All posts by: Catherine Meyers

U.S. News ranks UMBC’s online master’s in information systems among best in the nation

U.S. News and World Report has recognized UMBC’s online master’s degree in information systems as #34 on their national list of 2024 Best Online Master’s in Information Technology Programs. The program moved up seven spots from last year’s ranking.

The U.S. News rankings evaluate programs based on qualities such as strong faculty credentials, a good reputation among peer institutions, and the opportunity for students to use diverse online learning tools and engage with their instructors and classmates.

In response to surging interest in artificial intelligence, this year the UMBC program added a new class on AI fundamentals. AI is also one of four program tracks that students can choose to tailor their degree to their career goals. The other tracks are cybersecurity, data science, and user experience.

Recently, the program also launched five certificates, which students can pursue on their way to a master’s degree, or as a stand-alone credential.

Mechanical engineering professor Timmie Topoleski honored for his service to the Society for Biomaterials

Timmie Topoleski, professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, has received the 2024 Society for Biomaterials Award for Service, which honors individuals who have devoted significant time and energy to advancing the goals of the professional society.

The Society for Biomaterials brings together professionals from academia, government, and business to promote advancements in biomaterials science, education, and professional standards to enhance human health and quality of life.

“I do not know anyone for whom “Service” is written in their DNA as it is for Tim,” said Paul Ducheyne, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania who nominated Topoleski for the award and is quoted in a society press release.

Topoleski has served on and chaired many Society for Biomaterials committees and has taken on leadership positions for many years. His own research has focused on understanding the behavior of a range of biomaterials, from the harmful plaques that can build up in people’s arteries, to the metal, ceramic, and cement used in joint replacements. The work may lead to better ways to diagnose and treat diseases such as arthritis and heart disease.

“I enjoy working to make the Society for Biomaterials a society that serves the needs of our members and provides a forum for the exchange of the latest developments in our biomaterials research,” Topoleski says. “It is an honor and very humbling to be in the company of those who previously received the award.”

UMBC manufacturing research center gets boost from new partnership with U.S. Army

The Center for Research in Emergent Manufacturing (CREM), which started as the ambitious idea of two UMBC researchers in 2019, is launching a major new project with the U.S. Army and other partners this year. UMBC has received an initial amount of more than $3 million to fund the first year of the project, which will investigate ways to digitize the army’s supply chain.

CREM is led by director Nilanjan Banerjee, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, and associate director Donna Ruginski, associate vice president for center development in the Office of Research and Creative Achievement at UMBC. It aims to help manufacturers reap the benefits, and manage the risks, of new manufacturing approaches increasingly centered around computer systems—a concept known as digital manufacturing.

Since its founding, the center has already established programs to educate manufacturing professionals in cybersecurity. The new project will significantly advance the center’s research activities and impact.

“The partnership with the army is an important step in our evolution as a research center. We will be working on cutting edge problems for the Army in the areas of digitization,” says Banerjee.

“We’re new and full of energy,” says Ruginski. “I’m confident we’ll make a difference.”

From spinning jennies to generative AI

Manufacturing has come a long way since the 18th-century textile industry was revolutionized by the invention of machines such as spinning jennies, which greatly increased the amount of thread a single worker could produce. Since then, new technologies, such as the electric grid in the early 20^th century and computers in the mid-century, brought further waves of change to the way goods are made.

On a modern factory floor, robots and their computer control systems increasingly take the place of humans in the assembly process, and the future of manufacturing will likely be even more automated and digitized than it is today. Companies are increasingly turning to new technologies such as smart sensors, AI, cloud computing, and advanced analytics to increase the flexibility, resilience, and efficiency of their operations. This transformation—called industry 4.0—holds enormous promise to improve living standards by increasing productivity, but it also comes with some perils, including vulnerability to cyberattacks.

Robot arm and electronic equipment. — Equipment in the operations technology cyber range. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Training and research

UMBC aims to help manufacturers navigate the industry 4.0 shift. Part of that mission will be to educate future workers in digital manufacturing, be they UMBC students or working professionals looking to expand their skill set.

In 2020, under the auspices of CREM, Banerjee and Ruginski launched the Cybersecurity for Manufacturing Operational Technology (CyMOT) program to train manufacturing professionals in best practices for preventing cyberattacks on manufacturing operations. Through the program, CREM has educated more than 300 manufacturers from small and medium-sized businesses.

“The manufacturing sector has suffered a number of cyberattacks recently, so it’s important to make sure people in the sector are trained in cybersecurity,” says Banerjee.

CREM also hosts a state-of-the-art cybersecurity training and research facility, called a cyber range, specifically focused on digital manufacturing technology—one of only a few in the country. In the coming months, the cyber range will move to a new and dedicated location on the UMBC campus.

“The research and training efforts conducted by CREM under Dr. Banerjee’s leadership have wide-ranging consequences,” says Karl Steiner, the vice president for research and creative achievement at UMBC. “As digital manufacturing rapidly becomes a national and global standard, it is critical to develop adaptive cybersecurity strategies and protocols to secure the global supply pipeline. I am delighted that CREM is supported through one of three major research partnerships that UMBC developed in recent years with the U.S. Army.”

