Families, friends, furry pals, and Retrievers of all ages returned to UMBC’s campus last week for the 2024 Homecoming celebration. Retrievers were in high spirits as they enjoyed more than 30 events, including UMBC Homecoming staples like the beloved carnival and bonfire, and some attendees kicked off their Halloween festivities with costumes, pumpkins, and fall treats. 

Robots, pups, and Retriever traditions

In UMBC tradition, the Homecoming celebration had something for everyone. Leading up to main Homecoming weekend, students kicked Homecoming fun into high gear with the return of the student org kickball tournament. UMBC faculty and staff also took part in the fun at the annual faculty-staff social. 

A diverse breadth of UMBC’s research and creative achievement was on display at the eighth annual GRIT-X event. First-year computer science student Morgan Robbins attended this year’s GRIT-X with her mother, Nicole Robbins. The pair were impressed by GRIT-X speaker Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor of information systems, and student researchers in UMBC’s Center for Real-time Distributed Sensing and Autonomy (CARDS) who led a demonstration of their autonomous robotics technology.

“I’m interested in autonomous communication, and I like combining computing with helping people,” said Robbins. “This was my first time seeing research talks, and it was great to see the research happening at UMBC.”

During Homecoming and Family Weekend, there were smiles, cheers, and barks all around for the annual Puppy Parade, which featured dozens of animals in wild costumes. Dharma Bhatt ’23, psychology, said he came to Homecoming for one reason: “The puppy parade—entirely the puppy parade.” 

A weekend for family and friends 

Homecoming weekend also featured several get-togethers for various groups across the community, including reunions for UMBC’s “Founding Four” group and members of the university’s Honors College and scholars programs. President Valerie Sheares Ashby took part in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority Lambda Phi chapter’s celebration of their 15th reunion. The group helped to raise more than $1,600 for UMBC’s Second Generation Scholarship Fund.

Jim Lotfi ’89, visual and performing arts, kept the party rocking during the annual Greek alumni reunion party. Lotfi shared that he loves hosting the Greek alumni party, saying that, “It’s a great time for fraternity and sorority members across all organizations to come together and reconnect. This is one of my favorite Homecoming events to participate in.” 

In the Alumni and Friends tent on Erickson Field, attendees enjoyed games, food, petting zoo fun, and moments of reconnecting with old classmates and other familiar faces. Senior Emily Trentalance said she attended Homecoming to be able to see friends and professors again. “It’s hard hanging out, especially with your alumni friends when people are busy, so it’s nice to see everyone,” she shares. 

During this year’s Taste of Maryland Homecoming event, 100 attendees gathered across from UMBC’s Bookstore in The Commons for a crab and assorted buffet feast. Alumni Association President Kevin Yang ’07, computer science and financial economics, and his wife Katelyn Niu ’05, biochemistry, brought their son along for the Homecoming fun. The family enjoyed the endless bushels of crabs with fellow alumni friends. 

“There’s nothing like a UMBC celebration, and what better way to reconnect and reminisce with old friends than with crabs,” said Yang. 

As the carnival lit up the night sky, many attendees made their way to the annual Homecoming Tailgate where they cheered on the men’s soccer team in their victory against the University of Vermont. 

Additional reporting provided by JJ Gee ’25 and Maashal Awan ’25 for UMBC.

A new study in Naturefinds that up to 215 million hectares of land (an area larger than Mexico) in humid tropical regions around the world has the potential to naturally regrow. That much forest could store 23.4 gigatons of carbon over 30 years and also significantly help enhance biodiversity and water quality. The study showed that more than half of the area with strong potential for regrowth was in five countries: Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, China, and Colombia. 

“Tree planting in degraded landscapes can be costly. By leveraging natural regeneration techniques, nations can meet their restoration goals cost effectively,” says the study’s co-lead author, Brooke Williams, a researcher at  the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and the Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions. “Our model can guide where these savings can best be taken advantage of,” she says. 

