Paul S. Ciotta
Technical Coordinator and Facilities Manager, Physics
2012-2013 Presidential Distinguished Award, Professional Staff
For the past 38 years, Paul S. Ciotta has served the UMBC community and is currently the technical coordinator and facilities manager for the Department of Physics.
Ciotta is known for his professionalism and eagerness to rise to a challenge. During the construction of the physics building, he coordinated with architects, engineers and university representatives, sometimes working 60-hour weeks. He gathered technical data—including information on HVAC, electric, plumbing, communications and space requirements—from the faculty and presented it to the building design team, and then ensured that they were properly implemented.
At the time, there was no astrophysics faculty, and he was responsible for purchasing the $500,000 telescope. He spent countless hours reading, studying and speaking to experts before approaching manufacturers, and then worked out the exact specifications and planned the installation on the new Physics Building roof.
His ability to adapt, learn new technology and solve problems across a variety of disciplines make him an invaluable asset to the department.
Bimal Sinha
Professor, Mathematics Statistics
2012-2013 University System of Maryland Board of Regents’ Award for Excellence in Research
Since joining UMBC as a full professor in 1985, Bimal Sinha has served the Department of Mathematics and Statistics with world-class scholarship, outstanding teaching and mentoring. An internationally recognized scholar, Sinha has established himself as a leading authority in the field of environmental statistics. His work informed groundwater contamination enforcement and compliance decisions, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has funded his work since 1987.
Sinha’s leadership was instrumental in developing UMBC’s statistics program, which has become internationally renowned for research excellence. He developed and organized the popular “Probability and Statistics Day”, an annual one-day workshop at UMBC, funded in part by the National Security Administration. The event attracts statisticians from universities, private industries and the federal government.
Sinha’s research has appeared in numerous publications, including the International Journal of Statistical Sciences and Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and the U.S. Census Bureau has named him a Research Mathematical Statistician.
Sinha earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D in statistics from Calcutta University.
Phyllis Robinson
Professor, Biological Sciences
2012-2013 UMBC President’s Commission for Women Achievement Award
Phyllis Robinson has been a campus advocate on behalf of women and devoted to gender equity issues since first joining UMBC in 1992. Shortly after receiving tenure in 1999, she co-chaired a committee to investigate the gender differences in resources for female faculty in STEM fields. Her goal was to make UMBC as famous for its support of women in science as it is for the success of the Meyerhoff Scholars. In 2000, she was instrumental in the creation of Women in Science and Engineering (WISE), a group dedicated to addressing the challenges faced by women in STEM fields, and to give them support in male-dominated disciplines and departments.
For the next decade, WISE established resources and a community of support, organizing workshops on a variety of topics, including tenure, time management and health. She helped establish a formal family medical leave policy at UMBC, encouraged women to seek leadership roles on campus, and extended WISE to graduate students. Over the past decade, the number of female tenure-track faculty has more than doubled.
Robinson’s work and enthusiasm has helped advance the careers of women in the sciences at UMBC, all while maintaining a well funded research program, mentoring and training eight Ph.D students, four M.S. students and 29 undergraduate students in her lab.
Robinson earned her Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin and was a postdoctoral fellow at Brandeis University.
