He is a Biology major and an independent researcher. He is also a Teaching Assistant for both Biology 300 and 303, as well as a tutor for the Math Lab and Writing Center. He plans to attend medical school, become a doctor, and ultimately make a positive impact on the world. His advice on beginning in research, "Get started early!!! My biggest regret about research is that I didn’t get started as early as I should have. Working in a lab is a very rewarding experience that you learn a lot from. Getting involved early allows you to maximize what you gain and gives you enough time to pursue any long-term projects. Time is an invaluable resource and this is especially true with research."

Junaid's research will explore the efforts that will pave the way for the next-generation applications in human regenerative medicine. For more than a century, scientists have been captivated by the regenerative capabilities of the planarian flatworm, which can regenerate a full body from almost any type of amputation. To understand the mechanisms controlling this extraordinary ability, research approaches based on surgical, pharmacological, and genetic manipulations have been used extensively to produce a huge dataset of experimental results disseminated through the literature. The rise of sophisticated machine learning algorithms and computational power has brought upon a novel way of studying these fascinating creatures.

Read more about his research here…

Maybe you’ve heard of a feminist click moment, but do you remember what your queer click moment was? Kayla Smith, Women’s Center student staff member, collected queer click moment stories for the blog. Thanks to those who contributed!

That moment when the lightbulb went off in your head and a little (or loud) voice said “Holy crap! I’m not straight!”

Maybe you had a “girl crush” on a classmate? Or found yourself getting REALLY into L Word? The Women’s Center staff and community members share their queer click Moments!

Bi AND badass. Thanks Callie!

“When I was 19, I was completely infatuated with my Women’s Studies professor. She was
brilliant and beautiful, and I worked so hard in that class to try to impress her. I soon realized that it wasn’t a “girl crush” – it was an actual crush.” – Megan Tagle Adams, Women’s Center Assistant Director

First Shira, and then Willow. Everyone is gay

“I was in middle school, sitting next to this person who had identified as a lesbian at the time. I remember daydreaming in math, and suddenly an image of us married to each other, laying in bed and cuddling ( super scandalous for a 12 year- old, I know!). I quickly repressed that thought and never seriously revisited my queerness until college – though I still had a crush on this person all the way through High School.” – Shira Devora, Women’s Center student staff member

Shane putting the connections together!

“The moment is so vivid for me. At 24 years old, I was alone in my apartment watching L Word on DVD for the first time. I remember sitting on this green couch and feeling totally excited by what was happening on my tv (women hooking up with women – gasp!) followed by this realization that the stereotypes fed to me of what and who lesbians were was totally wrong. In that moment, my world opened up to the possibility there was another way of being for me… the rest, my friends, is history. This late bloomer, thanks you, L Word.” – Jess Myers, Women’s Center Director

“When I was a child, my favorite movie was The Sound of Music. My queer click moment, was when I saw Liesel (you know, ’16 going on 17′) do her musical number with Rolph (the bad guy who later ends up being a Nazi)! I wanted to be Rolph (but not a bad guy). Wow, this is embarrassing!” – Michael Jalloh-Jamboria, Women’s Center Student Staff member

Liesel seducing a young Michael.

Look at her cute gay overalls.

“I used to watch Power Rangers at my cousins house when I was little and I found myself really drawn to the Pink Ranger – Kimberly. I really liked Trini, the yellow ranger, and I knew I wanted to BE the yellow ranger….but something about the pink ranger and her little skirt? Yep. Definitely a queer.” – Kayla Smith, Women’s Center Student Staff member

“A friend of mine sent me a cool looking picture of a fantasy theme featuring a particularly attractive girl. We got into a conversation about female aesthetics which led to a rather non-PG13 discussion resulting in my friend telling me “you know that means you’re at least bi, right?”. My response was, “Wait what? Nooo…. wait. Hold on… huh. Aaaactually? THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE!” Click.” – Anonymous

“I slowly started realizing I was bisexual late freshman year. I had just gotten a tumblr, and one of the first blogs I followed was literally just selfies of “androgynous girls” (just gals admiring gals, right?) It finally hit me sophomore year when I got really into the band Halestorm. Their singer’s leather pants, her bright red lipstick… it was all too much for my baby bi heart.” – Anonymous

