All posts by: UMBC News Staff

New Spin on Wind Power

New Spin on Wind Power

What do you get when you combine geography, visual arts and a splash of humor?

“The Mills Family Gets a Wind Turbine,” a Web site created by students in both the visual arts and geography and environmental systems departments. The retro, 1950s-style site includes five Webisodes about the fictional Mills family, who decide to put a wind turbine in their backyard.

The project was initiated by Professor and Chair of the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems Sandy Parker, who contacted UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC) about doing a documentary-style film on wind turbines and wind power. At the time, IRC Researcher and Associate Director Lee Boot was about to begin teaching a spring 2009 IRC Fellows class about social media.

“The plan for the course was to take on an issue and treat it in a way that might engage the public more than the PBS-style formula,” said Boot. “The project seemed like a perfect match.”

Work was divided evenly as geography students worked on content, and the visual arts team created the videos, animations and the Web site. The storyline follows a consistent outcome: even though wind power may not be perfect, it’s a solid solution for now.

For some, the project was an opportunity to work in areas beyond their comfort zones.  IRC Fellow Abbey Salvo ’10 found herself collecting and creating props, performing the voice over for an off-screen character and writing dialogue for the Webisodes. She worked on the creative side for the site, which she said was her “first crack at web design.” That first experience is now encouraging her to expand her knowledge while at UMBC.

“Though it may seem rudimentary to some, I had so much fun designing, redesigning, troubleshooting and creating that I have decided to pursue a graphic design major,” she said. Salvo is currently at work designing an IRC Fellows Web site and a personal portfolio.

Almost everyone involved with the project noted how much they covered in a short amount of time.

“A semester is not a lot of time to wrap their brains around an issue, come up with a concept, write a script, scout locations, hire actors, create numerous animations and then edit the whole thing together,” said Boot. “Plus I wanted it on the Web with commenting capability. They made it happen.”

To view the site and watch the film, visit www.themillsturbine.com.

For more information on the IRC Fellows, click here. For more information on the geography and environmental systems department, click here.

(7/16/09)

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Celebrating Student Research & Creativity

Celebrating Student Research & Creativity

Bringing Jane Austen’s writing to life through dance. The ethics of Wall Street’s shadow markets. Turning algae into green energy. The history of POW war crimes trials. How Pakistani honor killings impact women and men. More accurate friend recommendations for Facebook. How blogging might change Iran.

These are just a few of the topics to be found at two upcoming campus events that put UMBC students’ intellectual curiosity and artistic creativity front and center.

The 13th annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD)  will be held Wednesday, April 22, followed by the 31st annual Graduate Research Conference (GRC) on Friday, April 24. Both events are extraordinary opportunities to discover original research and to enjoy free arts performances and exhibits.

Led by the Office of Undergraduate Education, URCAD gives students valuable experience preparing for graduate school or future careers, and in many cases, competitive grants of up to $1,500 over an academic year to support selected work. Nearly 200 student participants are involved with 165 scheduled presentations or performances at this year’s event.

“URCAD embodies and celebrates UMBC’s commitment to creativity, research, scholarship and a distinctive undergraduate experience,” said Teresa Viancour, associate vice provost for undergraduate education. “The outstanding professional maturity and social impact of student work presented at URCAD underscores the truly high quality of our students and the substantial commitment of faculty and staff who teach and mentor them. UMBC really is quite a special place.”

The GRC is a partnership between UMBC and University of Maryland, Baltimore and is sponsored by UMBC’s Graduate Student Association (GSA). Through its mentorship, support, outreach, social life and advocacy efforts, the GSA serves the more than 2,600 graduate students on campus. This year’s GRC keynote speaker is Marla Oros, president of the management consulting firm the Mosaic Group. The day will include 72 oral and poster presentations by UMBC and UMB graduate students.

“The GRC gives graduate students a special opportunity to present their research to the entire UMBC community,” said Katisha Smith, GSA vice president and a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering.  “As the biggest fan of UMBC graduate students, the GSA is proud to plan and host the GRC each year. We hope this event help students sharpen their presentation skills and take pride in their hard work, dedication and passion for knowledge.”

