There are black holes, and then there are supermassive black holes (SMBH), with masses millions to billions of times as great as the Sun. A small percentage of SMBH are furiously gobbling up matter; these are called active galactic nuclei (AGN). Adi Foord, assistant professor of physics, is co-leading a research project designed to further understanding of how this rare type of black hole forms and changes over time. 

The project, recently funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grant, also creates prime opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to contribute to the research and connect with leaders in the field for networking and mentorship—experiences with the potential to shape these students’ futures. 

In addition to Foord, the three other co-leads are giants in the field of black hole research at institutions with powerhouse astronomy programs: Meg Urry at Yale University, David Sanders at the University of Hawaii, and Nico Cappelluti at the University of Miami. All four co-leads have collaborated for years as members of a research consortium known as the Accretion History of AGN (AHA) group.

“The goal of the NSF project is to try to map out the growth of AGN across cosmic time using as much data as humanly possible,” Foord says. “We’ll be looking at data collected by observatories in space and on the ground over a really wide range of wavelengths.” 

By analyzing data from various sources, the team has a better chance of shedding light on how these black holes grow and evolve, “and how their growth mechanisms connect to things like their environments,” Foord adds, “so getting information about the host galaxies that they’re in will be key.”

Foord is particularly interested in what happens when two galaxies, each with a supermassive black hole at its center, merge, and her part of the new grant zeroes in on exploring these merging AGN. For example, the percentage of galaxies that begin to interact and then go on to complete a merger is an open question. 

Addressing the bottleneck

Zack Reeves, a UMBC Ph.D. student mentored by Foord, is contributing to the project through his research on dual AGN—pairs of black holes in the early stages of a potential merger. Reeves started with a dataset including 2,684 confirmed AGN, based on data from the X-ray Multi-mirror Mission (XMM) Newton observatory and Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Then he pared down the data further, eventually settling on 38 AGN that met particular data standards. 

“This summer, I’m going through each of the XMM X-ray sources, and looking to see if the AGN have any other significant X-ray sources nearby that could indicate a dual AGN,” Reeves says.

XMM Newton includes tools that allow scientists to filter and analyze the data to answer their specific questions, “but the process can be manual and tedious to do observation by observation,” Reeves says. To address that bottleneck, he’s coding a Python script to streamline data analysis, which he’ll run on UMBC’s High-Performance Computing Facility (HPCF), which can analyze all of the samples in parallel, producing results many times faster than completing the task sequentially by hand. 

The results will provide important insights into how galaxies and AGN form. Multiple theoretical simulations describe those processes, and “these simulations disagree on certain predictions, like how the dual AGN population will evolve over the course of cosmic time,” Reeves says. “So the interesting part of this project is that we can actually look in space and observationally constrain how this population evolves, and through that we can identify what strengths and weaknesses these simulations have.” 

Empowering the next generation of astrophysicists

The NSF grant not only creates opportunities for Foord’s students to dive into cutting-edge research—it will also connect them with top scientists and grow their professional networks. For example, Reeves will begin attending regular AHA group meetings this summer and attend the AHA workshop in Miami in December.

Foord considers creating these career-building opportunities for her students a core part of her mission as a faculty member at UMBC. 

“It’s really important that we give UMBC students not only great research projects and opportunities, but also visibility to the field and the ability to make connections and network with people,” Foord says.

The grant also funds UMBC undergraduate students to conduct research with the co-leads at their institutions. This summer, funded through the same NSF grant, Katherine Carver, a rising senior physics major, is interning at Yale with Meg Urry. 

At Yale, “Networking with so many talented astronomers and physicists and attending unique professional development and astronomy events”—like a workshop on dark matter and a watch party for the reveal of the first Vera Rubin Observatory images—“have been the most beneficial opportunities,” Carver says.

“It’s really important that we give UMBC students not only great research projects and opportunities, but also visibility to the field and the ability to make connections and network with people.”

Adi Foord, assistant professor of physics

“The students are getting an opportunity to learn about what’s going on at these other institutions, how research teams work at these different places, and also to network with scientists there,” Foord says, “and that’s only going to help their careers if they decide to continue in astrophysics.”

“Dr. Foord has been instrumental in my success as an aspiring scientist,” Carver says, “from teaching me how to write scientific proposals to aiding the progression of my research at UMBC.” 

Reeves is grateful for Foord’s guidance, too. “She’s teaching me a lot about moves that I should be making right now, and how to network and build connections, and also making those connections for me, which means a lot,” he says.

Big-picture questions require practical skills

Reeves says that in high school, he romanticized physics; “the lure of figuring out how the universe works” drew him in. Since then, he’s learned that to be successful in the field, big-picture wonder must be backed up with practical skills. 

