Three faculty in UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) have received distinguished awards from leading professional organizations for their commitment to mentoring students and advancing engineering education.

Amy Hurst, assistant professor of information systems, has been named a recipient of the National Center for Women and Information Technology’s Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award 2016, which she will receive at the group’s Summit on Women and IT in May.

Hurst studies accessibility issues and develops assistive technologies and tools to empower others to build their own assistive technologies. During her five years at UMBC, Hurst has mentored more than 40 undergraduate students and nearly 25 graduate students. She engages students in her lab in various ways, and says that mentoring students is a huge part of why she is a professor.

“Students are embedded in my research lab by conducting independent research, supporting my PhD students’ research, and maintaining our lab equipment,” says Hurst. “Through working in my lab, undergraduate students have gained valuable experiences and been very successful.”

Over the past five summers, she has also hosted 11 undergraduates from other institutions in her lab through the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program. The program allows students to work alongside UMBC students and complete meaningful research, while having access to a faculty mentor.

Hurst prioritizes meeting with all of her students at least once each week to discuss ongoing projects. “I have found that this topic [DIY assistive technology] is engaging for undergraduate researchers interested in having real-world impact and working with special populations,” she says.

Hurst’s award follows state and national recognition of Anne Spence, professor of practice in mechanical engineering, and Marie desJardins, associate dean of COEIT and professor of computer science, as mentors and advocates for engineering education.

Spence received the Engineering and Technology Education Advocacy Award from the Technology and Engineering Educators Association of Maryland (TEEAM) in February. The award recognized her substantial contributions to Project Lead the Way, a national organization focused on increasing the number, quality and diversity of engineers in the U.S. by effectively engaging more K-12 students in engineering through energetic, hands-on learning experiences.

In July, desJardins will be presented with the Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award from the Computing Research Association-Education (CRA-E). The award recognizes her work advancing computer science education in K-12 schools and preparing young women to pursue majors and careers in computer-related fields.

Since 2005, desJardins has mentored more than 70 undergraduate students, many of whom have gone on to pursue graduate programs in computing. She connects with undergraduate students during their first two years, and guides more senior students—particular those with research experience—in serving as peer mentors.

Hurst shares desJardins’s focus on engaging undergraduates in research through the support mentoring provides. “Mentoring has always been a priority to me, particularly helping students who are interested in research but have had little experience or exposure to it,” Hurst explains. “I feel that mentorship is one of the best ways to support students as they grow intellectually and make their career choices.”

Image: Amy Hurst talks with a student in her lab. Photo by Tim Ford, coordinator of illustrative services in the biological sciences department at UMBC.

Reverse Engineering of Dynamic Regulatory Networks
from Morphological Experimental Data

Prof. Daniel Lobo, Biological Sciences, UMBC
3:00pm 11:00am April 7 6th,  ITE Building, Room 325b

Many crucial experiments in developmental, regenerative, and cancer biology are based on manipulations and perturbations resulting in morphological outcomes. For example, planarian worms can regenerate a complete organism from almost any amputated piece, but knocking down certain genes can result in the regeneration of double-head phenotypes. However, the inherent complexity and non-linearity of biological regulatory networks prevent us from manually discerning testable comprehensive models from patterning and morphological results, and existent bioinformatics tools are generally limited to genomic or time-series concentration data. As a consequence, despite a huge experimental dataset in the literature, we still lack mechanistic explanations that can account for more than one or two morphological results in many model organisms. To bridge this gulf separating morphological data from an understanding of pattern and form regulation, we developed a computational methodology to automate the discovery of dynamic genetic networks directly from formalized phenotypic experimental data. In this seminar, I will present novel formal ontologies and databases of surgical, genetic, and pharmacological experiments with their resultant morphological phenotypes, together with artificial intelligence tools based on evolutionary computation and in silico simulators that can directly mine these data to reverse-engineer mechanistic dynamic genetic models. We demonstrated this approach by automatically discovering the first comprehensive model of planarian regeneration, which not only explains at once all the key experiments available in the literature (including surgical amputations, knock-down of specific genes, and pharmacological treatments), but also predicts testable novel pathways and genes. This approach is readily paving the way for understanding the regulation (and dis-regulation) of complex patterns and shapes in developmental, regenerative, and cancer biology.

