Nuclear fusion reactions inside certain stars can produce many of the most common elements on Earth, like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. But heavier elements that are also found on Earth are harder to generate, requiring reactions with even more energy than exists within a run-of-the-mill star like our own.

“So all of that heavier stuff we see here on Earth and throughout the cosmos, like gold, and platinum, and lead—where did it come from, and how did it get distributed?” asks Nicholas Cannady, a postdoctoral researcher at UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology, a partnership with NASA.

Cannady serves as operations lead on a new mission that aims to help answer this question. NASA recently selected that mission, the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder for the International Space Station (TIGERISS), for up to $20 million in funding over five years. Seven million will go directly to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where Cannady is based. The rest will go to the lead institution, Washington University in St. Louis, which will further disburse the funds to the collaborating institutions: UMBC, Pennsylvania State University, Howard University, and Northern Kentucky University. UMBC will receive $2 million. If all goes well, TIGERISS will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2026.

From model to measurement 

TIGERISS will count how often certain elements, arriving at Earth as cosmic rays, collide with its detectors. Cosmic rays are extremely high-energy particles that travel at nearly the speed of light. Heavier elements are rarer than lighter elements, which means they will be seen less frequently by the instrument. How often the detector sees a particular element can be used as a proxy for how abundant it is in our Milky Way Galaxy. 

Models exist predicting how common different elements are and how they might have been created, but they don’t all agree. In some cases, elements can only be made through a process that requires powerful explosions where the cores of atoms and neutrons repeatedly collide, Cannady explains. Scientists expect different kinds of events in the universe with the necessary power (such as exploding stars) to produce different amounts of these elements.

TIGERISS scientists will use measurements from the instrument showing how often different elements are detected “to support or go against those models,” Cannady explains. “It could help us see which models for production of heavy elements best represent what we see.”

Above the atmosphere

“TIGERISS is sort of the next step in a line of instruments that have been until now borne on balloons—high altitude, scientific balloons,” Cannady says. Unlike its predecessor, the balloon mission SuperTIGER, TIGERISS “will be on the ISS in space, which has some distinct advantages, and will let us really open up some interesting science that the other instruments weren’t able to do.”

The main benefit: On the ISS, there is no interference from Earth’s atmosphere. Although the SuperTIGER balloon flew as high as 130,000 feet, even the tiny amount of atmosphere at that height can affect precision when you are trying to detect extremely rare elements. “The atmosphere really throws a wrench into trying to wring out all the precision you can in things like SuperTIGER,” Cannady says.

TIGERISS will also be on the ISS for at least a year, whereas SuperTIGER made two flights, one for 32 days and one for 55 days. The 55-day flight set a record for a balloon, but TIGERISS’s longer exposure time will increase the chances of very rare elements happening to hit its detectors.

The cosmic ray mystery

TIGERISS may also help illuminate how cosmic rays form and transport elements around the cosmos. SuperTIGER results support one theory for how certain types of particles (including heavy ones) get “swept up and accelerated to the high energies that we see for cosmic rays,” Cannady says. “It gives us a picture of how this heavy stuff gets distributed through the galaxy.”

“So we have this neat picture of how this works,” he adds, “but then above a certain threshold, this picture seems to be breaking apart.”

Cannady and the rest of the team hope that TIGERISS will improve on SuperTIGER’s findings, and start to put the picture back together—or suggest a new one. Whatever it finds, TIGERISS will increase our understanding of where heavy elements formed and how they made their way to Earth.

Early career leadership

NASA selected TIGERISS through its Astrophysics Pioneers program, which launched in 2020. Its goal is to reduce costs by using smaller instruments that can still contribute to robust scientific advances. The program is also set up to encourage early career researchers, like Cannady, to take the reins.

“One of the big focuses of Pioneers is to incorporate early career leadership and roles into the full pipeline of mission development—conception, development, and implementation, and then the operations and analysis as well,” Cannady says. His roles as institutional lead and mission operations lead create plenty of opportunities to build a network with researchers at other institutions, hone his management skills, and conduct cutting-edge science at the same time.

“It’s really neat to me to get to see things from the beginning and potentially follow them on through to the end. There are several of us who are getting to do that,” he says. UMBC’s Kenichi Sakai, a CSST research scholar, is also on the project, and former CSST researcher John Krizmanic will serve as the overall lead for NASA Goddard.

Sakai is leading development for one of the detector subsystems, and he and Cannady are hoping to engage both undergraduate and graduate UMBC students in that work. For the next year, the team will undergo their concept study phase, figuring out what’s feasible and starting to nail down the details of the design. 

“We’re really going to start hitting the ground running with this,” Cannady says. And then, once the team completes a concept study and makes important implementation decisions in the first year, he says, “we’re going to start building.”

Most people rely heavily on image-forming vision to navigate the world, but our eyes do much more than help us “see” in the traditional sense. In addition to rod and cone cells that help us perceive contrast and color there are a small number of other specialized cells in our eyes. These cells, called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, play a role in what’s called non-image-forming vision. This type of vision affects everything from our mood, to our sleeping and eating patterns, to our ability to adapt to time zone and seasonal changes.

Despite the importance of non-image-forming vision, our understanding of it is still in the early stages. An important path forward is examining melanopsin, a key protein regulating how non-image-forming vision works. 

Phyllis Robinson, professor of biological sciences, has been studying melanopsin since its discovery. For the next four years, she’ll expand on her prior work with a new $2.5 million grant from the National Eye Institute (NEI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health. Colleagues on the grant include researchers at the NIH, Johns Hopkins University, Washington State University, and the Oregon Health Science University. The grant is a renewal of a previous five-year R01 award, traditionally the most sought-after and largest grant type from the NIH.