“I consider myself at heart to be an astrophysicist. That’s the dream. That’s what sparks joy in my heart,” he says. Luckily for him, “In practice, I also really enjoy statistics and statistical physics.”

Reeves’ work relies heavily on computer programming, data analysis, and statistics, skills he says are “absolutely critical” for astrophysicists. “I learned quickly in college you have to be really good at problem-solving to succeed in physics,” he notes. Reeves encourages anyone interested in physics to take enough computer science courses to “understand what the code is doing under the hood.” Without that foundation and a solid dose of perseverance, he says, at some point you’ll get stuck.

Thankfully, “Zack is super self-motivated, which is one of the most important aspects to being successful,” Foord says. “I’ve seen so many points in time where he’s hit some sort of wall, and then he comes back the next week and he’s figured out some way to get above that wall.” 

Staying close to go far

Carver, too, has picked up additional skills that support her physics research. From her work in Foord’s lab and previous internships at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and Space Telescope Science Institute, she gained key coding and problem-solving skills. Without that, “I would not have been able to contribute to the level I can now to my project at Yale,” she says. “Those experiences also prepared me to secure the internship.”

Foord’s students benefit from a close relationship with her and other research group members. “The energy in the group meetings and our one-to-ones is always just really positive and encouraging, and there’s no stress,” Reeves says. Foord’s guidance has turbocharged his growth, from tackling advanced projects to presenting his work clearly.

“He already has a really good idea of how to tell a story in a way that will help people who aren’t intimately familiar with his research to understand it,” Foord says. 

Through Adi Foord’s mentorship, doors to cutting-edge black hole research have swung wide open for Reeves and Carver, equipping them with skills and networks to explore the cosmos as their careers progress. Already, Reeves is paying it forward, using his communication skills to share his fascination with black holes and spark curiosity about one of the universe’s most mysterious phenomena.

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Tom Penniston, Ph.D., has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to advance learning-analytics projects in Croatia during the 2025–26 academic year. As UMBC DoIT’s Coordinator of Learning Analytics, he helps faculty translate data into inclusive, effective teaching practices. On September 1, he will take that expertise with him as he begins a six-month residency with the University of Zagreb’s Learning Analytics Laboratory at the Faculty of Organization and Informatics in Varaždin, and will remain working remotely in Croatia until August 2026.

During the fellowship, Penniston will test ways to scale course redesign around national and institutional competencies, map how analytics tools are adopted within and between universities, and embed empirically-based approaches in a new international setting. Working alongside Croatian colleagues, he also hopes to deepen his understanding of European Union education policy and seed partnerships that will ultimately benefit UMBC students and faculty.

“I’m humbled, excited, and admittedly a bit anxious,” he says, “but being part of a campus that prizes data-informed teaching makes the leap easier.” He credits CIO Jack Suess, AVP John Fritz, Director Mariann Hawken, and an “exceptionally talented” DoIT team for making this opportunity possible, and notes that his hosts have already “gone out of their way” to welcome his family, which is a kindness that has eased much of his initial anxiety.

“We’re all pleased for and proud of Tom’s selection to serve as a Fulbright Fellow,” says John Fritz, Associate Vice President for Instructional Technology. “He truly is a global citizen with an impressive, eclectic skill set and mindset focused on the value of education to change the trajectory of people’s lives. He will make a wonderful ambassador for what’s best about UMBC and the United States.” 

Penniston and his wife, Erin, previously served together in the Peace Corps in Moldova, yet the Fulbright will give their three children their first extended taste of life abroad. “I can’t wait to dive into the data, share what I learn, and bring fresh insights home,” he says, aiming to turn analysis into action on both sides of the Atlantic.

Cross posted from UMBC News & Magazine:

New AI-supported, high-resolution Chesapeake Bay Watershed stream maps reveal additional waterways and will help prioritize restoration projects 

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A dataset unveiled today more than doubles the documented stream miles in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, elevating the total from approximately 100,000 to over 200,000 miles. The Hyper-Resolution Hydrography Data used to generate the new stream maps stems from a collaboration between the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), the Environmental Protection Agency’s Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP), and the Chesapeake Conservancy (CC), including UMBC alumni at CBP and CC. 

The project lays a robust foundation for sustainable management of one of North America’s most critical ecosystems, which spans six states and supports millions of residents and iconic wildlife, such as blue crabs and migrating shorebirds. The new, high-resolution dataset offers the clearest picture yet of how water moves through both pristine landscapes and altered terrain throughout the watershed. 

The novel, AI-supported mapping method the research team used also dramatically reduces costs, time, and labor required for stream mapping, making it easy to update as additional data become available or apply in other watersheds to amplify its impact. 

