UMBC’s Office of the Provost has launched a university-wide initiative to celebrate faculty who go above and beyond as educators, scholars, and leaders on campus and in their fields. This initiative strives to highlight tenure-track junior faculty, lecturers, and adjunct, research, and clinical faculty whose work is essential to UMBC’s success. The first recipients were announced last month, and represent a broad range of disciplines.

In the College of Engineering and Information Technology, recipients were announced during a special celebration marking the end of the academic year. Chris Hennigan, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, received the Early Career Faculty Excellence Award. Gunes Koru, associate professor of information systems, received the Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award. Chuck LaBerge, professor of practice of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE), was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award.

In the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Pengwang Zhai, assistant professor of physics, received the 2018 Early Career Faculty Excellence Award. Tamra Mendelson, professor of biological sciences, was awarded the Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award. Tiffany Gierasch, senior lecturer in chemistry and director of the Chemistry Tutorial Center, received the Excellence in Teaching Award.

The College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences also presented awards to three faculty. The Early Career Faculty Excellence Award was presented to Corrie Parks, assistant professor of visual arts. The Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award was awarded to Susan McDonough, associate professor of history. Andrew Nolan, senior lecturer of history and director of the UMBC history program at the Universities at Shady Grove, received the Excellence in Teaching Award.

UMBC’s Office of the Vice President for Research presented its inaugural  Research Faculty Excellence Award to Milt Halem, research professor of CSEE. Halem came to UMBC following a highly successful career at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, serving as founding director of a UMBC center focused on big-data computation and next-generation computing.

“UMBC is the academic home to over 180 research faculty who contribute their expertise and personal commitment to making UMBC a destination for cutting-edge research while providing our students with remarkable insights and opportunities,” said Karl Steiner, vice president for research, shared. He noted that Milt Halem’s “energy and expertise have been a major factor in UMBC being recognized as a major contributor to high performance computation and data analytics.”

Banner image: Library pond. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

On June 12, leaders from UMBC and the University of Limpopo in South Africa formalized commitments to collaborate through joint research as well as faculty and student exchanges. UMBC has steadily grown its international partnerships with universities in Germany, Japan, Portugal, Peru, and other nations around the globe. This is the first such agreement between UMBC and a university in Africa.

“It gives us a lot of joy…to be the first African university with which you sign an agreement like this,” shared Jesika Singh, deputy vice chancellor for research, innovation and partnership at University of Limpopo. “There is so much potential that we see.”

This relationship grew out of the African International Conference (AIC) on Statistics, an event organized annually since 2014 by UMBC statistics faculty and international partners. Past conferences have occurred in Senegal, Ethiopia, Cameroon, South Africa, and Botswana, including statisticians from all across Africa as well as a dozen U.S. institutions. The next two conferences will take place in Ethiopia and Morocco.

Yehenew Kifle, associate professor at the University of Limpopo and currently visiting faculty at UMBC, first connected with UMBC during the 2015 AIC at Jimma University in Ethiopia. Inspired to build on the success of conference, Kifle asked UMBC to partner on a grant from the South African government to support faculty development.

The grant, managed by Professor Kingsley Ayisi, calls for University of Limpopo junior faculty, some of whom do not yet hold doctoral degrees, to travel to UMBC to pursue doctoral-level training in statistics. Through a similar agreement, other Limpopo faculty will travel to Iowa State University for agricultural training.

“This is really a milestone for us,” said Bimal Sinha, professor of statistics at UMBC and a leader in organizing the AIC, at the signing. “I hope that once other African universities see this, they will want to participate as well.”

In addition to Limpopo faculty traveling to UMBC, UMBC faculty will travel to South Africa to provide short training courses in statistical methods. Those courses will specifically focus on how statistics are used in the study of climate and climate change, which is already producing severe effects throughout the African continent.

Beyond the statistics training program, the partners also signed an agreement outlining plans to pursue joint research projects, exchange programs for UMBC and Limpopo students, and other collaborations across a wide range of departments and programs.

“The way I see it, all sides have quite a bit to gain from this collaboration,” said Rouben Rostamian, professor and chair of mathematics and statistics at UMBC.

“This agreement goes far beyond statistics,” said Antonio Moreira, UMBC’s vice provost for academic affairs. “We are using education between our two countries and our two young universities—both less than 60 years old—to truly change the world by educating, training, and cultivating the future.”

William LaCourse, dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at UMBC, is equally excited for the partnership. He shared, “We’re very proud to be here on this joint venture and to take this journey with you.”

