Martin Onuegbu
Frederic Worden, Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts

AC IV A 110  |  2:00 - 2:10 p.m.

Life Is Like Basketball is a narrative film depicting a young man’s struggles in his life and makes use of the game of basketball as a metaphorical representation of those struggles. This short movie presents a dazzling array of action shots and makes use of special effects to tell an epic story of a boy named Ron battling a variety of foes. These battles unfold both on a basketball court as well as in an imaginary trial room in his mind. As the story progresses, the protagonist overcomes his foes through his determination as well as his fantastic basketball skills. This film is intended to be both entertaining, as well as an in-depth character study of a man striving to overcome the obstacles in his life. Both the visual imagery and the original musical soundtrack are designed to communicate and articulate the character’s struggles. The hope is that the film will both entertain as well as make viewers think about the sources of inspiration that can be called upon to rise above some of life’s more challenging obstacles.

Morgan A. Madeira

Anupam Joshi, Professor, Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

UC Ballroom  |  10:00-12:30 PM

Social media has increasingly become an outlet for expression for a large part of our society. Literature suggests that analyzing data from these sites can lead to improvements in areas such as health-care and search-ad targeting. Users of these sites often associate with many other users described as “friends,” even if they do not have a strong connection, or what would be described as friendship in daily life. It is valuable to determine the strength of relationships between users and to identify communities within social networks. These communities represent people with similar characteristics, which are used by applications to solve many real-world problems. For instance, it is useful to identify groups that listen to the same type of music, are similarly affected by a natural disaster, or share health risks for a particular disease. We have created a system to collect and analyze the data about user characteristics, while being respectful of privacy concerns. The system is composed of a front end Facebook application and a back end machine-learning based tool. The front end component gathers data about a user and their friends. The back end uses the collected data and machine-learning techniques to determine relationships between users.

This work was funded through an Undergraduate Research Award from the UMBC Office of Undergraduate Education.

Eva Jannotta

Jessica Berman, Associate Professor, Department of English

UC 310  |  10:15-10:30 AM

Contemporary popular fiction novels written by and for women, often called “chick-lit” novels, are a genre frequently derided by the media and literary critics. Yet their commercial success and popularity attest to their importance and relevance to contemporary women readers. My research examines chick-lit novels from a Gender and Women's Studies and literary criticism perspective. I first analyze nine novels for the ways in which they imagine and represent contemporary white professional women, paying particular attention to portrayals of female relationships, feminism, careers, and the perpetuation of whiteness as an invisible racial category. I then analyze three chick-lit novels in-depth, exploring them as contemporary revisions of fairy tales. Using folktale and postfeminist theory I explore how chick-lit novels masquerade as verisimilitude and disguise their elements of fantasy, thereby attempting to persuade the reader to believe in the fairy tale and feel reassured by it. My research illuminates the hopes and anxieties of contemporary white professional women as portrayed through the novels they read and write. Understanding the dynamics reflected in chick-lit novels and the fairy tale tropes these novels deploy allows readers and critics to understand the function, appeal and insight of chick-lit novels despite their dubious reputation.

*This work was funded through an Undergraduate Research Award from the UMBC Office of Undergraduate Education.

Be the Change You Wish To See in the World!

Apply to become an AmeriCorps VISTA

with UMBC’s Service-Learning Program!

Through partnership with the Maryland-Washington, DC Campus Compact (MDCCC), the AmeriCorps VISTA position will provide leadership in the design and implementation of the Service-Learning & School-Family Connections MDCCC-VISTA project and will serve as the liaison between UMBC and its school partner.  The MDCCC-VISTA will meet with teachers and administrators to devise a plan for increasing student engagement in the Homework Club and will create surveys and assessments to ensure that data is measured on a regular basis.  The Information Workshops for parents will address the school’s commitment to provide school-family support.  The MDCCC-VISTA will meet with school administrators and parents to create a curriculum plan for the sessions that she or he will also implement and facilitate; surveys and other assessments will be created to ensure that data from sessions is assessed.  The MDCCC-VISTA will also recruit UMBC students to participate in service-learning activities that leverage the resources of the campus to meet the volunteer needs of local community programs.   

