Celebrating the rapid growth of our collaborative research programs, UMBC and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) joined together for an inaugural Research & Innovation Partnership Symposium on Friday, January 30, 2015.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and UMB President Jay Perman greeted a standing-room only audience of faculty researchers, students, and research support staff, and reflected on the value of collaborative research for both institutions. Yvonne Maddox, acting director of the NIH Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), delivered a keynote address focusing on the need to expand research on health disparities and how our institutions can support diverse young researchers entering this field. Scientific talks presented by collaborative research teams that received UMBC-UMB Partnership Grants in 2013 and an interactive poster session rounded out the symposium agenda.

“We are thrilled about the positive response by our campus communities to this inaugural research symposium,” stated Karl V. Steiner, UMBC’s vice president for research. “It serves as an important milestone for us to take stock of how far we have come with our relationship, but to also recognize how much more work and opportunities still lay ahead.”

The UMBC-UMB Research & Innovation Partnership Seed Grant program seeks to establish, enhance, and promote inter-institutional research collaborations between the two USM institutions and to stimulate joint grant proposals to federal agencies and foundations. USM Chancellor William E. Kirwan has praised the program for its “focus on cutting-edge science and health concerns” and its emphasis on interdisciplinary teamwork. The grant program is now in its second year, and the symposium offered an exciting stage to announce a new group of grant recipients.

This year’s grant program consists of two tracks — Innovation Seed Grants of up to $50,000 and Innovation Challenge Grants for senior researchers for up to $75,000 per year for two years. The committee received 21 applications — nine for the innovation seed track and 12 for the innovation challenge track — and awarded funding to four teams of three researchers each.

Ronghui Ma, associate professor in mechanical engineering, is working with her colleagues to create a 3D-printed chip that will allow scientists to test drugs on cells from different organs at the same time. She says that with this work, made possible by the grant program, the team can provide a new model for drug testing.

Zeev Rosenzweig, chair and professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and his UMB colleagues are working to develop a new method to prevent or delay amputation in diabetes patients. He explains that his goal is to prepare an NIH proposal using the preliminary data obtained during the next two years of research. “Without this funding mechanism,” Rosenzweig shares, “this collaboration wouldn’t happen.”

Previous seed grant recipients, reflecting on a year of collaboration across institutions, share this view. The inaugural program received 42 collaborative proposals in the summer of 2013, and awarded five teams 12-month grants of $75,000 each:

The grant recipients describe the program as having a dramatic impact on their work. “This program helped me start a whole new collaboration,” says Kathleen Hoffman, professor of mathematics and statistics.

Charles Bieberich, professor of biological sciences, agrees. “Having a pool of money that I could apply for made me stop and think about whom at UMB I could reach out to and establish a collaboration,” he says. “The funding acts as a catalyst to move the work forward.”

The UMBC-UMB Partnership Grants program is supported by the Office of the Provost and Office of the Vice President for Research at UMBC, and by the deans of the UMB schools of medicine, pharmacy, nursing, and dentistry.

Photo Credit: Marlayna Demond

Pictured, left to right: Zeev Rosenzweig (UMBC), Toni Antalis (UMB), Rajabrata Sarkar (UMB), Elizabeth Galik (UMB), Nirmalya Roy (UMBC), Hongbing Wang (UMB), Ronghui Ma (UMBC), Radi Masri (UMC), and Raimi Quiton (UMBC)

Male cardinals are red. Male peacocks have bright tail plumage. Conventional biological wisdom says that species look different because they are adapting to different environments — food, predators, or climate. That assumption is missing a major piece of the puzzle, say researchers at UMBC and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In a recent study published in the journal Ecology Letters and featured in The Baltimore Sun, Tamra Mendelson and her co-authors suggest that sexual attraction plays a significant role in how animals — even those of the same species living in similar environments — can adapt different characteristics to attract mates. The researchers propose that animals don’t just respond to their environments, they respond to each other.

“It turns out males in particular don’t have to adapt to the environment,” says Mendelson, an associate professor of biological sciences at UMBC and lead author on the study. “They’re adapting to the opposite sex.”

This implies, says Mendelson, that populations in similar environments may come up with different ways to solve the same problem. For example, males in one population might evolve a flashy feather to attract females, whereas males in another population might evolve a colorful beak.

This helps explain the wide array of vivid colors and arresting features we finding in creatures like birds-of-paradise. It also highlights the point that just because two individuals don’t look the same or act the same, doesn’t mean they’re not the same species.

The next steps will involve testing the model, Mendelson explains. She will do experiments called reciprocal transplants: placing species A in the habitat of species B, and species B in the habitat of species A. According to Mendelson’s model there shouldn’t be any difference in how the males perform in their reversed habitats.

Next, Mendelson and her colleagues will do a reciprocal transplant of the sexual environment. This involves allowing males of species A to compete with each other for females of species B and vice versa.

Mendelson says, “I want to understand why and what ornaments are going to be particularly attractive.” She hopes this will help scientists understand the development of such varied and complex ornamentation.

“What kind of a mutation would be successful?” Mendelson asks. “Mutations drive evolution. You could argue that it is mutation that is the most important thing. What is it about the female fish brain that makes certain male ornamentation more attractive?”

Mendelson and Natalie Roberts, PhD student in biological sciences, will use video animations of darter fish to ask that question in their ongoing research. Amazingly, fish respond readily to video images of other fish, so the researchers will manipulate videos of male darters to see if and how they can make them more attractive to fish of the opposite sex.

“We can use the videos to create mutations that don’t exist yet, to see what could happen in the future," says Mendelson.

Will an extra fin stripe or spot of color make a fish more attractive? Only the TV-watching darters can tell us.

An opportunities from the Society for Research Administrators International!

For more information, click https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/13/report-duke-ignored-warnings-research-fraud

For more information, see Focus Group Research on the IRB website. 

by Sierra Francis

For the year of 2014, UMBC Professor of History Kate Brown was awarded the Alfred J. Beveridge prize by the American Historical Association for her new book, Plutopia. This prize has been awarded annually since 1945 in order to recognize outstanding historical writing on the history of the Americas from 1492 to the present. 

Plutopia is a book about the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium, one American and one Soviet, during the Cold War, and the nuclear footprint they left behind. During the time period, both locations developed into seeming utopias for the working class plant workers and their families, but after surrounding communities became sick from the radioactive waste being dumped into the rivers and soil, suspicion quickly arose. What especially sets this book apart is the comparative history presented between America and the Soviet Union. According to Professor Brown, analyzing both of these histories in tandem has exposed the similarities in nuclear weapons states despite the vast differences in national cultures and ideology. 

After the incredible amount of work put into her research and writing, Professor Brown states, “It has been gratifying that Plutopia has won the premier prizes in a number of different categories - in American history, Slavic studies, and environmental history. This validation across fields tells me that this experiment in transnational history was a success.” 

Per the Graduate Assistant Handbook, all graduate students requesting maternity leave will need to notify his/her Graduate Program Director (GPD) or supervisor immediately. All requests for maternity leave must be approved by the Associate Dean of the Graduate School. 

- This is a new policy. 

- At present, this policy only covers female graduate students who need time for physical recovery from birth of a child.