Singh echoed his feeling. What started as a small gathering of colleagues from two continents, she said, “has very quickly developed into something that we can look forward to for many years to come.”

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Cybersecurity is one of the fastest growing industries in the United States and a recent Business-Higher Education Forum report calls Maryland the “epicenter of national cybersecurity.” The report, Building a Diverse Cybersecurity Talent Ecosystem to Address National Security Needs, found that University System of Maryland (USM) efforts to increase the number of students who earn degrees in cyber-related fields has made progress in meeting the needs of the region. It also emphasized that more growth is needed, through programs like those UMBC offers, to meet increasing industry demand for cyber professionals.

In a USM press release, Chancellor Robert L. Caret says, “The University System of Maryland has been committed to growing cybersecurity programs at universities across the state to serve the needs of students and employers in this burgeoning field.” USM highlights programs across the five universities “leading the way” in cybersecurity, including UMBC’s Cyber Scholars program, launched with support from the Northrop Grumman Foundation, and a new cyber apprenticeship program, created through a partnership between UMBC Training Centers, the Maryland Department of Labor, and Gov. Larry Hogan.

In its coverage of the report, The Daily Record focuses on two core findings: the need for students to gain work experience and demand for a diverse cybersecurity workforce. It highlights the work of USM institutions to grow “undergraduate pathways into cybersecurity that attract students with diverse backgrounds and interests, engage them in meaningful learning experiences that reflect the cutting edge of the field and encourage them to stay in the region to build their careers.”

The highlights a UMBC program to explain this idea, noting, “UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars program is viewed as a national model for increasing diversity in STEM fields, and the university drew on lessons learned from that model when it launched the Cyber Scholars program in 2013.” As illustration, the report profiles Lauren Mazzoli ’15, computer science and mathematics, M.S. ’17, computer science, a systems engineer in the Future Technical Leaders Program at Northrop Grumman. It showcases her experience as one of UMBC’s first Cyber Scholars and the value she found in UMBC’s Center for Women in Technology and an internship at the Department of Defense.

Graduates from UMBC computing programs continue to have an impact through work with government agencies and top companies in cybersecurity fields. From the Class of 2018, Cyber Scholar Priyanka Ranade ‘18, information systems, is now a cyber software engineer at Northrop Grumman and T-SITE Scholar Bryan Vanek ‘18, computer science is participating in the Computer Network Operations Development Program at the Department of Defense.

Banner image: Mobile technology. Photo by WOCinTechChat, CC BY 2.0.

UMBC’s Office of the Provost has launched a university-wide initiative to celebrate faculty who go above and beyond as educators, scholars, and leaders on campus and in their fields. This initiative strives to highlight tenure-track junior faculty, lecturers, and adjunct, research, and clinical faculty whose work is essential to UMBC’s success. The first recipients were announced last month, and represent a broad range of disciplines.

In the College of Engineering and Information Technology, recipients were announced during a special celebration marking the end of the academic year. Chris Hennigan, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, received the Early Career Faculty Excellence Award. Gunes Koru, associate professor of information systems, received the Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award. Chuck LaBerge, professor of practice of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE), was awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award.

In the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, Pengwang Zhai, assistant professor of physics, received the 2018 Early Career Faculty Excellence Award. Tamra Mendelson, professor of biological sciences, was awarded the Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award. Tiffany Gierasch, senior lecturer in chemistry and director of the Chemistry Tutorial Center, received the Excellence in Teaching Award.

The College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences also presented awards to three faculty. The Early Career Faculty Excellence Award was presented to Corrie Parks, assistant professor of visual arts. The Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award was awarded to Susan McDonough, associate professor of history. Andrew Nolan, senior lecturer of history and director of the UMBC history program at the Universities at Shady Grove, received the Excellence in Teaching Award.

UMBC’s Office of the Vice President for Research presented its inaugural  Research Faculty Excellence Award to Milt Halem, research professor of CSEE. Halem came to UMBC following a highly successful career at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, serving as founding director of a UMBC center focused on big-data computation and next-generation computing.

“UMBC is the academic home to over 180 research faculty who contribute their expertise and personal commitment to making UMBC a destination for cutting-edge research while providing our students with remarkable insights and opportunities,” said Karl Steiner, vice president for research, shared. He noted that Milt Halem’s “energy and expertise have been a major factor in UMBC being recognized as a major contributor to high performance computation and data analytics.”

Banner image: Library pond. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.