Science & Tech

Neel Savani, UMBC/NASA Goddard Researcher, Explains Solar Storm Forecasting Technique in The conversation

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In an article for The Conversation this week, Neel Savani, UMBC researcher at NASA Goddard, reviewed the disruption solar storms can cause and how a new forecasting technique developed at NASA Goddard can provide a 24 hour warning. Solar storms are explosions from the surface of the sun that can shoot out into space and affect the planets they pass. Savani explains how solar storms affect the Earth, saying, “If a solar storm makes it to Earth, it can disrupt a variety of modern technologies including GPS and high-frequency communications, and even power grids on the ground, causing radio blackouts and… Continue Reading Neel Savani, UMBC/NASA Goddard Researcher, Explains Solar Storm Forecasting Technique in The conversation

Qassim Abdullah, GES, Awarded ASPRS Presidential Citation

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Qassim Abdullah, adjunct professor of geography and environmental systems for UMBC at the Universities at Shady Grove, was awarded the Presidential Citation from the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). Presidential Citations are given by the ASPRS President in recognition of contributions to the operation or advancement of the Society and its interests. Abdullah received the award at the 2015 ASPRS Conference on Wednesday, May 6, in Tampa, Florida for authoring “Positional Accuracy Standards for Digital Geo-spatial Data”. Click here to read more about Abdullah’s award and work.

Kavita Krishnaswamy, CSEE Ph.D. student, Featured on National Science Foundation Website

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Kavita Krishnaswamy ’07, computer science and mathematics, Ph. D. candidate, computer science and electrical engineering, was featured on the National Science Foundation website for her research on adaptive technology. Krishnaswamy’s work focuses on developing robotic prototypes that can assist people with severe disabilities and improving robotic interfaces. In the article, Krishnaswamy discusses how the support of research fellowships and mentors at UMBC has aided her research. She has won several competitive fellowships, receiving a Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. “These fellowships are instrumental in… Continue Reading Kavita Krishnaswamy, CSEE Ph.D. student, Featured on National Science Foundation Website

Eileen Meyer and Markos Georganopoulos, Physics, Use Hubble Telescope to Observe Rare “Shock Collision”

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Eileen Meyer and Markos Georganopoulos, physics, published an article in Nature last week detailing their research on black holes. Meyer, the lead author of the paper, is completing a postdoctoral position at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore before beginning her professorship at UMBC. Using photographs taken with the Hubble Space Telescope over the past 25 years, Meyer and Georganopoulos observed a “shock collision” of plasma jets, indicating that plasma jets run into each other and gain energy in that manner. “Something like this has never been seen before in an extragalactic jet,” Meyer said. “This will allow us… Continue Reading Eileen Meyer and Markos Georganopoulos, Physics, Use Hubble Telescope to Observe Rare “Shock Collision”

UMBC Sends Record Number of Interns to 2015 NIST SURF Program

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UMBC is sending a record number of interns this year to the summer 2015 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. The highly competitive internship program offers students in the science, mathematics, and engineering fields the opportunity to participate in undergraduate research at NIST’s Gaithersburg, Maryland or Boulder, Colorado offices. This year, 26 students were accepted into the program and 20 will be participating. The interns include several Meyerhoff Scholars and Honors College students.

Biological Sciences Faculty and Ph.D. Student Find Light-Sensitive Components in Cephalopod Skin

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Thomas Cronin, biological sciences, and Alexandra Kingston, Ph.D. candidate in biological sciences, worked with scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts to find that squid and cuttlefish possess light-sensitive proteins called opsins on their skin. Their findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Biology last week and have received widespread media coverage. Their discovery suggests, but does not prove, that cephalopods might be able to sense light through their skin. “All the machinery is there for them to be light-sensitive but we can’t prove that,” Cronin told National Geographic. “We don’t know if they contribute to camouflage or… Continue Reading Biological Sciences Faculty and Ph.D. Student Find Light-Sensitive Components in Cephalopod Skin

Christopher Gardner ’18, Computer Science, Places First at Kaizen Capture the Flag