Selected highlights of 2009 URCAD and GRC presentations and performances include:

  • A team of economics and philosophy students analyzed the business ethics of Wall Street’s “shadow market,” the unseen transactions of credit default swaps, hedge funds and other speculative products that contributed to the current economic crisis.
  • “Letters from Jane,” by senior dance and English major Mary Rzasa combines literary history with choreography to bring Jane Austen’s letters to her elder sister Cassandra to life. Rzasa worked with UMBC dance alumna Elena Consoli ’07 to combine voice, music and dance sequences based on Austen’s life and filmed on location at historical sites in Hampshire, England into a 20-minute video.
  • Autumn Marie Reed, a graduate student in Language, Literacy and Culture, studied honor-related violence in Pakistani culture. She will also present on this topic later this year at the annual conference of the International Society for Language Studies.
  • Sophomore interdisciplinary studies major Yelena Dewald examined how the Internet and blogging are impacting youth culture, dissent and tradition in Iran, where the majority of the population is under 30 years old.
  • A team of chemical and biochemical engineering students developed a design for an industrial-scale plant to produce biodiesel and ethanol biofuels from algae.
  • Senior computer science major Roger Guseman worked with faculty and doctoral student mentors to create algorithms that could help social networking sites like Facebook increase accuracy when recommending potential new friends for their users.
  • Information systems graduate student Huimin Qian is working on touch-based mobile phone technologies to help provide sighted tech users with safer driving directions and to improve mobile tech interfaces for the blind.

URCAD will be held on Wednesday, April 22, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the University Center and Fine Arts Building. In addition to a morning session devoted to live dance performances, an afternoon session will focus on video and animation. For more information, visit the URCAD Web site.

The 2008 Graduate Research Conference will be held on Friday, April 25, 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the University Center. For more information, please visit the GSA’s Web site.

(4/16/09)

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Born Leader

Born Leader

Carlos Urtecho ’10, political science, never thought of himself as a leader. Instead, leadership found him.

It started in 2005 with Conexiones, an organization striving to meet the needs of Hispanic/Latino children in Howard County schools. Urtecho quickly became involved with the theatrical group, “Teens from the Hood,” a collaboration project between Conexiones, Alianza de la Comunidad and the Foreign-born Information and Referral Network. The group performed at churches, libraries, summer camps and community events to warn people about the dangers of smoking. 

During his junior year of high school, Urtecho was discouraged by the lack of unity amongst Hispanic students and their parents at Mt. Hebron High School in Ellicott City, Maryland. With the help of the Conexiones, he founded a group called the “Los Vikingos Hispanic Club” to bring students and parents together at his school.

“This was my first leadership role, and I learned a lot about starting a student organization from the ground up,” he said. “I didn’t know it then – but that experience would really help me in my future leadership roles in college.”

By the time he graduated from Mt. Hebron, Conexiones awarded him a college scholarship for his outstanding leadership. In 2006, he attended George Mason University, where he continued serving in leadership roles. He was a resident assistant, an orientation leader, a tour guide and the recruitment chairman and founder of the Delta Chi Fraternity.

Wanting to be closer to his family, Urtecho transferred to UMBC in spring of 2008 and wasted no time in getting involved on campus. He met with Greek Life and Leadership, asking what it would take to bring the Delta Chi Fraternity to UMBC.

Now, two years later, Urtecho is bringing Delta Chi to UMBC and will serve again as a founding father.

“Having Delta Chi on campus at UMBC will be a great addition to the other fraternities because it will strengthen Greek life,” he said. “The opportunity to become a founding father is a chance for UMBC students to redefine Greek life from the inside out.”

Being a founding father comes with opportunities to determine traditions, values and images that will remain at UMBC for years to come, according to Urtecho. He feels UMBC is the perfect place to start these new traditions. The Delta Chi Fraternity will be officially expanding to UMBC in February 2010.

Urtecho also serves as a tour guide, a resident assistant and president of Campus Crusade for Christ. The group has grown from seven people to 120 since he became president. After graduation, he plans on pursuing a master’s degree in higher education administration and working in residence life. He has maintained his relationship with Conexiones, serving as their alumni coordinator.

