Please find the schedule for the Fall 2019 joint seminar of the Department of Economics, the School of Public Policy and the Center for Social Science Scholarship. The full list of talks can be found below. All seminars will take place in Public Policy 367.

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Taxes and the Fed: Theory and Evidence from Equities

Anthony Diercks, The Federal Reserve Board

Wednesday, September 18, 2019. 2:00 pm

Trade, Jobs, and Worker Welfare

Eunhee Lee, University of Maryland, College Park

Tuesday, October 1, 2019. 2:00 pm

Impacts of Prenatal Care on Early Childhood Health and Health Care Utilization

Lyudmyla Ardan (Sonchak), Susquehanna University

Monday, October 14, 2019. 1:00 pm

Counterfactual Dissimilarity: Can Changes in Demographics and Income Explain Increased Racial Integration in U.S. Cities?

Paul Carrillo, George Washington University

Tuesday, October 29, 2019. 2:00 pm

O Youth and Beauty: Children's Looks and Children's Cognitive Development

Daniel Hammermesh, University of Texas, Austin

Monday, November 4, 2019. 1:00 pm

Student and School Concentrated Poverty: What are the Long-Term Consequences for Academic and Career Outcomes?

Angela K. Henneberger, University of Maryland, Baltimore

Wednesday, November 6, 2019. 2:00 pm

Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence? Tactics at the Bakery

José Ciro Martínez, University of Cambridge

Tuesday, November 12, 2019. 2:00 pm

Jonathan Sikora is a Biology major with a Psychology minor who will graduate in 2021.  He is a URA Scholar and a member of the Honors College.

Title of your research project: Comparing song repertoire size in male and female Eastern Bluebirds

Describe your project: 

I am investigating whether male and female Eastern Bluebirds can sing the same number of songs. This will help further our understanding of female song in songbirds; an emerging field in ornithology. 

Who is your mentor(s) for your project? Dr. Kevin Omland

How did you find your mentor? Dr. Omland taught my BIOL 142 class. He made a posting on blackboard looking for field assistants for an undergraduate researcher's independent project. I applied, and was eventually accepted into the lab. 

Why did you choose them? I thought Dr. Omland's work was incredibly interesting, and I loved what the Omland lab was doing. I thought that having the opportunity to work in this field would would be a great way to expand my interests and find something I'm really passionate about.

How did you become interested in this project? I had already assisted with a previous project on female song in Eastern Bluebirds, and I really enjoyed the experience. Doing research out in the field was unlike any other experience I had before. When Dr. Omland offered me the opportunity to lead a similar project of my own, I knew right away that it was something I wanted to do.

What has been the hardest part about your research/what was the most unexpected thing about being a researcher? Recording birdsong out in the field can be quite a challenge. It took me a while to understand how much goes into making a quality recording. Finding the correct distance, positioning, and recording settings all proved to be difficult tasks.

What has been the most rewarding part? Having the opportunity to explain my work is definitely the most rewarding part about research for me. I love being able to explain my findings to others and how they apply to the world around us, and I'm so grateful that this experience has afforded me that opportunity. 

How will you disseminate your research? I will be presenting at URCAD and possibly publishing my results in a peer reviewed journal. 

What is your advice to other students about getting involved in research? Talk to your professors in your favorite classes and see if you can get involved with their work. Try to find something you're really passionate about. And don't think that research has to be strictly within the sciences, as there are many different types of research you can get involved with (social sciences, art, history, etc.).

What are your career goals? After graduation, I plan on attending medical school and becoming a physician. 

Check out all of our URA Scholars: 

https://ur.umbc.edu/ura/current-scholars/

Join MEEC - Microsoft - Frostburg State University for a day of learning and networking.

• October 29th, 2019 9:30 – 3pm. (9:30 – 12pm “Best of Office 365”, 1-3pm “Creating an Inclusive and Accessible Environment”
• Intended Audience: MEEC Members especially any Frostburg, western Maryland and K-12 educators, faculty and staff

Best of Office 365 for Education, 9:30am - 12pm:

Capture the benefits of modern classroom collaboration with Office 365. Learn best practices from Microsoft experts on how to maximize efficiency in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams. Real-time collaboration in Office Online, Word Resume Assistant, and PowerPoint Presentation Coach are just a few examples of time saving tools you’ll learn to use in this interactive session.

