Past SURFF Awards

Below is a list of past recipients of the UMBC Summer Research Faculty Fellowship (SURFF) internal award program.

Summer 2026 SURFF Awards

  • Jude Agboada (Visual Arts): Designing Memory: Postcolonial Architecture and Community Narratives in Ghana
  • Tiffany Banks (School of Social Work): Social Work Education and Disability: A Scoping Literature Review
  • Brandon Beck (Education): Black History is Greenville’s History (BHGH) Archival Project
  • Fiona Bell (Information Systems): Developing Baltimore-Based Bioplastics for Sustainable Prototyping
  • Sophie Comer-Warner (Geography and Environmental Systems): Investigating temporal dynamics and drivers of aquatic greenhouse gas fluxes
  • Juan Sebastian Delgado (Music): From Manuscript to Voice: Reclaiming Ennio Bolognini’s cello legacy through archival, performance-based research, recording, and public presentation on his original instrument.
  • Nehal Elmeligy (GWST): Emergent Publics in the Times of Unpredictable Crackdowns: Feminist Counterpublics and Testimony-based Feminist Activism in Contemporary Egypt
  • Anderson Frailey (Economics): Cybersecurity Advantages of AI Access
  • David Garcia (CBEE): Proteomic and Machine Learning Based Supplementation of Cell-free Systems for Biological Production
  • Liana Harron (Music): American Solo Album: A Recording Project in New York City
  • Mark Hopwood (Philosophy): What (good) is “public philosophy”?
  • Yiwen Hu (CSEE): Securing Lost/Stolen Device Revocation Systems in 5G/6G Networks via Cross-Domain Evidence Attestation
  • Mohammadhossein Mohammadisiahroudi (Mathematics and Statistics): Quantum-Accelerated Optimization for Proton Therapy Treatment Planning
  • Karin Oen-Lee (Visual Arts): Glitching the State in Reform Era China: Video, Installation and the Middle Hermit
  • Busra N. Ozguler (Political Science): Choosing the Lesser Evil: Tribal Alignments in Civil Wars
  • Chulwoo Charles Park (Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health): Anti-Asian hate crimes and Asian immigrants’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A retrospective sentiment analysis in the United States
  • Aneeka Ratnayake-Sargent (Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health): Sexually Transmitted Infection Testing Among Older Adults in the United States: A Formative Investigation
  • Tera Reynolds (Information Systems): A Human-centered Approach to Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Research and Design to Support Hypertonic Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome Self-management
  • Hasan Shahid (Economics): Information Campaigns and Behavioral Change: Evidence from the Surgeon General’s AIDS Report
  • Chris Terry (English): Good Bones Break
  • Miller Shores Wright (History): History of Transitions in Atlantic and Native Slavery

Summer 2025 SURFF Awards

  • Rajasekhar Anguluri (CSEE): Localizing and controlling sustained oscillations in power systems: A sparsity- and structure-driven approach
  • Conial Caldwell, Jr. (Social Work): Dad, Can I Straighten My Hair?: How Black Fathers Prepare Their Daughters to Navigate Bias and Beauty Standards.
  • Meloddye Carpio Rios (Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication): Disrupting Masculinities, Queering the Andean and Amazonian Body in the Peruvian Arts
  • Randolph Ford (Ancient Studies): China, Rome, and the First Great Divergence: The Decline, Fall, and Survival of Empires
  • Ellen Kohl (Geography and Environmental Systems): Perceptions, Conceptions, and Stories of Biogas Infrastructure on the Delmarva Peninsula
  • Yasmine Kotturi (Information Systems Department): Human-Centered AI for Supporting Small Business Workflows
  • Joonho Lee (Philosophy): The Separability of Virtue in the Mencius
  • Dong Li (CSEE): Affordable, Accessible Blood Pressure Monitoring via Smartphones to Reduce Cardiovascular Health Disparities
  • Lulu Mwangi (Music): Summer Music Research Project
  • Farah Nibbs (Emergency and Disaster Health Systems): The Caribbean Water Crisis as a Collective Stress Situation
  • Luigi Pollio (Economics): Central Bank Communication and The Role of Firms Frictions
  • Edgar Reyes (Visual Arts): IMPACT Arts Residency
  • Jé St Sume (Political Science): Red, White, and Black: How Racial Fairness Shapes Black Democratic Engagement
  • Guan Wang (Political Science): Divided We Stand: Partisan Control and U.S. Foreign Policy
  • Ming Xie (Emergency and Disaster Health Systems): The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Emergency Management: Perspectives of Emergency Managers and First Responders
  • Shuling Yang (Education): Bridging Borders: Navigating Work, Life, and Academia as International Graduate Students of Color in the U.S
  • Jinghong Zhang (History): Down to the Roots: Dentistry and Oral Hygiene in Modern China