The new work will focus on how certain modifications to melanopsin affect its function. Robinson and colleagues will also examine the role of dopamine—a neurotransmitter involved in a huge range of mental and physical processes—in regulating this critical protein and its effects.

“We’re looking at this cool molecule that affects our light-dependent behaviors in ways we’re not conscious of,” Robinson says. “It’s really exciting stuff within our field.”

A cascade of changes

Robinson’s previous work has contributed significantly to a better understanding of melanopsin’s functions and mechanism of action. For example, shortly after melanopsin’s discovery, Robinson and her team demonstrated that it is involved in how our pupils respond to light. 

In a typical eye, light exposure causes the pupil to contract, and then, when the light dims, the pupil dilates again in about a minute. This system protects the eye from damage caused by overexposure to light. This process is familiar to anyone who has had their eyes dilated by an eye doctor and then stepped out into a sunny day.

In contrast to that typical reaction, in mice with chemical modifications to the structure of melanopsin, the pupils stay dilated for about 45 minutes after light exposure, indicating that functional melanopsin is involved in the pupil’s response to light. Ongoing and future studies under the new grant will look at how a different set of modifications to melanopsin affect mice’s ability to adapt to changes in their light exposure patterns, as if they were changing time zones—a process called “photoentrainment.”

Robinson’s group also recently showed that dopamine can regulate the function of melanopsin in a cell culture. The new funding will allow the team to further explore dopamine’s role in non-image-forming vision in mice. In addition to showing whether or not dopamine regulates melanopsin, they will work to figure out what sequence of chemical reactions drives the protein’s effects, and what other molecules are involved, called a “chemical cascade.”

Mystery molecule

Melanopsin and the cells that contain it are also interesting from an evolutionary perspective, Robinson explains. “These ganglion cells may be the ancient photoreceptors,” she says. 

“If you think about the evolution of vision, an organism just detecting whether it’s light or dark would be the first step,” she notes. “All you need is a light-sensitive cell.” In fact, even nocturnal animals and animals that live in dark environments, like caves or tunnels, have the cells responsible for non-image-forming vision, Robinson says.

In humans, a better understanding of melanopsin and its regulation could offer insight into health conditions that afflict shift workers, since their schedules do not align with their bodies’ natural hormonal responses to light. It could even reveal new potential targets for treating conditions like seasonal affective disorder or jet lag. And it might add evidence to arguments for dimming lights in the evening and prioritizing exposure to sunlight in the morning. 

“Our research is going from molecules to behavior,” Robinson says. Her lab at UMBC focuses on physiology by doing studies with cells. Then, based on the findings, her NEI colleagues and graduate students, who are jointly advised by Robinson and NEI faculty, carry out behavioral studies with mice as a next step. Eventually, it could lead to work directly supporting human health.

“It’s always exciting to renew an R01 award and this new funding will make important new research possible,” Robinson says. “Melanopsin is a relatively unknown molecule that has huge impacts on our physiology and health,” she adds. “It’s like the mystery molecule in your eye.” 

Over the next four years, Robinson and colleagues hope to make this molecule a little less mysterious.

Meet Jok Abraham Thon, UMBC’s first Peaceworker Global Fellow and the first Retriever from South Sudan. Thon is pursuing his master’s in entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership and plans to use these skills to continue to promote educational opportunities for other South Sudanese people.  

Q: Tell us about yourself. What are the essential things you’d want another Retriever to know about you? 

A: I am the father of four beautiful kids from the world’s youngest country, South Sudan. I left behind my young family in search of knowledge and skills so that when I return, I can play a part in transforming the lives of vulnerable children in my country.

When I was a refugee, it was not easy. We had our classes under trees; we didn’t have toys to play with, but I turned my bitter memories into positive energy to change the cycle of violence in my country by establishing Promised Land Primary and Secondary School with the motto of “Changing Minds from Bullets to Books.” 

Let’s be great libraries for our children where they can find great stories of peace, love, and humanity. This message is for the parents and students who are our future leaders and policy makers. This principle will help them change policies that discriminate and instead create policies that embrace inclusion and equality. 

Q: Tell us about your primary WHY, and how it led you to UMBC.

A: I need to use the leadership and entrepreneurial skills I will get from UMBC to help transform South Sudan into a peaceful and democratic country.

Q: What do you love about your academic program?

A: My first course was Introduction to Community Leadership and my biggest takeaway was what I called a ‘”spiderweb” from placemaking—how public parks are great places to build more inclusive and peaceful communities; they’re great places for communities to come together for entertainment and family outings; they’re great places for communities to build back trust and take away fear and misinformation. In South Sudan there are some cultures that negatively affect women and girls—I want to see how we can use this placemaking idea to create parks that will bring all people together. 

In my Developing the Entrepreneurial Mindset class, I am learning skills that will help me to establish a company to sustain my school and help in establishing more schools in the hard to reach villages in South Sudan. We want to provide education to the vulnerable 2.5 million children who are not in school in South Sudan and break the cycle that prohibits many girls from finishing their schooling—about 75 percent of girls don’t finish high school due to early forced marriage and poverty. 

From my classes so far, I came up with two projects—one is Jonglei Multipurpose Memorial Park. It will not only be a park but also provide a great solution to the flooded villages along the River Nile as a way we can beautifully live with water as we fight climate change.

Second, is the Central Nile Paper Company that will produce paper sustainably from local sources of bamboo and papyrus for school workbooks and use the revenue from sales to support the Promised Land School while opening more schools across the country.

Q: Tell us about someone in the community who has inspired you or supported you, and how they did it.

