Maryland Secretary of Commerce Mike Gill visited UMBC on April 7, 2016, for an afternoon focused on UMBC research and entrepreneurship.

While at UMBC, Secretary Gill met with President Freeman Hrabowski and UMBC leaders focused on research and technology commercialization, including Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of the bwtech@UMBC Research & Technology Park. He also toured the lab of Govind Rao, director of the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST) and professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering (CBEE).

CAST is known as an international leader in developing revolutionary technologies intended to scale up to impact lives across the globe. One tool currently under development is a portable, briefcase-sized bioreactor that rapidly manufactures medicines, replacing airdrops of pharmaceutical supplies to battlefields with point-of-care technology to manufacture specific drugs as they are needed. Rao’s lab has also developed an affordable incubator for vulnerable newborns in low-resource areas. With co-PI Yodan Kostov, CBEE research professor, and faculty collaborators from the College of Engineering and Information Technology, Rao is also working on a wearable system to track asthma triggers in pediatric patients, supported through a nearly $2 million award from NIH.

“We were proud to share with Secretary Gill the strong record of our faculty in launching new companies and contributing to the Maryland economy,” says Karl Steiner, vice president for research. “UMBC and bwtech have been partnering successfully for a long time on creating and attracting businesses that match our scientific strengths in cybersecurity, life sciences and environmental technologies.”

Secretary Gill began his service in the Maryland Department of Commerce in January 2015, after four decades as an entrepreneur, tech executive, and investment banker. His work with UMBC extends back over a decade, through his service on the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, 2004-2009.

Image: Maryland Secretary of Commerce Mike Gill and staff with Prof. Govind Rao (at right). Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC partnered with the Maryland State Department of Education to bring more than 200 educators, industry leaders, and legislators together for the Maryland Computing Education Summit, the state’s largest gathering focused on computing education. The event was held at UMBC on Tuesday, April 12, 2016.

The Maryland Computing Education Summit began as an annual event in 2013, with the goal of finding a way to offer at least one computer science course to students in every high school across the state, explained Marie desJardins, associate dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) and professor of computer science, one of the leaders behind the event.

Continuing the vision of the original summit, Jack Smith, Maryland interim state superintendent of schools, delivered opening remarks, emphasizing that computer science education needs to be integrated into all levels of K-12 education.

Throughout the summit, attendees participated in sessions on topics such as instructional resources, curriculum for students at different levels, teacher preparation, careers in computer science, and introducing students to computer science outside of the classroom. The session “Diversity and Equity: Why is CS Education Access So Important?” prompted participants to discuss unconscious and societal stereotypes within and about the field of computing.

Jan Plane, director of Maryland Center for Women in Computing and senior lecturer in the University of Maryland, College Park’s department of computer science, showed a graph illustrating the how fields such as biology, chemistry, math, and physics have become increasingly representative of the U.S. population, and how computer science still has significant work to do. “Without fixing the K-12 issues, we cannot fix the computer science pipeline,” Plane noted.

Both desJardins and Plane shared concerns that students often feel they aren’t “good at” or “cut of out for” computer science despite the fact that they haven’t tried it. They stressed that it is important for students to have exposure to computer science from an early age, before taking to heart stereotypes about who computer scientists are, and to have an understanding of the breadth of computing and the ways computing is used in society.

In one popular session, five UMBC students participated on a panel about their experiences in computing. Beatrice Garcia ‘16, computer science, recalled feeling troubled when she was one of a handful of women in her computer science courses. “Am I behind? Am I on par with the guys?” she would ask herself.

Several students mentioned that diversity is a huge issue in STEM fields. Sarah Heiner ‘19, computer science, said that she felt like an imposter during some of her classes, and wishes that one of her technology teachers in high school had been a woman. She did positively reflect on one high school STEM experience, recalling an exciting field trip to the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University to learn about the broad ways math can be useful in careers.

Kiante Brantley ‘15, computer science, M.S. ‘16, computer science, emphasized that when educators present information about computer science and careers that use computer science, it is important to present the content in a way that young students find engaging, relatable, and memorable.

Other sessions highlighted resources that educators can use in their classrooms to introduce students to computer science, and gave attendees opportunities to brainstorm ways to integrate computer science principles into their courses.

Core to all these conversations was an understanding that computer science should not be siloed and accessible to only the small percentage of students who might discover it on their own. “We need to make coding a part of our culture,” said UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski, “in the same way that students need to know how to write and think.”

More than five million Americans have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and Kafui Dzirasa ‘01, chemical engineering, is working to develop an electrical device that would stabilize a person’s mood without the side effects caused by medications. His work is featured in “Ride the Tiger: A Guide Through the Bipolar Brain,” a new PBS documentary that gives viewers a glimpse into the lives and stories of people with bipolar disorder.

Dzirasa, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, describes how he is able to approach studying the brain from the perspective of an engineer.

Nearly one third of people with bipolar disorder are prescribed lithium as a way to help manage their symptoms. “These medications go everywhere in the brain. And when they go everywhere, the come along with some side effects that are pretty troubling,” explains Dzirasa.

When it comes to treatment, Dzirasa says, “We want to do the least necessary thing to get [a beneficial] outcome.”

The device that he is creating is able to specifically target a certain part of the brain where there is a “roadblock.” “Because the stimulation is only going where you need it, you don’t have to worry about any of the other side effects,” he notes.

The technology Dzirasa is developing is being tested on mice, which are injected with a human bipolar gene and over time begin to show behaviors that are similar to behaviors exhibited by people with bipolar disorder.

Watch the full documentary “Ride the Tiger: A Guide Through the Bipolar Brain” on PBS or in the window below. Learn more about Dzirasa’s research in a recent UMBC News article about his Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.