UMBC joins national effort to improve pathways for women of color in tech

Earlier this month, UMBC joined dozens of other founding institutions at the kick-off meeting of a newly launched initiative to ensure sustained resources and opportunities in tech fields for women of color.

The effort, called the Action Collaborative on Transforming Trajectories for Women of Color in Tech, is organized by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and guided by the findings and recommendations detailed in a 2022 National Academies report. According to the report, while women of color make up a substantial and growing percentage of the female population in the United States, they earn a small percentage of computing degrees, and remain significantly underrepresented in the tech workforce.

UMBC has a history of success running programs, such the nationally recognized Meyerhoff Scholars Program and the Center for Women in Technology, that work to advance equity and inclusion and increase diversity among future leaders in science, technology, engineering, and related fields.

“Tech jobs are a vital part of our society,” says Anupam Joshi, the acting dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology at UMBC. “We need to tap the entire talent base of the country to fill these jobs.”

UMBC’s efforts as part of the action collaborative will be a continuation of the university’s commitment to supporting students from underrepresented groups as they pursue technical education, he says. “UMBC has a solid foundation that we can build on.”

The action collaborative will offer participating institutions—representing higher education, national laboratories, and government—a platform to exchange ideas and promising practices for increasing the recruitment, retention, and advancement in tech fields of women who identify as African American, Black, Hispanic, Latina, Native American, Asian American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

The action collaborative’s member institutions will collaborate over the coming four years to share novel, promising, and evidence-based practices, discuss and advance research priorities, share data collection practices, and more.

“This initiative will require dedication and collaboration from all of us,” said National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt, in a press release. “We are committed to facilitating research, collaboration, and action that reflect the representation and lived experiences of women of color, in hopes of driving substantial change in the tech and engineering ecosystem.”

More information can be found on the action collaborative’s website.

Building next-gen AI chips at UMBC: A Q&A with NSF CAREER award winner Chenchen Liu

Many recent artificial intelligence (AI) breakthroughs—such as smartphone tools that recognize your friends’ faces or understand your spoken commands—are based on a computing approach that was first dreamed up nearly 80 years ago. Called neural networks, the approach loosely mimics the way biological brains work. For decades, it was a quixotic idea with results that fell far short of the power of human brains. Yet starting in the early 2000s, the technique took off. What changed? In short, computers finally got fast enough (and training data plentiful enough) for neural networks to realize their hoped-for potential.

Woman in white blouse and jacket, who studies AI chips — Chenchen Liu (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The story of neural networks illustrates a key principle in computer science: the power of any computing technique is bound by the capabilities of the hardware that runs it. Improving that hardware is a major research focus for Chenchen Liu, an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UMBC. Liu was recently awarded a prestigious NSF CAREER award totaling nearly $540,000 that will fund her efforts over the next five years to advance the next generation of powerful computer chips.

As society continues to engage with the implications of the latest commercial iterations of AI, research efforts such as Liu’s are looking ahead to an even newer wave of applications, including self-driving cars, immersive virtual reality, and AI-assisted agriculture. These new applications often require separate neural networks—for example, an image recognition system and a collision avoidance system, to share information and work together.

Working with students and colleagues, Liu is studying how modifications to state-of-the-art AI chips could make such coordination easier.

UMBC News asked Liu about her research, the NSF CAREER award, the future of AI, and the need for responsible AI use.

UMBC News: What are some of the main challenges holding back next-generation AI applications?

Liu: In next-gen AI applications, machines are faced with a complex composition of multiple tasks, requiring them to run multiple AI models simultaneously. And not only do the models need to run at the same time, they need to share information from one to the other. The computing needs of the models may be different. Some models may need a lot of computing power, others may need a lot of memory. It becomes very difficult to coordinate these distinct resource needs on a single computing platform and to run everything in parallel and as efficiently as possible.

UMBC News: What are some ways that you plan to tackle these challenges in your NSF CAREER-funded research?

Liu: We first need to map the interactions of the different models and understand what computing resources they need and how they work together. We then plan to investigate a novel computer chip architecture designed to support these interactions. We will look for ways to flexibly schedule tasks and allocate computing power and memory so the system can operate differently for different scenarios. Eventually, we will integrate these techniques into a comprehensive framework that could be widely applied to various next-gen AI applications.

UMBC News: What are you the most excited about in your work?

Liu: I believe an incredible increase in AI complexity will be the next big thing in the world, and I am excited to become a small part of it. The increase in complexity comes with an urgent need for novel computer architecture to support it. Since the first computer was invented, people have been trying to optimize computing performance. Now with AI, current computing resources cannot meet the requirements caused by larger and larger volumes of data. A lot of researchers are working on novel computing architectures to improve performance and I am happy to be one of them.

UMBC News: Do you see a lot of opportunities for students in the field?