“I am very thankful for Conexiones for exposing me to the beauty that is leadership at such an early age.”

(1/19/10)

 

Venus, If You Will

Venus, If You Will

Many theatre companies are born out of a mixture of inspiration and frustration. Take The Venus Theatre in Laurel, for instance.

When its founder, Deborah Randall ’94, theatre, graduated from UMBC, she pursued a career as a playwright and a performer in Washington, D.C. Like many recent graduates, Randall had a desire to succeed in a challenging profession. But she also found some of the roles she played and the theatrical atmosphere that surrounded her to be stifling her creativity. She craved a theatre that valued women and living playwrights.

Randall recalls UMBC theatre professor Wendy Salkind’s advice to her. “Every time I would gripe to her,” Randall recalls, “she’d say: If it doesn’t exist, create it. That was her mantra to me.”

The theatre company that Randall founded in 2001 is dedicated to filling what she sees as a gap in the Baltimore-Washington region, presenting shows with a decidedly female perspective and recent work by contemporary playwrights.

The company is in the middle of its current season, which features new plays that include a fresh look at the experience of women characters in Shakespeare and a contemporary retelling of Medea set in Los Angeles. The series concludes this coming fall with a new World War II memory play called Why’d You Make Me Wear This, Joe? by acclaimed writer Vanda and a comedic look at a very difficult Helen of Troy in a new play called Helen of Sparta.

Randall says that the emphasis on new work – especially by women playwrights – is important to her. A steady cultural diet of reality television and revisiting the classical repertoire, she observes, has meant that “there are so many writers who are not getting an opportunity.”

Finding and nurturing new work, she says, “is part of the life of the theatre…. Finding the pulse in a new work is kind of what I wake up in the morning to do.”

Creating what ultimately became Venus Theatre took time, however. Randall started small, crafting one-woman shows for herself that played in various venues in Washington, D.C. She also started a reading series for women writers and tried her hand at children’s theatre before settling on more adult fare.

After a series of misadventures and mishaps, including one show that had its last week in a D.C. theater interrupted by a street explosion that rendered the space unusable, Randall decided that she needed to find a more permanent home.

The constant scrapping and hustling for space to rent “was not cute anymore,” says Randall, especially after the street explosion. After a long search, she finally settled on a storefront space just off Laurel’s Main Street, which she dubbed “The Venus Theatre Play Shack.” She and a dedicated crew of volunteers transformed the place into a black box theater that’s become a new home base for the company, perched halfway between Washington and Baltimore and drawing from both cities and the surrounding community.

Randall recalls her time at UMBC fondly. “I was a nontraditional student,” she says. “So I was a few years older than everyone else. I had been to community college, worked for three years, sown some wild oats…. I wanted to squeeze everything I could out of the experience.”

Along with Salkind, she counts professors Xerxes Mehta and Alan Kreizenbeck as influences on her current career path. Randall also recalls that her roles in a production of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade (directed by Mehta) and in Cinders – a play by Polish playwright Janusz Glowack, directed by Kreizenbeck – were particularly memorable.

Though Randall still writes plays (one of her works, Molly Daughter, is included in Anthracite! An Anthology of Pennsylvania Coal Region Plays, which was published by the University of Scranton Press), she says that she “has ended up more of a producer and a director than a writer and actor anymore.” Running a theatre company also involves a lot of logistics and fundraising.

But Randall’s commitment to helping produce new works by playwrights – especially women playwrights – remains a primary challenge that she’s happy to take on. With the classics, she observes, “all the kinks have been worked out in a way.” New work, she says, is where the sizzle and satisfaction is.

“If it has been done too often,” she says, “it doesn’t interest me.”

This story by Richard Byrne ’86 originally appeared in UMBC Magazine. (www.umbc.edu/magazine)

For more information about Venus Playhouse, visit http://www.venustheatre.org/.