“I suspected I was rainbow-tinged from an early age. When I was 5, I kissed a girl in kindergarten and thought it was gross (because let’s face it, out of context, kissing is weird). But when I went into elementary school and then middle school, all of my best friends were girls and I thought they were the most beautiful people ever. I would seriously stare at them in disbelief that people so beautiful could ever exist. Ladies were like otherworldly goddesses to me, a small unworthy frog-girl. Meanwhile, I was also heavily interested in the idea of Jesse Bradford (specifically as Cliff in Bring it On) putting his smirk on my face. I didn’t really put all the pieces together of being queer, until I kissed a girl and I liked it. And then I kissed a boy and I liked that, too.” – Amelia Meman, Women’s Center Special Projects Coordinator

Do you remember what your queer click moment was? Join us at Between Women on Thursdays (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ bi-weekly in the Women’s Center lounge. Between Women is a discussion-based program that centers the experiences of women students who identify themselves on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum.

We can’t wait to see you in the center!

A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

Happy Women’s History Month! Join us in celebrating women, their lives, their stories and their resistance.

• Be sure to check out the Women’s Center’s Women’s History Calendar. There are great events and opportunities this month! Hope to see you some of the events!
• In case you needed it, this is your weekly reminder to stay on top of politics, question everything and resist. It’s difficult but your work helps us create a better future. Take a break from the TV and check out What the F*** Just Happened Today?, a chronicle of policy and decisions being made through the current presidency.
• Last week, Trump Signs New Order Blocking Arrivals From 6 Majority-Muslim Countries. Be sure to stay up to date on the issues revolving around this order which went into effect yesterday, March 16th. You can read about UMBC’s response here. (as an FYI, archived messages from the President and Provost of UMBC related to diversity and inclusion can be found on this page)
• UN Says World Faces Largest Humanitarian Crisis Since 1945. If you’re anything like me, you’re wonder what we can do about it. Here is a short list of things we can do. 
• Students at UCLA are trying to expand their school’s sanctuary campus policy to include queer, black and undocumented students. Check that out!! 
• Have you read Daniel Willey’s post, What Happened to the “Working” in International Working Women’s Day? yet? Check out this amazing read!
• Let’s talk about privilege! Here are 25+ Examples of Western Privilege. How can we start to unlearn them? Come on into the Women’s Center to chat!!

Provost Philip Rous and Vice Provost Simon Stacy came to the Women’s Center to pay us a visit!

Enjoy your Spring Break! See you in two weeks! Same place, same time! Stay safe and continue to slay! Happy Women’s History Month!

Meet Stephanie,

She is a double major student working on her degrees in Computer Science and Psychology. She is a member of the Honors College, the Vice President of the Computer Science Education club, a member of the Retriever Robotics Club, a CWIT affiliate, and the Curriculum Development Coordinator for the Creative Coders Program. She is also a Research Assistant for CS Matters in Maryland and a Research Assistant for the Multi-Agent Planning and Learning (MAPLE) lab. Previously, she was the Secretary of QUMBC. Her future ambitions are to continue researching Artificial Intelligence or a related field and to continue with outreach in computer science education.

Stephanie's research will explore a recently developed method of hierarchical planning: a hierarchy of abstract Markov decision processes (AMDPs). AMDPs seek to address the immensely challenging problems that decision-making agents face when operating in large environments to solve complex tasks. A hierarchy of AMDPs provides a framework for decomposing such problems into distinct, related subtasks. Her previous tasks for research in this area were to design an AMDP hierarchy for a house-building domain and to collaborate with her lab members to research and write a paper combining the R-MAX algorithm with AMDPs. Currently, she is working with her lab members to research and write a paper on constructing and reasoning over composite objects.

Read more about her research here…

A reflection by Women’s center staff member, Kayla Smith.

Full disclosure: I’m a Beyonce stan. I support pretty much everything she does. There are very few things Beyonce can do that I wouldn’t damn near worship. Needless to say when she released pictures from her maternity shoot I was ready to bow down.

Beyonce’s pregnancy announcement on Instagram

I scrolled through her website looking at all the maternity pictures in awe. The symbolism of a black woman evoking the Virgin Mary and the goddess Venus was not lost on me as I looked through the pictures feeling overjoyed for her and hopeful for my own future. She looked regal and glowed  with pride. This pregnancy announcement was radically different from her first, and was shrouded in much less mystery. I was reminded that in 2015 Beyonce suffered a miscarriage and I was so happy that she could announce another pregnancy with confidence. I even lamented to my boyfriend hoping that I would be as beautiful as Beyonce whenever I decide to have kids.