Liu: AI is changing everything in the world now. You can hear about job opportunities in Silicon Valley or with new AI start-ups nowadays, indicating a thriving new era of careers centered on AI computing. This trend is also shaping the interests of students on campus. They want to work on projects with AI components and we offer opportunities like that in many of our classes. It’s not only an opportunity for students, but also an opportunity for us to review our course development and career guidance.

UMBC News: What do you think is the future of AI?

Liu: The overall feeling is one of awe. Just like the first word carved on stone and the first rocket launched to the sky, AI is another milestone in human history. It marks humankind’s exploration of intelligence itself, asking questions about how it is formed and how it might evolve.

We should proceed cautiously, since AI is also strong enough now to challenge human intelligence and even deceive us. Many governments have made calls to regulate it.

I believe in a few years, we will have every perspective of our world reshaped by AI, with clear impacts on the economy and society.

As summer wildfire smoke choked Baltimore, UMBC air pollution researchers leapt into action

Starting this May, a series of wildfires in Eastern Canada sent enormous smoke clouds wafting into the U.S., triggering air quality warnings in cities from the Midwest to the Northeast. For days, orange skies backdropped landscapes clouded by acrid air. People who could hunkered inside with the doors and windows shut. Those who had to go out faced itchy eyes, burning throats, and worse.

As a resident of the Baltimore area—which was blanketed with particularly bad smoke in both early and late June—UMBC Professor Chris Hennigan looked at the haze with dismay. But as an environmental engineer who studies air pollution, he had an additional thought: “We were looking at the air quality forecasts, and we thought ‘We have to gather data,’” he says.

The public found many colorful words to describe the summer’s unwanted smoke: brutal, eerie, dystopian.

Hennigan and his team have been working to put numbers to the adjectives. On the roof of the engineering building, the researchers installed a squat, white sensor that monitors the levels of tiny particles in the air, particularly those measuring 2.5 micrometers in diameter or less—smaller than most bacteria. Called PM_2.5, these particles are released in large numbers during fires. They are dangerous to human health because they can work their way into the deepest parts of the lungs and even enter the bloodstream.

Three people stand on a roof next to equipment. Trees in distance. — Chris Hennigan, Joel Tyson, Ph.D. ’23, and Luis Rodriguez ’25 (left to right) on the roof of the engineering building next to an air quality sensor. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The sensor showed huge spikes in PM_2.5 when the smoke blew through, on some days reaching levels considered unhealthy for anyone to breathe.

The researchers also set up equipment to filter particles out of the air. After 24 hours, they collected the filters, which they are storing, neatly labeled, in a refrigerator in Hennigan’s lab.

A gloved hand holds a sample dish with dark contents. Another sample dish is white. — Hennigan shows samples of smoke particles collected this summer. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The filtered samples will advance at least two ongoing investigations, Hennigan says. In one avenue of inquiry, Joel Tyson, Ph.D. ’23, biochemical engineering, is studying how tiny particles can harm human lung cells. Before this year’s smoky summer, Tyson had been studying the toxic effects of particulate matter normally found in the Baltimore air. With the new smoke samples, he will start to investigate whether wildfire smoke particles, per unit, are more toxic than regular urban particulate matter, which comes from sources such as cars and power plants. Some studies have indicated that wildfire particulate matter is indeed more toxic, but more research is needed before any definitive conclusions can be reached.

In another line of research, Hennigan is also studying how particles in the air, including from smoke, may affect the climate. Undergraduate chemical engineering students Danielle Larios ’25 and Luis Rodriguez ’25 are assisting in the investigations.

The researchers study how particles of brown-colored carbon-containing material absorb light. Burning vegetation sends large amounts of this brown carbon into the atmosphere. It’s possible that the particles are trapping significant heat from the sun, accelerating the pace of planetary warming. Such effects are not normally included in global climate models, and better understanding of the process could improve humanity’s ability to predict, and manage, the coming years of climate upheaval.

Three people wearing gloves and lab coats talk in a laboratory. — Rodriguez, Danielle Larios ’25 and Hennigan (left to right) discuss research in the lab. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Two people in the lab look at liquid in a container. — Rodriguez, Danielle Larios ’25 and Hennigan (left to right) discuss research in the lab. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Climate change and wildfires are intimately linked. This summer was not only smoky, but also scorching. July marked the hottest month ever recorded, and scientists predict that as the world continues to warm, wildfires will continue to increase in quantity and intensity. “Smokeageddon,” as headlines put it, may become the new normal.

Hennigan says recent research illuminates how much wildfire smoke has contributed to air pollution trends. He points to a paper published in September in the scientific journal Nature that estimated that since 2016, wildfire smoke in the contiguous United States has undone around 25% of the progress in air quality made between 2000 and 2016.

For the researchers in Hennigan’s lab, those effects have been felt personally.

Rodriguez recalled how in June he had to go out to buy a fresh pack of N95 masks. “The smoke was just awful,” he says. Larios says she felt a burning at the back of her throat in just 15 minutes walking to her car.

