The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded $10 million, the maximum allowable amount, to a set of projects, led by UMBC’s Yonathan Zohar, targeted to solve specific aquaculture challenges.
For decades, Zohar, professor and chair of marine biotechnology, has made steady progress toward making large-scale, sustainable land-based aquaculture—raising fish on land—a reality. Sustainable Aquaculture Systems Supporting Atlantic Salmon, known as SAS2, will address a range of remaining hurdles hindering the success of these emerging aquaculture platforms. SAS2 includes several academic and federal research institutions and nine industry partners from across the U.S., plus partners in Iceland and Norway.
“The mission is to enable an innovative, effective, and sustainable U.S. Atlantic salmon production platform that will transform the U.S. food and aquaculture systems and secure and increase high-quality and affordable seafood production for the world,” says Zohar, director of the Aquaculture Research Center at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
Land-based aquaculture systems are self-contained, avoiding the risks of environmental pollution or farmed fish escaping and interbreeding with wild stocks. They can be built anywhere, reducing the carbon footprint and cost of transporting fish. The water composition (salt and other minerals) can be optimized for different species, based on their natural habitat. Controlled light and temperature cycles ensure optimal year-round fish performance and production and entrain spawners to breed at different times of year, resulting in fish coming to market size year-round.
As demand for seafood continues to rise, innovative systems like this pave the way for producing a much greater quantity of seafood in a more sustainable way.
Yonathan Zohar observes a tank at the Aquaculture Research Center, located at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology.
Filling the knowledge gaps
SAS2 builds on another Zohar-led project, the Recirculating Aquaculture Salmon Network, or RAS-N. “RAS-N has been developing a prioritized list of the challenges we need to address and where we should invest resources. It asks: What are the gaps in knowledge? What are the main hurdles in technology, biology, and engineering?” Zohar explains. “And now, with SAS2, we’re taking that information and implementing it.”
Two-thirds of the project funding is dedicated to research. The remaining third is split evenly between education/workforce development and extension/community engagement. Professionals from all of these areas are co-directors on the grant.
SAS2 includes 17 objectives, each addressing a particular remaining challenge to the large-scale implementation of land-based salmon aquaculture. For example, one priority is developing a domestic brood stock, so aquaculture facilities in the U.S. aren’t solely dependent on importing salmon eggs from Europe. Another objective is biologically treating the tons of solid waste (fish poop) the facilities produce and converting it to fuel-grade biogas. Others focus on developing environmentally responsible feeds and ensuring optimal fish quality.
Yonathan Zohar (l) and Jorge Gomezjurado (r) at IMET’s Aquaculture Research Center.
From research to workforce
Also, Zohar says, “Workforce development is a huge bottleneck, because with these facilities popping up like mushrooms, there aren’t enough skilled workers available with the right kind of training.” These huge facilities rely on skilled technicians that can think creatively to troubleshoot problems on the spot. Aquaculture industry leaders, such as George Nardi, vice president for aquaculture services at Innovasea, are partners on the grant to assist with this and other parts of the work.
“I was impressed with the breadth of the workforce development in this proposal—everywhere from high school to university,” Nardi said at a kickoff meeting for SAS2. “My experience tells me that in aquaculture we need a great variety of skillsets to succeed,” he added. “And this project, with the enormous amount of talent surrounding it, is going to help the industry move forward.”
Extending the impact
In addition to UMBC, the other primary academic partner is the University of Maine, whose Aquaculture Research Institute is a leader in aquaculture on the East Coast.
“The Aquaculture Research Institute (ARI) at UMaine is excited to continue working with UMBC and implementing the lessons learned from the RAS-N network,” says Debbie Bouchard, director of the ARI. “Working with other institutions on the grant, we are focusing on integrated workforce development pathways that incorporate not only industry priorities and results from the research objectives, but also diversity and inclusion values that are important to advancing a sustainable RAS industry and rural development.”
The team’s collaborative and transdisciplinary approach to the project will create opportunities to transform the industry by addressing key bottlenecks that thus far have created challenges in scaling up land-based aquaculture. Both RAS-N and SAS2 “have always been stakeholder-driven,” Zohar says. “We are not in the ivory tower of academia telling businesses ‘you should do this and that.’ Instead, it’s us asking the industry, ‘What do you need to ensure success?’.”
Extension is an important part of the project, too. As aquaculture facilities can take up a significant physical footprint, “One of our objectives is community engagement, being totally transparent and keeping a dialogue going.” That is happening already as AquaCon, another industry partner on the grant, works with Zohar and other colleagues to implement salmon aquaculture facilities on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Poised to succeed
Fish in a tank at IMET’s Aquaculture Research Center in Baltimore.
The new $10 million grant is part of a National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) program, which includes everything from corn to beef. The fact that an aquaculture project was selected and awarded the maximum amount indicates the priority the federal government has placed on innovative, sustainable food production strategies for the future.
“The goals are for it to be transformative, to be collaborative, to be synergistic, and to cross boundaries,” Zohar says. “The USDA program is called sustainable agriculture systems, so it takes a systems approach and goes from basic science to the translational.”
“It’s an exciting time for aquaculture in Maine and the nation,” Bouchard says. “I’m looking forward to seeing all the great things that are going to come out of this over the next five years.”
Banner image: The Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology in Baltimore. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
UMBC is part of a new consortium that has received $64.1 million from NASA to establish the Partnership for Heliophysics and Space Environment Research (PHaSER) and fund it for the next five years. UMBC will receive $10 million from the award to move forward the next phase of heliophysics research at the university.
Heliophysics researchers study the Sun and how it affects and interacts with the solar system, including its role in space weather. The Catholic University of America leads the PHaSER consortium, which also includes University of Maryland, College Park (UMD); George Mason University; Howard University; and the Universities Space Research Association.
The UMBC arm of PHaSER will replace the Goddard Planetary and Heliophysics Institute (GPHI), a cooperative agreement between NASA, UMD, and UMBC that UMBC has led for the last 10 years. Both GPHI and PHaSER support missions run by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Heliophysics Science Division (HSD). Recent GPHI research has included identification of a phenomenon known as the Terminator, which helps describe sun cycles and could improve decade-scale weather forecasts.
“The primary purpose of PHaSER is to collaboratively support the HSD in studying plasma processes in our solar system and developing new missions and instruments,” says Jan Merka. He served as GPHI director and will now direct the UMBC arm of PHaSER. “UMBC has a long tradition of working with NASA and HSD,” Merka adds, noting that in the last year alone GPHI funded 30 full-time researchers, 15 of them at UMBC.
GPHI director, and now PHaSER director at UMBC, Jan Merka. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
All hands on deck
“The mission of the heliophysics division is to study the transport of energy, in the form of particles and radiation from the sun through interplanetary space and its effects on Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere,” saysBob Robinson, the director of PHaSER and research professor of physicsat Catholic University. PHaSER will support that mission through a multi-pronged approach targeting a range of initiatives.
For example, PHaSER’s goals include nurturing early-career and underrepresented researchers. Specific programs designed to do that will be a hallmark of the new center, including student internships and funding for postdocs. PHaSER support will also help sustain and strengthen partnerships across institutions and with NASA researchers. It will fund visiting scientists and sabbaticals for established faculty, and offer conference hosting and organization.
“PHaSER represents a network as much as a partnership, and we will leverage the many linkages the member institutions have to help move HSD scientific and technical projects forward,” the group said in its proposal.
“Cooperative agreements like GPHI and PHaSER enable closer connections between NASA and universities, which simplifies sharing ideas and performing joint research and technology development,” Merka adds. He emphasizes, “Another significant benefit is connecting students with research opportunities and mentors in heliophysics.”
The new partnership will enable institutions to hire more researchers in specialty heliophysics fields. Plus, in addition to supporting researchers, the PhaSER proposal calls for staff at NASA and the partner institutions to be directly engaged in planning, technology development, and implementation for PHaSER projects.
By supporting heliophysics researchers, students, and staff, PHaSER will empower people at all career levels and from all backgrounds to contribute new knowledge about the Sun and how it affects processes in the solar system.
This image shows some of the ways that space weather can affect technologies such as airplanes, GPS systems, and the power grid. Credit: NASA
Tradition of partnership
The strength of UMBC’s relationship with NASA goes beyond GPHI and PHaSER. The Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), a similar partnership housed at UMBC, recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. And a third partnership, the Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST), recently received a funding renewal and enhancement.
JCET scientists, engineers, and statisticians conduct research on Earth and its atmosphere, while CSST supports researchers who study distant celestial bodies and phenomena. Both centers are housed at UMBC, which is one of the top 100 public universities in the U.S. for NASA funding.
“We are very proud of this new multi-institutional partnership with NASA Goddard,” says Karl Steiner, vice president for research at UMBC. “The new PHaSER program will not only continue to enhance our heliophysics research capability, but also provide unique opportunities for UMBC faculty and students to work in this important field.”
Banner image: A terminator event, a phenomenon discovered by GPHI researcher Robert Leamon, on the Sun in 2011. The three different colors (added by researchers) represent three temperatures. Photo courtesy of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Extreme heat is on the rise, and people in urban areas with minimal tree canopy are especially susceptible to its harmful effects. Urban tree planting projects have proliferated in recent years, because trees are associated with lower urban temperatures, are relatively low-cost, and offer numerous benefits beyond cooling. A new study in Environmental Research Lettersdescribes nuances of how trees affect temperature in cities. The research findings could have a major public impact by helping urban planners reap the greatest benefits from tree planting efforts and protect their most vulnerable residents.
