Theresa Good, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, works to slow the toll of Alzheimer’s, one of the world’s most devastating illnesses. Her peers recently voted her as among the most talented in her field, electing Good as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

The Rochester, NY native came to UMBC from Texas A&M in 2002. A former Peace Corps volunteer who taught biology and chemistry in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Good has always been drawn to real-world challenges.

About 10 percent of the population over age 60 and 50 percent of those over age 80 develop Alzheimer’s. The progressive, fatal disease causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior.

Good’s lab specializes in a protein found in senile plaques, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s in the brain.  Senile plaques are large globs of protein that grow to about the same size as brain cells.

Good is grateful for the AIMBE recognition, but says that her true passion is working with undergraduate and graduate students and helping them to develop into researchers.

“I’m pleased that my colleagues recognize my contributions, but to be honest, the GSA mentor award (Good won the Donald Creighton Memorial Faculty Award for Graduate Student Mentoring in 2007) meant a lot more. 

I like to teach undergraduates at UMBC; they’re talented, they’re funny and every day is different. It’s wonderful to be recognized for producing useful research, but another thing I help to produce is people.”

“Theresa is a tremendous role model to her students and will go to any length to ensure that they are both growing intellectually and succeeding in their efforts,” said Julia Ross, professor and chair of chemical and biochemical engineering.

Good and her colleagues study beta amyloid protein (BAP) as a target for potential new Alzheimer’s drugs. A buildup of BAP in the brain is linked to most forms of the disease, including early-onset Alzheimer’s, impacting some patients as early as in their 40’s. 

Alzheimer’s is an especially challenging adversary since it is difficult to diagnose in the early stages. “The brain is redundant; people compensate for memory loss until the damage to brain cells reaches the catastrophic stage,” said Good. Her lab is examining if fluorescent or metal nano-molecules can be used as tools for earlier diagnoses.

According to Good, there is room for cautious optimism for Alzheimer’s research and possible new therapies. “I think there will be something in clinical trials in the next five years to help prevent further neural damage, but it won’t be perfect,” she said.

(4/3/2009)

Theodosia Gougousi (left) and Haijun Su, who uses virtual reality in his research, are UMBC's latest NSF CAREER award winners.

Two UMBC scientists were recently recognized as among the nation’s top young faculty in their fields by the National Science Foundation (NSF), receiving the NSF’s CAREER award, an honor that comes with five years of research funding and support.

Theodosia Gougousi, assistant professor of physics, is helping to find the next-generation hearts of consumer electronics. Haijun Su, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, uses 3-D virtual reality to make design innovations faster and cheaper for manufacturers.

Nano-scale Paving Stones

Without the expertise of physicists like Gougousi, beloved consumer electronics like iPhones, Blackberries and iPods would drain their batteries in half an hour. “Silicon-based technology has reached its limit,” Gougousi said. “Gallium Arsenide is a possible next-generation material." 

The Thessaloniki, Greece native studies the properties of nano-scale insulating materials suitable to integrate in Gallium-Arsenide-based transistors, a small but vital part of computer chips. The materials must be in the form of very thin films – 1,000 to 10,000 times thinner than human hair - and are made with a process she compares to building a patio at the atomic level.

“It’s somewhat like putting down paving stones to make a patio; we stack layers of atoms one on top of the other. Our stones and glue are organic molecules and water. Our goal is to understand the interactions of these materials at the atomic level and develop techniques to produce a dependable, good quality film.”

For Gougousi, the CAREER award is justification for years of effort, but more importantly, it provides an opportunity to focus more time in the lab, the classroom and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students.

“Show Me the Motion”
Su uses virtual reality to save companies real money. His particular passion is on the early design stages of small, precise machine parts that need almost human levels of flexibility and movement.

 “We use virtual reality, or VR, as a tool to design machine systems, especially those with flexible parts,” Su said. Su’s toolkit, known as the VR design environment, adds a crucial third dimension to early-stage design and prototyping.

“You need a lot of freedom to explore for the designer. Typical computer-aided design (CAD) software is bounded on a two dimensional screen and operated with a two dimensional mouse. So I say, okay, show me the motion.”

Su and his students use a virtual reality helmet, interactive glove and a pen-like gizmo known as a haptic device, which lets users feel a virtual prototype. Their goal is designing machine parts capable of precise - sometimes delicate - motions at the different scales.

His lab helps design complex and crucial parts for vehicles, robotics, precision or medical instruments, and even power tools.

“An example is the tip of a robot’s grasper arm in a factory assembly line,” said Su. “It has to be able to be flexible in order to accommodate errors. If it’s too rigid, it doesn’t work correctly.”

The key for Su’s lab is using VR to cut overall product development costs in the early, concept-design stage which itself costs little but is responsible for 75 percent of product development expenses. “The earlier you make changes, the more money you save,” Su said.

Su is honored by the CAREER award, and hopes it will enable him to spend time on another passion: educating the next generation of engineers. Hosting and teaching a two-week summer course for high school students was part of his award proposal.

Gougousi and Su are the latest in a growing number of UMBC faculty members to receive the prestigious NSF CAREER award. Half of the chemical and biochemical engineering faculty have received the honor, and since 2001, the university has had 12 honorees. 

Photo caption: (back row, from left) Richard Blissett, Justin Donlan, professor Andrea Kalfoglou, Michael Young, (front row from left) Mary Rhee, Jacqui Wanjohi, and Melissa Chapman attend the National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference at Harvard University.

Three members of the UMBC Bioethics Student Association (BSA) presented research papers at the National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference at Harvard University March 13th and 14th.