For Tyson, the effects of the smoke were so bad that at one point he struggled to breathe and had to visit the doctor. The episode, he says, drove home the importance of his toxicology research.

All three note both the complexity of the systems they are studying and the importance of discovering new knowledge that might help society handle the environmental challenges it faces.

“Our work can have real-world impact, and that’s exciting,” says Larios.

From apples to army robots, curiosity and commitment define Priya Narayanan’s career

She didn’t exactly experience a Sir Isaac Newton-like epiphany after being conked by a falling apple, but Priya Narayanan, Ph.D. ’08, mechanical engineering, spent a lot of her time at UMBC interacting with the iconic red fruit.

For her Ph.D. thesis, Narayanan worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study whether a simple device made of a long, inclined track could reliably orient apples. The ultimate goal was to automate visual inspection of the fruit—using cameras to spot blemishes—and the cameras required the same view of the apple each time.

Narayanan spent thousands of hours performing experiments with rolling fruit, filming high-speed videos of its descent down the track, and developing mathematical models of the apple’s motion to explore why the fruit ended up in its final orientation at the bottom of the track.

“I was able to shape the direction of the research and got interested in modeling the contact mechanics of the apples,” Narayanan says. “I thought it might be easy, but it turned out to be very hard.”

Rouben Rostamian, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMBC who worked with Narayanan on the modeling, commended her persistence.

“Priya was interested in studying the problem deeply,” he says. “She learned new areas of math so that she could really pursue her questions.”

Developing her skill set

Headshot courtesy of Priya Narayanan.

Curiosity and commitment to learning have been a constant of Narayanan’s approach to problem solving—even as the systems she studies and the roles she takes on have shifted over her career. Narayanan was recently named chief of the autonomous systems branch at the U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL). She leads teams working to develop intelligent robots to assist the U.S. military.

“I’m not studying my apples anymore,” she says. “But in graduate school, I broadened my skill set. That has really helped me throughout my career.”

After graduating from UMBC, Narayanan worked for a few years at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. She studied robotic systems that could assist patients recovering from strokes. The work gave her the opportunity to develop expertise in computer vision and image processing as well as gain experience making prototypes for robotic research and conducting clinical trials.

In 2014, Narayanan was awarded a National Research Council fellowship to work at the Naval Research Laboratory.

“It was around this time that deep learning started making waves,” she says. She shifted her focus to building artificial intelligence (AI) models. When her fellowship ended after three years, Narayanan joined the ARL, headquartered in Adelphi, Maryland, and has been there ever since.

She has ascended the ranks at the organization, moving from a research engineering position, to leader of a small team, to ultimately head of an entire branch.

Overlapping work with UMBC

Researchers under Narayanan’s leadership conduct research in robotics to help aerial, wheeled, and legged robots autonomously navigate rugged landscapes and difficult terrains, and coordinate their actions with other robots and humans.

As part of her role, Narayanan has worked with UMBC researchers affiliated with the Center for Real-time Distributed Sensing and Autonomy. The center, which is led by information systems professors Aryya Gangopadhyay and Nirmalya Roy, coordinates with ARL on research to develop AI-enabled smart robots.

A woman and two men look at a laptop screen in contemplation — Narayanan with fellow graduate students Raghavendra Angara and Jingrui Wang in the robotics lab at UMBC. (Photo courtesy of Narayanan)

Narayanan says she found her way into management by embracing leadership opportunities that came her way, such as leading an ARL seedling program that encouraged researchers to form teams and submit proposals for new high-risk, high-payoff projects. “I’ve also attended an entrepreneurship and leadership program organized by ARL in collaboration with UMBC Training Centers, so I’m still learning from the university,” she says.

She honed soft skills, such as communication and networking, that have been critical to her success. She also says her broad range of research experience has been useful in her leadership positions, helping her connect with team members who have varying areas of expertise.

an indian woman in decorate make up and outfit poses — Narayanan at a performance at UMBC. (Photo courtesy of Narayanan)

Looking back at her days at UMBC, Narayanan remembers a wonderful community and the feeling of being supported. Not long after she arrived on campus, she and a few fellow students found themselves in the same elevator as then President Freeman Hrabowski. He introduced himself and asked all the students their names and what they were studying. Later, when Narayanan and a friend performed a classical dance on campus in celebration of the Indian holiday Diwali, she remembers how President Hrabowski came backstage to complement their performance.

She encourages current students to take advantage of all that the university and the region have to offer: “Realize how many resources you have at your disposal, and really make use of them,” she says.

Uri Tasch, her Ph.D. advisor, who is now an emeritus professor of mechanical engineering, recalls how Narayanan showed up nearly every day at the lab. “You couldn’t stop her,” he said. “She did beautiful work, and she always had a smile on her face.”

UMBC’s Vandana Janeja aims to boost high-performance computing know-how to tackle environmental science challenges with a $1 million NSF grant

The discovery of the Higgs boson. The first picture of a black hole. The Covid-19 vaccine. Many recent scientific advances, such as these, owe much to a largely unsung hero: high-performance computing.