(11/2/09)

 

 

Researching Cancer, Serving the Uninsured

Researching Cancer, Serving the Uninsured

Paula Whittington ’01 is a healer in more ways than one. As a doctor in training, she gives medical treatment to patients at an inner-city Detroit medical center, many of them uninsured. Outside of the clinic, her research may offer hope for millions of breast cancer patients.

The former MARC*U*STAR and Meyerhoff scholar at UMBC has already earned her Ph.D. and is working towards her M.D. at Wayne State University. She was recently lead author on a Cancer Research article announcing a potential new vaccine for a type of breast cancer.

Whittington, who has always been fascinated by the immune system, worked under the mentorship of Wayne State Medical School’s Wei-Zen Wei that focused on HER-2, a surface protein that is over expressed by breast cancer cells. Doctors screen for high HER-2 levels as an indicator of a poor prognosis, but it also gives a target for a treatment that has caused tumors to regress.

The problem with HER-2 as a drug target is that after about nine months of treatment, the cancer cells that remain in circulation become resistant to the therapy and the tumors come back. Wei has developed a DNA vaccine to address this complication that is currently undergoing clinical trials in Sweden. “The idea is to train the body to recognize HER-2 and attack cancer cells, not healthy cells,” said Whittington.

Outside of the lab, Whittington enjoys serving clinic patients. “I like treating different people from different cultures,” she said. One of her most recent rotations was pediatric hematology/oncology. “You think it would be depressing with cancer and kids, but 85 percent of their cancers are curable,” said Whittington.

Whittington continues to represent UMBC well, despite the passing of time and distance. She remains in touch with former UMBC mentors such as Professor of Biological Sciences Sue Rosenberg and Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies Daphne Harrison.

“I remember Paula as an energetic student who seemed to flourish when working on assignments or participating in discussions and activities,” said Harrison. “I am excited about her achievements and that she continues to be a scholar and scientist of exceptional talent and humanitarian concern.”

(1/23/09)

 

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Turning Knowledge into Action

Turning Knowledge into Action

Women Involved in Learning and Leadership (WILL) at UMBC, part of the Gender and Women’s Studies program, is one of eight groups nationwide participating in a week-long global health event funded by a grant from Americans for Informed Democracy (AID). “Global Women’s Health Action Week: Healthy Women, Healthy World” will run April 27 through May 1.

Jen Keeter ’09, one of the lead organizers of the event, received information about an available grant through AID and was immediately drawn to the idea of helping women. WILL members wrote the proposal together and submitted it in fall 2008. The team decided to highlight global women’s health in five distinct areas by focusing on one each day: environmental justice, reproductive justice, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), maternal and children’s health and holistic health. Events run 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for five days, and each day is filled with interactive games, exhibits, speakers and giveaways.  

Eva Jannotta ’12, was involved with planning the holistic health day and said there will be gift baskets, giveaways, alternative health products and a Wii Fit Yoga demonstration in The Commons. WILL kicks off the week with a guest speaker from MADRE, a renowned transnational feminist organization that WILL is raising money for during the week. Communications Director Yifat Susskind will speak on Monday, April 27, at 4:30, in the University Center, Room 312.

Other days will hold similar activities including tours of a constructed mock kitchen (environmental justice), advice from a doula (maternal and children’s health) and a sexual health Jeopardy game (STIs), hosted by the Peer Health Advocates from University Health Services (UHS). Free, anonymous and confidential HIV screenings through UHS will be available on Thursday morning. Participants will also have the opportunity to contribute their voices to help form a set of health-related concerns that will be sent to President Barack Obama and other national and local decision-makers.

The health action week will operate in a similar manner as WILL, through teamwork and strong effort. The leadership program is academically connected to UMBC’s Gender and Women’s Studies program, designed to be co-curricular and guided by students.

“Everyone in WILL collaborates and makes decisions as a community,” said Jodi Kelber-Kaye, gender and women’s studies faculty member and director of WILL. “The heath action week will highlight not only how each day’s themes are interrelated when examining issues of women’s health, but also show what amazing things can be done when WILL students apply their intellectual work in gender and women’s studies to grassroots activism.”