Creating an Inclusive Classroom and Work Environment, 1-3pm:

One in five people have a disability. Accessible technologies empower people with disabilities to unlock their potential at school, work, and in modern life. Take a deep dive on Accessibility and learn to use free Microsoft tools that support classroom engagement for students with physical and cognitive disabilities. Tools such as live captioning, real time translation, reading tools and more help create a compliant and inclusive workplace for your entire organization.

MEEC - Microsoft - Frostburg State University Event

• October 29^th, 2019 9:30 – 3pm. (9:30 – 12pm “Best of Office 365”, 1-3pm “Creating an Inclusive and Accessible Environment”
• Intended Audience: MEEC Members especially any Frostburg, western Maryland and K-12 educators, faculty and staff

Best of Office 365 for Education:

Capture the benefits of modern classroom collaboration with Office 365. Learn best practices from Microsoft experts on how to maximize efficiency in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams. Real-time collaboration in Office Online, Word Resume Assistant, and PowerPoint Presentation Coach are just a few examples of time saving tools you’ll learn to use in this interactive session.

Creating an Inclusive Classroom and Work Environment:

One in five people have a disability. Accessible technologies empower people with disabilities to unlock their potential at school, work, and in modern life. Take a deep dive on Accessibility and learn to use free Microsoft tools that support classroom engagement for students with physical and cognitive disabilities. Tools such as live captioning, real time translation, reading tools and more help create a compliant and inclusive workplace for your entire organization.

This story was written by Sarah Hansen and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Scientists understand many of the body’s processes, like breaking down sugars and generating energy for the cell, pretty well. They know what chemical reactions are involved, what molecules they produce, and in what order everything happens. Complex maps even exist of how the different processes interact with one another. There’s a problem, though: the maps are two-dimensional, and cells are three-dimensional. Add the element of time, and you’re up to four dimensions.

Minjoung Kyoung, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, has never been satisfied with 2D maps of 4D processes. “I’ve always been interested in how proteins are working in the real system, in real time, in real action,” she says.

To address the limits of current understanding, Kyoung and her graduate student, Erin Kennedy, ordered parts to build an innovative type of microscope, found in just a few labs around the world. This new tool gave them the rare ability to look at entire living cells at exquisite resolution, as they change in real time. Finally, they could move forward with constructing  a 4D map of cellular metabolic pathways.

Kyoung’s preliminary results with the new instrument are promising. Now, with a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, she’s poised to make serious breakthroughs in how we understand the functional relationship between metabolic pathways. Her first targets will include essential basic processes like glucose metabolism (sugar breakdown) and cellular respiration (energy production for the cell, which relies on glucose). Both are fundamental to diseases like diabetes, cancer, and obesity.

Anticipating disease

One thing Kyoung’s early results suggested is that the enzymes important for breaking down glucose and for generating energy are physically close together in the cell—but only when both pathways are functioning normally. “So when they are functionally linked, they are spatially related,” Kyoung says. Her continuing research will try to determine how and why that happens, by looking very carefully at what’s going on in whole cells at various time points and under different cellular conditions.

Minjoung Kyoung and Erin Kennedy work on the lab’s unique microscope. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Kyoung also finds the glucose pathway itself to be fascinating. It takes place in the cytoplasm, the watery fluid that fills cells. But somehow, the enzymes required to break down glucose form dense clusters, which Kyoung has dubbed “condensates,” even though the clusters don’t have a formal boundary. “The fundamental mechanism for how these condensates are reversibly assembled and disassembled is one of the specific aims that we’re going to study,” Kyoung says.

The enzymes for the cellular energy pathway also cluster, but they are enclosed inside mitochondria, a structure surrounded by a membrane. A single cell can contain from zero to thousands of mitochondria, depending on the cell’s job. Kyoung explains, “Mitochondria are very important for various metabolic diseases—cancer, diabetes, obesity, and so on. How these mitochondria relate to glucose metabolism is the most important part. So, by understanding them, I truly believe that we can get much, much closer to understanding how these diseases are caused, thus promoting therapeutic intervention.”

“My dream is to be able to predict disease before symptoms occur,” she shares. “That would be the best.”

Ready for a challenge

Getting to the point of recognizing disease before symptoms are apparent won’t be easy. The imaging techniques Kyoung, Kennedy, new graduate student Tao Zhang, and UMBC collaborator Songon An, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, are employing are so new, and so difficult, Kyoung anticipates many challenges.  