What is AmeriCorps VISTA?

• AmeriCorps VISTA is the national service program designed specifically to fight poverty. 
• VISTA members serve as full-time volunteers, organizing and implementing programs that build the capacity of organizations while making resources available to communities in need.

What are the benefits of serving as an AmeriCorps VISTA?

• The VISTA member will receive health insurance, a travel allowance (for work-related meetings and events), and a taxable living allowance of approximately $13,000 for their year of service.
• After successfully completing the service year, the VISTA will be eligible to receive either $1,200 in cash or an AmeriCorps Education Award of $5,550 that can be used toward the repayment of student loans or school tuition.  

What are the eligibility requirements to be a VISTA?

• A Bachelor’s Degree and driver’s license is required by the start of the VISTA year.
• Commitment to provide one year of full-time service (8/15/12-8/14/13).  
• Desire to work on-campus and with a local school partner to combat poverty.

How can I apply?

• Complete the enclosed Intent to Apply Form and email it to Clare Greene (clare6@umbc.edu) in the Service-Learning Program at The Shriver Center at UMBC.  Only emailed submissions will be accepted.  Eligible applicants will be contacted for an interview.
• For more information about the AmeriCorps VISTA program, visit: http://www.americorps.gov/for_individuals/choose/vista.asp.

ALL INTENT TO APPLY FORMS MUST BE EMAILED TO clare6@umbc.edu

By 5pm on Friday, April 27^th, 2012.

This Saturday, April 14, 2012, students in the ENES101 Introduction to Engineering Science course will be competing in UMBC's second AROW competition. AROW, which stands for Academy Robotics on the Water, is an introductory engineering design experience developed by Captain Jonathan Russell, Lt. Cmdr. Brian Maggi and Stephen Grenier at the US Coast Guard Academy.  Students are tasked with the design, implementation, test and operation of a robotic vessel to perform simulated tasks representing activities of the U.S. Coast Guard. 

Working in teams of three to five, the students must design the propulsion, mechanisms, and programming necessary to accomplish simulated Coast Guard tasks, such as tending a light house, placing navigation buoys, cleaning and recycling and oil spill – represented by ping-pong balls – and rescuing Lego fishermen who have fallen overboard. Each team is given a budget and permitted to "purchase" structural elements for their design from a common supply. The competition will be judged on the basis of the cost-effectiveness of the various team designs.

The UMBC AROW competition will be held in the Atrium on the second floor of the Engineering building on Saturday, April 14. Each team will have four minutes to accomplish as many tasks as possible. A single competition session will start at 10 AM.  Approximately 24 teams of ENES101 students will compete. The UMBC community is invited to view the competition from the third floor balcony of the Engineering building.

Saturday's event is the second AROW competition at UMBC. It is supervised by the ENES101 instructors, Dr. Anne Spence, Professor of the Practice of Mechanical Engineering and Dr. Chuck LaBerge, Professor of the Practice of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and assisted by the ENES101 Teaching Fellows: Mathew Kurtz, Julia Lopez, and Elliot Mooney.

What: UMBC's Second Academy Robotics on the Water (AROW) Competition
When: Saturday, April 14, 2012. 10:00 a.m.
Where: Engineering/ Computer Science (ECS) Building: 3rd Floor Balcony
 

The Virtual Human Simulator:
Computer-aided Exploration of Human Biology

Professor Andreas Linninger
Laboratory for Product and Process Design
University of Illinois at Chicago

1:00pm Friday, 13 April 2012, 227 ITE, UMBC

Engineering has substantially impacted the world by creating material wealth through design of chemical production plants, synthesis of specialty chemicals and pharmaceuticals and sustainable processes for energy and the environment. Systematic engineering methods are also driving a transformation in biomedicine. We will present developments in advanced scientific computing for discovering the fundamental transport and reaction mechanisms in biological systems.