But WILL’s work will not be finished after the health action week. They will submit a short video detailing the preparation and execution of the event to AID, who will highlight the videos on its Web site. Viewers cast votes for the best video, and the group will receive an additional $500 if they win. If other campuses would like to replicate the same campaign, they will also be funded $750 (the same amount WILL received for the event).

The event not only affects the present but also the future of WILL and the students involved.

“WILL is about leadership development and taking those skills into your own work,” said Kelber-Kaye. “I think this event will allow us to showcase the dedication and commitment of the WILL students and enable us to continue to build important and meaningful partnerships across campus.”

After graduating in December 2009, Keeter hopes to utilize the skills gained through WILL by organizing and advocating for services on the community level in Baltimore.  

For Jannotta, her career at UMBC is just beginning. She hopes to continue working toward creating change and will remain a member of WILL in upcoming years.

For more information on the Global Women’s Health Action Week: Healthy Women, Healthy World, contact Jen Keeter at jen21@umbc.edu.

4/23/09

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Weidong Zhu Recognized for Engineering Innovations

Weidong Zhu Recognized for Engineering Innovations

Have you ever wondered how engineers can tell if a structure needs repairs? Weidong Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, is determined to make this process easier and more accurate. In conjunction with his graduate students, he has developed a unique method for testing and monitoring stationary objects for structural soundness.

The Daily Record recently recognized Zhu’s work by naming him an Innovator of the Year. The awards program recognizes Maryland individuals and companies that have created a product, service, program or process that has had a positive effect on their business, industry or community.

Zhu, whose research focuses on continuous system vibration and structural damage detection, is being recognized for his development of a vibration-based damage detection method that uses changes in natural frequencies of a structure to accurately detect the locations and extent of structural damage. Currently, structural damage can be detected through either visual inspection or ultrasonic testing, but these methods are not as thorough and have limited accuracy in detecting internal damage.

With several mechanical engineering graduate students in his Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Lab at UMBC, Zhu has developed new modeling techniques and inverse algorithms for structural damage detection. “Much of the work we do is theoretical, but it all has applications in industry,” says Zhu. These techniques have been used to test the lightning masts’ structural soundness at Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) electric substations. Testing can be done from the ground level, greatly reducing the employees’ risk for injury. His group is currently applying the methodology to other structures such as transmission towers, pipelines and cables, and the work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Society for Nondestructive Testing.

Zhu has also worked with other industries. In particular, his group has developed traveling cable and hoist cable vibration models for Otis Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric and ThyssenKrupp Elevator. A native of China, Zhu was recently named a Visiting ChiangJiang Scholar Chair Professor in General Mechanics by China’s Ministry of Education. For his three-year appointment, he will conduct short-term research at the Harbin Institute of Technology in the field of dynamics and vibration, with the goal of developing a collaborative research program with Chinese universities. Zhu has previously received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his work on continuous system vibration.  

Zhu is most proud of the achievements of his students, who have gone on to prestigious jobs in both academia and industry, such as the United Technologies Research Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, A.O. Smith Electrical Products Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Zhu received his Innovator of the Year Award on October 14 at an awards ceremony at the American Visionary Art Museum.

(10/19/09)

 

The Tweet Science

The Tweet Science

UMBC Assistant Professor of Sociology Zeynep Tufekci is not a big fan of technology for its own sake. But if a new electronic gadget helps her get through the day more easily, she is all for it.

The best technology not only solves human problems, but it can actually change our world, Tufekci says. And she has become one of the country’s most called-upon academic experts in explaining how new technologies of social networking—such as Facebook and Twitter—are changing the way we live. The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other media outlets have interviewed Tufekci about social networking.

Social networking is becoming an increasingly large part of our lives. Facebook alone reports having over 200 million users.

“People wonder why these technologies spread so much,” Tufekci says. “It’s kind of like asking: ‘Why do people like foods that are high in salt and sugar?’ Being deeply social is part of being human. It is part of your biology.”

Tufekci studies how social networking blurs the boundaries between public and private spaces. Her work spans multiple disciplines – sociology, social psychology, computer science, psychology, anthropology and communications.

“My work doesn’t fit into an existing discipline. It’s fairly grounded in sociology, but it has been very interdisciplinary,” she says.