“Urban heat is a big deal, and tree canopy can help,” says Matthew Baker, second author on the study and a professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC. Trees can shade heat-trapping surfaces, such as roads, roofs, and sidewalks. Transpiration from trees is also important to consider, but has gotten less attention. In transpiration, trees release water through their leaves that cools the air when it evaporates.
Both shading and transpiration are important contributors to cooling-by-trees, but they offer the greatest benefits in different conditions. “Different kinds of canopy do different kinds of work,” explains Baker, who also serves as associate dean for faculty affairs in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at UMBC. For example, trees above paved surfaces function differently than those above unpaved surfaces.
The new paper, which was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Geography and Spatial Sciences program, found that all the differences the researchers examined affect the role that trees play in cooling. Understanding which kinds of canopy could help the greatest number of residents most during heat events could improve quality of life in cities—and even save lives.
A figure from the paper by Matthew Baker and lead author Michael Alonzo visualizes the distribution of canopy cover in Washington, DC.
Canopy type matters
Baker and colleagues, including lead author Michael Alonzo at American University, analyzed more than 70,000 air temperature measurements collected on a hot summer day in 2018 in Washington, DC. They collected data using sensors attached to vehicles in the pre-dawn hours, during afternoon peak heat, and in the evening along different routes throughout the city.
In addition to looking at the effect of time of day, the researchers separated “hard canopy” (tree canopy above impervious surfaces, such as streets or rooftops) and “soft canopy” (tree canopy above unpaved surfaces, such as in yards or parks). They further divided soft canopy into patches (larger canopies found in large parks and forests) and “distributed” canopy (such as individual trees spread out among backyards or at a ball field).
Overall, and in agreement with previous studies, total tree canopy reduced temperature at every time tested. The amount of cooling increased linearly as the percentage of canopy cover in a location increased. For example, with 50 percent tree cover, the cooling effect was about twice as large as at 25 percent tree cover. The greatest overall effect was in the afternoon, when trees reduced the temperature by 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.2 degrees Fahrenheit).
An example of a forest patch, or clump. Clumped canopy demonstrated the ability to retain its lower temperatures even in afternoon heat. Photo by Michael Alonzo.
Cooler nights thanks to soft canopy
While the overall findings seem clear, once the researchers separated the different kinds of canopy, it got more complicated. Baker says, “The big story is that all tree canopy does not behave the same way, and soft canopy is more effective by far.”
For example, Baker notes that soft canopy seemed to do a better job cooling in the evening (more than 3 degrees Celsius) than in the afternoon. The authors suspect that’s because some trees shut off transpiration during peak heat to conserve water, and then start transpiring again in the evening. The evening bump could also be a side effect of the distribution of soft canopy throughout the city.
Hard canopy offered a slight cooling benefit (0.2 degrees Celsius) in the afternoon, even at less than 25 percent coverage, whereas soft canopy offered no apparent benefit at such a small amount of coverage. However, hard canopy created a very slight warming effect overnight, likely by trapping heat rising from hard surfaces.
Trees whose crowns hang over pavement or rooftops are examples of hard canopy. Photo by Michael Alonzo.
Missing the forest for the trees
Larger patches and more distributed forms of soft canopy also offer different benefits, but both produce significant cooling effects. Clumped patches were better at retaining their cooling effect in the peak afternoon heat, when distributed canopy was less effective. By contrast, distributed canopy cooling approached the effect of larger patches in the pre-dawn and evening, possibly because, with long shadows from low sun angles, distributed trees shade more of their surroundings.
Overall, “if you can increase the soft canopy, you are much more likely to reduce temperatures,” Baker says. Clumped soft canopy might be the most effective overall for cooling, because it retains its temperature reduction throughout peak heat and its cooling effects can extend to nearby areas beyond the clump’s boundary.
However, Baker also notes that distributed canopy is more accessible for many urban residents, who can more easily plant or maintain trees in yards than find the space for a microforest, so distinguishing the likely benefits of different kinds of canopy is important. “Of course” he says, “not everyone who needs the benefits of trees has a yard.”
Still, he emphasizes, “the benefits of a forest go well beyond the trees,” so “you can’t replace a forest with street trees.”
Strategies for the future
Urban tree-planting programs have the right idea, Baker suggests, because urban heat risk is almost certain to get worse and trees work to cool urban neighborhoods. But to make those efforts as effective as possible, more knowledge is needed about the relative benefits of different kinds of tree canopy.
Findings like those in this new research “affect how we might strategize future planting and woodland management,” Baker says. More nuanced understanding can help tree-planting programs, community groups, and individual residents make decisions about how to invest limited resources—in planting more street trees, yard trees, or forested tracts, but especially by protecting existing forest patches in and out of urban parks.
Header image: Matthew Baker at UMBC. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
How many ways are there to make a sticky protein? That’s the overarching question driving new research by Mercedes Burns, assistant professor of biological sciences, and Sarah Stellwagen, a postdoc at UNC Charlotte and former postdoc at UMBC.
Burns and Stellwagen study arachnids, a diverse group of invertebrate animals that includes spiders. Materials scientists have long envied the strong, flexible, and sometimes sticky silks the eight-legged critters produce, but spider silks have so far proven difficult to replicate effectively in a laboratory. That’s partly because the genes responsible for producing the silk proteins are so long that typical DNA sequencing methods are insufficient for gene discovery. Additionally, spinning synthetic silk protein into fiber isn’t scalable yet.
“That’s been a major reason why no one’s been able to make their own spider silk,” Burns says. With $900,000 in funding from a new National Science Foundation grant, Burns and Stellwagen will explore sticky substances used to capture prey by arachnids and a few other animals, including glowworms (the larval stage of a type of fly) and velvet worms (a group of ancient, worm-like invertebrates found across the Southern Hemisphere).
The substances their non-spider study organisms produce “are sticky like spider silk glues, but maybe their genetic architecture is easier for us to duplicate,” Burns says. “That’s one of the long term goals: Can we make a synthetic glue, based on these same principles, with more efficacy than we’ve been able to do with spider silks?” This glue could have medical or industrial applications, she notes.
Mercedes Burns, right, and Sarah Stellwagen handle daddy long legs (scientific name Opiliones) in Burns’s lab.
How to make a sticky protein
Burns and Stellwagen will study the sticky silks produced by velvet worms, glowworms, spiders, and harvesters (also known as daddy longlegs). Many people may lump them all into the “creepy-crawly” category, but they actually diverged hundreds of millions of years ago. Yet they all use sticky substances to capture prey. “So what we want to know is, ‘Is there one way to make a sticky protein, or are there many different ways to make sticky proteins?’” Burns says.
For each of their study species, they will compare the sequences of the genes responsible for the sticky stuff. Then they’ll compare the substances’ function by measuring just how sticky it is and under what conditions it performs best, such as a particular humidity or temperature. Finally, they’ll consider the structure of the proteins themselves, with a special focus on whether sugar compounds bound to the backbone of the protein play an important role in its function.
“By comparing those characteristics among different groups, we hope to understand what the necessary components of sticky biomaterial prey capture proteins are,” Burns says.
“The results of the study will provide opportunities for further research,” Stellwagen adds. “There are many other species from the groups we are studying here, so projects comparing glues more broadly within species groups is one area for expansion later on, or even diving deeper into the biomechanics across groups by including more test conditions.”
The spider gaucho
Burns and Stellwagen have continued to collaborate on other projects since Stellwagen moved from UMBC to UNC Charlotte last year. Just this week, they published a new paper in Integrative and Comparative Biology on the glue genes in the bolas spider.
Rather than depositing droplets of glue around a web, like orb-weaving spiders, the bolas spider hangs one huge droplet of glue at the end of a long thread of silk. The spider releases chemicals mimicking female moths, luring in male moths. It then uses tiny hairs to sense vibrations in the air as a male moth approaches. At the right moment, it swings its glue bolas like a lasso and, “if they hit the moth,” Burns explains, “they reel it in really, really quick and dispatch it with their venom.”
The first—again
Stellwagen and Burns are the first to sequence the glue gene for this species. While genetic sequencing has become commonplace in recent years, spider glue genes are so long and so repetitive that the duo had to employ a special process called “long-read sequencing” to produce results. In 2019, Stellwagen became the first to sequence any spider species’ glue genes, which also required long-read sequencing, and the bolas spider gene was much longer still.
The work funded by the new grant will fill an important gap in spider silk research. “We don’t have anyone studying the intersection between the function and primary elements of the gene sequence for spider silk, so that’s pretty exciting,” Burns says. “From there we can understand more about how these genes evolved.”
Is it necessary to have a long, repetitive gene to make a sticky protein, for example? Burns thinks that’s a possibility. Maybe those repetitive sections help the protein fold onto itself in a way that allows it to be strong and flexible.
“I’m thrilled our project was selected for funding, not only because we’re so passionate and excited about the research, but because at this career stage, it’s life changing,” Stellwagen says. “This gives us an opportunity to prove ourselves and set ourselves up for long term success.”
Sarah Stellwagen (left) and Mercedes Burns in Burns’s laboratory.