Woman smile at camera — Vandana Janeja (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Yet the use of high-performance computing is generally limited to a niche group. “Some researchers are very sophisticated in the use of these tools, but many are not,” says Vandana Janeja, a professor of information systems at UMBC.

Janeja is on a mission to spread advanced computing know-how far beyond its current borders. “It’s not just for the elites,” she says.

She was recently awarded a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) that will help further that mission. The grant is part of a larger NSF collaborative award with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences (UMCES).

Janeja and her UMBC and UMCES colleagues will work to connect a wide range of students and faculty with high-performance computing experts, creating and nurturing what has been called the cyberinfrastructure pipeline. The ultimate goal is to facilitate the flow of knowledge.

“Once one person gains experience, they can turn around and help someone else,” Janeja says. “It’s about supporting and connecting people with resources and not just about setting up the hardware and software.”

Building a high-performance computing workforce

The need for fast computers in research is driven in part by a modern deluge of data. For example, NASA estimates that it will soon have accumulated hundreds of petabytes of Earth science data, from sources such as satellites flying overhead and sensors installed on the ground. Making full use of all that data requires new approaches to computing. While traditional computers generally perform calculations one at a time, high-performance computing facilities break up the work between multiple computing nodes and run processes in parallel.

UMBC has its own high-performance computing facility, which houses computing equipment that can process data significantly faster than a standard laptop. University researchers have employed the fast computers to study topics as diverse as weather modeling, cancer treatment, and flight dynamics.

“Learning how to use high-performance computing is not straight-forward,” says Janeja. Users have to gain a good understanding of the infrastructure of the computers, and also hone their skills in identifying the best techniques to take full advantage of that infrastructure.

People with a good understanding of how these machines and their software work will be in high demand, Janeja adds.

Many modern AI algorithms, which are used by scientific researchers and big tech companies alike, require high-performance computing to operate. “While everyone is running toward the shiny object of AI, many don’t realize that there is a backbone, called cyberinfrastructure, that runs AI,” says Janeja.

Part of Janeja’s goal with the new grant is to educate students who may pursue careers building, maintaining, utilizing, and improving that cyberinfrastructure backbone. She also cares deeply about ensuring diverse groups of people have access to these roles.

“We are trying to democratize the use of cyberinfrastructure and make it accessible to people who have never used it,” Janeja says.

Jack Suess, ‘81, M.S. ‘94, UMBC’s vice president of information technology, says he is excited for his division to play a key role in the award, helping shape best practices and build a national cyberinfrastructure support structure. “I look forward to watching how this work informs not just how we support faculty, but how we train and support advanced undergraduates and graduate students to evolve into these roles,” he says.

Tackling environmental challenges

While there is no shortage of scientific questions that might be tackled with high-performance computing, Janeja and her colleagues on the new grant will test-run their collaborative initiatives with projects in environmental science.

Aerial view of rugged landscape with snow and ice. — Changes to the ice and snow in Greenland could contribute to sea level rise. (Image credit: NASA)

Janeja is also director of iHARP, an NSF-funded institute that aims to harness big data and advanced computing tools to better model how climate change will affect the polar regions. As part of the new grant, iHARP and UMCES researchers will partner with cyberinfrastructure professionals to explore environmental science questions, such as in iHARP investigating how to predict the rate of snow melting in Greenland.

Scientists increasingly rely on big data and high-performance computing to understand and predict changes in the environment. As human activities continue to put pressure on natural systems, it will be more important than ever to forge collaborations between researchers and computing experts that advance the science.

“I’m excited to leverage high-performance computing to solve real-world problems and make it accessible to students and researchers of all backgrounds,” Janeja says.

UMBC joins collaboration to create new STEM education, research center at Arecibo Observatory site in Puerto Rico

This week UMBC was named as one of four institutions chosen to work together on a National Science Foundation-funded project to establish a new science educational center at the Arecibo Observatory site in Puerto Rico. NSF will contribute more than $5 million over five years to establish the multidisciplinary center, called the Arecibo Center for Culturally Relevant and Inclusive Science Education, Computational Skills, and Community Engagement (Arecibo C3).

The center is expected to open in early 2024 and will include a research laboratory and a hands-on, interactive science center open to the public.

Patricia Ordóñez head shot — Patricia Ordóñez (Photo courtesy of Patricia Ordóñez)

Patricia Ordóñez, M.S. ’10, Ph.D. ’12, computer science, an associate professor in information systems, will lead UMBC’s contributions to the project. As part of the Arecibo C3 collaboration, Ordóñez is organizing a Women in Data Science Puerto Rico conference, as well as several workshops in data science that will be held both online and in person. One of the workshops will prepare attendees to participate in the 2024 Women in Data Science Worldwide datathon. Other workshops will recruit mothers and daughters to learn coding together, and will teach new skills to women and other participants who already code.

