September to October 2018

My name is Denise Williams and I am an AGEP scholar studying nanoparticle chemistry at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). In addition to being an AGEP scholar, I am a proud member of the Rosenzweig Lab in UMBC’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and also a Meyerhoff Graduate Fellow. I am from Prince George’s County Maryland, but prior to my studies at UMBC I left the state for my undergraduate studies in both Chemistry and Forensic Science at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. My undergraduate research experiences in analytical chemistry inspired me to pursue graduate studies in a similar area. Hence my current research topic which combines analytical chemistry with inorganic, polymer, and conjugation chemistries. My current research and the international research experience that I will share here have been funded by a National Science Foundation AGEP graduate fellowship supplement award (Grant No. CHE-1506995), the National Science Foundation Center for Chemical Innovation (CCI) program award for the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology (CSN)(Grant No. CHE-1503408), and a National Institute of Health training supplement (Grant No. NIH-T32-GM066706).

I had the opportunity to spend 6 weeks as a Visiting Scientist in the lab of Dr. Karen Lienkamp in the Freiburg Centre for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies (FIT) at the University of Freiberg, and at the Department of Dentistry, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in the University Hospital of Freiburg.

This trip served to satisfy the cross-disciplinary training component of my dissertation research as required by the UMBC Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) program. As a CBI trainee, I am required to: 1) present papers at multiple conferences, 2) take an upper level course outside of my discipline, and 3) participate in cross-disciplinary research training. Fortunately, not only did my research allow me to pursue biological cross-training, it also enabled me to obtain an invaluable international research training experience.

The international component was fostered through an ongoing collaboration between the Rosenzweig group at UMBC, my principal investigator’s lab, and the Lienkamp group in Freiburg. The Rosenzweig group is a nanoparticle focused group, where we seek to make new nanoparticles and study their impact on the environment and human health, and their use in biomedical applications. The Lienkamp group is a polymer synthesis group, which aims to make and characterize polymers for several different applications. The collaboration between the two groups seeks to explore the potential use of the Lienkamp group’s patented antimicrobial Synthetic Mimics of Antimicrobial Peptides (aka PONs for their chemical name) when used to coat nanoparticles that the Rosenzweig group provides as antimicrobial nanoparticles. The motivation behind this collaboration arises from: 1) the increasing prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria, 2) the ability of the PONs molecules to kill even these drug-resistant strains of bacteria, and 3) existing literature which demonstrates that coating nanoparticles with antimicrobial drugs and polymers can increase the drug loading and targeting to specific bacteria, followed by increased killing efficiency of the bacteria. To this end, the PONs-coated nanoparticles are used to investigate the interactions between the coated nanoparticles with environmentally-relevant membranes and bacteria, an area of prime interest to the national CSN which supports research projects in the Rosenzweig laboratory.

The overarching goal of this experience was for me to learn the microbiological techniques used to characterize the activity of the antimicrobial PONs polymers against cells. After learning the techniques, I could then use them to characterize the activity of nanoparticles that are coated with the PONs polymers. The specific objectives to reach this goal were to: 1) successfully coat nanoparticles with PONs molecules, 2) characterize the coating efficiency, and 3) conduct parallel microbiological experiments with the free PONs molecules and PONs-coated nanoparticles.

The coating and characterization of PONs-coated nanoparticles were started at my home institution, so that they could be shipped in advance and be ready for the microbiological studies once I arrived in Germany. Unfortunately, the particles were held in customs for a week and a half! This meant that instead of working with PONs-coated nanoparticles from the beginning, I alternatively had the chance to thoroughly learn the biological assays with other samples while waiting for their arrival. The specific microbiological studies taught to me by those in the Lienkamp group looked at the how the samples would impact the ability of different bacteria cells and human red blood cells to live after exposure. Specifically, bacteria inhibitory growth assays were completed against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus cells to look at bacteria growth changes after the cells interacted with polymers and nanoparticles. The bursting of human red blood cells in the same conditions was investigated using a hemolysis assay.

While only some of the objectives were fully completed in the six weeks, every objective was started with general success. Fortuitously, the preliminary results analyzed from replicates of these microbiological assays with free PONs, nanoparticles, and PONs-coated nanoparticles indicate the potential for this cross-training experience to continue into a publication-producing collaboration with the Lienkamp group.

I am appreciative of the opportunity to complete this international cross-training experience. It afforded me the opportunity to be immersed in a different scientific culture and discipline, interact with people from Germany and Switzerland at their home, and even take in a new country’s scenery and history in my free time.

I’d like to acknowledge Dr. Lienkamp, Vera Bleicher, Dr. Sibylle Rau and others of the FIT and the University Hospital for extending their time, resources, expertise and friendliness. Further, I’d also like to thank Dr. Rosenzweig for allowing me time away from the UMBC lab to receive this training, and Dr. Seley-Radtke for facilitating the CBI program and encouraging me and other trainees to pursue cross-disciplinary training and expand our expertise and horizons. Provided the opportunity, I would feel more confident returning to Germany or any other international lab to receive training and international perspectives.

Please click on the following link and read the entire post. Please follow the guidelines specified to be considered for funding and as a member of our Maryland delegation.

https://usmlsamp.wordpress.com/2018/12/13/2019-latin-american-and-caribbean-consortium-of-engineering-institutions-laccei-in-jamaica/

Students, WEEF will be releasing the requirements for submitting a paper to participate in this conference. Make sure you check our main PROMISE website for a follow-up post regarding what is needed.

Below is a portion of a published statement by the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES):

“IFEES has selected a bid from the Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI, represented by N Sambandam), the Indo-Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE, represented by Krishna Vedula) and the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) to host the 2019 World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) in Chennai (India). WEEF 2019 is scheduled to be held between November 11 and 17, 2019. The tentative theme is Transforming Engineering Education through Disruptive Technologies in the Industry 4.0 Era.”