“Spider Camp”
Another exciting outcome of the grant is funding for undergraduates to attend “Spider Camp,” a two-week intensive summer field experience for undergraduates, graduates, and enthusiasts at the Highlands Biological Station in western North Carolina that Stellwagen co-instructs. Burns will introduce new material on Opiliones (the scientific name for daddy longlegs). The Appalachians are a center of diversity for this group of arachnids that Burns focuses on in her other projects. The region is rich in other arachnid life as well.
By giving UMBC students a chance to participate in an engaging field experience, Burns hopes to help diversify the field of arachnology. “We want to make classes like that available to students who might otherwise never take a field course,” she says.
The work Burns and Stellwagen do will open doors for further research—perhaps one day completed by those who attend Spider Camp. “There’s a lot of interesting evolutionary questions that come from this,” Burns says. “I enjoy trying to figure out how species that are lesser known address the challenges of life.”
Header image: Sarah Stellwagen (left) and Mercedes Burns. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
As a trifecta of crises upended life in 2020, the need for a diverse scientific and medical community grew ever more clear. George Floyd’s murder elicited worldwide protests against racial injustice. COVID-19 affected all of our lives and had an outsize impact on Black and brown communities. And COVID-19’s economic fallout only exacerbated extreme wealth inequality.
At the same time, while some Black and brown people were reluctant to take the vaccine because of a negative history with the medical establishment, there was no one better than Kizzmekia Corbett ’08, M16, biological sciences and sociology, to reach out to “vaccine inquisitive” folks, as she describes them. Corbett rose to fame in 2020 as the lead of the NIH team developing the Moderna vaccine and as the first Black woman in the world to create a vaccine.
Kizzmekia Corbett, who led the team that developed the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, talks to CNN in UMBC’s Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building in April 2021. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Representation matters
It is in this context that UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and Peter Henderson, senior advisor to the president, published their latest article in Issues in Science and Technology, “Nothing succeeds like success,” which addresses the persistent and urgent need to diversify the group of professionals in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine).
“When we have greater diversity of representation, we also have greater diversity of information, knowledge, lived experience, and perspectives—each of which enhances discovery and innovation,” Hrabowski and Henderson write. “When the science and engineering community looks like the United States, we find greater trust in and support for that community across groups in the population.”
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC, and its more than a dozen replications elsewhere, have made great strides in supporting the success of underrepresented students in STEMM. Hrabowski and Henderson argue that the U.S. should frame the need for a diverse scientific workforce as a national priority and invest in it accordingly. Programs like the Meyerhoff Scholars that have proven their ability to move the needle, they write, should be short-listed for that investment, because “nothing succeeds like success.”
Impressive outcomes
“According to NSF data, UMBC is the number one baccalaureate institution for African American undergraduates who go on to earn Ph.D.s in the natural sciences and engineering, as well as doctorates in the life sciences, mathematics, and computer science,” Hrabowski and Henderson report. And, “according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, UMBC is the number one baccalaureate institution for African American undergraduates who go on to earn M.D./Ph.D.s.”
At the same time, “Over the past 30 years, our six-year completion rate [at UMBC for all students] has doubled, and the gap in completion rates between white and Black students has disappeared,” they write.
At UMBC, more than 1,400 undergraduate Meyerhoff Scholars, all of whom are committed to diversity in STEMM, have earned their undergraduate degrees. More than 800 of those have earned advanced degrees, and 300 more are currently completing graduate programs at top institutions across the country.
Meyerhoff Scholars at an annual dinner. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
A role model
And yet, this powerful example of progress exists in a nation that has seen minimal growth, and, in some fields, a backslide in minority participation in STEMM in the last decade, Hrabowski and Henderson explain. But programs like Meyerhoff have shown that big change is possible, and how to make it happen.
For example, for over 30 years the program has offered academic, social, and financial support. UMBC instructors have also invested time in completing significant course redesigns that shift the focus from “weeding out” to promoting success, and end up helping all students. More recently, an increased focus on faculty diversity has taken shape and begun to have an impact. Those efforts have led to impressive outcomes and a profound culture shift.
The Meyerhoff Scholars program has inspired several other student success initiatives at UMBC that offer various forms of support for students, including a cohort model that enhances a sense of belonging. For example, STEM BUILD is an NIH-funded program designed to help diversify the biomedical sciences. Programs in other fields, such as the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars and the Linehan Artist Scholars, also follow some of the same principles.
Other institutions have taken note. Programs at Pennsylvania State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have replicated the principles of the Meyerhoff Scholars with great success. UC San Diego and UC Berkeley have begun their own replication efforts. And programs at other institutions with similar principles, such as University of Florida and the historically Black Howard University, have also seen dramatic change in their graduation rates for underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering, and math.
A student conducts research at UC San Diego, which launched a replication of the Meyerhoff Scholars, called the Pathways to STEM (PATHS), in 2019. Photo by UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering, CC-BY-2.0 license.
Investing in the future
In early 2021, a group of scientists wrote in Sciencerecommending the formation of a new National Science and Engineering Diversity Initiative (NSEDI). They suggested NSEDI should allocate $10 billion per year for several years to improve diversity in science. “These and any other funds that target increasing diversity should be allocated judiciously,” Hrabowski and Henderson argue. “Financial resources should flow to institutions that most successfully contribute to greater diversity—regardless of institutional type.”
In the end, “producing scientists is about more than increasing the numbers. It is about changing attitudes and transforming the lives of people,” Hrabowski and Henderson write. “It is about showing our society what is possible when we invest in the talent of all our youth.”
As the pandemic, widening economic inequality, and rising demands for racial justice demonstrate, there is still much work to be done. “The message is clear,” Hrabowski and Henderson declare. “Investing in young people, replicating best practices of effective programs, and committing substantially more money to support Black and minority scientists can indeed move the needle and also tackle fundamental scientific and public health problems for humankind.”
Banner image: Scores of Meyerhoff Scholar alumni and current students with President Hrabowski (seated front, left) and Robert Meyerhoff (seated front, right). Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Soon, Steve Guimond and his students will begin exploring a new angle of his hurricane research. They want to better understand the fundamental physics that drives hurricanes. Specifically, they want to know how small disturbances in a hurricane’s wind flow, similar to a strong gust on a windy day, may affect its overall structure and intensity. The findings could have implications for hurricane forecasting.
A new, $682,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in collaboration with the New Jersey Institute of Technology will fund the team’s work, which primarily involves developing, running, and analyzing complex numerical models on supercomputers. However, Guimond might never have received the grant if he hadn’t received a UMBC Strategic Award for Research Transitions (START) first.
In 2018, the NSF rejected a related proposal from Guimond, who is an associate research professor with UMBC’s physics department and the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, a partnership with NASA. The proposal outlined a broad research program using two different methods to learn more about hurricanes: remote sensing and numerical modeling. “The START funding helped us evaluate those two sides of the project,” he says.
The START program funded initial research that was carried out by Guimond, Devin Protzko ’20, physics and mathematics, and Badrul Hasan, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering. They gathered preliminary data showing that the modeling path had significant potential, so they wrote a fresh NSF proposal with a narrower focus. It won approval. The small START grant, Guimond says, “was key to helping us identify the most fruitful path for follow-on funding from NSF.”
A simulation of a “large eddy,” an instance of turbulence, in a rapidly intensifying hurricane. Running this kind of simulation is part of Steve Guimond’s research. Animation courtesy Steve Guimond.
Turbulence in focus
The NSF proposal will support work to understand the role of turbulence in how or whether hurricanes intensify. Guimond’s team will also look at the value of using numerical hurricane models with very high resolution. High resolution is important because a hurricane’s “gusts” appear and disappear very quickly. They also generally take up very little physical space. Because they’re so ephemeral, you can’t simulate them precisely or accurately with current models. And if you can’t simulate them, you can’t figure out their role in overall hurricane development. High resolution models would make those simulations possible, which can feed back into improved forecasts in the future.
The fact that Guimond has the chance to do this work exemplifies START’s goal. The program, funded by UMBC’s Office of the Vice President for Research, offers a maximum of $25,000 to UMBC faculty who wish to pursue new avenues of research. The hope is that the funds will put them in a stronger position for much larger external grants from places like NSF—exactly what happened for Guimond.
Steve Guimond. Courtesy Steve Guimond.
A first step
A new cohort of UMBC faculty will receive START funding this summer. Lira Yoon, associate professor of psychology, hopes to follow a similar path to Guimond. Yoon will collect initial data on how Asian Americans regulate their emotions in response to overt racism, and how or whether the strategies they practice affect their well-being. This work is particularly relevant given the sharp rise in anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic. Yoon is also working on a project to help long-term care workers better manage their stress, another group impacted heavily by the pandemic.
“I’m eager to start a new line of research examining the effects of racial discrimination on psychological well-being, particularly in Asian Americans,” Yoon shares. “Although the ultimate solution to the problems resulting from racial discrimination lies at the policy and systems levels, understanding mechanisms operating at an individual level could help mitigate the adverse effects of discrimination.”
“This project will be the first step in that direction,” she says, “and it will provide preliminary data to secure external funding for future larger-scale research.”
Lira Yoon. Photo courtesy Lira Yoon.