Novel medical imaging modalities open unprecedented views into organ function and cellular chemistry of whole organisms in vivo. The quantitative investigation of spatio-temporal reaction and transport phenomena opens a path for the rational design of drug delivery therapies to specific target areas of the human central nervous system. Image-based computational fluid dynamics (iCFD) will be introduced as a new methodology integrating medical imaging modalities with rigorous transport principles. System dynamics and control theory are centerpieces in the prediction of cerebral hemodynamics towards better treatment options for stroke. Non-linear mathematical programming techniques developed by chemical engineers for large scale process optimization are key to parameter estimation in pharmacokinetic and toxicity studies as well as novel techniques for design optimization of gene therapies. The integration of transport and reaction phenomena with anatomical and physiologically consistent computer models spanning the molecular, cellular through the macroscopic length scales lead us to progressively accurate predictions of metabolic functions in the normal and pathological conditions. Prototype developments of the virtual human simulator to engineer design solution in-silico will be demonstrated. Case studies will illustrate the state-of-the-art in computing cerebral blood flow patterns, computer-aided design of drug administration therapies and physiologically-based pharmacokinetic modeling for new drug leads.

Dr. Andreas A. Linninger is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering and Director of the Laboratory for Product and Process Design at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He received Diploma and PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from the Vienna University of Technology. He received postgraduate training at the Rijksuniversiteit Gent, the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research interests in process system engineering include computer-aided process synthesis, mathematical modeling of complex systems and design under uncertainty. He has published more than 100 papers on parameter estimation in distributed systems, synthesis of distillative separation networks, integrated design and control, process design for the environment and computational fluid mechanics methods in biological systems.

Host: Yelena Yesha

Curious what all the buzz is about doing undergraduate research?

Interested in learning more about the process?

Stop by URCAD and see what other students have been doing in their undergraduate research projects. More nutrituous than pizza!

All CWIT Affiliates are invited to the annual end of year picnic sponsored by the CWIT Affiliates Program and the CWIT Parents organization (PWIT). This year's picnic will feature food from QDoba, games, and a chance to meet up with other Affiliates, Scholars, and CWIT alumni. FREE, all Affiliates are welcome! Just RSVP by hitting the green "I can attend" button on the event page below.

UMBC will host three events as part of the CRA-W Distinguished Lecture Series on Monday, 16 April 2012. CRA-W, the Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research, is an action-oriented organization dedicated to increasing the number of women participating in Computer Science and Engineering research and education at all levels.

The visiting speaker is Dr. Ellen Zegura, Professor and Chair of
the School of Computer Science, Georgia Tech.  Dr. Jeff Forbes
of NSF and Duke University will also be on campus as part of
the Distinguished Lecture Series to participate on a panel about
grad school (aimed at graduate students and undergraduates).
The events are open to the public and UMBC visitors are welcome
to attend.

PANEL DISCUSSION: GRADUATE SCHOOL: BEFORE, DURING, AND AFTER
10:00-11:00am, Monday 16 April, 2012, UC 310
Dr. Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
Dr. Jeffrey Forbes, National Science Foundation
Mr. James MacGlashan (UMBC CSEE Ph.D. Candidate)
Ms. Alyson Young (UMBC HCC Ph.D. student)

COMPUTING IN CIRRUS CLOUDS: THE CHALLENGE OF INTERMITTENT CONNECTIVITY
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
1:00-2:00pm, Monday 16 April 2012, ITE 325B

COMPUTING FOR GOOD: EXPERIENCES IN HUMANITARIAN COMPUTING
Ellen Zegura, Georgia Tech
4:00-5:00pm, Monday 16 April, 2012, Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Details of these events can be found at http://csee.umbc.edu/talks and
in the attached flyer.

These events are jointly sponsored by CRA-W, UMBC’s Center for Women in
Technology (CWIT), CSEE and IS Departments, and the Graduate School.

We encourage you to attend these events.

Yun Peng and Marie desJardins
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)