A: My journey to UMBC came as an inspiration from the love I received from Joby Taylor (Ph.D. ’05, language, literacy, and culture) in the Shriver Center, Kenneth Baron in Academic Advising, David Di Maria in the Center for Global Engagement, Gib Mason (’95, economics) in the entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership program, and Kimberly R. Moffitt, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. This team and many more great faculty as well as staff from International Student and Scholar Services have changed my life.

I want to particularly thank Dr. Joby Taylor and his wife and children for being such a great host family. I am glad to call UMBC my sweet home far away from home.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

Amid a bustling day filled with Homecoming excitement, GRIT-X returned to UMBC this month for its sixth year, delivering a wide-ranging lineup of Retriever excellence in action. Held in the Fine Arts Recital Hall, this year’s GRIT-X was the first for new UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby. Enjoying one engaging talk after another, she deemed the event “the essence of UMBC.”

“What a beautiful day,” said President Sheares Ashby, in her remarks to the GRIT-X audience. “Not only were [the presenters] brilliant, they were people-centric. They were thinking about things that were real and important to each one of our lives being better, the universe being better, our bodies being better, and our communities being better. I cannot have experienced a better first GRIT-X.”

Watch the GRIT-X 2022 talks

Rethinking digital divides: Creating access, experiential learning, and empathy in the digital world

Delali Dzirasa ‘04, computer engineering, opened this year’s GRIT-X event with a presentation detailing how his company, Fearless, led the development of the Searchable Museum to complement the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) “Slavery and Freedom” exhibition. Dzirasa elaborated on how his team, including several UMBC alumni, was able to reimagine this exhibit specifically for online audiences amid the pandemic. The Fearless CEO was the third in his family to deliver a GRIT-X talk, following his wife, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Letitia Dzirasa ‘03, biological sciences (GRIT-X 2021), and his brother Kafui Dzirasa ‘01, M8, chemical engineering (GRIT-X 2017).

Can we reduce the deluge in sea levels with a data deluge?

Vandana Janeja, professor and chair of information systems, discussed the research she’s leading as the director of the NSF HDR Institute for Harnessing Data and Model Revolution in the Polar Regions, or iHARP. Janeja outlined how she and the iHARP team are utilizing data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and polar science to analyze enormous volumes of climate data as well as Arctic and Antarctic observations in ways that could help populations respond to the harmful impacts of climate change. 

Sounds of the world through the violin

Airi Yoshioka, professor of music, delivered her presentation on how the cultural background of a composer manifests in the music they create. Yoshioka played excerpts of music from several composers around the world, explaining how they were able to express their cultural identities through their music. The violinist then captured the imagination of the audience with her striking performance of “Sentimental” from “Five Little Milonguitas” by composer Pablo Ortiz from her 2015 album Sueños Misticos.

Community building: How to build with materials that are stronger than brick and mortar

Alicia Lynn Wilson ‘04, political science, serves as vice president for economic development at Johns Hopkins University. She has taken part in some of the largest redevelopment efforts in the country, overseeing more than $10 billion in redevelopment projects in the last decade. Wilson shared her perspective on how every person is involved in construction, being actively engaged in the community-building enterprise. Her presentation outlined five principles that she relies on when forging and maintaining community connections.

Glucosome: 4D Visualization of the secret society of metabolic enzymes

Minjoung Kyoung, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, started her presentation on metabolic enzymes in an unexpected way: by showing the audience a picture of donuts. The image helped to entice the audience as they listened to her research on how the food we eat transforms into glucose and the metabolic process that happens as a result. The presentation explored the glucose metabolism and its 4-dimensional network with mitochondria in living cells, and how Kyoung’s team built the Lattice Light Sheet Microscope to better visualize small features inside of living cells.

Green walls or greenwashing? Tree planting dreams meet reality

Matthew Fagan, associate professor of geography and environmental systems, delved into his research related to forest restoration and reforestation showing that sometimes, planting trees can cause more harm than good. He educated the audience on the rise of tree planting initiatives around the world and the reality of what has happened as a result of reforestation efforts. 

The many faces of immune cells: Building back tissues after trauma

Kaitlyn Sadtler, ‘11, biological sciences, who earned an honorary doctorate from UMBC in 2022, presented on immunology and how the body works to heal after injuries. Sadtler is an investigator and chief of the section on immunoengineering at the NIH’s National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. She earned a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. She described her lab’s research into different immune cells and how they respond during injuries. She also shared how her team is working to develop new methods to help modulate the immune response to injury and implantation of medical devices.

The quantum universe is weird, but our world is not: Schrödinger’s cat is dead, right?

Sebastian Deffner, associate professor of physics, focused his presentation on demystifying the world of quantum physics and the quantum universe. He offered the audience an introduction to the components of this growing field of study. He also explained different interpretations of quantum mechanics with his analysis of the “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment.

Sometimes systems fail us: Designing alternatives for domestic violence survivors

Nkiru Nnawulezi, associate professor of psychology, has been working with the D.C. Coalition Against Domestic Violence to collect data on the experiences of domestic violence survivors in Washington D.C., particularly related to housing services. She closed the afternoon’s program by detailing her experience of conducting research interviews with the survivors. She explored what can be done to create more inclusive community responses that support domestic violence survivors in more effective and sustainable ways.

Karl V. Steiner, vice president for research and creative achievement, was the master of ceremonies for GRIT-X 2022. Moderators included: Keith J Bowman, dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology; Kimberly R. Moffitt, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; and William R. LaCourse, dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences.

Two UMBC Ph.D. students in atmospheric physics, Maurice Roots and Kylie Hoffman, have received competitive Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) awards that will support the remainder of their graduate studies. Roots’s research project will focus on air pollution and Hoffman will target thunderstorms, both using remote sensing techniques. Each will receive up to $150,000 over a maximum of three years for tuition, research, professional development, and other expenses.