A culmination of decades of work

Matthew Fagan, associate professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC and second author on the new study, developed a data set the authors relied on.

In that work, “We used satellite images to identify millions of small areas where tree cover increased over time. We then excluded the areas planted by humans with machine learning, focusing on natural regrowth,” Fagan says. The study tracked regrowth between 2000 and 2012, and then checked if the regrowth was maintained through 2015. “Those natural patches were the input data for this novel study,” he says, “the first to predict where future forest regrowth will occur, given observed past regrowth.” 

The study, co-led by Hawthorne Beyer, head of geospatial science at Mombak, a Brazilian startup which aims to generate high-quality carbon credits through reforestation of the Amazon, and director of science at Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions, also pulled in global data sets describing factors like soil quality, slope, road and population density, local wealth, distance from urban centers and from healthy forest, and more. “Any time you build one of these global studies, you’re standing on the backs of so many other scientists,” Fagan says. “Each one of these studies represents years of work.”

The study found that the factors most strongly associated with high regrowth potential were a patch’s proximity to existing forest, the density of nearby forest, and the content of carbon in the soil. Those factors in particular “seem to do a really good job explaining the patterns of regrowth we see across the world,” Fagan says. Being close to existing forest, for example, is key to supplying a variety of seeds to the area to support diverse regrowth, Fagan explains. 

Keeping it local—by supplying a global map

The end product of the study is a digital map of the global tropics, where each pixel—representing 30 x 30 square meters of land—indicates the estimated potential for regrowth. That map, made possible by n extensive international collaboration of researchers, is a boon to environmentalists worldwide hoping to advocate locally for their efforts.

“Our goal and our hope is that this is used democratically by local people, organizations, and localities from the county level all the way up to the national level, to advocate for where restoration should happen,” Fagan says. “The people who live there should be in charge of what happens there—where and how to restore really depends on local conditions.”

Fagan points out that some of the potential regrowth areas the study identified are unlikely to be restored for a variety of reasons, such as being in active use for ranching or crops or located on prime real estate near roads and urban centers. However, a meaningful portion of the 215 million hectares is abandoned and degraded cattle pastures or previously logged forests, where encouraging natural regeneration would have minimal cost to local economies and a long list of benefits.

“If you restored that to rainforest, the benefit to water quality, water provision, local biodiversity, and to soil quality would be immense,” Fagan says. “It would also be an immense benefit for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, so really it’s just a question of, ‘Where can we do this most efficiently?’ That’s what this paper is all about.”

Most people wouldn’t guess horseshoe crabs—ancient arthropods with hard, round carapaces and long, spiky tails—when asked what animals you might find in a K-12 classroom. But Jessica Baniak ’23, biological sciences, is collaborating with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to shift kids’ perspectives of the alien-looking critters and create opportunities for inquiry-based learning.

Today, Baniak is a student in the ICARE program, an environmental science master’s program led by UMBC biology professor Tamra Mendelson. ICARE students study local environmental issues and include community partners on their master’s thesis committees. 

Horseshoe crabs congregate on Maryland and Delaware beaches to mate each spring, and the last two years Baniak has collected some of their eggs with a research permit from the Maryland DNR. Each female can produce upwards of 20,000 eggs. Baniak takes the eggs back to a lab at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET), a multi-institution research facility on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and raises them until they’re about a centimeter across. 

Then Baniak delivers the baby crabs to elementary, middle, and high school classrooms in Howard, Carroll, and Baltimore counties. This year, 10 schools received crabs. Some teachers use the crabs in their curriculum, and some crabs are tended by student environmental clubs. Students run basic experiments that develop their science reasoning skills, like comparing growth rates in different hatchery setups. 