Melissa Chapman, a junior biological sciences major and vice president of BSA, discussed the ethics of genetic testing of Ashkenazi young adults to determine if they are carriers of Gaucher’s Disease. Some organizations have advocated not informing carrier couples due to the availability of a new enzyme replacement therapy treatment. Chapman argued that not informing couples denies them the right to make informed reproductive decisions.

Richard Blissett, a junior bioinformatics and computational biology major and treasurer of the BSA, discussed the ethics of continuing to market preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) to patients seeking in vitro fertilization for infertility. The screening is controversial due to a lack of evidence that it increases pregnancy rates and consensus in the US and EU scientific community that it should be considered "experimental." Blissett argued that with the recent change in NIH funding for embryo research, PGS for infertile couples should only be offered in the context of well-designed clinical trials where patients are not expected to pay $5000 for the cost of the screening.

Finally, Mary Rhee, a sophomore double major in philosophy and biological sciences and public relations director for BSA, discussed the ethics of facial transplantation. Rhee argued that in most of the severe cases, the transplant is not simply cosmetic, but life altering, and that patients ought to have the freedom to consent to the surgery -- even if the immunosuppressant drugs required to prevent rejection will shorten their lives-- because it so dramatically improves their quality of life.

Andrea Kalfoglou, BSA faculty sponsor and assistant professor in the Health Administration and Policy Program said, “I was so proud of our UMBC students. Their presentations were thought provoking and professional. I think bioethics has really captured the imagination of UMBC students from many different disciplines.”

Calla Thompson, assistant professor of Visual Arts, received a 2009 Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council.

The video profile below was produced by the Visual Arts department and gives insights into Thompson's work and recent exhibitions.

Chris Corbett - a veteran journalist, novelist, humorist and professor of the practice of English at UMBC - discusses his recent book "Orphans Preferred: the Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express."

"UMBC in the Loop" is a production of UMBC's New Media Studio and the Research Channel.

Andrea Novicki from Duke University added a new post on the Center for Instructional Technology's (CIT) blog about a UMBC hybrid learning effective practice: using participation portfolios to manage and assess online discussions.

Can a Parking Lot be Good for the Chesapeake Bay?

To view scenes from UMBC CUERE’s pervious concrete installation, click the play button below.

9/3/2008

The answer could be yes, if it’s made of pervious concrete, a ‘green’ building material and the subject of a recent how-to workshop hosted by UMBC’s Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE).

Pervious concrete allows stormwater to slowly drain through it like a sponge. Traditional concrete causes runoff that erodes waterways and carries pollution into the Chesapeake Bay.

The August 27 event drew 90 public and private sector attendees from all of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed states (New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Delaware) to UMBC. Attendees included state and local regulators and managers for planning, stormwater, environmental protection and highway/transportation departments as well as private sector engineers, architects, developers, builders and concrete suppliers and contractors. 

“We were delighted by the overwhelming turnout and interest,” said Stu Schwartz, organizer of the event and a senior research scientist at CUERE with more than 15 years experience in land use and water quality issues. “It was a great success in providing practitioners consistent information on how to use pervious concrete effectively.”

According to Schwartz and his colleague Norb Delatte of Cleveland State University, the workshop also taught attendees how to navigate Maryland’s recent changes in development laws, such as the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007, which calls for “environmental site design” for new construction and development.

The highlight of the day was the arrival of a concrete mixing truck for a lesson in the proper pouring and installation of the material at two instrumented test plots outside the Technology Research Center building. The test beds are equipped with scientific instruments to give UMBC researchers long-term data on pervious concrete’s effectiveness as a building material and for environmental stewardship. Gwen Stanko, a doctoral student in CUERE’s prestigious IGERT program, and other UMBC students will help monitor the test beds.

The workshop and research effort was funded by the Chesapeake Bay Trust, part of the organization’s new Pioneer Grant Program, which focuses on larger, higher-impact grants to improve the health of the Bay. All labor, equipment and supplies to prepare the sites were donated by Increte of Maryland, and the test beds were installed by Z-Con Inc.

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A DVD-ROM co-authored by Helen Burgess, an assistant professor of English, has received a favorable review in the international science research journal Nature (March 5, 2009 edition).

The DVD-ROM, Biofutures: Owning Body Parts and Information, examines the issue of owning human tissue and genetic material for research and potential profit. Biofutures uses video, text, interviews, film clips and Web links to explore ownership of human body parts. The discussion centers on themes of law, biology and culture.

The review applauded the approach of exploring the subject through multimedia information sources.

"The authors use their broad backgrounds in science policy, history and English literature to locate the questions of body ownership within the wider fields of social science and bioethics,” the review said.

Burgess worked with co-authors Robert Mitchell, a faculty member in the Duke University English department, and Phillip Thurtle, a faculty member in the University of Washington history department.

"Helen Burgess' recognition in Nature shows the wide-ranging scholarship that takes place in the UMBC Department of English today and our interest in new media," said Jessica Berman, associate professor and department chair.

"This recognition also shows the value of an interdisciplinary approach to such thorny issues as the ownership of body parts and the information derived from genetic material," Berman said.

Burgess is active in the new media research community as editor of the online journal Hyperrhiz: new Media Cultures.

Biofutures is a production of the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Chris Swan, assistant professor of geography and environmental systems, was featured in a March 3 entry in the Baltimore Sun's "Bay & Environment" blog.

Swan is one of just a few researchers in the nation studying the environmental impact of salt used to clear roads after winter storms. Sun reporter Tim Wheeler quoted Swan and government officials on the balance between possible harm to Maryland waterways' frogs, zooplankton and insects versus safety for the state's drivers.