“There is no previous data whatsoever. There is no technical approach whatsoever. There is no approach to data analysis whatsoever,” says Kyoung. She describes being at this cutting edge as both exciting and intimidating. To even successfully collect useful data, “many things have to go right,” Kyoung says.

Minjoung Kyoung explains a result to her students. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

To see what they want to see inside the cells, such as a particular enzyme, Kyoung’s team will need to tag it with a fluorescent protein, a process that is successful in 50 to 60 percent of cells. That’s not a problem when you use a conventional microscope, because you can see lots of cells at once. But the microscope that enables observing living cells with the resolution Kyoung needs can only see a few cells at a time. So finding the tagged cells has been the first challenge.

After the images are collected, a complex mathematical process called “deconvolution” removes the distortion that the microscope’s light beam itself generates in the images. That takes several hours for a single cell. And then they can actually analyze the images to see which enzymes are where, when. This process takes several days for one cell. Only at that point do they know if the experiment worked.

And, “Because no one has done this type of research before, we have to figure out how we are going to validate our results, too,” Kyoung says. “There is no precedent.” Despite all these challenges, Kyoung is excited to get to work. She believes the kinds of relationships they’ve started to see between glucose metabolism and mitochondria are only the tip of the iceberg as far as spatial relationships between metabolic pathways in the cell.

“Just a start”

“This is just a start. So far we have focused on these two metabolic pathways, but I believe this phenomenon is not limited to just these two,” Kyoung says. “So I envision that this will be the beginning for a big 4D map of all the metabolic networks.”

Kyoung and her team have significant funding from NIH to support their work, the microscope they need to do it, a healthy sense of optimism, and a commitment to helping answer some of the fundamental questions surrounding emerging epidemics like cancers, diabetes and obesity. With the key elements in place, they are bound to make breakthroughs that move the needle on tackling some of today’s most challenging diseases.

Banner image: Minjoung Kyoung and her UMBC lab group. From left to right: Keynon Bell, Minjoung Kyoung, Erin Kennedy, Manuel Huerta-Alvarado, and Tao Zhang. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

This story was written by Megan Hanks and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

UMBC’s Lee Blaney and research partners have published a landmark study on contaminants of emerging concern in the Chesapeake Bay. Their article in Science of the Total Environment is the first research study that quantifies concentrations of antibiotics, estrogenic hormones, and UV-filters in multiple locations of the Bay.

Blaney, an associate professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, conducted the research with Ke He, Ph.D ‘17, chemical engineering, and Ethan Hain ‘21, chemical engineering. They also partnered with collaborators at the U.S. Forest Service and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. 

Underway since 2016, their work highlights the importance of understanding how previously unexamined chemicals impact the environment. The project has been primarily funded by Maryland Sea Grant through a Program Development Fund to Blaney, and a Graduate Research Fellowship to Hain.

The researchers studied the prevalence of contaminants of emerging concern in water, sediment, and oyster tissue collected from the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Their study of how accumulated UV-filters negatively impact the environment is the first of its kind. UV-filters are one of the primary ingredients in personal care products, such as sunscreen and cosmetics. The accumulation of these UV-filters can impact organisms and animals.

Maintaining a healthy Chesapeake Bay 

While the Chesapeake Bay is one of the most well-studied ecosystems in the United States, Blaney says that little is known about the sources, occurrence, and impacts of contaminants of emerging concern in this important estuary. 

“As the health of the Chesapeake Bay continues to improve due to recent nutrient and sediment regulations, it is important to consider new threats from specialty chemicals like antibiotics, hormones, and UV-filters,” he explains. “The first step to ensuring the safety of the Chesapeake Bay is to measure the concentrations of these contaminants in water, sediment, and tissue.”

Lee Blaney. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The discharge of antibiotics into the Chesapeake Bay may speed up the spread and development of antibiotic resistance, a global public health challenge, explains Blaney. He adds that estrogenic hormones and UV-filters are considered priority chemicals of concern due to reported toxicity and other effects on reproductive systems in aquatic and marine organisms. 

Over the past two years, Blaney and his team have continued to collect data throughout the Chesapeake Bay to better understand differences in contaminant levels. They have found relatively high levels of antibiotics in the Chesapeake Bay, and the reported concentrations are in the range that can select for antibiotic resistant bacteria. In addition, most samples have contained UV-filters, including two common in sunscreens that were recently banned from being sold in Hawaii due to concerns that they are toxic to corals. 