Summer 2024 SURFF Awards

  • Enrico Berkes (Economics): The Decline of the Diffusion of Science
  • Sayantan Bhattacharya (Mechanical Engineering): An in-vitro flow loop setup to characterize single-ventricular hydrodynamics
  • Dustin Donahue (Music): Recording and Release of “Labor, Dreams, Listen”
  • Alok Ghanekar (Mechanical Engineering): Understanding Near-field Thermal Interactions in Space-time Modulated Metamaterials
  • Tejas Gokhale (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering): Improving the Continual Learning Ability of Visual Recognition Systems via Targeted Unlearning
  • Eva Grandoni (Visual Arts): Chincy Adams
  • Foad Hamidi (Information Systems): Co-designing Interactive Living Media Interfaces with Community Participants
  • Lara J. Martin (Computer Science and Electrical Engineering): Reinforcement Learning for Playing Dungeons & Dragons
  • Eric Millikin (Visual Arts): Symbiotic Robotic Performance
  • Molly Y. Mollica (Mechanical Engineering): Sex and Hormone Effects on Platelet Mechanical Activation and Function
  • Matthew Novak (Psychology): Evidence-Based Performance Management for Substance Use Recovery Facility Staff
  • Nigel Semaj (Theatre): the serpent under’t’ : a new shakespeare adaptation
  • Gerrad Taylor (Theatre): Exploring the dramatic form through an Afrocentric lens
  • Kyung-Eun Yoon (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication): Exploring Offer Sequences in Korean Interactional Discourse; Examining Learners’ Perspectives on Korean Language Learning through Engagement with Korean Popular Culture

Summer 2023 SURFF Awards

  • Janelle Billingsley (Psychology): Familial Socialization and Black Adolescents’ Resistance to Emotionally Oppressive Systems
  • Jun Chu (SAPH): Examining the effects of immigration enforcement activities on health and healthcare access of immigrant children in the US
  • Mercedez Dunn (SAPH): Books & Boys: Black Collegiate Women’s Heterosexual Practice & Identity Negotiation
  • Kerri Evans (Social Work): Unaccompanied Immigrant Children: Developing a Bibliography Entry and Research Briefs
  • Manas Gaur (CSEE): SAFEX: Safe and Explainable Question Generation in Depression-related Conversations
  • Ankit Goel (Mechanical Engineering): Time-accelerated Algorithms for Real-time Applications
  • Sophia Hwang (Psychology): Cultivating Positive Learning Environments in Baltimore Public Schools: A Framework for Classroom Emotional Ecology
  • Ye Lu (Mechanical Engineering): A Novel Computational Framework for Digital Image Correlation Analysis
  • Philip Mann (Music): Ensemble Bravura: Maryland Performance and Recording Residency
  • Sameera S. Nayak (SAPH): Beyond the Binary: Immigrant Health and Well-Being Across the Status Continuum
  • Achuth Padmanabhan (Biological Sciences): Novel high throughput assay to identify novel regulators of a key ovarian cancer metastatic factor
  • Adriana Rocha Lima (Physics): Optical Characterization of Lunar Dust Simulants
  • Julie Sayo (Visual Arts): Designing Contemporary Baybayin Fonts
  • Herana Kamal Seneviratne (Chem/Biochem): Understanding nucleotidase-mediated drug dephosphorylation using mass spectrometry imaging
  • Amy Tondreau (Education): Postmodern Picture Books as an Invitation to Critical Writing Pedagogy
  • Lei Zhang (Information Systems): Automated Detection of Assertion-Related Bugs in Quantum Programs