Real-world impact
Maryam Rahnemoonfar, information systems, is another member of the new START cohort. Her team is developing algorithms for use on drones flying over affected areas after natural disasters. The goal is for the drones to relay important information about conditions on the ground in real time. Her team has created a unique dataset, called FloodNet, that can train the algorithms to recognize disaster impacts—for example, roads that are flooded or blocked by debris.
With a previous AI for Earth grant from Microsoft, more than 20 students at all levels in Rahnemoonfar’s research group spent more than a thousand hours creating the FloodNet dataset. Input from first responders and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) guided their work, plus mentoring from faculty and more advanced students. Team members labeled each pixel in images to teach the artificial intelligence (AI) system what a flooded road or damaged building looks like.
“It was a very difficult and challenging task, but we are the first in the world to prepare this sophisticated dataset,” Rahnemoonfar says.
Already, German authorities have requested (and been granted) access to the FloodNet set of labeled images to help them respond to recent catastrophic flooding in the country. The FloodNet dataset is the first and only dataset of its kind that can be used for training AI systems in the wake of natural disasters.
With the new START funding, Rahnemoonfar’s team hopes to improve the algorithm that evaluates how much damage buildings have sustained, on a scale from none to total destruction. Rahnemoonfar also hopes to build an interface where a person can ask the AI system a verbal question and get a useful answer. Her team is developing this ability for data already collected, “but when a new hurricane happens, we hope that while a drone is flying you can ask and get answers to these questions in real time,” she says.
To save time—of the essence during disaster response—Rahnemoonfar’s graduate students are working on adding a layer to the algorithms that would allow the AI to learn on its own, with a minimal training dataset.
“Now that we have developed this AI system, for any new hurricane that happens, we don’t need to label data again,” she says. “With the algorithm that we are developing, with very few labeled images we can get insights for any new hurricane.”
A ripple effect
The START program has a ripple effect beyond UMBC faculty. Many of the awardees involve students in their work, enhancing the students’ UMBC experience and helping set them up for success later on. Students in Guimond’s group, for example, get first-hand experience with NASA scientists and facilities.
Also, by helping researchers hone their projects and, as a result, future proposals, START increases their chance of success with applying for larger grants. Like Guimond, Rahnemoonfar is already looking to use the START support to lead to bigger research awards.
“The START program enables UMBC faculty members (and with them, UMBC students) to move in new directions with their scholarly work,” shares Don Engel, associate vice president for research. “We are proud of the success past recipients have found in turning their proposed ideas into longer-term initiatives.”
Banner image: Hurricane Matthew bears down on Haiti in 2016. Image by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
A high-potential green space on the edge of UMBC’s main campus will see big changes in the coming months. A new $1 million grant from the Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund, combined with about $1.4 million of university investment, will fund a major stream restoration on campus. The stream is a small tributary of the West Branch Herbert Run, and it flows through campus by the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena and bwtech@UMBC. The stream is part of the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay watersheds.
“This project will not only create and enhance wetland and stream habitats and functions, it will also provide recreational enhancements such as walking trails with stream access and connection to other existing trails,” says Lenn Caron, associate vice president of facilities management.
Additionally, he notes, “the restored stream will elevate UMBC’s aesthetic appeal and provide a pleasant natural environment for members of the campus and local community for recreation, exercise and watershed education.”
Restoring Herbert Run is part of UMBC’s Institutional Management Plan, a stormwater master plan put in place in 2014. The plan empowers UMBC to “make decisions that serve the campus’s interests on a broader scale—on a watershed basis,” rather than addressing stormwater requirements for new construction projects in isolation, explains Larry Hennessey, associate director of design and construction services and the lead on the restoration work. “This is the outcome of many years of stormwater planning.”
Larry Hennessey at UMBC’s community garden. Photo courtesy Larry Hennessey.
Recreating a healthy stream
The need for the restoration is a result of decades of growth at UMBC and in the surrounding community. In a forest, soil absorbs and filters a large percentage of precipitation exactly where it falls, leaving only a small portion to flow into nearby streams. However, development leads to an increase in surfaces that water can’t penetrate, like concrete and building roofs. This generates more runoff that enters streams. Because the natural stream channel didn’t form to handle that much water, the increased runoff quickly erodes the stream banks.
As the bank erodes, “the stream channel becomes so deep that it’s no longer connected to the floodplain,” Hennessey says. The water can’t spread out and seep into adjacent land, so it flows with greater speed and force through the stream, worsening erosion. “It becomes a self-perpetuating problem,” Hennessey says.
The restoration project will “reconnect the stream with the floodplain by raising the streambed and adding natural features in the stream to slow down the flow,” Hennessey explains. “By spreading the water out, when you do get a big storm event, the impacts won’t be concentrated in a small area. The stream will function the way it was intended to function.”
The West Branch Herbert Run on campus prior to the restoration. The height of the bank indicates extensive erosion that separates the stream from the natural floodplain. Photo courtesy Larry Hennessey.
Welcoming visitors—wild and human
Additional benefits of the project abound. Eroded, fast-flowing streams don’t support nearly as much wildlife as healthy streams connected to the floodplain. While it may alarm some observers that the stream restoration involves removing trees, “Lower portions of the trees are left in the stream to create deeper pools and riffles,” Hennessey says. These microhabitats attract animals like frogs, dragonflies, crayfish, and even herons. “This is going to significantly improve our ecosystem,” he explains.
Along the portion of the stream to be restored, concrete stairs lead down to a frequently submerged concrete walkway, and the land beside the stream is clogged with invasive plants. Once the project is finished, however, a healthier streamside and new nature trail dotted with informational signage will greet visitors in this section of the greenway.
Larry Hennessey (rear, blue shirt) with students from the Environmental Task Force, a UMBC student organization that he advises, after one of their stream clean-ups. Photo courtesy Larry Hennessey.
New tech, new strategies
The campus implemented its first stormwater management facilities decades ago by installing ponds near some buildings to collect stormwater runoff. The ponds prevented a rush of fast-flowing water into streams during storms, slowing erosion. These projects focused on stormwater quantity, but did little to address the quality of the runoff. The runoff would deposit sediment in streams, causing more problems.
This challenge is far from unique to UMBC. “The entire Chesapeake Bay is filled with plumes of sediment after a rain event, because this is happening everywhere,” Hennessey says. “The ponds were a good first step, but they didn’t really solve the problem. We still had detrimental effects of the stormwater runoff coming out of the ponds.”
Over time, as technology and understanding of the damage caused by runoff increased, the strategies changed. New projects, like UMBC’s Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, include bioretention facilities that both slow the flow of water to streams and use a special medium underground to effectively filter out sediment and other harmful compounds.
Plantings in the Commons Plaza, adjacent to the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, are the aboveground element of a bioretention facility to remediate runoff generated by the building. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
A commitment to sustainability
Hennessey has been with UMBC since 2007 and has a deep personal commitment to landscape stewardship. Previous projects he’s been involved with included landscape conversions, such as from a lawn to a no-mow pollinator meadow, and improving the functionality of older stormwater management installations, like the ponds.
He is excited to see this new project launch after almost a decade of planning. There was some question as to whether the project as originally designed would come to fruition due to funding constraints, but the grant from Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays Trust Fund removed that barrier.
The project “highlights our goal of continuous improvement, both visually and functionally,” Caron notes. Simpler options, like street-sweeping, might have met environmental requirements, but would not have yielded the same long-term benefits. The decision to pursue a stream restoration on campus, Caron says, “demonstrates our commitment to environmental sustainability.”
Banner image: The UMBC Library Pond and adjacent vegetation, upgraded in 2014, serve as a stormwater management facility on campus. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Noah Sienkiewicz is working alongside NASA and UMBC colleagues to design and build HARP2, an instrument that will launch on NASA’s PACE mission in 2024. Nathan Myers is partnering with top scientists across the country at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico on innovative quantum computing research. And both physics Ph.D. students have just received highly competitive grants that will help them take their work even further.
Myers received an Office of Science Graduate Student Research award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which will fund an 11-month experience at Los Alamos. Sienkiewicz received a Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Fellowship, which will fund his Ph.D. thesis work at UMBC for up to the next three years.
Fresh ideas
Myers is looking forward to infusing fresh ideas from Los Alamos scientists into his research on non-linear quantum systems. His work fits into the field of quantum thermodynamics, which is critical to the future of computing. The non-linear quantum systems he explores have the potential to be much faster than the already super-fast linear quantum systems that researchers have modeled and begun to fabricate.
Myers had already planned to pursue this area of research, but “now we’ll have the resources and the collaboration with all the researchers at Los Alamos, which is one of the foremost quantum computing research centers in the U.S.,” he says. “So it’s pretty exciting.”
Nathan Myers (left) and Sebastian Deffner at Myers’s master’s graduation. Photo courtesy Nathan Myers.
Begin with the end in mind
Sebastian Deffner, assistant professor of physics and Myers’s mentor, has gone the extra mile to make sure he is in a strong position for the future. In addition to supporting his students’ research, Deffner also helps his mentees develop “related skills, in terms of how to write and apply for these funding opportunities, awards, and grants, and just how to build your network and get in contact with people,” Myers says.
In fact, “When I was first starting research,” Myers says, “one of the first conversations we had was, ‘So, when you graduate, what are some of the places where you might be interested in working? And who can we talk to, to start that process as early as possible?”