Tracking ozone’s journey

Roots will further his study of ozone found near the Earth’s surface. Unlike ozone in the upper atmosphere, which is critical for protecting organisms on Earth from powerful solar radiation, ozone near the surface is a form of air pollution. It can lead to respiratory issues in animals (including humans) and reduce crop yields by damaging plants’ leaves. 

Combustion engines are the main producers of surface-level ozone, because they release molecules that can convert to ozone when they interact with sunlight. Roots is particularly interested in ozone prevalence in the Chesapeake Bay region and other urban areas on bays, such as New York City and San Francisco, because “water is like a mirror,” he says, and with more light bouncing around, there are many more opportunities to generate harmful ozone.

Roots will use a network of ground-based remote sensing instruments to improve understanding of how ozone forms and moves around, with a focus on the Eastern United States.

It’s an exciting time to be in remote sensing and ozone studies, Roots says, in part because “we’re still finding out things about simply when and where high ozone is happening.” At the same time, the instrument network “is becoming a teenager. It’s grown up a lot, and a lot of changes are about to start happening.” One of Roots’s main goals with the new project is to generate a “synergy of NASA’s ground-based instruments,” where all of the data they produce can be easily gathered and interpreted together to form conclusions.

Understanding not just where ozone forms, but where it travels from there, is important, Roots says. For example, phenomena called “nocturnal low-level jets” can move air (and ozone and other pollutants with it) from Georgia to New York in one night, he explains, which “changes the whole regulatory perspective.” Right now, states or cities can be fined for having too many instances of high ozone—but if the ozone may have come from several states away, the picture gets more complicated.

While Roots isn’t directly involved in policy, his work to improve “process-level understanding” of where ozone is created, how it moves, and where it ends up could influence regulation in the future.

Predicting thunderstorms, protecting farmers

Hoffman’s work will explore how severe thunderstorms form in the southern United States, especially at night. The genesis of these storms is currently poorly understood, despite their important implications for community safety and agriculture.

Belay Demoz, professor of physics and director of the Goddard Earth Science Technology and Research (GESTAR) II Center, and also Hoffman’s and Root’s Ph.D. advisor, co-led the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) mission in 2015. It used ground- and aircraft-based instruments to collect a huge amount of data about storms in the U.S. southern plains, much of which has the potential for more in-depth analysis, Hoffman says. She will develop a few in-depth case studies using PECAN data, seeking clues about which variables are most important for forming these storms, such as temperature, wind speed, and water vapor concentrations. After that, she’ll expand to determining the frequency of severe storms and what features differentiate them from milder events.

“A lot of people research these storms with weather models and simulations, but there hasn’t been a ton of research done with remote sensing observations yet,” Hoffman says. “I plan to use the PECAN datasets to calculate atmospheric quantities that are typically only evaluated in model-based research, and determine what potential uses this approach has for improving our understanding of these storms.” Her eventual goal is to develop better forecasting for thunderstorms, especially to benefit the many farmers in the southern plains. 

Hoffman’s research is interdisciplinary and brings together the work of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which previously awarded her a research fellowship. Better weather forecasting is “also one of NOAA’s main missions,” she explains, “to help us become a weather-ready nation, and improve our ability to inform people and small businesses” about the risks severe weather can pose to lives and livelihoods.

Making it official

Hoffman’s research as an undergraduate meteorology major also used remote sensing data, which she enjoyed. As a result, “I was looking specifically for a meteorology or atmospheric physics graduate program that worked with remote sensing data,” she says, “and that’s one of the strengths of the UMBC program.”

In preparing her FINESST application, “I felt very supported by Belay [Demoz] and the whole office. It was exciting. It felt really official,” she says. “Writing the application helped me clarify where I want to go with my research. And even if I hadn’t gotten the grant, it was helpful just to know the process.”

Demoz is thrilled to have two students receive the FINESST award—a rare event for any Ph.D. advisor. “I know firsthand how competitive this was, and I am very proud of their accomplishment,” Demoz says. 

He’s also proud of the work they do outside the lab, supporting other students and choosing projects that could have real public impact. “This is what I would like all our grad students to do, since it prepares them well for entering the professoriate,” he shares. “I’m honored to say they are my graduate students.” 

Paying it forward

Roots and Hoffman have already begun to pay forward the support they received from mentors at UMBC. This past summer, they and three more graduate students, including Emily Faber, M.S. ’21, atmospheric physics, a current Ph.D. student in the same field, served as mentors in the eight-week Student Airborne Science Activation (SaSa) program. The NASA-funded program offers high-achieving first- and second-year undergraduates at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) the opportunity to gain experience with airborne field research campaigns through a paid internship.

This year, SaSa welcomed 24 students, including four from UMBC, to UMBC’s main campus for four weeks. Participants spent the other four weeks at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia. The graduate students served as the participants’ primary mentors, Hoffman explains, from helping them develop research questions to guiding them through final presentations. 

Two of the UMBC participants decided to continue conducting research with Demoz’s group during the academic year. Trisha Joy Francisco ’25, mechanical engineering, is working with Hoffman on pollution measurements. Eric Ekey ’25, computer engineering, will start work soon with Roots.

Hoffman recalls a transformative summer internship that gave her the confidence to apply to graduate school. “That’s part of what I wanted to do for the students—replicate what my mentor did to help me during that experience,” she says. 

SaSa was mutually beneficial for the students and their mentors; it helped Roots boost his confidence, too. After answering student questions for a month, “by the end,” he says with a smile, “I realized, I guess I actually know a lot.”

With their FINESST awards, Hoffman and Roots will continue to put their knowledge and mentoring skills to work as they conduct research to answer big questions about how atmospheric dynamics impact our daily lives.

