All COEIT undergraduate students (BTA, IS, Comp Sci, CompE, MechE, and ChemE majors) are encouraged to complete the 2026 COEIT Undergraduate Student Voice & Experience Survey.

This survey aims to understand your experiences and perceptions related to your experience in your major, classroom interactions and environment, campus involvement and resources, and the diversity and inclusion within COEIT. 

Extended Deadline: Sunday, April 19, 2026

Take the Survey Here: https://umbc.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5iI6xaFXbYdbZGu or check your email for a direct link via an email from the Dean! 

Want to take the survey with others? Join CWIT Student Council on Wednesday, April 15th at 12pm in ITE 456. Pizza will be available to those who complete the survey during this event.

All COEIT undergraduate students (BTA, IS, Comp Sci, CompE, MechE, and ChemE majors) are invited to complete the 2026 COEIT Undergraduate Student Voice & Experience Survey.

This survey aims to understand your experiences and perceptions related to your experience in your major, classroom interactions and environment, campus involvement and resources, and the diversity and inclusion within COEIT. As this is the first time we're offering this survey since 2016, your feedback is incredibly valuable in helping the COEIT community collect critical benchmarking data.

Survey Deadlines & Prize Drawing:

• Priority Deadline: March 23, 2026 (and last chance to enter to win $25 Retriever Dollars)

• Final deadline: April 10, 2026

• Incentive: Complete the survey by the priority deadline (3/23) and select "yes" for the very last survey question to be taken to an anonymous separate survey to provide your email. This email will only be used to enter you into a prize drawing to receive $25 Retriever Dollars (multiple winners will be selected!). Your email address will not be linked to your survey responses.

Take the Survey Here: https://umbc.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5iI6xaFXbYdbZGu 

Students from Mt. St. Joseph High School had an engaging day at the Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering (CBEE) today, where they toured cutting-edge labs and learned about innovative research and CBEE’s academic excellence from leading faculty members. They were accompanied by Jason Ader, Mt. St. Joe’s Director of Sustainability, STEM, and Innovation, and Dr. Rebecca Obniski, a STEM coordinator.

The visit kicked off with a tour of the laboratories of Drs. Josephson, Blaney, and Marten, where students got a firsthand look at ongoing projects in the field. Each lab showcased unique research efforts, sparking curiosity and inspiring future engineers.

Following the lab tour, the students enjoyed a pizza lunch, where they had the opportunity to discuss their interests and ask questions about the engineering field. Dr. Marten, Chair of CBEE, shared insights into the department's research efforts and academic program.

Additionally, COEIT advisor Krista Wallace provided valuable information on the application process for the CBEE program, highlighting opportunities for prospective students to engage in research and hands-on learning.

The visit was a fantastic opportunity for high school students to connect with university faculty and explore potential career paths in engineering, fostering a deeper understanding of the impact of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering on society.

UMBC News | Published: Sep 18, 2024 |By:Catherine Meyers

On September 12, UMBC’s Upal Ghosh, from the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering, was sworn in as a member of the Washington, D.C., mayor’s Leadership Council for a Cleaner Anacostia River (LCCAR). The council consists of 25 high-level government officials, community leaders, and environmental experts who support the vision of a swimmable and fishable Anacostia River. The members meet quarterly to advise the D.C. government on ongoing restoration projects. 

The Anacostia River, which runs from Prince George’s County in Maryland into Washington, D.C., before joining the Potomac River and ultimately flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, has historically suffered from high levels of industrial pollution and contamination from sewage overflow. In recent years, government officials have been making concerted efforts to clean up the river. UMBC was invited to sit on the council, with Ghosh as the representative, based on the university’s key contributions to these clean-up efforts. 

Since 2016, Ghosh and his UMBC colleagues and students have developed innovative methods of measuring contaminants in the river and created models to elucidate where the contaminants come from and how they travel through and accumulate in the water, sediment, and aquatic life, such as fish. Nathalie Lombard, a research assistant professor at UMBC who has played a significant role in the projects, will serve as the alternate representative on the LLCAR when Ghosh cannot attend. 

In addition to his work on the Anacostia, Ghosh and his students have studied and contributed to the cleanup of the waterways throughout Maryland, Delaware, and across the country. “Students learn a lot from being out in the field,” Ghosh says. “They learn how the science and engineering we do helps guide major decisions. Our ultimate goal is making a positive difference in the health of the river, lake, or bay. That gives me a lot of excitement, and it really motivates the students too.”

Read original post via UMBC NEWS: Upal Ghosh Appointed To D.C. Mayor’s Leadership Council For A Cleaner Anacostia River - UMBC

Monday 2/21

• Engineers week kick-off, 12-lpm, ENG atrium
• Virtual trivia night, 6-8 pm, Online

Tuesday 2/22

• Open Lab Tours, 11-1 pm, ENG & ITE
• SHPE Diversity panel, 5-7 pm, ITE 238
• SWE Hot chocolate bar & CWIT cookie bar 7-7:30 pm, ENG atrium

Wednesday 2/23

• Connecting with Nature, Reflecting on our future, Library Pond
• ASME Showcase, 2-3 pm, ENG atrium AIAA & AIChE Showcase, 5-7 pm, ENG atrium

Thursday 2/24

• NSBE Engineering challenges, 1-2pm, ITE 238
• Alumni reception, 5:30-8 pm, Guinness Brewery

Friday 2/25

• IEEE Arduino workshop, Ilam-lpm, ITE 238
• Battle of COEIT, 2-3 pm, ENG atrium
• Baja Car unveiling, 3-4 pm, ENG atrium

All week

• Week-long photo scavenger hunt

Last weekend, UMBC Racing drove up to northern New York to compete in a volunteer-run Baja competition, Oktobajafest. The competition consisted of hill climb, acceleration, design, and Baja cross events, followed by a 4.5-hour endurance race. UMBC Racing earned 9th in design and earned 5th in Baja cross, an event that tests your vehicle’s ground clearance and suspension and your driver’s skill. This competition provided some much-needed practice to a team that was only able to go to 1 competition in the last 2 years due to the pandemic. Our drivers got valuable seat time, design practice, and we learned about more component failures to resolve in our 2022 vehicle design. Oktobajafest was a blast and has put UMBC Racing on a course for success in the 2022 Baja SAE season where we will be going to all three competitions, New York, Tennessee, and Arizona.

Check their website http://sae.umbc.edu/, and their Instagram is @umbcracing

An Introduction to Inertial Navigation From the Perspective of State Estimation 

[Focus on Education]

Abstract

Necessary and sufficient regressor conditions for the global asymptotic stability of recursive least squares

Abstract

In recursive least squares (RLS), a persistently exciting (PE) regressor guarantees global asymptotic stability (GAS) of the estimation error relative to the zero equilibrium, and hence convergence of the parameter estimates to their true values. It is known, however, that PE is sufficient but not necessary for GAS, and thus GAS might be achieved even if the regressor is not PE. Since analyses based on PE are ubiquitous in the recursive estimation literature, the existence of non-PE regressors that ensure GAS raises the question of how PE can be directly generalized into a necessary and sufficient condition for the GAS of RLS, and whether or not such a generalization would provide a simple characterization of non-PE regressors for which RLS is GAS. In this paper, we introduce WPE, a direct generalization of PE that is necessary and sufficient for GAS, and explain how it can be understood as a “non-uniform” extension of PE to specific classes of summation windows and lower bound sequences. Next, we show that WPE is equivalent to a condition that emerges from extending certain proofs of non-negative series divergence, such as Oresme’s divergence proof for the harmonic series, to sequences of real symmetric positive-semidefinite matrices.

Read the article here.