Attached is a flyer for our Summer 2020 Internship posting.  It is open now and closes an entire month earlier than in previous years and BEFORE all the Fall Career Fairs. 

Intern applicants are required to select offices they’d like to work at.  Most select the office near their home but Engineers usually do best at FBI headquarters in DC or at the Engineering Research Facility or Operational Technology Division which is part of our Laboratory at Quantico. Electrical Engineers also do well as Computer Scientist in Field offices.  If anyone has questions about where they should chose have them contact me directly.  Email is best.

Selections and offers will be made by the beginning of November.  They're doing this to try and solve the yearly problem of applicants not getting through background in time to do the summer internship and consequently leaving many students without a summer internship last minute.  They're making hard deadlines this year as well for background investigation.  If the student isn't processed to the point of successfully completely the polygraph by January 17, 2020 they will be discontinued and notified.  If the student's background investigation isn't completed by May 1, 2020 they're discontinuing them and notifying them so they can look for another opportunity or job.

Qualifications & Eligibility are the same.

1. 3.0 GPA or higher;

2. Must be a Full-time student (12 credits for Undergrad; 6 credits for Graduate); 3. Must be returning to school full-time in September 2020; 4. Must be capable of passing the FBI Background Investigation and obtaining a Top Secret Clearance.  See Disqualifiers on our websitewww.fbijobs.gov; 5. Must be in the United States during the background investigation which means from now until the Internship starts (both Fall 19 & Spring 20 semesters-not studying aboard for the semester). A one week vacation will be fine.

A couple of facts, we had 1100 Interns this past summer which included hiring about 360 new ones for Summer 2019.  Many were returning Interns from previous years who were invited to stay on with us after their first summer.  Baltimore Division had 29 Interns this summer.  Approx. 30% of the FBI's entry level positions were filled by Interns this past year.  

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.”

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 fall, hundreds of Retrievers will set foot in UMBC’s new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building for the first time. They may be inspired by the vibrant art installation, find a quiet nook to study, or work together in research labs with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking pocket gardens and curving pathways. The new facility offers features that set it apart as a space for learning, and set up students and faculty for transformative moments of discovery.

“New things will brew”

Each research floor in the ILSB is connected along its entire length and bounded by glass on all sides. Inside the labs, benches are configurable so that instrumentation can go in and out as needed. Neon-colored glass surfaces double as marker boards for quick sketches of lab protocols, equations, or encouraging doodles. Just outside the lab are spaces, overlooking an airy atrium, where graduate students can write and undergraduates can meet with mentors. 

It’s a research environment that looks toward the future. These shared, open spaces are designed to help anyone who enters sense that they have a role to play in addressing big challenges, discovering more about the world, and developing the next generation of scientists.

“The ILSB provides an unprecedented opportunity to have researchers who are intellectually next to each other also be physically next to each other,” shares Greg Szeto, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering (CBEE). “When you share a kitchenette with a biologist, a chemist, an engineer and somebody from public policy, it’s inevitable that new things will brew.”

Szeto is part of the new Translational Center for Age-Related Disease and Disparities (TCARD²), an initiative made possible by the ILSB. The initiative is led by Chuck Bieberich, professor of biological sciences, and also includes faculty from CBEE and psychology. Bieberich’s lab focuses on cancer biology, especially prostate cancer, while Szeto works on cancer therapies that leverage the immune system. “When we bring our two approaches together, hopefully it will lead to new research, new papers, new grants,” and new cancer treatments, Szeto says.

On top of the collaborative advantage, the ILSB offers all the equipment labs need in one place. Szeto’s students were already collaborating with biologists, but that used to mean carrying samples to instruments in other buildings. Not anymore. “Now everything is going to be in the ILSB,” Szeto says. “Being able to centralize the operation both intellectually and logistically is so critical.”

Bringing the outside in

Faculty in the new Interdisciplinary Consortium for Applied Research in Ecology and Evolution (ICARE²) are also taking up residence in the ILSB. Tamra Mendelson, professor of biological sciences, and Chris Swan, professor of geography and environmental systems (GES) co-lead the initiative. It also includes faculty in CBEE and marine biotechnology.

“The collaboration is designed to bring together evolutionary biologists, ecologists, conservationists, social scientists, and engineers,” says Swan. “We want to build a powerful network of people to collaborate on training graduate students, solving environmental problems relevant to Baltimore, and building out UMBC’s focus on ecology.” The ILSB will offer ICARE² researchers the opportunity to work in a shared space for the first time.

A new, state-of-the-art environmental science lab in the ILSB will also open up the possibilities for these researchers. It’s a space “devoted to environmental work,” which often means, “It’s dirty!” Swan says. The lab will enable larger-scale controlled experiments that can be hard to manage in the field and that would be incompatible with a lab focused on molecular work, where the slightest bit of stray DNA could ruin an experiment.

“A total game-changer”

Chris Hawn, assistant professor of GES, is excited to move to the ILSB because of the doors it will open for their environmental research. Hawn runs chemical analyses on spiderwebs to measure local air quality. They are collaborating with an advocacy group for houseless people that will train them to collect webs in spaces where they are living to send to Hawn for analysis. The goal is that they can use the findings to advocate locally for their health and make the best possible choices about where to stay. 

Hawn also studies how pollutants in waterways are passed through the food chain from small aquatic insects, to spiders, to birds.

The ILSB “is a total game-changer for me,” Hawn says. With the instrumentation available at the ILSB, “There are protocols where I can get ‘level unlocked.’ It just opens things up for me and my students.”

Hawn is the first researcher assigned to their floor of the new building. They note, “I’m excited to make the space my own, but also excited that it will be a shared space very soon. It will be interesting to see how we can work together.”

Even if they aren’t working together directly, having other researchers nearby is a good thing, Hawn adds. “Working simultaneously and having people around you is important, especially for graduate students who are spending a lot of their time in the lab.”

Coming to life

Sarah Leupen, senior lecturer in biological sciences, has been looking forward to teaching in the ILSB—and not just because it’s a new space, but because it’s a new kind of space. Even the building’s largest learning spaces are designed to help students connect with each other and the material in an engaged, intimate, collaborative way. 

One of Leupen’s favorite rooms is filled with small round tables that seat six students. Screens and whiteboards appear all around the room and there is plenty of open space. “It’s this kind of flipped classroom that makes possible truly active learning, the kind of teaching that is most well-supported by research.”

Bill LaCourse, dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, which administers the building, is thrilled to see it come to life. “For me, it’s been a decade of planning, design and construction to create this building that can serve the needs of our community in essential ways.” 

“The process really epitomized the ethos of UMBC, involving the input and collaboration of so many people across the university,” he shares. “To see it evolve from a germ of an idea to the magnificent building we see today is a tribute to UMBC’s strength in the life sciences and commitment to student and faculty success.” 

Banner image: Undergraduate researchers outside the TCARD² lab. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.