When disasters happen, access to food can be interrupted, which can increase existing food insecurity issues and compound the impact of disasters. Currently, there isn’t a standard tool to measure disaster-specific food insecurity issues, making it harder to address them. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded UMBC’s Lauren Clay, associate professor and chair of emergency health services, a five-year, $520,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award to develop a sociocultural model called Food Environment in Disasters (FED) and other tools to improve the understanding and monitoring of food availability, acceptability, and accessibility during disasters. 

“Food is a basic need for human survival and the ability of social systems to meet this need in disaster situations is compromised when our homes, businesses, and other structures are damaged and lifelines disrupted,” says Clay. “While elements of the various social and built-in environmental systems that make up the broader food environment as well as food security issues have been studied by various disciplines, a comprehensive, systematic approach has yet to be applied and tested in disaster settings.”

The CAREER award is one of NSF’s most prestigious awards for early career faculty. Recipients are chosen for their passion and dedication to the discovery process and commitment to teaching, learning, and sharing new knowledge. 

This research builds on Clay’s prior body of work in disaster preparedness, recovery, and resilience. That work has focused on communities impacted by COVID-19; Hurricanes Harvey, Sandy, and Katrina; the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico; and the 2013 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, among other disasters and public health emergencies. 

The FED model

Over the next five years, Clay will use the current Nourish Food System Model as a guiding theory to develop her new FED model. “The Nourish Food System Model looks at the interconnectedness and interdependence of the biological, social, political, economic, health, and policy systems,” says Clay. “Some of these systems can be disrupted any day, but in a disaster, all of the systems are stressed.”

A key aspect of the FED model is that it is being developed with data from disasters. This is unlike current food system theory and metrics that base their emergency response on data from non-disaster times. The FED model will be tested against food insecurity data from COVID-19, Hurricane Florence, the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, and other case studies to determine how well the model fits with actual lived experiences in disasters.

“After I develop the FED model and validate it, the last part in the latter years of the grant will be to develop tools to support communities in building food system resilience for disasters,” says Clay. She will create the Environmental Audit Tool (EAT) to help local and state organizations better monitor and assess the processes and structures in place to address food insecurity in non-disaster times. This information will help improve both early response and long-term monitoring. 

All of this work will help address the kinds of acute food insecurity issues that can double or triple chronic food security problems following disasters.

Best practices in teaching

The NSF award also recognizes and furthers Clay’s work as an innovative educator. Through the CAREER award, she will develop best practices in teaching methods related to food insecurity in disaster situations.

Clay will create one of the first teaching labs to train undergraduate students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to address disaster-focused food insecurity. She will also integrate field and lab research into her classes more broadly, where students can engage with the work as disaster response is unfolding, giving them the opportunity to learn about disasters both from emergency response practices and a theoretical framework.

Foundational work

Clay’s latest research builds on prior foundational work. In 2021, she received a $100,000 collaborative research award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Tufts University. Clay was one of six researchers across the U.S. to participate in the USDA’s “25 Years of Food Security Measurement: Answered Questions and Further Research” program. The program aims to foster research related to the past 25 years of U.S. household food security research and to explore feasible evidence-based improvements. 

“I proposed that the USDA was missing important information about people’s lives by focusing entirely on financial barriers to food security. Having cash does not guarantee food security if there are community-level disruptions,” says Clay. “Roads can flood and access to kitchens and food storage facilities can be damaged.” 

Clay and a team of researchers collected data from six states to explore nonfinancial barriers to food accessibility, availability, and acceptability, including physical barriers to food sources (such as damaged roads), barriers to food availability (such as store closures), and access to foods that can be consumed without extensive kitchen facilities.

“We are in the final phase of developing a better measure of food insecurity following disasters when there is a community-level disruption,” says Clay. She plans to use this measurement tool in the development of the FED model.

National food access and COVID-19

Additionally, Clay has been working on two other food insecurity projects that have received Quick Response Research Awards, funded by the University of Colorado’s Natural Hazards Center with support from NSF. 

In the first project, Clay leads the New York state team of the National Food Access and COVID research Team (NFACT). The team consists of researchers across 15 states exploring the impact of COVID-19 on food access, food security, and food systems across local, state, regional, and national levels. NFACT also integrates data to explore outcomes and impacts across scales. 

NFACT has published several research briefs on COVID-19 and its primary and secondary health impacts, racial disparities in food insecurity, and racial disparities in healthcare insecurity among Native Americans and communities of color in New York City and New York State. NFACT has also published academic journal articles related to the health impacts of COVID-19, food access during the pandemic, and the need for enhanced outreach and support to those experiencing food insecurity for the first time during the pandemic.

The second project, in which Clay is the co-PI, is a study with the Food Distribution Program on American Reservations to pilot a culturally relevant metric of food insecurity. It will measure the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food insecurity among Native American and Alaskan Native communities in Western New York.

Clay was also awarded a research fellowship with the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Gulf Research Program studying the Post-Disaster Food Environment project.

Helping communities to prepare and recover

In five years, Clay plans to have established the Disaster Health Research Lab, integrating the breadth of her research and teaching activities. This lab will offer a portfolio of tools to monitor food systems over the course of a disaster experience, from preparedness to assessing and responding to impact, to recovery. And she will offer tools to help communities improve the functioning of their food environments in disasters. 

She particularly looks forward to developing a public engagement plan to share this work with researchers, disaster officials, and communities.

“Dr. Clay’s research demonstrates the importance of bringing a social science lens to the understanding of disaster science, management, and resilience,” says Christine Mallinson, director of UMBC’s Center for Social Science Scholarship. “Disasters exacerbate inequities, including food insecurity, which has a serious impact on the health of people and communities around the world. Dr. Clay’s research not only aims to understand these processes but also how to design interventions to mitigate the societal-level impacts and consequences of disasters.”