Several UMBC graduate and undergraduate students and staff members have been involved in developing and testing the workshop materials.

“My passion has always been to increase the number of Latinas in computing,” says Ordóñez, who, before joining the faculty of UMBC, was a member of the computer science department at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras. “There are too few of us in the field—creating inclusive programs from Arecibo C3 will help us bridge that gap.”

The other grant awardees are Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras, and the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. In addition to data science programming, Arecibo C3 will offer a suite of activities, including explorations of biodiversity and how to identify species using short segments of DNA. The Arecibo C3 team will also advance research to explore how STEM teaching can be enhanced through the presentation of data in audio, tactile, and other sensory forms, to increase accessibility.

“The new educational center builds on the great scientific, educational, and cultural legacy of the Arecibo Observatory and is closely aligned with NSF’s goal to create STEM opportunities everywhere,” said James L. Moore III, NSF assistant director for STEM Education, in a press release. “The center aims to create new opportunities for STEM education, exploration, discovery, engagement and participation of students, scientists and researchers in various STEM disciplines ranging from astronomy and radio science to biological, computer and natural sciences in Puerto Rico and beyond.”

Ordóñez credits the talents of the whole Arecibo C3 team with turning what feels like a dream of hers into a reality. “We recognize the responsibility of what we are doing and we are going to work very hard to create the environment of inclusive excellence in Arecibo that everyone deserves, so that everyone sees they have a place in STEM,” she says.

For updates on the project, please visit the Arecibo C3 website.

Students discover the beauty of mold and mentorship in Mark Marten’s UMBC lab

Mold on your bread or bathroom tiles can be a nuisance. Mold in a scientific lab can be a marvel.

Up close, the growth of mold becomes living artwork—white, feathery shoots morphing into undulating waves of color. And molds can be amazingly useful.

“They are used to ferment food, make laundry detergent enzymes, and help produce pharmaceuticals,” explains Garrett Hill ’24, biochemistry and molecular biology, who has been working with molds in the research lab of UMBC chemical engineering professor Mark Marten for more than four years. “It’s surprising how ubiquitous they are in industry.”

Mold under the microscope shows thin filaments and round dots. — Mold under the microscope. (Image by Kathie Hodge via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

Molds (along with mushrooms) belong to a group of organisms more technically known as filamentous fungi. One of the oldest and largest living organisms in the world is a filamentous fungus, nicknamed the “Humongous Fungus,” that has likely been spreading across the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon for more than 2,000 years, and has come to occupy an area of more than 2,000 acres.

The Humongous Fungus grew (and grew) through an enormous network of interconnected thread-like structures called hyphae that gather and share vital nutrients.

Networks—of a different sort—are also vitally important to the students studying fungi in Marten’s lab. Lab members, from high schoolers to Ph.D. students, work together on projects. Marten offers advice not only on research questions, but also on skills such as communication. Support flows in from the university, in the form of research awards, scholar programs, and more. It’s tied together with a simple philosophy that helps everyone flourish: “Mentorship is the magic ingredient,” Marten says.

High school research leads to UMBC

Hill found his way to Marten’s lab through a program in nearby Howard County Public Schools called the Biotechnology Career Academy. As part of the program, he earned credit for conducting research in the lab. After high school graduation, he enrolled at UMBC and has continued his work in Marten’s lab every year since.

“UMBC has a culture that emphasizes supporting students,” says Hill. “This was something that initially attracted me to the school, and something that I’ve absolutely experienced during my time here.”

In Marten’s lab, Hill has been working on research that investigates how a fungus called Aspergillus nidulans repairs damaged cell walls. Armed with a better understanding of the complicated cascade of biochemical reactions triggered when the fungal cell wall is damaged, scientists could possibly manipulate the process to use molds more effectively (or in the case of harmful molds, eradicate them more effectively.)

Man in lab coat holds petri dish with mold. — Mark Marten (left) and Garrett Hill examine mold cultures. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

To untangle the hidden and complicated inner workings of the fungus, the researchers deploy an arsenal of analytical tools and methods.

“When I started in the lab, I spent a lot of time learning the background and standard lab techniques,” Hill says. “But now that I’ve had a few years to acclimate, I have the foundation to support my own project.”

As part of that project, Hill has been investigating how to use the Nobel Prize-winning gene editing tool called CRISPR to create fungal cells with inner elements that light up. The light provides a beacon for researchers to track how those elements move as the cell experiences stress or initiates repairs.

“The sense of project ownership has been one of the most rewarding parts of my research experience,” Hill says. “When my graduate mentor and I first discussed the possibility of leading my own project, I had a brief moment of doubt. But I chose to not listen to that voice.”

Networks nourish growth

Hill says he was attracted to the beauty and power of science from a young age, even though no one in his family had a scientific career. UMBC has provided the resources and counsel to help him chart his path.

Within Marten’s lab, Hill says more experienced researchers were always willing to help. When Hill first joined as a high schooler, fellow lab member Ryland Spence ’19, biological sciences, who is now a medical student at Brown University, trained him on techniques.