Finding the sweet spot

It’s tricky to successfully raise the crabs to adulthood. Baniak visits each classroom a couple of times a year and makes suggestions to improve the crab habitats. Factors like feed, temperature, salinity, and more play a role in their survival. For her master’s research, Baniak is working out the ideal setup for successful crab-rearing with a focus on temperature. Higher temperatures produce faster growth, but some baby crabs perish in the heat. Cooler temps cut the mortality rate, but slow growth. 

Baniak’s goal is to find the sweet spot that produces the most healthy crabs in a short amount of time. Why does efficiency matter? Because eager students aren’t the only ones interested in raising crabs.

Companies extract a compound from horseshoe crab blood that is used to detect bacterial contamination in pharmaceuticals. The blood can’t be harvested until the crabs are about 10 years old, Baniak explains, so raising them in captivity isn’t economical (it’s also challenging). Instead, reintroducing young crabs to their natural habitat is “a way that companies can help mitigate how much they’ve taken out of the wild,” Baniak says. Baniak’s work will help optimize these reintroduction programs for the industry—and at the same time, give kids a unique learning opportunity.

‘Everything all at once’

As a child, the National Aquarium in Baltimore—directly across the pier from IMET—inspired Baniak to pursue marine biology. Today her experiences range well beyond horseshoe crabs. As an undergraduate, she had a summer internship at an oyster hatchery. “During the breeding season—that’s when you work really long hours,” she says. “You have to do everything all at once.”

Counting surviving oysters, mating specific oyster pairs, and cleaning tanks—all while squeezing in work on experiments running at the hatchery—filled her days. One project involved developing a protocol to anesthetize oysters, which made it possible to collect tissue samples without killing the oyster. Baniak also assisted with the hatchery’s softshell clam initiative.

For another internship, she worked at the Maryland Pesticide Education Network, which promotes safer alternatives to harmful pesticides. During the academic year, she found time to participate in UMBC’s tae-kwon do club and play club volleyball. 

Sharing the joy in science

After she graduates with her master’s next spring, Baniak hopes to move on to a role in a federal agency like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She wants to continue to contribute to outreach programs like the horseshoe crab project. 

“That’s my motivation for continuing in science, because I want to make more programs like that,” Baniak says. “I like ICARE because you’re working with other people in the community and not just researching a really niche subject.”

After she transferred to UMBC during the pandemic to be closer to home, UMBC faculty members helped her stay committed to her biological sciences degree. Maggie Holland, professor of geography and environmental systems, “brought back the joy into science after returning from online learning,” Baniak says. “She seemed to genuinely care about me as a student and about the subject she was teaching.”

Mendelson, too, made an impact. “She’s put a lot of effort into the ICARE program and wants to see all of us succeed,” Baniak says.

At the end of the school year, Baniak will travel with the students to release their horseshoe crabs at Sandy Point State Park and watch them wriggle across the sand and swim into the Chesapeake Bay, heading for life’s next phase. 

Most people wouldn’t guess horseshoe crabs—ancient arthropods with hard, round carapaces and long, spiky tails—when asked what animals you might find in a K-12 classroom. But Jessica Baniak ’23, biological sciences, is collaborating with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to shift kids’ perspectives of the alien-looking critters and create opportunities for inquiry-based learning.

Today, Baniak is a student in the ICARE program, an environmental science master’s program led by UMBC biology professor Tamra Mendelson. ICARE students study local environmental issues and include community partners on their master’s thesis committees. 

Horseshoe crabs congregate on Maryland and Delaware beaches to mate each spring, and the last two years Baniak has collected some of their eggs with a research permit from the Maryland DNR. Each female can produce upwards of 20,000 eggs. Baniak takes the eggs back to a lab at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET), a multi-institution research facility on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and raises them until they’re about a centimeter across. 

Then Baniak delivers the baby crabs to elementary, middle, and high school classrooms in Howard, Carroll, and Baltimore counties. This year, 10 schools received crabs. Some teachers use the crabs in their curriculum, and some crabs are tended by student environmental clubs. Students run basic experiments that develop their science reasoning skills, like comparing growth rates in different hatchery setups. 