Clay is the first faculty member in UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences to have received this award. UMBC faculty have received 42 NSF CAREER Awards since NSF launched the program in 1995, including eight faculty over the past five years. Their fields of research include computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE); information systems; chemistry and biochemistry; chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering (CBEE); and biological sciences. 

UMBC’s most recent recipients are Cynthia Matuszek, associate professor of CSEE; James Foulds, assistant professor of information systems; Naghmeh Karimi, assistant professor of CSEE, and Jianwu Wang, associate professor of information systems. UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby received an NSF CAREER award in 1998 while at Iowa State University.

Women of Color Magazine has named UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby 2022 Technologist of the Year. Sheares Ashby celebrated the honor surrounded by joyful UMBC students at the Women of Color STEM DTX Conference in Detroit earlier this month. The annual event is designed to connect members of the STEM community at all career stages and to support the continued advancement of diversity in the STEM workforce.

Several UMBC attendees at the Women of Color STEM DTX Conference (l-r): Janerra Allen, Meyerhoff Graduate Fellow; Mitsue Wiggs, assistant director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program; Ngozi Emezienna ’25, M33, biological sciences; President Sheares Ashby; Natolya Barber ’23, M31, computer science; Samara Pyform ’24, M32, environmental science; Maki Negesse, Meyerhoff Graduate Fellow. (Image courtesy of Wiggs/UMBC)

Sheares Ashby’s award is highlighted on the cover of Women of Color Magazine this month in a special feature that explores her life and career. The article begins with her love of math and science while growing up in a small town in North Carolina and details the twists and turns of her college experience at UNC Chapel Hill. She details the joy of her first real chemistry lab experience and the moment she realized, “I made a compound that nobody else had made before.” 

Women of Color Magazine cover featuring Pres. Valerie Sheares Ashby.

Mentorship is central to Sheares Ashby’s approach as an educator and leader, and the article recognizes several mentors who shaped her experience. She recalls Henry Frierson as the first mentor who encouraged her to get a Ph.D. and Joseph DeSimone, her Ph.D. supervisor, as “the person who told me I could be a faculty member. Not just a scientist, but a faculty member.” 

She highlights Holden Thorp, who served as provost and chancellor at UNC Chapel Hill, as the person who helped her transition from faculty to administrator and Freeman Hrabowski, UMBC president emeritus, who predicted that someday she would be a university president.

Vision and values

The feature article also emphasizes the value that Sheares Ashby places on talking openly about the challenges of academia, and how that openness has helped her become an effective teacher, mentor, and scholar.

“I don’t know how many times I’ve given workshops on imposter syndrome, because I had it until I was 40,” she says in the magazine. “If you struggle and use it to help other people who are struggling…that’s your superpower because there’s nothing like authenticity.”

Sheares Ashby often speaks about the connection she feels with UMBC’s vision. Describing her thoughts on UMBC’s future, she shares, “There’s no change of vision needed. The question is, what does that look like in the next decade?”

Legacy of excellence

Joining Sheares Ashby as a featured participant at the Women of Color STEM Conference was UMBC alumna retired Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams, Ph.D. ’06, public policy. 

Sylvia Trent-Adams at UMBC’s 2017 Alumni Awards ceremony. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Trent-Adams previously served as principal deputy assistant secretary for health (2019 – 2020) and deputy surgeon general of the United States (2015 – 2019). She was named UMBC’s Outstanding Alumna in the Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2017 and received the Technologist of the Year Award in 2020. This September, Trent-Adams was named president of the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center at Fort Worth.

UMBC Special Collections has been given an extraordinary gift of one of the world’s largest collections devoted to parapsychology, from the Parapsychology Foundation, Inc. in Greenport, New York. The acquisition will be known as the Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection. It includes documents related to hauntings, poltergeists, out-of-body experiences, and séances, as well as spirit photographs and much more.

A renowned resource

The Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection contains more than 12,000 volumes and more than 100 periodicals, including rare books on and early journals devoted to psychical research. The collection emphasizes the literature of contemporary parapsychology and those publications that approach the subject from objective and analytical points of view.

The library also maintains strong sections on the history of psychical research and parapsychology, including early Spiritualism, mysticism and relevant philosophical works, as well as on mediumship, apparitions, hauntings, poltergeists, near-death and out-of-body experiences, experimental research on extrasensory perception, psychokinesis and precognition. A number of relevant encyclopedias, doctoral dissertations on parapsychological topics, introductory textbooks, and biographies of researchers, psychics and mediums are also on hand.

The archival collections comprise the history and proceedings of the Parapsychology Foundation and its annual conferences and publications, as well as field work, research notes, and manuscripts from prominent parapsychologists. Among the people and topics included in the collection are: the Bindelof séance phenomena, research files of psychic researcher Hereward Carrington, the poltergeist investigations and personal scrapbook of Nandor Fodor, scrapbooks compiled by Eileen J. Garrett, records pertaining to the R101 Airship crash, and spirit recordings captured by Hans Holzer.

The collection features original manuscripts by Harry Price and others pertaining to the infamous Borley Rectory case, popularly known as the most haunted house in England. It also contains Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner’s dream telepathy research and many other subjects. Audio visual materials include over 600 audio and video recordings of conferences and lectures, spirit photographs, glass slides, target images, psychokinetic objects, and an ESP testing machine.

The Parapsychology Foundation’s rich history

The non-profit Parapsychology Foundation provides a worldwide forum supporting the scientific investigation of psychic phenomena. The Foundation gives grants; publishes pamphlets, monographs, conference proceedings, and the International Journal of Parapsychology; hosts the Perspectives Lecture Series; conducts an outreach program; and publishes books on the subject through its imprint, Helix Press.