Los Alamos was on Myers’s list. Deffner connected Myers with Yigit Subasi, a Los Alamos scientist, and their conversation revealed significant overlap between their research interests. They were coming at the same questions from different angles. So, they collaborated on the proposal for the DOE funding to blend their ideas and work on a breakthrough together.
“Winning this award will give Nathan a unique opportunity to interact with and learn from world-leading experts at a top-tier research location,” Deffner says. “The potential impact on his scientific career can hardly be overestimated, and I hope that this will set a new benchmark for the excellence of our graduate education at UMBC.”
The Los Alamos National Laboratory is perched at 7,355 feet, atop the Pajarito Plateau in the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico. Photo courtesy LANL.
The full arc
Sienkiewicz started his UMBC career in a research rotation with Zhibo Zhang, associate professor of physics. He then rotated to work with Vanderlei Martins, professor of physics and director of UMBC’s Earth and Space Institute, who is now his Ph.D. advisor. Zhang gave Sienkiewicz an introduction to computational techniques. And with Martins, he learned how to apply those techniques to data that address the most fundamental physics describing an instrument or phenomenon.
Those two experiences informed Sienkiewicz’s path forward. Now he wants to be involved in “the full arc” of atmospheric research projects— “to make sure the whole process is interconnected and well-informed,” starting with design, and progressing through testing and data processing.
These days, Sienkiewicz is working on both HARP2 and the original HARP, which he helped develop before it launched successfully in fall 2019. In the morning, he analyzes incoming HARP data. Then, in the afternoon, he uses what he observed to inform decisions about HARP2. Both instruments have the potential to inform how climate models account for clouds and tiny particles in the air called aerosols, such as dust, smoke, and other airborne chemicals.
Bands of cirrus clouds above Australia. Clouds are one of the hardest factors for climate models to account for. Data collected by HARP and HARP2 should help. Photo: NASA.
“My goals are to straddle that line between someone who runs code all day and someone who goes into the lab and does the testing,” Sienkiewicz says. It’s a rarer path among atmospheric physicists, but one that offers exciting opportunities. In particular, Sienkiewicz’s comprehensive perspective will be beneficial in the planning process for NASA’s next decade, he believes.
A childhood dream
Both HARP and HARP2 are examples of polarimeters, which will be a major focus of NASA experiments over the next 10 years. Sienkiewicz hopes to stay involved in their development after he graduates, in 2023 or 2024, by transitioning to a role at NASA proper just in time for the PACE mission launch that will carry HARP2 into space.
Through UMBC’s strong connections with the space agency, “I’ve gotten to be more exposed to actual NASA work, and sit in meetings with NASA officials,” Sienkiewicz says. “So, as far as the childhood dream of ‘I want to work for NASA,’ I feel like it’s been a great stepping stone to doing that and having direct interaction with those people and building a network.”
Just after the HARP launch in 2019, Sienkiewicz (far left) and other UMBC students listen to Vanderlei Martins (right) as he offers an impromptu lesson in atmospheric physics. Photo by Sarah Hansen, M.S. ’15.
Support at every level
With Sienkiewicz focused on space and climate science and Myers on quantum computing, their physics research could hardly be farther apart. But they actually have a lot in common.
Sienkiewicz and Myers began their graduate studies at UMBC at the same time. “We sat shoulder to shoulder in the first-year grad student office in 2017,” Sienkiewicz says. “Especially in that first year, our whole cohort really stuck together and helped each other a lot.”
They became friends and housemates. Even as their research trajectories diverged, living in the same house during a pandemic exposed them to each other’s work in new ways. “I’ve probably learned more about quantum thermodynamics in the last year than I ever have, because I hear him in the other room going on and on about anyons,” Sienkiewicz says with a smile.
Their personal camaraderie speaks to a larger graduate student support network in physics at UMBC. For both Myers and Sienkiewicz, the application process for their awards was a group effort, with multiple rounds of feedback from faculty, peers, and staff at UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET).
In addition to the DOE award, Myers is also funded by the private sector arm of NASA, Paraton, and benefits from a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Deffner. Sienkiewicz received a Graduate Assistant in Areas of National Need award from the U.S. Department of Education in his first year, and, later, a JCET fellowship.
“Getting the funding opportunities through UMBC and making those connections has been instrumental to my progress,” Sienkiewicz says. “Our department really supports students by keeping them funded and showing them opportunities. They help set us up for success.”
Banner image: Two scientists work on the HARP polarimeter in a clean room at UMBC. Sienkiewicz helped fabricate the HARP satellite, including time in the clean room, and now is working on HARP2. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC
New findings published this week in Physical Review Letters suggest that carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen cosmic rays travel through the galaxy toward Earth in a similar way, but, surprisingly, that iron arrives at Earth differently. Learning more about how cosmic rays move through the galaxy helps address a fundamental, lingering question in astrophysics: How is matter generated and distributed across the universe?
“So what does this finding mean?” asks John Krizmanic, a senior scientist with UMBC’s Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST). “These are indicators of something interesting happening. And what that something interesting is we’re going to have to see.”
Cosmic rays are atomic nuclei—atoms stripped of their electrons—that are constantly whizzing through space at nearly the speed of light. They enter Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high energies. Information about these cosmic rays can give scientists clues about where they came from in the galaxy and what kind of event generated them.
An instrument on the International Space Station (ISS) called the Calorimetric Electron Telescope (CALET) has been collecting data about cosmic rays since 2015. The data include details such as how many and what kinds of atoms are arriving, and how much energy they’re arriving with. The American, Italian, and Japanese teams that manage CALET, including UMBC’s Krizmanic and postdoc Nick Cannady, collaborated on the new research.
Iron on the move
Cosmic rays arrive at Earth from elsewhere in the galaxy at a huge range of energies—anywhere from 1 billion volts to 100 billion billion volts. The CALET instrument is one of extremely few in space that is able to deliver fine detail about the cosmic rays it detects. A graph called a cosmic ray spectrum shows how many cosmic rays are arriving at the detector at each energy level. The spectra for carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen cosmic rays are very similar, but the key finding from the new paper is that the spectrum for iron is significantly different.
This image combines data from four space telescopes to reconstruct all that remains of the oldest documented example of a supernova, which was witnessed in 185 A.D. by Chinese astronomers. Supernovae are understood to be important sources of cosmic rays arriving at Earth. Image credit: NASA
There are several possibilities to explain the differences between iron and the three lighter elements. The cosmic rays could accelerate or travel through the galaxy differently, although scientists generally believe they understand the latter, Krizmanic says.
“Something that needs to be emphasized is that the way the elements get from the sources to us is different, but it may be that the sources are different as well,” adds Michael Cherry, physics professor emeritus at Louisiana State University (LSU) and a co-author on the new paper. Scientists generally believe that cosmic rays originate from exploding stars (supernovae), but neutron stars or very massive stars could be other potential sources.
Next-level precision
An instrument like CALET is important for answering questions about how cosmic rays accelerate and travel, and where they come from. Instruments on the ground or balloons flown high in Earth’s atmosphere were the main source of cosmic ray data in the past. But by the time cosmic rays reach those instruments, they have already interacted with Earth’s atmosphere and broken down into secondary particles. With Earth-based instruments, it is nearly impossible to identify precisely how many primary cosmic rays and which elements are arriving, plus their energies. But CALET, being on the ISS above the atmosphere, can measure the particles directly and distinguish individual elements precisely.
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a ground-based cosmic ray detector in Argentina. Photo: Pierre Auger Observatory, shared under CC BY-SA 2.0
Iron is a particularly useful element to analyze, explains Cannady, a postdoc with CSST and a former Ph.D. student with Cherry at LSU. On their way to Earth, cosmic rays can break down into secondary particles, and it can be hard to distinguish between original particles ejected from a source (like a supernova) and secondary particles. That complicates deductions about where the particles originally came from.
“As things interact on their way to us, then you’ll get essentially conversions from one element to another,” Cannady says. “Iron is unique, in that being one of the heaviest things that can be synthesized in regular stellar evolution, we’re pretty certain that it is pretty much all primary cosmic rays. It’s the only pure primary cosmic ray, where with others you’ll have some secondary components feeding into that as well.”
“Made of stardust”
Measuring cosmic rays gives scientists a unique view into high-energy processes happening far, far away. The cosmic rays arriving at CALET represent “the stuff we’re made of. We are made of stardust,” Cherry says. “And energetic sources, things like supernovas, eject that material from their interiors, out into the galaxy, where it’s distributed, forms new planets, solar systems, and… us.”
All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.
Carl Sagan, “The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective,” 1973
“The study of cosmic rays is the study of how the universe generates and distributes matter, and how that affects the evolution of the galaxy,” Krizmanic adds. “So really it’s studying the astrophysics of this engine we call the Milky Way that’s throwing all these elements around.”
A global effort
The Japanese space agency launched CALET and today leads the mission in collaboration with the U.S. and Italian teams. In the U.S., the CALET team includes researchers from LSU; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; UMBC; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Denver; and Washington University.The new paper is the fifth from this highly successful international collaboration published in PRL, one of the most prestigious physics journals.
CALET was optimized to detect cosmic ray electrons, because their spectrum can contain information about their sources. That’s especially true for sources that are relatively close to Earth in galactic terms: within less than one-thirtieth the distance across the Milky Way. But CALET also detects the atomic nuclei of cosmic rays very precisely. Now those nuclei are offering important insights about the sources of cosmic rays and how they got to Earth.