Finding the sweet spot

It’s tricky to successfully raise the crabs to adulthood. Baniak visits each classroom a couple of times a year and makes suggestions to improve the crab habitats. Factors like feed, temperature, salinity, and more play a role in their survival. For her master’s research, Baniak is working out the ideal setup for successful crab-rearing with a focus on temperature. Higher temperatures produce faster growth, but some baby crabs perish in the heat. Cooler temps cut the mortality rate, but slow growth. 

Baniak’s goal is to find the sweet spot that produces the most healthy crabs in a short amount of time. Why does efficiency matter? Because eager students aren’t the only ones interested in raising crabs.

Companies extract a compound from horseshoe crab blood that is used to detect bacterial contamination in pharmaceuticals. The blood can’t be harvested until the crabs are about 10 years old, Baniak explains, so raising them in captivity isn’t economical (it’s also challenging). Instead, reintroducing young crabs to their natural habitat is “a way that companies can help mitigate how much they’ve taken out of the wild,” Baniak says. Baniak’s work will help optimize these reintroduction programs for the industry—and at the same time, give kids a unique learning opportunity.

‘Everything all at once’

As a child, the National Aquarium in Baltimore—directly across the pier from IMET—inspired Baniak to pursue marine biology. Today her experiences range well beyond horseshoe crabs. As an undergraduate, she had a summer internship at an oyster hatchery. “During the breeding season—that’s when you work really long hours,” she says. “You have to do everything all at once.”

Counting surviving oysters, mating specific oyster pairs, and cleaning tanks—all while squeezing in work on experiments running at the hatchery—filled her days. One project involved developing a protocol to anesthetize oysters, which made it possible to collect tissue samples without killing the oyster. Baniak also assisted with the hatchery’s softshell clam initiative.

For another internship, she worked at the Maryland Pesticide Education Network, which promotes safer alternatives to harmful pesticides. During the academic year, she found time to participate in UMBC’s tae-kwon do club and play club volleyball. 

Sharing the joy in science

After she graduates with her master’s next spring, Baniak hopes to move on to a role in a federal agency like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She wants to continue to contribute to outreach programs like the horseshoe crab project. 

“That’s my motivation for continuing in science, because I want to make more programs like that,” Baniak says. “I like ICARE because you’re working with other people in the community and not just researching a really niche subject.”

After she transferred to UMBC during the pandemic to be closer to home, UMBC faculty members helped her stay committed to her biological sciences degree. Maggie Holland, professor of geography and environmental systems, “brought back the joy into science after returning from online learning,” Baniak says. “She seemed to genuinely care about me as a student and about the subject she was teaching.”

Mendelson, too, made an impact. “She’s put a lot of effort into the ICARE program and wants to see all of us succeed,” Baniak says.

At the end of the school year, Baniak will travel with the students to release their horseshoe crabs at Sandy Point State Park and watch them wriggle across the sand and swim into the Chesapeake Bay, heading for life’s next phase. 

Written by Farah Nibbs, assistant professor of emergency and disaster health systems at UMBC

Long before colonialism brought slavery to the Caribbean, the native islanders saw hurricanes and storms as part of the normal cycle of life.

The Taino of the Greater Antilles and the Kalinago, or Caribs, of the Lesser Antilles developed systems that enabled them to live with storms and limit their exposure to damage.

On the larger islands, such as Jamaica and Cuba, the Taino practiced crop selection with storms in mind, preferring to plant root crops such as cassava or yucca with high resistance to damage from hurricane and storm winds, as Stuart Schwartz describes in his 2016 book “Sea of Storms.”

The Kalinago avoided building their settlements along the coast to limit storm surges and wind damage. The Calusa of southwest Florida used trees as windbreaks against storm winds.

In fact, it was the Kalinago and Taino who first taught the Europeans – primarily the British, Dutch, French and Spanish – about hurricanes and storms. Even the word ‘hurricane’ comes from Huracán, a Taino and Mayan word denoting the god of wind.