At present, Tufekci is working up an academic review that she hopes will explain how social networks fit in the larger picture of how people have traditionally related to one another. For Tufekci, the use of social-networking services represents a return, in at least some aspects, to a time when we lived in smaller and more close-knit communities.

Only in the past 150 years or so have the vast majority of people left their villages to live and work in larger cities, she notes. Such moves to larger urban centers have brought about a sense of isolation and even alienation, to judge from popular analysis from books such as 1950’s Lonely in the Crowd (written by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney) and 1956’s The Organization Man (William Whyte).

In many ways, Tufekci says, the social-networking sites are returning elements of this older way of living to us, for better and for worse.

“That is the kind of environment our species has lived in for the past 100,000 years,” Tufekci says. “We’re not going back to the village, but we’re bringing back some of its aspects. I want to explain why this is an important development in human history. The questions on the table are not trivial.”

This is an excerpt from a UMBC Magazine article by Joab Jackson ‘90. Click here to read the full article.

(10/13/09)

 

We Are Commonvision

We Are Commonvision

There’s a Quadmania T-shirt hanging on the wall, photographs of squirrels and a flyer about baked potatoes. There are smaller note cards, large posters and textured frames that come out from the wall. The area is covered from top to bottom with art and design – and also with creativity and hard work.

“We are commonvision” is the first-ever exhibition from commonvision (a full-service print, copy and marketing center in The Commons) and showcases work from the 2008-2009 staff designers and artists. The exhibition explores the staff’s creative process, individual and group aesthetics and the way they combine their various UMBC educational experiences to create their work.

“This exhibition is really our chance to showcase our work, not just as individuals, but as a collaborative group of designers, co-workers and friends,” said Adam J. Kurtz ’09, exhibit curator and organizer. “commonvision allows us to take our visual arts lessons and apply them to real-world situations, and we’re excited to share our work with the rest of campus.”

The exhibition came along by accident, said Kurtz. He was walking down the hall of the visual arts department when a few professors approached him. Knowing he had curated UMBC ArtWeek 2009 just two months earlier, they asked if he’d be interested in showing more work.

“I immediately thought it would be a great chance for all the commonvision staff to show our collective work, and we took it from there,” he said.

It’s more than just work for these student designers. Working under the guidance of commonvision Coordinator Laura Schraven and Copy Center Supervisor Stephanie Hemling, the staff learns about print production, file management, marketing concepts and tactics, design methods and customer service. Students are able to combine their visual arts education with hands-on experience, putting course materials into action to produce tangible design pieces for real clients.

“What’s truly unique about commonvision is the creative freedom afforded to student staff,” said Kurtz. “Whereas an internship with a design firm might only allow for a limited creative experience, commonvision staff regularly complete projects from conceptualization to production, learning to perform each step of the design process. Every voice is heard and taken into account.”

The exhibit is on display through October 2 in the UMBC Fine Arts building, First Floor Gallery. Included is work by Katie Heater ‘10, Andy Hsu ‘06, Emily Jenkins ‘11, Saira Khan ‘10, Adam J. Kurtz ‘09, Sean Maykrantz ‘09, Tazuko Sugajima ‘10, Erin Surrock ‘10 and Jenna Ullrich ‘10.

For more information, click here.

(9/11/09)

 

Green Concrete

Can a Parking Lot be Good for the Chesapeake Bay?

To view scenes from UMBC CUERE’s pervious concrete installation, click the play button below.

9/3/2008

The answer could be yes, if it’s made of pervious concrete, a ‘green’ building material and the subject of a recent how-to workshop hosted by UMBC’s Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE).

Pervious concrete allows stormwater to slowly drain through it like a sponge. Traditional concrete causes runoff that erodes waterways and carries pollution into the Chesapeake Bay.

The August 27 event drew 90 public and private sector attendees from all of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed states (New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Delaware) to UMBC. Attendees included state and local regulators and managers for planning, stormwater, environmental protection and highway/transportation departments as well as private sector engineers, architects, developers, builders and concrete suppliers and contractors. 

