Meet Joel,

He is a Biochemical Engineering major, a JHU Researcher and a presenter at URCAD 2016. Joel also gave a presentation at Johns Hopkins’ Annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium and gave a presentation to the Hopkins Inistitute of NanoBiotechnology.

His research focused Parkinson's disease; in this study the most toxic fibrillar form of misfolded α-syn, pre-formed fibrils (α-syn-PFF), were used to elucidate the functional domain of a nascent transmembrane receptor, JHA1, in its role as a mediator of α-syn-PFF endocytosis. Joel's advice to research students is to apply to labs or to opportunities that actually interest you. This will also make your application stronger.

Read more about his research here…

Meet Matt,

He is a Chemical Engineering major, a NIST Scholar and a presenter at URCAD 2016. Matthew also volunteered his time as a Peer Alumni from Community Colleges, assisting potential students from Anne Arundel Community College to UMBC. And he served in the Air Force for three years. (Thank you for your service!) 

His research focused upon the development of an alternative method for heat transfer to chill hot wort in the brewing process. Efficient heat transfer is necessary to ensure an adequate cold break for a clear and flavorful product. The cold break is a group of proteins that must be thermally shocked to precipitate out of solution. An ice bath is not sufficient to obtain an efficient cold break, so alternative methods must be explored.

Read more about his research project here...

Meet Max,

 He is a Mathematics and Computer Science major and a NIST Scholar. In his spare time he likes to participate in the youth development program at Arbutus Middle School. This program consists of UMBC students who volunteered to tutor and mentor middle school students from AMS.

Last summer, Max’s research took him to the Neutron Research Center (NCNR) where he assisted in writing (python) scripts that was utilized for the NICE neutron beam client. He designed a feature that would allow users to create custom scripts written in the python programming language to control their experiments.

Read more about Max here...

Meet Rachel,

She is a visual arts major and a URA Scholar. She started off her academic career at CCBC where she found her career path in photography before transferring to UMBC in 2013. She premiered her film "Light Inhibits Light” at URCAD 2016. Rachel graduated from UMBC in May 2016 and is now a freelance photographer.

Her research explored the effect of light pollution in the world today. "Light pollution is a real problem; not only does it cause issues in the environment, it also is a waste of energy." Rachel traveled to the Northeastern United States and into Nova Scotia to capture the dark skies using time lapse photography. With this medium she plans to document amounts of light pollution and to showcase the beauty and the wonder of our night sky in hopes of awakening people to the problem of light pollution.

Read more about her research here…

Meet Daniel,

 His major is Interdisciplinary Studies in Arts Management and a summer researcher. He graduated cum laude this past winter (2015) and currently, he is an Inventory Controller for the Renaissance Fine Arts and Merritt Gallery in Baltimore city.

His research explores the complexities of non-profit Arts Management. Daniel investigated 7 non-profit art centers located across the nation to see how they managed their business and how they could be run with a high level of efficiency. Non-profit Art Centers are a life blood to the creative growth in the arts in every neighborhood, city and town in the U.S.. Have you ever been to one? Do you know where one is located? Can you believe there are more Non-profit Arts Centers than they are McDonalds? I bet you know of a location of the nearest McDonalds. Non-profits Arts Centers are not fast-foods, but they do provide substance for life can survive.

Read more about Daniel's research here...

Meet Vicki,

She is a Media and Communications Studies major and summer researcher. She graduated cum laude this past spring and currently works for Burness Communications, a public interest communications firm in Bethesda, MD. 

Her research investigates how to better understand and define what constitutes the “language” of television and involved a cross-cultural comparative quantitative and qualitative analysis of episodes from a Greek adaptation of the British medical series, Doc Martin. This research is particularly relevant due to the increasing volume of deterritorialized and localized narratives circulating within the global television format trade. She will conduct a cross-cultural analysis of components like narrative structure, sound, music, camera, lighting, and dialogue and demonstrated how these contribute to adapting for cultural proximity in the new setting. This comparative methodology led to an analysis of cultural components such as gender, masculinity, and community. 

Read more about her research here…

Meet Markus,

He is an Technology Entrepreneurship and Organization Management major and a summer researcher. His main focus is to bring technology to the masses - mainly into elementary schools. During his senior year he was the Vice-President for the Interdisciplinary Studies Council of Majors. Markus was also a speaker on the panel “Youth and Diversity in Entrepreneurship” at Baltimore’s inaugural Light City U Creative Innovation Conference in April 2016.

His research explores the technological world of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs has the potential to provide education to billions across the globe at little to no cost to learners. However, most individuals who start these free online courses do not watch the first video or complete the course at all. The purpose of my study is to compare the approach to MOOCs by American and Switzerland institutions and what practices are being used to address these issues and how the quality of distance education impacts the completion rates of online courses.

Read more about his research here…

Meet Jamshaid,

He is a Mathematics and Statistics major, Meyerhoff Scholar and MARC U*STAR Scholar. Jamshaid was also a participant of UMBC’s Young Scholars program, which allowed him to take classes as a high school student and earn credit. After graduation, he plans to attend graduate school focusing on either applied mathematics, bioinformatics, or computer science. He is interested in a career that involves mathematical modeling, statistics, and computer science.

His research will explore the world of microscopy; one of the main tools in cell biology. The overall goal of his research project is to quantify the differences between image features computed by several feature extraction tools. His approach to this project will be to identify implementations of the same image features across multiple software packages, extract numerical values of image features, and compute statistical variance of image features. 

Read more about his research here…

Meet Joelle,

She is a Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major and a URA Scholar. Joelle is a premed student, a TA for Biology 142 and was also a Woolie for the new students during Welcome Week 2015. After graduation, she plans to pursue an MD (hopefully, at University of Maryland School of Medicine) and would like to specialize in oncology. She feels that the field of oncology would allow her to be able to have the opportunity to treat patients and promote health wellness and prevention within the community while also opening the doors to do research on genetic diseases and to continue studying how mutations of genes found in DNA can cause and affect cancer.

Her research will examine the toxin Crotamine that is present in the venom of Crotalus durissus terrificus, the South American rattlesnake. Crotamine has been shown to have a preference for targeting rapidly proliferating cells, such as malignant cancer cells, and displays numerous other functions, including DNA delivery and localization to the nucleus upon penetrating the cell. 

Read more about her research here…