dedicated crew of volunteers transformed the place into a black box theater that’s become a new home base for the company, perched halfway between Washington and Baltimore and drawing from both cities and the surrounding community.

Randall recalls her time at UMBC fondly. “I was a nontraditional student,” she says. “So I was a few years older than everyone else. I had been to community college, worked for three years, sown some wild oats…. I wanted to squeeze everything I could out of the experience.”

Along with Salkind, she counts professors Xerxes Mehta and Alan Kreizenbeck as influences on her current career path. Randall also recalls that her roles in a production of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade (directed by Mehta) and in Cinders – a play by Polish playwright Janusz Glowack, directed by Kreizenbeck – were particularly memorable.

Though Randall still writes plays (one of her works, Molly Daughter, is included in Anthracite! An Anthology of Pennsylvania Coal Region Plays, which was published by the University of Scranton Press), she says that she “has ended up more of a producer and a director than a writer and actor anymore.” Running a theatre company also involves a lot of logistics and fundraising.

But Randall’s commitment to helping produce new works by playwrights – especially women playwrights – remains a primary challenge that she’s happy to take on. With the classics, she observes, “all the kinks have been worked out in a way.” New work, she says, is where the sizzle and satisfaction is.

“If it has been done too often,” she says, “it doesn’t interest me.”

This story by Richard Byrne ’86 originally appeared in UMBC Magazine. (www.umbc.edu/magazine)

For more information about Venus Playhouse, visit http://www.venustheatre.org/.

(11/2/09)

Weidong Zhu Recognized for Engineering Innovations

Have you ever wondered how engineers can tell if a structure needs repairs? Weidong Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, is determined to make this process easier and more accurate. In conjunction with his graduate students, he has developed a unique method for testing and monitoring stationary objects for structural soundness.

The Daily Record recently recognized Zhu’s work by naming him an Innovator of the Year. The awards program recognizes Maryland individuals and companies that have created a product, service, program or process that has had a positive effect on their business, industry or community.

Zhu, whose research focuses on continuous system vibration and structural damage detection, is being recognized for his development of a vibration-based damage detection method that uses changes in natural frequencies of a structure to accurately detect the locations and extent of structural damage. Currently, structural damage can be detected through either visual inspection or ultrasonic testing, but these methods are not as thorough and have limited accuracy in detecting internal damage.

With several mechanical engineering graduate students in his Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Lab at UMBC, Zhu has developed new modeling techniques and inverse algorithms for structural damage detection. “Much of the work we do is theoretical, but it all has applications in industry,” says Zhu. These techniques have been used to test the lightning masts’ structural soundness at Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) electric substations. Testing can be done from the ground level, greatly reducing the employees’ risk for injury. His group is currently applying the methodology to other structures such as transmission towers, pipelines and cables, and the work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Society for Nondestructive Testing.

Zhu has also worked with other industries. In particular, his group has developed traveling cable and hoist cable vibration models for Otis Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric and ThyssenKrupp Elevator. A native of China, Zhu was recently named a Visiting ChiangJiang Scholar Chair Professor in General Mechanics by China’s Ministry of Education. For his three-year appointment, he will conduct short-term research at the Harbin Institute of Technology in the field of dynamics and vibration, with the goal of developing a collaborative research program with Chinese universities. Zhu has previously received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his work on continuous system vibration.  

Zhu is most proud of the achievements of his students, who have gone on to prestigious jobs in both academia and industry, such as the United Technologies Research Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, A.O. Smith Electrical Products Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Zhu received his Innovator of the Year Award on October 14 at an awards ceremony at the American Visionary Art Museum.

(10/19/09)

Wired Watchdog of the Waterways

Claire Welty watched a thunderstorm roll in from the west. The network of monitors tracking Gwynns Falls streams began to react, tracking the Baltimore area’s streams and rivers like an MRI of a patient’s veins and arteries.

Welty, director of the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE), was able to see this big-picture view of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed without even donning her field’s traditional waders or even feeling a drop of rain, thanks to CUERE’s new Computational and Visualization Lab. The high-tech facility located in the Technology Research Center offers near real-time views and a wealth of environmental and water science data on a bank of large screen TV monitors. 

On the surface, the Lab looks like a cousin of a financial analyst’s war room or a big city’s traffic nerve center. On one screen, a Google Earth animation mash up produced by UMBC environmental science major Daniel Jones flies viewers around the area. The animation stops briefly at each of the multitude of gauges and sensors found across the region’s waterways. Thanks to the work of scientists affiliated with CUERE, the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, and the U.S. Geological Survey, greater Baltimore is one of the most heavily monitored urban watersheds in the country.

Other screens show visual data from weather radar, web cameras monitoring smog, aircraft flyovers, satellite instruments and other sophisticated tools of the modern water scientist’s trade. One animation, made by UMBC/GES graduate student and IGERT Fellow Garth Lindner, models the ebb and flow of water through a road culvert.

Welty’s vision for the Lab was brought to life thanks to the work of CUERE staff Jeffrey Campbell and Michael McGuire, who helped bring Welty’s vision of a real-time hydrologic monitoring nerve center to life.

“We’re so excited to have this powerful research and teaching tool,” said Welty. “The Visualization Lab will help us predict, model and track the flow of many factors that impact the health of our waterways and the Chesapeake Bay. It also gives us a dynamic, eye-catching way to demonstrate to the public and partners how our research directly affects Marylanders.”

(8/28/09)

Your Sneaker, Your Self

UMBC attracts students from many corners of the globe. And sneaker artist and media and communications major Martin Figueroa ’11, has figured out a way that these homesick students can remember that there’s no place like home. He’s painting the skylines of their hometowns – or any other image that represents their personal style – right onto their sneakers.

Figueroa started drawing sketches on his own shoes when he was a senior in high school. Before long, friends asked if he would paint their shoes. Figueroa has now designed more than 25 pairs of shoes, with prices starting at $100 a pair. He’s also decided to start a business.

When Figueroa contacted UMBC’s Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, the staff at the Center gave his fledgling enterprise a leg up by putting him in touch with experts to help him get his new business launched. Figueroa hopes to be marketing his work professionally later this year.

To contact Figueroa, e-mail him at fig1@umbc.edu.

(12/18/09)