“We were delighted by the overwhelming turnout and interest,” said Stu Schwartz, organizer of the event and a senior research scientist at CUERE with more than 15 years experience in land use and water quality issues. “It was a great success in providing practitioners consistent information on how to use pervious concrete effectively.”

According to Schwartz and his colleague Norb Delatte of Cleveland State University, the workshop also taught attendees how to navigate Maryland’s recent changes in development laws, such as the Maryland Stormwater Act of 2007, which calls for “environmental site design” for new construction and development.

The highlight of the day was the arrival of a concrete mixing truck for a lesson in the proper pouring and installation of the material at two instrumented test plots outside the Technology Research Center building. The test beds are equipped with scientific instruments to give UMBC researchers long-term data on pervious concrete’s effectiveness as a building material and for environmental stewardship. Gwen Stanko, a doctoral student in CUERE’s prestigious IGERT program, and other UMBC students will help monitor the test beds.

The workshop and research effort was funded by the Chesapeake Bay Trust, part of the organization’s new Pioneer Grant Program, which focuses on larger, higher-impact grants to improve the health of the Bay. All labor, equipment and supplies to prepare the sites were donated by Increte of Maryland, and the test beds were installed by Z-Con Inc.

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Green Skies: A Better Environment for Air Travel

Green Skies: A Better Environment for Air Travel

Hillol Kargupta logs thousands of frequent flier miles each year to do research, conduct business for a successful, global firm and to visit his family. But it was his quest to make those flights friendlier to the environment that recently won him a highly competitive IBM Innovation Award and a $20,000 grant.

Kargupta, an associate professor of computer science, is an expert on deep data mining in mobile environments. He is also the founder and president of Agnik, a company that pioneered the use of sensor technology to improve efficiency in ground transportation.

Now he’s looking to take his research and business skyward. And when the European Union includes aviation pollution in its ambitious cap-and-trade emissions market system next year, Kargupta hopes his sensors will analyze the data that makes skies greener in the EU and around the world.

“Every second of flight burns about a gallon of fuel.” says Kargupta. Airplanes already have sensors that monitor and adjust fuel/air ratios to yield the best fuel economy, he observes, but analyzing that data for emissions purposes “is a chance to meet a real market need.”

The available information is staggering. New York’s JFK Airport, says Kargupta, produces a continuous stream of about 100 megabytes of data per minute. “Multiply that times all the world’s airports,” he continues, “and it equals a huge amount of data changing rapidly over a large area.”

Kargupta is enthusiastic about the daunting task, however: “It’s just the type of challenge we like at UMBC.”

In addition to his research and business success, Kargupta is also a dedicated mentor. His former graduate students have gone on to careers at NASA, Columbia University, IBM, New Mexico State University and Haifa University, Israel.

(2/20/09)

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Erickson School Helps Launch Nation’s First Elder ER

Erickson School Helps Launch Nation’s
First Elder ER

In partnership with aging experts from the Erickson School at UMBC, Holy Cross Hospital (Silver Spring, Md.) recently launched one of the nation’s first emergency medical centers designed specifically for older adults.

The Seniors Emergency Center at Holy Cross Hospital opened its doors November 5, 2008, featuring a specially designed environment to reduce patients’ anxiety and risk of falling. After a 90-day observation period and review of patient outcomes conducted with Erickson School researchers, the center becomes fully operational in February.

Erickson School faculty, including internationally renowned geriatrician Bill Thomas and long-term care reformer Judah Ronch, led a team of researchers in designing the Seniors Emergency Center and providing specialty training in geriatrics for Holy Cross medical staff.

Holy Cross Hospital is part of Trinity Health, the nation’s fourth-largest Catholic healthcare system. Holy Cross provided emergency care to over 12,000 seniors in its emergency centers and admitted over 5,700 to its hospital in 2008. The hospital projects a sharp increase in older patients during the next decade as the nation’s population of older adults increases.

The Erickson School at UMBC offers graduate and undergraduate degree programs in the Management of Aging Services and cutting-edge research through its Center for Aging Studies.

The Washington Post reports: “Serenity in Emergencies.”

(2/2/09)

 

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

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