The researchers argue that their findings suggest a need to improve municipal wastewater treatment and agricultural waste management to remove contaminants of emerging concern and prevent their introduction to the environment. In this regard, Blaney and his collaborators are actively working on a number of technologies to improve the transformation of contaminants into benign molecules that do not have antibiotic or estrogenic properties or other toxicity concerns. 

Continuing to expand the research

In 2017, Blaney received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation to study contaminants of emerging concern and their effects on the urban environment. That research focused on the Gwynns Falls watershed in Baltimore, and the Chesapeake Bay research is an extension of that work. In addition to the public and ecological health concerns highlighted in the current article, Blaney also continues to examine issues like antimicrobial resistance and the impact of agricultural runoff.

Blaney was recently named associate director for sustainability engineering and liaison to the University System of Maryland (USM) vice chancellor for environmental sustainability. In this capacity, he will work closely with collaborators at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and will lead additional sustainability-focused research projects within the USM. 

Banner image: Lee Blaney, left, working with a student in the lab. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

This story was written by Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque and first appeared on news.umbc.edu

Preminda Jacob, visual arts, has been named the new associate dean of research and community engagement for UMBC’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CAHSS). She will join the current team of associate deans in providing support for the College’s many departments, programs, and research centers. Together they will continue to implement CAHSS’ strategic goals and objectives, focusing on projects around recruitment and retention of diverse faculty, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, and further developing community engagement work. 

Scott Casper, dean of CAHSS, is excited about the level of expertise Jacob brings to the team. “Preminda Jacob brings a wealth of experience as a scholar, teacher, and UMBC citizen, and leader to the Dean’s Office,” says Casper. “I am delighted that she has joined our leadership team and look forward to her continued contributions to the College and the University in this new role.”

Jacob at graduate commencement.

Engaging faculty

Jacob will begin by joining the team of associate deans in working to further foster the current research community within CAHSS and build broader awareness of CAHSS research. One way Jacob hopes to share faculty research is by collaborating with campus partners on updating the university’s current faculty research database capabilities. This digital tool will help academics, researchers, educators, and students from around the world more easily access information about UMBC researchers and their areas of study.

“I see part of community engagement as an accessibility issue,” explains Jacob. “UMBC faculty conduct top-level research. A searchable database elevates our commitment to provide research-based answers to the world’s most pressing questions by placing the research within everyone’s reach.”

Jacob will also help faculty better connect with each other across departments, including for research that involves community partnerships. She looks forward to working with faculty who have research expertise on community engagement by exploring topics through existing brown bag lunch series and working groups in the five CAHSS research centers as well as across UMBC’s colleges. 

Engaging the community

Prior to joining the Dean’s Office, Jacob served as chair of visual arts from 2015 to 2018. As a professor of visual arts specializing in art history and visual culture, she worked to connect her passions for research and community engagement.

Jacob recalls a four-year partnership between the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum in Catonsville and her Space, Place, and Public Art class as a particularly significant collaboration. Jacob partnered students with the museum’s staff to create public art pieces from start to finish in one semester. “Students were excited to work directly with a local organization and leaders within the organizations were equally excited to serve as guides and mentors in the process,” she says. 

Over the years, Jacob’s students have created object and wall labels, interactive and interpretive recordings, and works of art for the museum. They produced a video featuring interviews with local leaders and archaeologists talking about the archaeological dig conducted by the Maryland Historical Trust in the 1980s on Benjamin Banneker’s property.

Museum exhibit three teams of students helped design.

Victor Pineda ‘15, visual arts, who went on to serve as a museum intern after participating in Jacob’s class, helped record an actor’s interpretation of the voice of Benjamin Banneker. The recording became part of an interactive device in the Banneker Gallery. Today, visitors can listen to Benjamin Banneker discuss his letter to Thomas Jefferson. 

Pineda recording audio for interactive exhibit at the museum.

“Through the museum’s partnership with the visual arts department at UMBC,” says Willa Banks, the museum’s former director of education and curatorial affairs, “Dr. Jacob’s public art class provided a phenomenal service that not only benefited UMBC faculty and students but also the museum and the general public as well.”

Jacob plans to work with faculty already engaged with community partners in the Baltimore region to amplify relationships like this one. She is also dedicated to opening pathways for new community engagement opportunities, in the greater Baltimore region and beyond. 

Banner Image: Preminda at MFA celebration. All images by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC with the exception of the images of student work at the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum which were courtesy of Willa Banks.