“We didn’t expect that the nuclei – the carbon, oxygen, protons, iron – would really start showing some of these detailed differences that are clearly pointing at things we don’t know,” Cherry says.
The latest finding creates more questions than it answers, emphasizing that there is still more to learn about how matter is generated and moves around the galaxy. “That’s a fundamental question: How do you make matter?” Krizmanic says. But, he adds, “That’s the whole point of why we went in this business, to try to understand more about how the universe works.”
Banner image: A Japanese transfer vehicle (labeled HTV-5) is docked at the International Space Station. The CALET experiment is being extracted by the station’s robotic arm (labeled with “Canada”). Credit: NASA
Everyone who’s ever met Kizzmekia Corbett ’08, M16, biological sciences and sociology, gets it.
Sue Florence, one of the few Black teachers in the Hillsborough, North Carolina, school district where Corbett went to elementary and middle school, got it. Rhonda Brooks, Corbett’s mother, remembers Florence saying, when Corbett was in third grade, “She’s got a gift. You’d better seek into it.”
Florence’s comments pushed Brooks to make sure expectations were high for Corbett in school, and to encourage—no, require—15-year-old “Kizzy” to find a scholarly internship rather than a position in retail when she wanted a summer job in high school.
So, at her mother’s behest, Corbett got involved in Project SEED, a program that offers research experiences to talented high school students from underrepresented groups in STEM. Her first program mentor was James Morken, who was on the chemistry faculty at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the time.
He got it, too.
“When Kizzy started in my laboratory, she didn’t have much hands-on research experience, but she had loads of curiosity, a drive to learn what she didn’t know, and a very strong work ethic,” Morken says. “It was abundantly clear she would be successful in whatever she chose to do.”
Today, Corbett is an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, after leading the team behind the successful effort to create a vaccine for COVID-19 at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Working with the pharmaceutical company Moderna, Corbett’s achievements on the global stage benefit all of us. Now, we get it, too.
“She can do anything”
As a Meyerhoff Scholar and NIH Scholar at UMBC, Corbett worked in Barney Graham’s lab at the Vaccine Research Center at the NIH. He’s also her boss today.
“Kizzmekia’s spirit was noticeable even from a young age,” Graham says. “New people who come into the lab have always quickly realized that she was a person who had bigger things in her future.”
Corbett met Jessica Kelley, a UMBC assistant professor of sociology at the time, when Corbett took her Introduction to Sociology course. “She was a standout in that large lecture class from the beginning,” Kelley recalls. Later, Corbett took Kelley’s course on applied community research, and conducted research with Kelley as part of a National Institute on Aging study on healthy aging in diverse neighborhoods.
The work with Kelley inspired Corbett’s double major and her approach to all of her future work. Corbett even became the only undergraduate enrolled in one of Kelley’s graduate-level courses. “She kept the graduate students on their toes,” Kelley says.
“When she’s got her mind set on something, it’s set,” Brooks says. “She can do anything.”
A leading role
Today, Corbett has proven them all right. As the scientific lead of the Vaccine Research Center’s coronavirus team at the NIH, she developed a new technology for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and others, and as a result, she has played a leading role in one of the most important measures to end the pandemic. She has also become the first Black woman in the world to create a vaccine.
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and one of the most trusted voices about the pandemic around the world, described Corbett as “widely recognized in the immunology community as a rising star,” when he nominated her for TIME magazine’s TIME100 Next list. Based on her leadership of COVID-19 vaccine development at NIAID, he added, “Her work will have a substantial impact on ending the worst respiratory-disease pandemic in more than 100 years.”
People drive the research
Perhaps just as important as her scientific accomplishments, Corbett has burst onto the public stage as the face of a diverse and rising generation of talented scientists who will transform the world. She is a stellar science communicator, explaining the vaccine and the virus in highly accessible ways to media outlets, her family, two U.S. presidents, and more. She is an inspiration to children who may now imagine becoming scientists.
Corbett visits a lab on campus in April 2021. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.
“Dr. Corbett’s voice has been particularly important this year,” Graham says, “and going forward, her ability to inspire and to educate and motivate young people to see science as something feasible and even to see science as something fun will be part of her legacy.”
And yet, amid her newfound celebrity status and her vast scientific acumen, somehow she has managed to remain unabashedly human.
“I am still Kizzy. I’m still the little girl you met when I was 17 and being recruited into the Meyerhoff program,” she told UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski during a conversation in February 2021, when they were both being recognized at the Kaiser Permanente and Reginald F. Lewis Museum 2nd Annual African American Health Care Awards.
“Actually, before a scientist, I’m a Christian, and I’m sassy, and I’m bright, and I’m fashionable…” she says, “and I’m Southern, and I’m empathetic, and I’m all of these things that make me into this person, that make me a better scientist. I think that is the most important part of the story—that people drive the research.”
The genuine thing
First there was Sue Florence. Then there was James Morken and others with the SEED Project. All through her childhood, there was her mother, Rhonda Brooks, cheering her on. Combine that support structure with Corbett’s own deep-seated determination to succeed, and by the time she was looking at colleges, Corbett had lots of options. But when she, her parents, and her grandmother visited UMBC, it felt like home. The first reason? The grain silo along UMBC Boulevard.
“It reminded me of being back at home in the country,” Brooks remembers. When they began touring campus, Brooks thought, “Oh man, this is really her,” but, “I needed her to see it was her. So I didn’t even say anything.” There was no need. By the end of Meyerhoff Selection Weekend in 2004, Kizzy was glowing.
Beyond the welcoming silo were all the welcoming faces. “Everybody was so friendly,” Brooks says. “You think when you go visit campuses that people have to be this way because they’re trying to get students to come, but as a person who’s been in the education field for so long, I can weed out who’s genuine and who isn’t.” And, Brooks says, despite the emphasis on Meyerhoff cohort numbers, of which Kizzy belonged to M16, “it just felt like she would be not just a number.”
Equaling the playing field
In the February conversation with Hrabowski, Corbett recalls her father telling her that she should “go where she would be loved.” UMBC became that place.
Asked to describe the value of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, she said, “It is simply one word: resources. It is equaling the playing field for people who have generally been under-resourced, and those are communities of color and people from underrepresented minority groups. And the Meyerhoff Program does that.”
Corbett with fellow Meyerhoff alumni at a 2017 on-campus event. Photo courtesy of Keith Harmon, director, Meyerhoff Scholars Program.
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program, founded in 1989, is considered the gold standard of programs designed to support students from underrepresented groups in STEM. Hundreds of alumni have gone on to standout careers, including U.S. Surgeon General, Baltimore City health commissioner, and professorships at the nation’s top-tier universities.
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program “is a place where every single person was special and would be loved. The goal is not to fail you out, but to lift you up,” Corbett says. And for underrepresented students in STEM, living in a world that too often still doesn’t expect people who look like them to excel as researchers, the Meyerhoff Program “provided a niche for us to just be, to be comfortable, and to just thrive.”
A mother’s touch
It wasn’t always easy, though. Brooks remembers when Kizzy received her first C. “Being on the phone with her just didn’t help,” Brooks remembers. “So I got in my car, and I drove all the way to Maryland. I was trying to tell her it was going to be alright, but it was just heartbreaking, because she never had that C. I told her, it’s gonna be tough—you might get more than one C.”
Even world-class, world-saving scientists sometimes get Cs and need their moms.
And even now, Brooks is ready to support Corbett as she navigates this new chapter in her life. “If she needs me now, if she’s feeling stressed,” Brooks says, “if she picks up the phone, I don’t care what time of night it is, I pick it up.”
On Corbett’s college bedside also sat a Bible—another lasting connection to her family and her faith, which Corbett brings up often in her interviews. Brooks gave each of her children a Bible as they left for college. “I say take this Bible with you. Even if you don’t look at it, keep it next to your bed. I don’t care if you don’t open it. But if you touch it, it will make you feel a whole lot better.”
Corbett and her mother, though apart during the pandemic, have stayed connected by attending online services from the same church in Texas. Their first travel plans post-pandemic? A trip to attend the service in person.
Lifting others up
Whether it’s her faith, an innate empathy, 35 years of experience as a Black woman in the U.S., or other factors, Corbett’s dedication to lifting people up goes far beyond her work in the laboratory. Her commitment to equity has demanded that she speak out to address vaccine hesitancy, especially in communities hit hardest by the virus, and champion the participation of minorities in science and research, both as scientists and as participants in clinical trials.
“She has always, even as a young student, brought an energy and curiosity and love of science that made our lab a better place,” Graham says. “She has also always been very devoted to making things better for people around her, particularly younger people coming behind her.”
Brooks says that Corbett has always had a selfless nature. One day she brought home a classmate who had no place to go after school and asked if she could stay with the family. Brooks was uncertain at first, “but we did it,” she says. “And we’ve been taking kids in ever since.”
Fighting for the public good
Corbett’s study of sociology at UMBC enhanced and sharpened her innate desires to help people and promote fairness into a commitment to consider social factors throughout her scientific career. For example, when the Moderna vaccine was in clinical trials, Corbett pushed hard to make sure that there were more people of color among the study population.