But then colonialism changed everything.

I study natural disasters in the Caribbean, including how history molded responses to disasters today.

The current disaster crisis that the Caribbean’s small islands are experiencing as hurricanes intensify did not start a few decades ago. Rather, the islands’ vulnerability is a direct result of the exploitative systems forced upon the region by colonialism, its legacies of slave-based land policies and ill-suited construction and development practices, and its environmental injustices.

Forcing people into harm’s way

The colonial powers changed how Caribbean people interacted with the land, where they lived and how they recovered from natural hazard events.

Rather than growing crops that could sustain the local food supply, the Europeans who began arriving in the 1600s focused on exploitative extractive economic models and export cash crops through the plantation economy.

They forced Indigenous people off their lands and built settlements along the coast, which made it easier to import enslaved peoples and goods and to export cash crops such as sugar and tobacco to Europe – and also left communities vulnerable to storms. They also developed settlements in low-lying areas, often near rivers and streams, which could provide transportation for agricultural produce but which became flood risks during heavy rains.

Today, more than 70% of the Caribbean’s population lives along the coast, often less than a mile from the shore. These coastlines are not only highly exposed to hurricanes but also to sea-level rise fueled by climate change.

Legacies of slave-based land policies

Colonialism’s legacy of land policies has also made recovery from disasters much harder today.

When colonial powers took over, a few landowners were given control of most of the land, while the majority of the population was forced onto marginal and small areas. The local population had no legal right to the land, as the people did not possess land certificate titles or deeds and were often forced to pay rent to landlords.

After independence, most island governments tried to acquire land from former plantations or estates and to redistribute it to the working class. But these efforts, mainly in the 1960s and ’70s, largely failed to transform land ownership, improve economic development or reduce vulnerability.

One colonial legacy perpetuating vulnerability to this day is known as crown land, or state land. In the English-speaking Caribbean, all land for which there was no land grant was considered property of the British crown. Crown land can be found in every English-speaking island to this day. https://www.youtube.com/embed/YTckM-cNeII?wmode=transparent&start=0 How colonial powers controlled the Caribbean over time.

For example, in Barbuda, all land is vested in the “crown in perpetuity” on behalf of Barbudans. This means that an individual born on the island of Barbuda cannot individually own land.

Instead, land is communally owned, which limits access to the credit and development opportunities that were sorely needed to reconstruct the island after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Most Barbudans were unable to insure their homes because they had no title deeds to their property.

This and other collective land tenure systems created by colonialism places Caribbean residents at greater risk from a variety of natural hazards and limits their ability to seek financial credit for disaster recovery today.

The roots of poor construction

Vulnerability to disasters in the Caribbean also has roots in post-slavery housing construction and subsequent failures to institute proper building codes.

After emancipation from slavery, freed people had no right nor access to land. To build houses, they were forced to lease land from the former enslavers who at a whim could terminate their employment or kick them off the land.

This led to the development of a particular type of housing structure known as chattel houses in countries such as Barbados. These houses are tiny and were constructed in a way in which they could be easily taken apart and loaded onto carts, should the residents be forced out by their former enslavers. Many Bajans still live in these houses today, although quite a few have been converted to restaurants or shops.

In Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, owned by the Dutch, slave huts were built along the coast, on land not suitable for agriculture and easily damaged by storms. These former slave huts are now tourist attractions, but the colonial patterns of settling along the coast has left many coastal communities exposed to hurricane damage and rising seas.

The vulnerability of such houses is not only a result of their exposure to natural hazards but also the underlying social structures.

In many islands today, poorer residents can’t afford protective measures, such as installing storm shutters or purchasing solar-powered generators.

They often live in marginal and disaster-prone areas, such as steep hillsides, where housing tends to be cheaper. Houses in these areas are also often poorly constructed with low-grade materials, such as galvanized sheeting for roofs and walls.