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Earlier this week, UMBC CyberDawg Christopher Gardner ’18, computer science, took first place out of approximately fifty competitors at Booz Allen Hamilton’s Kaizen Capture The Flag event held at the Jailbreak Brewing Company in Laurel, MD. The event focused around navigating through a series of progressively harder cybersecurity obstacles. The challenge’s theme centered around a narrative that competitors were assisting the FBI in finding and then defusing a bomb. Competitors needed to complete a series of increasingly harder challenges to locate clues and other information, such as examining an Android .apk to find a wireless access point password, finding the… Continue Reading Christopher Gardner ’18, Computer Science, Places First at Kaizen Capture the Flag

Marc Olano, CSEE, and Anne Rubin, History, Describe the Bandit Video Game Project in the Daily Record

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A team of professors and students across several disciplines have worked together to develop “Bandit,” a video game in which players control a fox that navigates the streets during Civil War-era Baltimore. The game is one of two developed this semester in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Professor Marc Olano’s game development class. The group collaborated with students in the history department and Anne Rubin, an associate professor of history, to develop viewpoints of diverse actors in the Pratt Street Riots. The work was featured in a Daily Record article published on May 19: “The game-design students initially pitched several game ideas to the history… Continue Reading Marc Olano, CSEE, and Anne Rubin, History, Describe the Bandit Video Game Project in the Daily Record

UMBC Research Forum Tackles High-Performance Computing

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UMBC hosted its semi-annual Research Forum on May 1, 2015.  This semester’s forum focused on the role high-performance computing (HPC) can play in a variety of interdisciplinary applications, and featured speakers from diverse programs such as information systems, chemistry and biochemistry, geography and environmental systems, and computer science and electrical engineering.  UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski noted, “The mid-Atlantic region has one of the greatest concentrations of super-computing in the world.  That gives us a certain advantage as researchers.”  One key advantage is the facility of creating partnerships, “not just between universities, but with companies,” Hrabowski said. The forum keynote speaker,… Continue Reading UMBC Research Forum Tackles High-Performance Computing

Jeffrey Gardner Receives Dept. of Energy Early Career Award

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The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected UMBC’s Jeffrey Gardner, assistant professor of biological sciences, for a 2015 Early Career Research Program award. This program supports exceptional researchers early in their careers, when many scientists do their most formative work. The DOE award will provide five years of support for Dr. Gardner’s research into the use of plants as a renewable energy source. Most animals can’t use wood as an energy source because they are unable to digest plant cell walls. Termites are able to get energy from wood thanks to the help of bacteria that live in the termites’ digestive… Continue Reading Jeffrey Gardner Receives Dept. of Energy Early Career Award

Matthew Baker, Geography and Environmental Systems, Publishes Article on Ecological Restoration in Science

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A new article published by an interdisciplinary team of scholars in Science calls on policy communities to take up a set of holistic guiding principles for ecological restoration projects. Matthew Baker, an associate professor of geography and environmental systems, is co-author of the article and is part of an interdisciplinary working group on restoration funded by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). “Bringing their collective perspectives to bear in a series of workshops, the interdisciplinary team determined that restoration projects should be guided by four comprehensive principles to maximize benefits such as conserved biodiversity and sustained livelihoods. The authors concluded that… Continue Reading Matthew Baker, Geography and Environmental Systems, Publishes Article on Ecological Restoration in Science

Manil Suri, Mathematics, Writes New York Times Op-Ed on Math’s Application to the Maryland Blue Crab Population

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Published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times on May 3, Mathematics Professor Manil Suri wrote his third column since being named contributing opinion writer on the application of math to predict Maryland’s blue crab population. He examined the complexities and various factors that can go into a mathematical formula to predict the population. “Fecundity and survival rates — so innocuous as algebraic symbols — can be difficult to estimate. For instance, it was long believed that a blue crab’s maximum life expectancy was eight years. This estimate was used, indirectly, to calculate crab mortality from fishing. Derided by watermen,… Continue Reading Manil Suri, Mathematics, Writes New York Times Op-Ed on Math’s Application to the Maryland Blue Crab Population

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