“Mentorship has been so important for me, so I am always happy to provide mentorship to others whenever I get the chance,” Spence says. “A supportive environment that values diversity is very much a part of UMBC.”

Marten himself also provided enormous guidance and support. “Dr. Marten has been the strongest mentor I’ve had, helping me even before I came to UMBC,” Hill says. “He’s taught me not only about fungus, but also about how to think like a researcher, how to present research, and how to be a good student.”

University-wide programs provided Hill with additional research support. He was awarded multiple Undergraduate Research Awards (URAs), which provide financial assistance for research projects and opportunities to practice skills such as presenting research.

Hill is also part of the nationally renowned Meyerhoff Scholar Program, which seeks to increase diversity among future leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by supporting students who intend to pursue a Ph.D. or combined M.D./Ph.D. in STEM and are interested in the advancement of minorities in those fields.

“A lot of my best friends are from the program,” says Hill. “It’s been great to have that community.”

Now that he is applying to graduate schools, Hill says the Meyerhoff program provides detailed guidance through the process. “They have been an invaluable resource, and a rock really. They make sure I know what I need to do now to ensure I have opportunities in the future.”

A closing chapter and a new beginning

As the fall semester of his senior year kicks off, Hill says that he’s feeling confident and excited.

“I find myself frequently looking back on how I felt on my first day in the lab, during my first lab meeting presentation, or during my first day of classes, and realizing how much I’ve grown these past few years,” he says. “What once used to really shake me, I am now able to do with confidence—that tells me a lot about what I’ve gained from my research experience.”

As Hill gears up for grad school, he is passing the baton to other UMBC students like Matthew Quintanilla ’27, chemical engineering, a first-year student whose journey shares many similarities with Hill’s. The first in his family to pursue a scientific career, Quintanilla also started work in Marten’s lab as a high-schooler and decided to enroll at UMBC. In Marten’s lab, Quintanilla is working with Ph.D. student Alex Doan, who attended the same high school and embraced the opportunity to mentor fellow students.

“It’s been great catching up on high school news, but more importantly helping students grow,” says Doan.

A student in a lab coat holds a glass rod in the flames of a Bunsen burner — Matthew Quintanilla works in the lab. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Quintanilla is also a URA-recipient and Meyerhoff Scholar, and says he is excited for the new school year.

“I am eager to start my academic career at UMBC, meet many others, and integrate my knowledge from courses into my lab work,” he says.

“Matthew and Garrett are both really talented individuals,” says Marten. “Having them in the lab has been a win-win situation.”

April Householder ’95, the director of undergraduate research and prestigious scholarships at UMBC, looks at Marten’s lab as a microcosm of the vibrant UMBC research environment. “These two students—Garrett and Matthew—represent two ends of the research spectrum. One is just getting started, and the other is a four-time URA Scholar,” she says.

“The support these students receive from the mentorship in their lab is invaluable, but also as important is the peer-to-peer support they will get from one another. It’s this type of academic community building that gets student researchers excited about being a part of UMBC.”

Cybersecurity expert Richard Forno appointed an honorary international professor

Richard Forno, assistant director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity and a principal lecturer in the department of computer science and electrical engineering, has been appointed an honorary international professor in the School of Science and Engineering at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH), one of Mexico’s oldest universities.

Forno joins a select group of academics who have been named honorary international professors at UAEH. The recipients, some of whom have received some of the highest honors in their fields, are chosen for their overall academic and professional contributions.

The investiture ceremony coincided with the university’s two-week-long international book fair, held in late August and organized this year around the theme of cybersecurity. Over two days, Forno delivered five talks, met students and faculty, and spoke with university leaders about areas of possible collaboration between UMBC and UAEH.

A man in a suit stands at a podium. — Richard Forno delivers a lecture on cybersecurity. (Photo courtesy of UAEH)

Countries around the world share the challenge of maintaining cybersecurity in an interconnected and ever-evolving digital landscape. In his main lecture, Forno emphasized the importance of education and interdisciplinary collaboration to combat cybersecurity threats.

Forno says the formal investiture ceremony, held in one of Hidalgo’s oldest structures, was a particularly meaningful event for him. “It was a humbling personal experience and certainly a professional honor that I will not soon forget,” he says.

Harnessing AI to improve healthcare: Sanjay Purushotham wins $590,000+ NSF CAREER award

Today, a plethora of technologies, from image recognition tools to chatbots, are powered by machine learning. A key component to the technique’s success is data—and lots of it. For doctors and hospitals who hope to use machine learning to improve healthcare, that need for copious data presents a problem: medical data is protected by privacy laws and often exists in incomplete or diverse forms—from doctor’s notes to medical scans—that make it difficult for machine learning models to use it effectively.

“Using data better to aid medical decisions is a grand challenge of the 21st century,” says Sanjay Purushotham, an assistant professor in information systems at UMBC. “We need innovations in existing techniques to take full advantage of artificial intelligence in healthcare.”