This situation is made worse by the informal and unregulated nature of residential housing construction in the region and the poor enforcement of building codes.

Due to the legacy of colonialism, most housing or building standards or codes in the Commonwealth Caribbean are relics from the United Kingdom and in the French Antilles from France. Building standards across the region lack uniformity and are generally subjective and uncontrolled. Financial limitations and staffing constraints mean that codes and standards more often than not remain unenforced.

Progress, but still a lot of work to do

The Caribbean has made progress in developing wind-related building codes to try to increase resilience in recent years. And while damage from torrential rain is still not properly addressed in most Caribbean building standards, scientific guidance is available through the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in Barbados.

Individual islands, including Dominica and Saint Lucia, have new minimum building standards for recovery after disasters. The island of Grenada is hoping to guide new construction as it recovers from Hurricane Beryl. Trinidad and Tobago has developed a national land use strategy but has struggled to use it.

Construction standards can help the islands build resilience. But work remains to be done to overcome the legacy of colonial-era land policies and development that have left island towns vulnerable to increasing storm risks.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 250 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.

A multidisciplinary team of UMBC researchers was recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to expand the use of digital twinning technology to diagnose, treat, and increase the understanding of neurodegenerative diseases.

The use of digital twinning—a virtual model of a physical object—was developed by scientists and engineers at NASA as early as the 1960s. Within the last decade, the technology has grown in popularity across a range of industries and has more recently been implemented to advance healthcare diagnostics and treatments, explains Snigdhansu (Ansu) Chatterjee, professor of mathematics and statistics.

Chatterjee, the principal investigator of the UMBC-led study, is taking a closer look into the use of digital twinning to examine neurodegenerative diseases, supported by a nearly $900,000 grant from the NSF’s Foundations for Digital Twins as Catalyzers of Biomedical Technological Innovation (FDT-BioTech) program. The program, in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health and the FDA, was created to foster advances in mathematics, statistics, computational sciences, and engineering required to develop responsive digital twin models that incorporate the abilities of artificial intelligence. UMBC was one of seven institutions awarded research funding to explore the development and use of digital twins in health care and biomedical research. The Washington Post mentioned the FDT-BioTech program in a recent article on the evolution of digital twin technology and its potential to transform healthcare.

The UMBC team will work to develop a prototype of their digital twin model for possible use for neuroscience researchers. The study will also address the ethical, legal, and social implications of using digital twin models in the context of healthcare and in studying neurodegenerative diseases using magnetic resonance-technology driven images (MRI) in particular. 

“There are various issues relating to the ethics of AI models and how you use the data, which is especially important when it comes to biological sciences and healthcare,” says Chatterjee. “All good scientists stay within ethical guardrails, and we’re defining what those guardrails are when it comes to using this technology to study neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis.”

The study, which will run until 2027, includes co-investigators Karuna Joshi, professor of information systems, and Animikh Biswas, professor and chair of mathematics and statistics. Additional partners include researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas at El Paso. The project will also provide funding to support two graduate students and a postdoctoral researcher at UMBC who specialize in engineering, math, or statistics.

Joshi, who is the director of UMBC’s Center for Accelerated Real Time Analytics, explains that there has been an increase in the use of AI models in health prediction,  diagnostics, and determining treatment options.

“The explainability and the replicability elements of digital twinning are very critical to why the technology is becoming popular,” says Joshi. “We are looking to develop a ‘meta model’ of all of the various models that’s going to run the neuroimages we’ll study so that it can be explained, archived, and audited.”

Joshi adds that the study will allow for “a cross-pollination of ideas,” where engineering meets science, math, statistics, and healthcare in a very unique way.

More on artificial intelligence research at UMBC.

Homecoming is around the corner, and the calendar is full of favorite community events—along with some new opportunities and unique Halloween twists.