Summer 2022 SURFF Awards

  • Michael Andrews (Economics): Quantifying Patent Disclosure
  • Can Ataca (Physics): Data-Driven, Heterostructures of Two-Dimensional Materials for Electrochemical Applications
  • Haniyeh Barahouie Pasandi (MLLIC): Au delà de toutes limites: Francophone Graphic Novels in the Middle East and North Africa by women
  • Sanorita Dey (CSEE): Designing and Building a Low-Fidelity Prototype of an Online Supporting Platform for Long-Hauler Communities
  • Blake Francis (Philosophy): The Moral Significance of Middle Emissions
  • Yehenew Kifle (Math and Statistics): Comparison of Local Statistical Powers of Several Tests for a Common Multivariate Normal Mean Vector under Different Dispersion Matrices
  • Tara LeGates (Biological Sciences): Neuronal plasticity and pathway integration involved in contextual learning
  • Eric Stokan (Political Science): Capturing Public Sentiment of Economic Development Decisions through Social Media
  • Emily Yoon Perez (English): Little Intimacies: Race and Oceanic Migration in Minority U.S. Fiction

Summer 2021 SURFF Awards

  • Mir Usman Ali (School of Public Policy): A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Citizen Oversight Agencies on Racial Disparities in Policing Outcomes
  • Michael Andrews (Economics): Who Are America’s Inventors? Expanding Our Knowledge through Better Patent Data
  • Can Ataca (Department of Physics): Designing Next-Generation Lithium/Sodium-Ion Battery Cathodes via Accurate First Principles Simulations
  • Seungchul Baek (Mathematics and Statistics): Testing Existence of Clinical Effect Using EHR Data
  • Lujie Karen Chen (Information Systems): Computational Framework for Assistance Dilemma: Supporting Human-AI Collaboration in Education
  • Kerri Evans (Social Work): Rohingya Unaccompanied Refugee Minor Wellbeing
  • Molly Franz (Psychology): PTSD and Parent-Child Functioning in Daily Life: Risk and Resilience Among Mothers Exposed to Interpersonal Violence
  • Karrie Godwin (Psychology): Designing Instruction with Attention in Mind: An Investigation of Attentional Decay
  • Ramon Goings (Language, Literacy, & Culture): Examining the Collegiate Experiences and Trajectories of Black Male Adult Learners in STEM
  • Tyler Josephson (CBEE): Mapping the Equation Space of Adsorption
  • Deepak Koirala (Chemistry and Biochemistry): Roles of structured RNA elements in viral cap-independent translation
  • Yusuke Kuwayama (School of Public Policy): Spatial heterogeneity, lags, and uncertainty: Implications for cost effective regulation of water pollution
  • Thu Nguyen (Mathematics and Statistics): Advanced Algorithms for Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
  • Fernando Tormos-Aponte (School of Public Policy): Island Strife: The Politics of Survival in Puerto Rico
  • Brian Van Wyck (History): Turkish Teachers and Imams and the Making of Turkish German Difference
  • Mirjam Voerkelius (History): “Evolution in Times of Revolution: Darwinism, Nature, and Society in the Soviet Union”
  • Fernando J Vonhoff (Biological Sciences): The role of genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease during brain development
  • Nykia Walker (Biological Sciences): Pro-metastatic reprogramming of naive cells by tumor-derived extracellular vesicles in breast cancer
  • Yaxing Yao (Department of Information Systems): Investigating Privacy Mechanisms in Smart Homes From A Multi-Stakeholder Perspective