The Parapsychology Foundation was founded by trance medium and research advocate Eileen J. Garrett and congresswoman Hon. Frances P. Bolton in 1951 to encourage and support impartial scientific inquiry into psychical aspects of human nature such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis.

A participant in some of the groundbreaking psychic experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, Garrett understood that psychical research was ignored by a large segment of the academic community. She knew that practical aid for scholars and scientists working in this area, now known as parapsychology, would not be available from most universities nor from other foundations. The Parapsychology Foundation, as envisioned by Garrett, fulfilled this need by providing a worldwide forum for the support of scientific exploration of psychic phenomena.

Establishing a new home for the collection

The Foundation recently decided to transfer its library to an American institution that would be willing to care for, interpret, and provide public access to the Foundation’s collection of scholarly materials. UMBC Special Collections was awarded this major gift thanks to its demonstrated commitment to preservation and accessibility.

Parapsychology Foundation president Lisette Coly states, “While bittersweet to relinquish the care of our library into the most capable hands of UMBC Special Collections, we are confident and excited that it has found a perfect harbor for its continuation and growth. Lovingly maintained throughout our 72 years of existence, we are assured of its preservation and growth as a valued resource disseminating quality information concerning a complex and often misunderstood subject. We eagerly look forward to future collaboration.”

“We are thrilled to bring this important collection to UMBC,” says curator and head of UMBC Special Collections Beth Saunders. “I believe that the Garrett Collection is exemplary of the spirit of free intellectual inquiry that our materials are intended to support.”

Saunders notes, “The collection includes materials relevant to a wide range of academic disciplines including anthropology, art history, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and physics, and addresses fundamental concerns of human experience.”

Building on strengths

“The Garrett Library also builds upon an existing strength of Special Collections,” adds Saunders. “We are known internationally for our Jule Eisenbud Collection on Ted Serios and Thoughtographic Photography.”

Jule Eisenbud was heavily involved with psychoanalysis and psychology and was a clinical faculty member at the University of Colorado, and an honored member of the American Society for Psychical Research and Parapsychology Foundation. Eisenbud met his main subject, Ted Serios, in 1964 in Chicago. At the time, Serios was an unemployed bellhop who claimed that he had the ability to put images on film with his mind. Although initially skeptical of Serios, a significant number of successful experiments under tightly controlled conditions convinced Eisenbud that Serios’s talent was legitimate.

Ted Serios’s ability, which came to be known as “thoughtography,” gained national attention with his appearance on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson. The Eisenbud Collection includes over 2,000 photographs and is the subject of a forthcoming exhibition organized by Emily Cullen, curator of exhibitions at UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, for The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a book to be published by Atelier Éditions, both in 2023.

Saunders envisions similar opportunities for the Eileen J. Garrett Parapsychology Foundation Collection. “We plan to focus first on making the collection accessible by cataloging the books and serials and creating a Finding Aid for the archival documents. We also plan to publish detailed research guides to aid scholars in discovery of relevant materials. In the future, there are a number of digitization projects that would make the highest research value materials more widely available, and I’d like to work with students to curate an exhibition from the collection in the Library Gallery.”

UMBC’s Special Collections

The Special Collections department collects materials of enduring historical and cultural value—housing, preserving, and making accessible materials that are original, rare, unique, fragile, and archival. The collections and staff support UMBC’s research and educational mission and its dedication to cultural and ethnic diversity, social responsibility, and lifelong learning. Topical collecting areas are particularly emphasized within the fields of photography, the history of the biological sciences, the Baltimore Sun newspaper, science fiction literature and popular culture, parapsychology, alternative presses, UMBC history and records, and Maryland manuscript, photograph, and newspaper collections.

Saunders notes that Special Collections will continue to work with the Parapsychology Foundation to grow the collections and encourage its scholarly use. The Parapsychology Foundation hopes to administer library grants that will fund researchers visiting the Garrett Collection at UMBC. The organizations would also like to host joint public programs and academic symposia on topics related to the collection in the future.

Every year, Retrievers of all ages (including some actual Retriever pups) and community members gather together for UMBC’s Homecoming—and as always, this year had something for everyone. For those who wanted to get an early start on the festivities, Retrievers enjoyed the morning’s 5k Dawg Chase and Fun Run. From there, alumni and friends could sit down for Family Breakfast, cheer on the Puppy Parade, gather for an ice cream social, and take in all the rides.

“For a lot of folks at UMBC, it’s coming back to a department, coming back to a social group, coming back to a physical space, coming back to an experience,” Jess Wyatt, associate director of Alumni Engagement and one of the event organizers.

Bringing the Homecoming spirit… competitively 

Alexis Nobleman ’16, psychology and biological sciences and Alex Nobleman ’17, psychology, came for the Dawg Chase and stayed for the ice cream and the rides. “It’s always a blast to come back,” shared the married couple, “but we really wanted to race the 5k.”

As usual, Erickson Field was transformed into a carnival ground—families and friends played games, took a spin on a ride, enjoyed the petting zoo, food trucks, and more. But most people paused their activities for the midday marquee event—the Puppy Parade. All good dogs were welcome to join, and some well-dressed pups participated in a special costume contest.

Roland Brooks, father to sophomore Olivia Brooks, a Meyerhoff Scholar, came to campus for the day. “We’re excited to support the university,” he said. “And with the change of guard with a new president, we wanted to be on campus, participate, and show our support. But we’re most excited about participating in the Puppy Parade.”