Together with his students, Purushotham is tackling that challenge. He recently received a prestigious NSF CAREER award to support his team’s efforts to develop new ways to train health-focused machine learning models.

Purushotham has been contributing his expertise in computer science to collaborations with doctors and hospitals for almost ten years. The NSF CAREER award will help Purushotham further that research in a new direction, and ultimately, his team hopes their work will improve medical treatments and reduce costs, benefiting patients around the world.

The need for data-driven healthcare

Portrait photo of man in suit jacket in front of a brick building. — Sanjay Purushotham (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

When you visit the doctor, you may be asked about your general health, your family medical history, and your current symptoms. The doctor may order a series of tests and scans. All of this data could yield valuable insights into your health and the best course of medical treatment.

Bringing the data together in ways that make it accessible and illuminating is an ongoing challenge in health care. Synthesizing and presenting health information in new ways could improve individual medical care. Computer systems could ensure busy doctors see the most relevant information at the right time, aiding their decision making. It could also prove valuable for addressing public health challenges, such as the spread of infectious diseases.

“During the COVID pandemic, the health community realized the importance of having access to good data,” says Purushotham. Better data could help public officials make better decisions about when to take precautions, such as closing schools. It could also help individuals better understand the risks when choosing to partake in activities like attending large social gatherings or traveling.

Over the next five years, the award will support Purushotham and his students as they investigate ways to advance a technique called federated learning, which could allow hospitals and doctors to jointly build and evaluate a machine learning model without sharing sensitive medical data.

A new way to collaborate

Most machine learning models are trained centrally, on vast quantities of data that are often scrapped from the internet. However, a lot of data exists that cannot be sent to a central processing facility, for cost or privacy reasons. The term ‘federated learning’ was coined in 2016 to describe a decentralized machine learning technique that could train on data that never leaves users’ mobile phones. Instead, individual devices would take turns downloading the model, training it on their own data, and then sending the updated model parameters back to a central location.

One person sits in front of a computer and microphone, while two standing people look at the screen. — Students Sultan Ahmed (left) and Zahid Hassan Tushar (center) work in the lab with Sanjay Purushotham (right). (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The general approach could be beneficial in many industries, from finance to manufacturing. In health care, federated learning has clear appeal because privacy laws strictly limit how health data can be shared.

For example, federated learning could allow hospitals to train a joint model on their medical data, such as CT scans, without sharing the scans with each other. The jointly trained model might reveal new ways to detect disease.

Yet, many hurdles remain to successfully deploying the technique, including the non-uniformity and limited nature of some patient data, the varying computational resources available to different medical practitioners, and the threat of bad actors seeking access to private information.

Advancing federated learning

In the coming years, Purushotham and his team will pursue three main avenues of research to address the obstacles of deploying federated learning in healthcare. The project will develop new algorithms, methodologies, and software to make data-driven federated learning for healthcare more robust and trustworthy.

The first focus of the team will be to develop new ways to handle the diversity of health data. The team will then study potential methods of attacks on the federated learning systems, and develop defenses against such attacks. The researchers will also investigate ways that the system can “un-learn” in situations where users request the influence of their data be removed from the model. In all cases, the researchers will focus on developing fair and interpretable algorithms. Finally, the researchers will study ways to generate synthetic health data, which can be used to augment or replace real data to improve the AI models.

The scope of the work is ambitious, but Purushotham is confident in his team.

“I have great students and collaborators,” he says. “I’m really excited to make federated learning in healthcare work.”

All posts by: Catherine Meyers

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UMBC News: What do you think is the future of AI?

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Developing her skill set

Overlapping work with UMBC

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Building a high-performance computing workforce

Tackling environmental challenges

UMBC joins collaboration to create new STEM education, research center at Arecibo Observatory site in Puerto Rico

Students discover the beauty of mold and mentorship in Mark Marten’s UMBC lab

High school research leads to UMBC

Networks nourish growth

A closing chapter and a new beginning

Cybersecurity expert Richard Forno appointed an honorary international professor

Harnessing AI to improve healthcare: Sanjay Purushotham wins $590,000+ NSF CAREER award

The need for data-driven healthcare

A new way to collaborate

Advancing federated learning

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All posts by: Catherine Meyers

Read more about the career of a recent graduate of the online master’s in information systems and find out if it’s the right program for you.

From spinning jennies to generative AI

Training and research

UMBC News: What are some of the main challenges holding back next-generation AI applications?

UMBC News: What are some ways that you plan to tackle these challenges in your NSF CAREER-funded research?

UMBC News: What are you the most excited about in your work?

UMBC News: Do you see a lot of opportunities for students in the field?

UMBC News: What do you think is the future of AI?

Developing her skill set

Overlapping work with UMBC

Building a high-performance computing workforce

Tackling environmental challenges

High school research leads to UMBC

Networks nourish growth

A closing chapter and a new beginning

The need for data-driven healthcare

A new way to collaborate

Advancing federated learning

Resources

Important Contacts

Emergency Info

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