“The landscape is shaped by running water. Stream networks are the primary conduit between the watershed and the Bay, and now we can characterize that connection in ways that we’ve never been able to before,” says Matthew Baker, UMBC professor of geography and environmental systems, and a lead on the mapping project. In addition to locating streams and tracing their flow paths with a high degree of precision, the mapping process also allowed the team to report estimates of each channel’s width and depth along its entire length. 

Matthew Baker led the generation of the new hydrography dataset. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

A resource for restoration

“When you spend a lot of time looking at hillshade relief maps, you begin to recognize the extent of human manipulation of terrain and how dramatically we have shaped how water flows across the landscape,” Baker adds. The new data will allow individuals and organizations to improve efforts to mitigate any harms from human disruption. 

Environmental groups and government agencies, including the CC and CBP, can use the data to prioritize restoration projects, like targeted streamside tree plantings that can mitigate excessive erosion—detected as unusually steep banks or deep channels relative to a stream’s width—and filter pollutants to improve water quality. Farmers and urban planners are likely to find it useful as well, to decrease the detrimental effects of agricultural runoff or wisely manage development to avoid flooding and minimize detrimental effects on wildlife habitat, for example.  

“These maps represent over six years of hard work, and I can’t wait to see what people do with this highly anticipated dataset,” says David Saavedra ’14, environmental science. Saavedra’s role as a senior geospatial technical lead at the Chesapeake Conservancy had him intimately involved with the project from brainstorming to implementation. 

The project has been personally rewarding for Saavedra, too. “To work alongside Dr. Matt Baker all these years has been a wonderful opportunity,” he says. “I continue to learn from him every day and am proud to consider him a colleague and mentor.”

These streams were all missed by the previous dataset, but the new method picked them up. (David Saavedra)

What to leave in, what to leave out?

This project is the first to harness high-resolution LiDAR data and artificial intelligence for large-scale, automated stream mapping. LiDAR, a laser-based system deployed via aircraft, captured elevation data with centimeter-level accuracy, generating a three-dimensional portrait of the terrain. AI algorithms, leveraging resources at UMBC’s High-Performance Computing Facility (HPCF), then processed the data, employing computer-vision techniques to identify channels. 

David Saavedra played a key role in validating the new dataset at the Chesapeake Conservancy. (Courtesy of Saavedra)

The HPCF computers mapped the entire watershed in a mere two weeks—a feat that traditional methods might take years to accomplish. The results achieved 94 percent accuracy for streams represented in existing data, and between 67 and 82 percent accuracy for previously unmapped streams, as validated by Saavedra against two other datasets, aerial imagery and LiDAR-derived topographic maps.

“I led a painstaking process of manually evaluating over 7,000 stream reaches across the watershed to conduct a thorough accuracy assessment on this novel dataset,” Saavedra says. Now that the methodology has been demonstrated effective, that level of manual validation shouldn’t be necessary if the technique is applied elsewhere.  

The algorithm needed some tweaks along the way, however. Initially, it included channel-shaped features that made less sense to include on a stream map, like detention ponds, green swales, gutters, and crop furrows. That necessitated modifications to the algorithm to remove those features.  

“Part of the challenge in interpreting the terrain was to make distinctions between those features and more natural channels,” Baker says. “So in our model, we had to eliminate some features that were mapped initially. That was unexpected.”

Eye-opening opportunities

Labeeb Ahmed is excited about the research possibilities the new dataset presents. (Courtesy of Ahmed)

The resulting maps offer a tenfold boost in resolution, moving from a 1:24,000 map scale to a 1:2,400 map scale with each pixel representing one square meter. The new stream maps align with recently-developed land cover maps produced at the same resolution, which are being released at the same time. 

“I think when people begin using our hyper-resolution hydrography in conjunction with the one-meter land use data, it will be eye-opening to see just how connected the landscape is to our waterways,” Saavedra says. “There are so many opportunities to improve our region’s water quality, many of which may not have been readily apparent with previous data.” 

Labeeb Ahmed ’15, environmental science, has been involved in managing the data release through his role as a geographer in the Chesapeake Bay Program at the EPA. 

“The lack of consistent high-resolution hydrography data has always been a challenge, as it is critical for numerous outcomes outlined in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, such as mapping forest buffers, non-tidal wetlands, species habitats for brook trout and black duck, and defining stream health,” he says. “This data release will enable novel and interesting research and scientific inquiries. I’m excited to see how other researchers and stakeholders will use this data in their conservation and restoration efforts.”

The new stream maps (blue) not only show more streams than the old maps (red), but trace their paths in more detail. (Courtesy of Matthew Baker)