Welcoming back alumni

Alumni are always welcome back on UMBC’s campus, and Homecoming is a great opportunity to revisit your Retriever roots. If you ask Ron Pettie ’82, English, and his wife Christine, it’s all about reconnecting. “It’s a chance to come back and see what the school is doing now,” they’ll tell you. Through the years, Ron and Christine have made a point to return to UMBC each October and are enthusiastic to talk about the close soccer wins, sharing a corndog, and trying to keep up on the rides with their two little nieces.

This year, Retrievers of all backgrounds could find a variety of events geared specifically toward them. Alumni enjoyed reunions, socials after sports games (catch the Athletics recap here), compelling talks at GRIT-X, relaxation at the beer garden, and so much more. A new addition this year was a Homecoming get-together at UMBC at the Universities at Shady Grove. Alumni Engagement is continually looking for ways to connect with more cohorts of Retrievers.

Spending time with family

Homecoming at UMBC is an event for Retrievers to enjoy with their families, and the Family Breakfast gave folks a time to celebrate where they come from, the people they love, and how UMBC nurtures those connections. 

“We have a lot of non-traditional age students, students who are parents, [and] students who live in a multi-generational household,” says Wyatt. As such, Homecoming was been planned with students, alumni, and families of all types in mind. 

“Homecoming isn’t just a work project for a lot of us, it’s the thing that we bring our families to every year,” says Wyatt. “It’s really just seeing the best of everything that UMBC has to offer.” 

By Levi Lewis ’23

Over the last decade Nicole King, professor of American studies and director of the Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community, and Culture, has worked with colleagues to develop public humanities research methods that address disconnections, misrepresentation, and inequalities in Baltimore City and in the classroom. King helps students actively listen to and partner with Baltimore communities in research to create multimedia narratives as a vehicle of community-building and advocacy. 

“Place-based public history projects demonstrate that students and scholars can engage and collaborate with communities to identify, analyze, and respond to pressing social problems,” says King. “Public history methods can create dynamic social spaces in which scholars and residents work together to frame questions, conduct research, and preserve urban places.”

King’s work has reached a broad range of academic and public audiences, from the recent co-authored article “Building Together” in Baltimore? Corporate Megadevelopment and Coalitions for Community Power in Urban Affairs Review to media coverage of A Place Called Poppleton, documenting a fight for community-led development as part of the Baltimore Traces project.

A Place Called Poppleton

In July 2022, Sonia and Curtis Eaddy celebrated as Baltimore’s mayor announced their home in the historic Poppleton neighborhood of West Baltimore, dating back to the late 1800s, would not be demolished for redevelopment as previously planned. Among those whom Sonia thanked for support were King and her students. 

King originally connected with the Eaddy family through their son, Curtis Eaddy II, who shared his story as a third-generation Poppleton resident in 2019 for the storytelling series Baltimore Traces: West Baltimore. He became a strong partner in leading walking tours of West Baltimore through UMBC’s Baltimore Field School before interviewing his parents for A Place Called Poppleton, which King co-created in 2020 with students, residents, and Bill Shewbridge, media and communication studies professor of the practice. 

Through A Place Called Poppleton, UMBC students listened to residents who live, work, and are connected to Poppleton. They shared their voices through media like films, a digital walking tour and historical timeline, a zine, and a brochure. These materials have documented, analyzed, and raised awareness about Poppleton’s history and present community advocacy.

The project Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition, which began in 2015, is a collaborative teaching initiative that brings together students from a variety of disciplines in the arts and humanities to create media focused on Baltimore neighborhoods. The project has produced the Telly Award-winning documentary Mill Stories: Remembering Sparrows Point Steel Mill as well as short films, digital maps, and podcasts such as the Baltimore Green Space and A Walk Down West Baltimore Street. This included the radio series Stories of Deindustrialization, produced in partnership with the Center for Emerging Media—a Baltimore non-profit, and aired on the Marc Steiner Show.

“Getting out, showing up, listening to people, and meeting people where they are is so important to building the Baltimore Traces project,” King explains. “It’s something that organically grows to educate students…to do work that matters on the ground.”

Baltimore Field School

It’s no accident that King first connected with Curtis Eaddy II through Baltimore Traces, and then the Baltimore Field School, a project specifically designed to support innovation in the public humanities through collaboration with Baltimore residents.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded King and Dean Kimberly Moffitt $125,000 to establish the Baltimore Field School in 2020, to enhance the understanding and visibility of communities in South and Southwest Baltimore. The project accomplishes these objectives through methods centered in community partnership. In this way, it works to build a national model of effective, ethical humanities research, teaching, and learning about Baltimore and cities like it.

The work continues to evolve. In 2022, the American Council of Learned Societies awarded King; Sarah Fouts, assistant professor of American studies; and Tahira Mahdi, adjunct professor of psychology, an NEH-supported public engagement grant totaling more than $150,000 for “Baltimore Field School 2.0: Undoing & Doing Anew in Public Humanities.” 

Fouts, King, and Mahdi will work with community members, UMBC graduate students, and faculty to continue to develop frameworks for ethical and sustainable community-engaged research between local communities and academia, around topics such as public information, racial equity, and food and land justice.

The “public” in public humanities 

These are some of the same core themes explored inBaltimore Revisited(Rutgers University Press, 2019), the leading contemporary anthology on the city’s complex history and efforts to address longstanding inequalities, written by experts both within and outside of academia. King co-edited the book with long-time collaborators Kate Drabinski, principal lecturer of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies, and the University of Baltimore’s Joshua Clark Davis. 

“We hope the book raises questions about how history can inform the present to understand the roots of the city’s many inequalities,” said Drabinski, when it was published. “We wish readers to imagine new ways of being in and organizing for Baltimore now and in the future.”

Thinking of the anthology and all that has followed it, King reflects, “We can not forget the ‘public’ in public humanities.”