“You have to start things equitably to finish them that way,” she told Hrabowski at the February event. “We slowed down the phase three clinical trial until we got to a point where we felt the numbers were respectable. We wanted 13 percent, to represent the proportion of Black people in the country,” she said, but they didn’t quite make it. Still, she says, “I have other vaccines heading into trials, so we will take care of it then.”
Kelley, her sociology instructor and research mentor at UMBC, reflects on how Corbett has developed over time. “Kizzmekia’s training in both biology and sociology has helped her become both a scientist working at the cutting-edge of vaccine development to provide a universal public good and a humanist who understands that historically and structurally not all groups have had access to these public goods,” she says.
(left: Corbett at a Rally for Medical Research event in Washington, D.C.)
Corbett has faced her own challenges throughout her career, some of which have predictably intensified since she became more of a public figure.
Kizzmekia, whose name is a combination of “Kizzy” from the character in Alex Haley’s Roots and “-mekia” from Brooks’s own imagination, has been teased since childhood and continues to be harassed about her name. When Kizzy showed her mother a particularly hurtful social media post, “I told her, tell them to call your mama,” Brooks recalls, “because your mama chose your name for a reason, because you’re a gift from God to me.”
As a child, even Kizzy’s strong interest in academic success was sometimes looked down upon by her peers, but “she just went beyond,” Brooks says.
Corbett has also experienced sexism and racism as a scientist. Brooks says sometimes men have skipped over Corbett and instead approached her boss, but “that’s why I like her boss, [Barney Graham] so much, because he’s always been behind her back,” she says—pointing people right back to Corbett.
(Right: Corbett (center, front) with her NIAID research team, including Olubukola Abiona ’17, M25, biochemistry and molecular biology (center, back).)
Finding your champions
Corbett has taken her mother’s message to heart. “You just have to believe in yourself and believe in your work,” she says. Important, too, is having your own champions. “I always had someone in the space who was looking out for me,” she said—people like Sue Florence, Freeman Hrabowski, and Barney Graham. “Find those people and seek them out. You want someone to be as invested in you, as you are in you.”
High expectations and support from all those people who “got it,” cheering for her and setting the bar high from elementary school onward, combined with Corbett’s inner determination—and a dash of spunk—have fueled her success. If you had met a childhood Kizzy, she would have said, “Hi, I’m Kizzmekia Corbett, and I’m going to be the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine.”
Verbalizing one’s goals is a risk, because people will know if you fail. But it’s also a critical step toward turning them into reality. Little Kizzy knew it as a kid. “It speaks to putting yourself where you want to be, and really speaking the words to the universe,” she told Hrabowski. Even if she hasn’t reached her childhood goal yet, she’s happy with what she’s been able to accomplish so far.
“I haven’t won a Nobel prize, and I don’t know if I will,” she says, “but I think helping to ‘save the world,’ so to speak, is good enough.”
For now.
Read more about other ways Retrievers are giving their time and efforts to help others access the vaccine.
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Header image of Corbett on campus in April 2021 by Marlayna Demond ’11.
NASA has committed $178 million to extend support for the Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science & Technology II (CRESST II) through 2027. Founded in 2006 and renewed in 2016, CRESST II is a partnership between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and four universities. UMBC and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) are the two primary funding recipients, with UMD leading the consortium. CRESST II also supports researchers at Catholic University of America, Howard University, and the Southeastern Universities Research Association.
Developing talent in space sciences
Talent development is a key component of the partnership, which creates opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty to engage in NASA research on topics ranging from the composition of neutron stars to the atmosphere on Mars. New UMBC funding to support these projects will be more than $63 million over five years under the CRESST II renewal.
Since the last renewal in 2016, the UMBC arm of the partnership, the Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST), has focused on offering additional training for budding space scientists. Graduate students with NASA fellowships are co-advised by UMBC faculty and NASA scientists, undergraduates have internship opportunities on site at Goddard, and post-baccalaureate programs offer recent grads a chance to get more experience before applying to jobs or graduate school. Career workshops are available to all.
“We’re trying to do more to support their growth, and also prepare them to move on to other things afterwards,” says Don Engel, director of CSST and assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering. “We’re building more infrastructure around career support for our scientists, especially those at earlier levels.”
Don Engel, director of the Center for Space Sciences and Technology, UMBC’s arm of the CRESST II partnership, in the Imaging Research Center at UMBC. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Collaboration at all levels
Engel has also been leading an effort to engage more departments at UMBC in the partnership. Physics is the most involved so far, but researchers in computer science and electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, information systems, and even geography and environmental systems have connected with CSST, meaning the Center spans all three UMBC colleges.
“We have more affiliations with more departments than we’ve ever had before,” Engel says, “and I’m excited about that being just the tip of the iceberg.” Karl Steiner, vice president for research at UMBC, adds, “The scope of work conducted by our UMBC faculty and research scientists under the Center for Space Sciences and Technology makes this one of the largest research centers on the UMBC campus.”
The consortium structure is also an asset. “The partnerships have been phenomenal,” Engel says. “Through having multiple institutions, we’re able to learn from each other’s ideas and strengths. We can tap into the broader resources at each of our institutions for things like trainings.”
A 2018 paper in Nature Astronomy by CSST scientist Kenji Hamaguchi concluded for the first time that the largest star system, within 10,000 lightyears of Earth is emitting cosmic rays, some of which may reach Earth. In this visualization, the supermassive star at the center of that system, Eta Carinae, is at the center of two huge and expanding clouds of dust and other material, the result of an eruption about 150 years ago. Nathan Smith/NASA.
“The CRESST partnership provides an amazing opportunity for government and university researchers to jointly advance NASA research and space science,” adds Laurie Locascio, vice president for research at UMD. “The collaboration has demonstrated the value of our partnership and our capability to do great work together.”
“NASA’s decision to renew and enhance the CRESST II Partnership, led by the University of Maryland, College Park and including the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), builds on a successful collaboration and will continue to develop top-notch scientific talent,” U.S. Senator Ben Cardin says.“Team Maryland is proud of the close relationship between the University of Maryland and federal agencies like NASA that keeps our nation and our state on the cutting edge of research and technology.”
A 2020 paper by CSST scientist Tom Barclay published in Nature reported the discovery of a Neptune-sized planet orbiting a young, nearby star. This visualization shows an interpretation of the planet, AU Mic b (green), and its star, Microscopii. Image courtesy NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (Universities Space Research Association).
New understanding, new technologies
Reflecting on the impact this research will have, Engel says, “looking at things on the scale of galaxies or other solar systems lets us know more about our own solar system and the physical laws that govern the universe, including our day-to-day lives.”
“Some of the greatest mysteries that remain in physics can really only be further probed by looking at things that are massively large or very dense—extremes that we can only find by looking far away,” he notes. “And yet, these mysteries always end up unlocking fascinating new technologies that change people’s lives.”
To do this research effectively, he says, bringing together talented students and faculty at all levels, from all backgrounds, is essential. CSST and CRESST II will develop the next generation of space science leaders, who will push the boundaries of human understanding and help answer the universe’s remaining big questions.
Banner image: NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft orbits Mars in this visualization. A 2019 research paper in Science led by CSST’s Mehdi Benna mapped Mars’s global wind patterns, the first time that had been done on any planet (including Earth). Visualization courtesy of NASA.
Students from across all of UMBC’s colleges and schools are graduating this week having taken advantage of the unique undergraduate research opportunities and supportive mentorship UMBC offers. They’re poised to take their research to the next level and move on to new challenges through graduate school and careers.
For example, Davis Cappabianca ’21 is recommending reforms to better coordinate multi-agency disaster relief efforts. Hana Flores ’21is conducting cutting-edge HIV studies. Keren Herrán ’21, M29, is incorporating environmental science to improve public health. Ali Abdolrahmani, Ph.D. ’21, is developing innovative assistive technologies for the blind community, and Briscoe Turner ’21 is reimagining public safety with an eye to community empowerment.
Big breakthroughs
Cappabianca took advantage of UMBC’s individualized study program (INDS) to tailor his degree around his interests. As a U.S. Navy veteran, Cappabianca knows that coordination between the military and civilian relief groups in the aftermath of disasters is often clumsy. He also expects, as an aspiring Navy medical doctor, that he will be involved in these situations in the future. He wanted to find a way to improve outcomes in these situations, because, he says, “The end goal [is] helping the most people possible in the most effective way.”
Davis Cappabianca ’21 in his U.S. Navy uniform. Photo courtesy of Cappabianca.
“I realized that my background in the U.S. Navy provided me with a lot of unique experiences,” he shares, “and what I found in INDS was a way for me to bring those experiences into my education and claim my own degree.” His two degree mentors, Stephen Kosloski, joint director of Naval ROTC at UMBC and University of Maryland, College Park and Joby Taylor, director of the Peaceworker Program at UMBC, brought very different perspectives to his research.
“More often than not, the melding of their ideas was what got me to major breakthroughs in my research,” Cappabianca says. Learning to always consider multiple perspectives was one of the most valuable takeaways from his INDS degree, he adds. “I think it will fundamentally change the way you approach problems, even if it’s subconsciously.” He plans to pursue medical school or a master’s degree in emergency management.
Environmental science meets public health
Herrán also designed her degree around her experiences. Answering a call for more Spanish-speaking participants, she spent spring break of her first year at UMBC in Nicaragua with the UMBC chapter of Global Medical Brigades, a student-run organization committed to implementing sustainable health systems worldwide.