Beyonce as the Goddess Venus, pictured with a bust of Nefertiti.

To my surprise, outside of the BeyHive bubble, not everyone responded to the maternity shoot in the same way I did. Comment threads are filled with comments that call the maternity shoot “tacky,” “extra,” and “self absorbed.” Articles were written criticizing not just the image, but Beyonce and the announcement itself.

I can understand criticism, and I’m sure Bey can handle it. But one article in particular really felt like something was off. The author calls the Instragram picture “a brave woman who has the optimism to kneel down in front of a million flowers, get their wedding veil back on again, and know that bar the bump, the rest of their body is in perfect condition. People, this is not what pregnancy looks like.” A stranger, telling the public that Beyonce’s actual pregnancy isn’t what a pregnancy looks like. The author invalidates the actual pregnant woman, who is controlling her exposure and the narrative surrounding her pregnancy, by saying that, because it doesn’t look the way she expects pregnancy to look, it isn’t valid. In the days following the announcement I found myself falling down the rabbit hole of reading more and more articles criticizing Beyonce and her announcement. My excitement for her began to fade, and I wondered if maybe she should have avoided the criticism all together by being less flashy, or less “extra.”

Beyonce being pregnant on a car. I’m not sure why, but I’m here for it.

I started to think about women who hide their pregnancies in order to avoid backlash from their employers and peers and the expectations thrust onto women about the proper way to compose themselves during their pregnancies and once they become mothers. In 2016, when Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave birth to her child, she didn’t tell anyone when she was pregnant because she didn’t want to “perform pregnancy.” She’s quoted saying, “I just feel like we live in an age when women are supposed to perform pregnancy. We don’t expect fathers to perform fatherhood. I went into hiding. I wanted it to be as personal as possible.” Knowles-Carter and Adichie are both controlling the narrative around how much access the public has to their pregnancies.

I know I’m not nearly as famous as Beyonce or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie so I’m probably not going to have any articles written about me whenever I get pregnant, but I will still be a black woman carrying a child in a society where people feel entitled to comment on a woman’s appearance and police how she carries herself. Black women are not only harshly criticized for their appearance, we are also subjected to racist perceptions around black pregnancy. There is the assumption that black women are someone’s “baby mama” or that the pregnancy was an accident. Black women are not afforded the same respect as other women when they decide to bear children.

Beyonce and her first child Blue.

I still have a lot of life to live before I have children, but in the digital age I wonder about what my own pregnancy announcement will look like, if I have one at all. Would I be willing to weather the storm of criticisms thrown at me or would I be more private? I often wonder what kind of mom I will be on social media. Will I be Beyonce, performing pregnancy from the day of my pregnancy announcement to the child’s birth or will I be Adichie, and keep the public away from the very personal and miraculous process that is pregnancy?

Two years ago, when I decided I wanted to have kids one day, I fantasized about telling anyone who would listen about my pregnancy; however, after seeing the backlash women of color face online it’s easy to understand why it would be tempting to keep a pregnancy quiet altogether.

Beyonce being flawless during her Grammy’s performance.

This is where I come back to Beyonce. Instead of covering her pregnant belly up when she performed at the Grammys, she evoked the image of a Nigerian fertility goddess. She performed covered in gold and jewels, literally beaming like the sun. She took every criticism about being over the top and threw it all right back at her critics.

Women of color are already told how to act, how to sound, how to dress, and how to treat other people;however, like Beyonce, I refuse to let society tell me how to carry a child.

The Library is testing a new service allowing students to reserve Study Rooms. We've set aside 6 study rooms on the 3rd floor for this pilot program.  To reserve one, use this form or try the touchscreen kiosk near the 3rd floor elevators.

These are the rules we're starting with:

1. Reservations are limited to 3 hours per person or group each day.
2. Reservations can be made up to five days in advance.
3. Although the room is a more private space, please be mindful not to disturb others.
4. Clean up the room before you leave.
5. Reservations containing inappropriate language may be canceled without warning.

Let us know what you think!