Daniel Lobo is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His research aims to understand, control, and design the dynamic regulatory mechanisms governing complex biological processes. To this end, his group develops new computational methods, ontologies, and high-performance in silico experiments to automate the reverse-engineering of quantitative models from biological data and the design of regulatory networks for specific functions. They seek to discover the mechanisms of development and regeneration, find therapies for cancer and other diseases, and streamline the application of synthetic biology. His work has received widespread media coverage including Wired, TechRadar, and Popular Mechanics.

I honestly do not understand how I am going to graduate this university thousands of dollars in debt and yet I can't find a parking space. In addition to that, when I follow all the rules as they are outlined, I STILL get ticketed.

I was attempting to find a parking space so that I could head to class. I arrived on campus an hour before class started. 35 minutes later I found myself in parking lot 29. There was room along a curb that was not marked for no parking, was not adjacent to a sidewalk, was not blocking an intersection, and was not part of a crosswalk. So I parked there and went to class. When I came back there was a ticket waiting for me. I wondered what rule I broke. The ticket stated that I was not parked in a designated parking space. Lot 29 is clearly marked as available parking for all commuter students, which I am. How is lot 29 not a designated parking space? Are UMBC parking lots somehow outside the definition of "space?" Beyond the "designated parking space" rule, I was offered no explanation of why I received a ticket. So, to recap, lot 29 is a space that is specifically designated for parking. I parked in lot 29. I got a ticket for not parking in a designated space. How does that make sense? Does anyone else have problems with the parking?

UMBC’s Office of the Vice President for Research has named seven new recipients of Strategic Awards for Research Transitions (START). The awards are formerly known as Special Research Assistantship/Initiative Support (SRAIS). Reaching up to $20,000 each and beginning July 2016, the awards are intended to help faculty compete more effectively for external support and to pursue new areas of inquiry.

Rachel Brewster, associate professor of biological sciences, was awarded funding to study how zebrafish are able to survive extreme environmental conditions by entering hypometabolism.

Felipe A. Filomeno, assistant professor of political science, will receive START funding to study inclusionary policies on immigration settlement in Baltimore City. His case study will assess the outcomes of local immigration policies, examine how effective the policies have been in Baltimore, and advance understanding of local immigration policies.

Erin Green, assistant professor of biological sciences, will use the START funding to study the role of yeast genes in cellular stress response pathways. By understanding how yeast genes affect a cell’s response to stress, her work will expand the understanding of how environmental stimuli change the structure and function of DNA and proteins in chromosomes.

Marcella Mellinger, assistant professor of social work, was awarded START funding to study the evolution of anti-domestic violence advocacy efforts. She will gather qualitative data through focus groups and interviews, and identify themes that illuminate how advocacy work has shifted over time.

George Derek Musgrove, associate professor of history, will use START funding to conduct research and writing for the study “The Black Nationalist Resurgence and the Changing Nature of Black Protest in the Post-Civil Rights Period.” The study will focus on black political activism between 1980 and 1995, and will reframe this time period by displacing the popular teleological narratives in today’s discussions of race.

Hamed Pirsiavash, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE), was awarded START funding to develop computer algorithms that can make computers “see” the world and “interact” with the world in ways similar to humans, accounting for a level of uncertainty. Utilizing these algorithms, computers watching large-scale unlabeled videos should be able to predict what will happen next.

Meilin Yu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, was awarded START funding to develop a 3D computational fluid dynamics simulation tool that will be used to study the fin-body-flow interaction in fish locomotion. The findings of this research will help improve the design of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

Image: Associate professor Rachel Brewster. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

JOB SUMMARY:
Young Audiences is seeking enthusiastic, hardworking artists/teachers to serve as teaching artist assistants for its Summer Arts and Learning Academy operated in partnership with Baltimore City Public Schools. This job is a key component of the success of the academy, and teaching assistants will have the opportunity to work alongside some of our state’s most experienced and accomplished professional teaching artists. Assistants will be paired with a teaching artist for the entirety of the program and will work closely with them to plan and implement lessons in their given art form. Assistants will assist with set-up and breakdown, assist students in learning through the art form, assist with attendance and record keeping, and assist with the coordination of student showcases and performances/exhibitions throughout the city. Assistants will also accompany students, teaching artists and staff on field trips.

JOB SUMMARY:
The Summer Arts and Learning Academy Grade Level teacher is key to insuring rigorous and meaningful learning in both literacy and math at the Summer Arts Learning Academy sites. Grade level teachers will be paired with a highly skilled teaching artist to provide arts integrated instruction daily.