She noticed the relationship between water quality and community health in Nicaragua, and reflected on similar challenges she observed during her childhood summers in Puerto Rico and El Salvador (the birthplaces of her parents). “Coming back to UMBC, I thought, this is what I want to dedicate my life to,” she says.
Keren Herrán ’21, right, In Honduras while participating in the Honduras Leadership Institute. Photo courtesy of Herrán.
Her degree has included courses in environmental science, sociology, research methods, and writing—even cartography. Why? Herrán sees significant overlap between study of the environment and public health, but, in practice, doesn’t see the fields as very connected in today’s world. She says, “I want to be in that overlap.”
“I think INDS has been crucial to my acceptance to graduate school, because it’s given me the opportunity to be intentional in my choice of classes, and to claim my education,” Herrán notes. “I knew that I wanted to pursue research and partner with communities, not just come in and tell them what to do,” she says. She has had the opportunity to take that approach in her undergraduate work.
This fall, Herrán will begin a Ph.D. at University of South Carolina as a Presidential Fellow in health promotion, education, and behavior.
Keren Herrán in her graduation regalia, spring 2021. Photo courtesy of Herrán.
Asking challenging questions
Turner and Abdolrahmani also focused on issues close to their hearts. As a Sondheim Public Affairs Scholar and psychology major, Turner has studied community building in the context of reimagining public safety and justice.
“I’m really interested in the community aspect, alternatives to policing, and understanding how you build as a community and solve these problems without the use of force—with understanding and restorative practices,” she says. “I’ve grown in that way, and thought about, ‘What does abolition look like? How do we expand our thinking and make sure that we’re tapping into new ideas of how we operate with each other, and how we communicate with each other, and how we treat each other, rather than sticking to historical practices?’”
Briscoe Turner ’21, rear, second from right, with other members of the UMBC Black Lives Matter Club in 2019. Photo courtesy of Turner.
Her current research with Bronwyn Hunter, assistant professor of psychology, focuses on college students who have had parents incarcerated or struggle with substance use, and understanding the students’ ideas of what justice looks like. In addition to her work with Hunter, a Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute at Princeton University “opened my eyes to how public policy works,” Turner says. Now, she’s asking big questions: “I’m trying to understand what the world could look like, and how do we get there?”
This summer, Turner is headed to Brown University to pursue a master’s of public affairs. “I’ve really enjoyed my UMBC experience. That’s why I picked Brown,” she says. “I felt like it had a lot of similar aspects to it as UMBC, so I want to continue that community feel and the support that I got here.”
Briscoe Turner ’21, left front, with UMBC’s Black Lives Matter Club in the UMBC Commons. Photo courtesy of Turner.
Inclusive design
Abdolrahmani has spent the last seven years investigating and developing assistive technologies for the blind community in the human-centered computing Ph.D. program. He decided to pursue a Ph.D. after being exposed to the field of assistive technology while working in his home country to improve the internet banking experience for blind customers. Intrigued and wanting to make a bigger contribution to the field, Abdolrahmani, who is legally blind, moved to the U.S. with his wife at age 36 to study with UMBC faculty in information systems.
“I wanted to understand how I could develop technologies to improve the independent living of the blind community or other people with disabilities,” Abdolrahmani says. He first worked on a project to develop a wearable indoor navigation assistive device. Later, he worked to enhance the user experience of mainstream voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google assistant for the blind. And, finally, he brought the two together for his thesis project, which focused on the use of mainstream voice assistants for navigating airports.
Along the way, he learned that not only did blind people appreciate the technologies he was developing, but so did sighted people and members of other groups. His research “shows that these technologies have great potential for future use for different groups of users in different contexts,” he explains.
Now, Abdolrahmani is looking for roles where he can have an even more direct impact as a member of a product design team, “so that I can inspire more accessibility and inclusive design in products, to see that products are designed in such a way that people with different abilities can use them right away out of the box.”
Becoming a scientist
A culture of supportive mentorship has helped sustain all of these students on their path to commencement. For Hana Flores, her first mentor on campus was none other than President Freeman Hrabowski.
Hana Flores ’21, center, with Phyllis Robinson, right, and Ernestine Baker, after Floes received an award for her presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in 2019. Photo courtesy of Flores.
The CEO of Prince George’s County Public Schools connected Flores with Hrabowski after hearing her deliver the valedictorian address at Bowie High School and learning that she would attend UMBC. On the day of their meeting, when Flores heard Hrabowski’s booming voice from the anteroom to his office, she was nervous. “But once he entered the room, any nerves I had went away,” she recalls. “He was so interested, and genuinely wanted to know what my goals and aspirations were.”
Soon thereafter, she joined the lab of Michael Summers, Distinguished University Professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. And she’s been conducting research with his team on the structure of HIV since.
Hana Flores ’21, left, Pengfei Ding, center, and Ridhi Chaudry ’22, right, at UMBC’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fest in 2019. Photo courtesy Flores.
Postdoc Pengfei Ding, in particular, spurred her growth by encouraging his mentees to contribute to the intellectual direction of the research, rather than simply teaching them specific laboratory techniques. “Dr. Pengfei Ding essentially was a catalyst for me to grow into a more independent researcher,” Flores says.
Her many professors in chemical engineering also had a role to play. “They are really focused on students being able to achieve. I felt comfortable going to office hours,” she says. “And I feel like they didn’t just care about me accomplishing in my classes, they also cared about how I was as a person.”
Flores has presented at national conferences, conducted summer research at MIT, and joined the UMBC Honors College and U-RISE Program. Shes also a contributing author for one published and two pending research articles. This fall, she’ll begin a Ph.D. at MIT as a Dean of Science Fellow, where she hopes to pursue interests in protein engineering and regeneration.
Hana Flores ’21. Photo courtesy Flores.
The power of mentoring
Herrán had support from research mentor Dawn Biehler, associate professor of geography and environmental systems, as well as her INDS and Meyerhoff Scholar communities. Biehler “is invested in her mentees and their growth and development, and she’s just incredibly kind and supportive,” Herrán says.
On her Meyerhoff experience, Herrán reflects, “I’m a minority in many aspects, and Meyerhoff is so beautiful, because it’s so rare to be in a cohort of more than 50 other students who are also minorities, who are also trailblazers within their families and their cultural communities. You relate to one another, you support one another—it’s a family for life.”
Abdolrahmani also received support from multiple angles. Stacey Branham, formerly of UMBC and now on the faculty at University of California, Irvine, “had a very deep trust in me and my abilities and my creativity for different research projects that we collaborated on together,” he says. Ravi Kuber, associate professor of information systems, was his primary advisor and “the first one who trusted me when I arrived in 2014.”
Keren Herrán ’21, right, at the University of Pennsylvania, where she gave a poster presentation on research completed during the Leadership Alliance Summer Research – Early Identification Program in 2018. Photo courtesy Herrán.
A strong believer in peer mentoring, Abdolrahmani thinks back to the supportive relationships he developed with both graduate and undergraduate students. With the undergrads, in particular, “I trained them academically, but also how to interact with me as a blind person, what kind of support I need,” Abdolrahmani says, “so I had the support that Ph.D. students need through the collaboration of my mentors and colleagues in the team.”
Circle of support
Turner’s research mentor, Hunter, offered valuable insights beyond their specific research project, supporting Turner as a whole person. “I’ve learned a lot from her about criminal justice and research and just about life,” Turner says of Hunter.
That support included walking her through the graduate school application process and providing an emotional anchor point. “I really appreciated her and the graduate students sharing their experiences,” Turner says. “She would also check in with me during our one-on-one meetings to see how I was doing throughout the process, given how difficult this past year has been.”
Briscoe Turner ’21 in graduation regalia. Photo courtesy Turner.
Faculty in the Sondheim Scholars and Honors College programs completed Turner’s circle of support. “All of them have been there for me, which I really appreciate, for personal growth and also my career goals,” she reflects.
Connections and pathways
Other graduating students, too, have benefited from strong mentorship and rich research experiences. Caleb Robelle ’21, M29, mathematics and computer science, had the opportunity to connect with research mentors across UMBC, Rutgers, Texas A&M, and Johns Hopkins, and was accepted into all 17 of the Ph.D. programs he applied to. He will pursue his Ph.D. in theoretical computer science at MIT.Olumide Fagboyegun ’21, M29, biochemistry, will pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Harvard as a Herchel Smith and NSF Graduate Research Fellow after completing neurological research with Erin Green, assistant professor of biological sciences.
Jordan Troutman ’21, M29, computer science and mathematics, is UMBC’s first Knight-Hennessy Scholar. He will pursue a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford. And Samuel Patterson ’21, economics and mathematics, will attend Oxford as the second Rhodes Scholar in UMBC’s history, with a focus on transportation economics.
Thinking ahead
In UMBC tradition, on the eve of their graduation these students are already thinking about how they can support those coming after them. Flores, for example, benefited from being paired with a graduate student as part of her summer research experience at MIT. She’s planning to become a mentor once she arrives on campus to begin her Ph.D.
They all agree that community connections matter. “It’s powerful to give people the platform to share their stories, their lives, their hopes, their dreams,” Turner says. “There’s a lot of power in community—building with each other and climbing as you go.”
Banner image: Hana Flores, left, and Keren Herrán, right, on campus. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