As part of our ongoing commitment to security, the Unix Infrastructure group will be conducting its quarterly system patching on Thursday, December 20th and Saturday, January 5th.  While many of the systems will be patched without any service disruption, there are some systems which require the downtime of key services.  The schedule below outlines which key services will be offline and for how long.

Thursday, 12/20/2018 between 5pm and 7pm (most systems will only be down for a short period during this time): 

• The web hosting environments (virthost) will be partially unavailable (pages will be available but any database calls will not work)
• Access to Cyrus and UMBC Webmail (accounts not migrated to UMBC Gmail)
• All mail will be queued up and delivered after the server is patched
• All HFS (user) servers will be offline
• Certain software licenses will be unavailable (autodesk, cadence, idl, schrodinger, xilinx, mathematica)

Saturday, 1/5/2019 between 9am and 11am(most systems will only be down for a short period during this time):

• myUMBC lite page will be up resulting in reduced myUMBC functionality
• Wiki will be unavailable
• The sites (wordpress) web hosting environment will be unreachable

Please let us know if you have any concerns or questions.

Thanks!

Tim Champ

Manager of Unix Infrastructure

UMBC DoIT

On Thursday, December 20th starting at 2pm LDAP-Master and Webadmin will be taken down for system maintenance.  During this time account creations and password changes will be unavailable.  Account authentication and logins will not be affected during this downtime.  

The maintenance window will allow staff to apply needed security and application updates.  The outage window is expected to last two hours with services being restored by 4pm on Thursday, December 20th.

During the outage window account creations will be queued and then processed upon restoration of services.  If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our Technology Support Center at x53838.

This Dissertation House is hosted by the Graduate School at UMBC for UMBC students only.

Dates: Tuesday, January 22 to Friday, January 25, 2019.

Location: UMBC, Commons Building, Room 329.

Time: 9 am – 5 pm (each day).

Graduate students who plan to participate should follow the application procedures on the application webpage for the Dissertation House (below). The application period closes on Monday, January 07, 2019. (Please note that there are only 12 to 15 slots for this event, consider applying early). Applications received after January 07, 2019, will be considered for the DH waiting list.

Registration: Please log into myUMBC: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/66182, click “Going” at the bottom, *AND* follow the application procedures on the main website for the Dissertation House: https://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/apply/. The application period to attend the Dissertation House closes on Monday, January 07, 2019.

Event Details: 

• The Dissertation House runs from 9 AM – 5 PM, for four days, Tuesday, January 22, 2019, through Friday, January 25, 2019.
• Students must plan to attend the full session, for each of the 4 days. 
• The daily schedule includes 2 mini-lectures and 5 hours of writing per day.
• Breakfast, lunch, and a snack will be served daily.
• The Dissertation House is free for UMBC’s graduate students.
• There are 12 to 15 spaces available for the Dissertation House. 
• Details regarding eligibility can be found on the application page of the website for the Dissertation House.

Read about The Dissertation House in UMBC’s Alumni Magazine: Byrne, R.  (2011, Fall) “The Write Stuff”, UMBC Magazine. p. 12. (PDF). More information about the DissertationHouse: https://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/about/

Dissertation House Application Procedures

Both the on-campus setting and the retreat setting provide Dissertation House participants with productive and rewarding scholastic engagement.  Students who participate in this program will spend each day thinking, writing, and sharing ideas about their doctoral dissertations.  Students will learn effective time-management skills; learn how to set small manageable goals, and will meet with a dissertation coach in one-on-one consultations to discuss and address obstacles that might prevent them from completing their degrees.

The Dissertation House period can span either a Tuesday – Friday (9 a.m. – 5 p.m., non-residential) or a Friday – Sunday weekend (includes evening sessions) commitment to focus on the doctoral dissertation.  The Dissertation House activities focus on areas where students typically have difficulty: conceptualizing a topic, writing a literature review, transitioning from a proposal to a dissertation, analyzing data, writing the last chapter, and editing.

Students may apply to attend the next Dissertation House during open application enrollment, by submitting two parts of an application.

PART I:

I. Submit a brief description (maximum of 2 pages, font size 11-12 point 1-inch margins) that describes the project that you wish to accomplish during the Dissertation House period.  Applications will neither be reviewed nor accepted outside of the application enrollment period.

PART II:

II. Please use the following guidelines  for the application:

(1) Summary of the project, including research question(s), data or texts, and method

(2) Amount completed on the project to date

(3) Any obstacles that you are encountering that hinder completion of the dissertation.

(4) Include the following header information with the description:

• Name
• Address
• Telephone numbers (home, office, and fax)
• E-mail address
• Academic Program and Year in the program

Dates/Location: January 22 to 25 (Tuesday – Friday), 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Dissertation House will be held in COMM 329 (for Dissertation House) and COMM 328 (for one-on-one sessions).

Application Enrollment Period: Application can be submitted within a designated 2-week period, usually scheduled 1-2 months prior to the next Dissertation House session.  Email applications to promisestaff@gmail.com.  Please use the words “Dissertation House” in the subject line of your email.

Selection Process: Eighteen participants will be selected for participation in the Dissertation House.  The following applicants will have priority:  (1) Applicants who plan to finish the Ph.D. within the next 6 months; (2) Individuals who are working on dissertations and theses rather than a proposal; (3) Applicants who submit earliest; and (4) Individuals who appear most able to benefit from the services offered at the Dissertation House.

If your application is accepted, you will receive an acceptance notice via email and additional details about the Dissertation House.  All students, including those who have not applied or those who are not selected, have the option to participate in the next online challenge, a virtual version of the Dissertation House.