The festivities start off October 20, with the Student Org Kickball Tournament, an old tradition making a comeback thanks to Campus Life. Teams receive bragging rights (and prize money to spend on their student organizations). That night the Homecoming bonfire returns to light up the night.

Events really kick into high-gear on October 24 with GRIT-X talks by UMBC faculty and alumni, now given their own special night to celebrate research and creative achievements. The following Friday brings the carnival preview and Athletics Hall of Fame banquet with new Athletics Director Tiffany Tucker. Saturday, October 26, has the most activities to offer—featuring the famous puppy and pet parade, 5k and family fun run, Greek alumni day party, Taste of Maryland crab feast, men’s soccer game vs. Vermont, and much more.

“We do try to have something for everyone,” says Bobby Lubaszewski ’10, M.P.S. ’23, director of communications and marketing for the Office of Institutional Advancement and one of the event organizers. “This year’s event is close to Halloween, so we’re leaning into the Halloween theme with pumpkin painting for the kids and other activities.” 

A chance to celebrate and reconnect

Jess Wyatt, associate director of Alumni Engagement and another of the event organizers, says Homecoming offers Retrievers of all ages and backgrounds and their families a chance to connect. Her own kids enjoy the festivities each year and have made friends with colleagues’ children. 

Sara Osman ’09, modern languages and linguistics, and M.A. ’11, TESOL, recently started attending Homecoming as an opportunity to introduce her young kids to the campus where she and her husband, Karim Yergaliyev ’09, business technology administration, met. “We like to show our three-year-old and six-year-old the places around campus from our stories of the early years when we were dating,” Osman says. “It’s also a nice time to meet up with other alumni and their families.”

The Osman-Yergaliyev family not only re-lives old memories at Homecoming, they also create new ones. Last year, they were some of the few people still at the carnival as the rain came down. “We were playing ring toss when Karim won a stuffed unicorn so large we could barely get it home,” Osman says.

Something for everyone

The plethora of events showcase all UMBC has to offer. You can see demos of advanced AI robot technology one night, reconnect with your childhood on a carnival ride the next, and finish the weekend cheering on the UMBC soccer teams.

Homecoming this year also coincides with UMBC’s annual Livewire new music festival, an exploration of new sounds presented in six concerts over the three days from October 24 – 26.

New this year, the Physics Department is offering tours of the UMBC Observatory, including descriptions of telescope operations and the basics of astronomical detection. “Where else can you go to tour an observatory at Homecoming? That’s really cool!” says Wyatt.

UMBC’s GRIT-X event is returning for its eighth year with a lineup of dynamic talks spanning a wide range of subjects, including insight into the university’s contributions to the next Moon landing mission, a look into Baltimore City’s new violence prevention plan, human-robot interaction, and much more. 

GRIT-X, a TED-Talks styled showcase of presentations on compelling aspects of UMBC’s impact in the research and creative achievement space, is one of more than a dozen events happening during UMBC’s Homecoming 2024 celebration. This year’s GRIT-X will take place ahead of Homecoming weekend, returning to the Fine Arts Recital Hall on October 24 from 4 to 6 p.m. 

The annual series spotlights developing research from UMBC faculty experts and alumni who are doing impactful work. This year’s lineup features alum-turned-physics professor Todd Pittman, M.S. ’92, Ph.D. ’96, physics, who’ll be discussing the foundations of classical and quantum physics. 

In his GRIT-X presentation, Pittman will dive deep into quantum entanglement, the major disparity between classical and quantum physics. “Right now, we’re in the era of trying to use quantum physics to do new and more powerful things in information processing,” says Pittman. 

UMBC research and creative achievement in action 

Takashi Yamashita, professor of sociology, anthropology, and public health, will discuss his research in aging and lifelong learning with his talk, “When Does Our Education End? Aging and Life Course Perspectives.” 

“I will explore a range of education benefits across life stages. I’m excited to introduce key ideas from gerontology and how they help us think about important topics in our lives, such as education, work, and leisure,” says Yamashita, who is the co-director of UMBC’s joint gerontology doctoral program with the University of Maryland, Baltimore. 

GRIT-X 2024 will feature:

• Guenet Abraham, Professor of visual arts
• Mehdi Benna, Research scientist at the Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST)
• Aryya Gangopadhyay, Professor of information systems; director of the Center for Real-time Distributed Sensing and Autonomy (CARDS)
• Stefanie Mavronis ’12, political science, media and communication studies, Director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, City of Baltimore
• Tamra Mendelson, Professor of biological sciences
• G. Derek Musgrove ’97, history, Associate professor of history and affiliate professor of Africana studies
• Patricia Ordóñez, M.S. ’10, Ph.D. ’12, computer science, Associate professor of information systems
• Todd Pittman, M.S. ’92, Ph.D. ’96, physics, Professor of physics
• Takashi Yamashita, Professor of sociology, anthropology, and public health

Another alum-turned professor, Patricia Ordóñez, will discuss “Why moms should be the leaders in computing education” with her GRIT-X presentation. 

“I noticed that some women my age who are mothers and grandmothers, their digital skills are not as advanced as they should be because they were taking care of children or working in fields that don’t require the technology to be so advanced,” says Ordóñez. “This becomes a digital determinant of health, education, getting employment, or applying for additional opportunities.”

Ordóñez is working to develop a community computing learning center that assists mothers and others from marginalized and underserved communities to strengthen what she calls their “digital identity.” Her talk will also break down how research can impact change within communities.

“If you can’t see people that look like you in computing, it gets very isolating, and it starts to make you think maybe I’m in the wrong field,” she adds. “I’m trying to model my own experience for my students in seeing teaching and research happening at the same time.”

For the first time, GRIT-X will be followed by a reception and special showcase event held in UMBC’s Engineering Building. The reception showcase will include remarks from several GRIT-X speakers from previous years on updates on their research and recent work. The event is in partnership with the Office of Institutional Advancement and bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park.

Learn more about this year’s line up and watch the GRIT-X 2024 presentations. 

In the early hours of the morning, as the windows of Albin O. Kuhn Library begin to reflect the sunrise, UMBC’s faculty and staff are making sure all the campus needs—technology, buildings, streets and sidewalks, lessons, and social media—are ready for students. A close-knit community of over 2,500 faculty and staff is at the heart of UMBC’s vibrant campus, and for the 15th consecutive year, UMBC has garnered the distinction of being on ModernThink’s Great Colleges to Work For list. 

Retriever Nation spoke loud and clear, sharing what makes their work fulfilling on the 2024 Great Colleges to Work For survey. The survey covered 10 categories, including faculty and staff wellbeing, compensation and benefits, and confidence in senior leadership. The resounding feedback secured UMBC a spot on the Honor Roll among the top 10 four-year institutions with an enrollment exceeding 10,000 students out of 75 outstanding workplaces.

“Great workplaces don’t just happen,” says Lynne Adams, UMBC’s chief human resources officer. “They are built through a collaboration of the community, care, connection, and a shared vision. Our culture really does reflect a team working together continuously evolving into an inspiring workplace for everyone.”

Faculty and staff flourish and enjoy sharing their talents and personal journeys, adding to the campus life through events like yoga and other classes at the RAC taught by Joella Lubaszewski ’10, theatre. UMBC gives space for people to be brave and share their whole selves, as executive administrative assistant Melessia Jasper knows. Visit a McNair Scholars information session to see leadership in action with Michael Hunt ’06, computer engineering, and current Ph.D. student leading the pack. The dedication of our faculty and staff allows students to receive support and shine.

“As we nurture an inclusive and welcoming community and support the professional development of our staff and faculty, they see themselves fully in our mission and believe deeply in the transformative power of education,” says President Valerie Sheares Ashby. “Staff and faculty know their work serves both individual students and the public good. They know their work matters and that they are seen and valued.”