Summer 2020 SURFF Awards

  • Haniyeh Barahouiepasandi (Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication): Beyond the borders: the transversal adventures of francophone graphic novels
  • David Beard (Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication): Cross-linguistic Influence in Second Language Vocabulary Development: Do Learners Use Their First Language to Recognize Words in Their Second?
  • Michael Casiano (American Studies): Broken City: Race, Property, and Policing in Early Twentieth-Century Baltimore
  • Lisa Cassell (Philosophy): Idealizations—Between the Descriptive and the Normative
  • Nicolas Castro Cienfuegos (Economics): The Macroeconomic Importance of Production Networks and Sectoral Heterogeneity for Monetary Policy
  • Maria Celleri (Gender, Women’s + Sexuality Studies): “‘La palabra mágica es planificación:’ Print Media’s Influence on Controlling Urban Sprawl and Increasing Tourism”
  • Mirela Cengher (Psychology): Maximizing Learning Outcomes in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Number of Conditional Discriminations Concurrently Taught
  • Diane Flint (EHS): CREATING A COMMUNITY PARAMEDICINE CURRICULUM -JOINING INTERNATIONAL BEST PRACTICES INTO COMPREHENSIVE EDUCATION
  • Erika N. Fountain (Psychology): Mapping Juvenile Justice: Youths’ Accessibility and Responsivity to Juvenile Justice Programs
  • Sarah Fouts (American Studies): From Banana Republics to Plantation Economies: Foregrounding Extractivist Development in Discussions on Labor, Displacement, and Migration
  • Riadul Islam (CSEE): Graph-Based Machine Learning in CAN Bus Security
  • Aubrey Jackson Soller (SAHAP): Patterns of Abortion Bill Activity in the Texas Legislature
  • Shaness Kemp (Department of Dance): Movement Memoirs: The Dancing Body
  • Tara LeGates (Biological Sciences): Dissecting neuronal circuits linking the circadian system and mental health
  • Deepa Madan (Mechanical Engineering): Safe and flexible rechargeable Zn batteries (RZB) for wearable medical devices
  • Daniel Pesca (Music): Piano concertizing and composition time
  • Adithyan Rajaraman (Psychology): Minimizing Risk in the Assessment and Treatment of Dangerous Problem Behavior: A Replication and Extension in General Education Settings
  • Ashanté Reese (Geography and Environmental Systems): The Carceral Life of Food
  • Shannon Sauro (Education): Virtual Exchange and the skills of the modern workplace
  • Brian Soller (SAHAP): The Social Roots of Peer Conflict
  • Laurie Sutton (Biological Sciences): The role of GPR158 in an early life stress model
  • Tracy Tinga (Media and Communication Studies): Africa Rising or Neoliberalizing?
  • Yolanda Valencia (Geograpy and Environmental Systems): Archival Research & a book proposal: Undocumented Immigrant: Thriving in Places Made for Our Failure
  • Jianwu Wang (Information Systems): Causality Analytics from Global Spatiotemporal Climate Datasets
  • Justin Webster (Mathematics and Statistics): Multilayer Poro-elasticity in Biological Applications
  • Noorzehra Zaidi (History): Cells of Memory, Sites of Loss: Sectarianization and the Ba’ath Regime, 1980-2003

Summer 2019 SURFF Awards

  • Chengpeng Chen (Chemistry and Biochemistry): Develop an in vivo mimic endothelial microfluidic device that enables real-time quantitation
  • Ann Sofie Clemmensen (Dance): Site Specific Dance: An Inquiry into the State of In-Between Through the Lens of Circulation and Connective-Spaces in Architecture
  • Keegan Cook Finberg (English ): Poetry in General, or, Literary Experimentalism since 1960
  • Kathleen Cusick (Biological Sciences): Introduction of Alien Microbial Species into Coastal Ecosystems via Marine Vessel Biofouling
  • Oleg Firsin (Economics): Immigration Attitudes and Consequences: Do More Anti-Immigrant Attitudes Lead to Fewer Immigrant Doctors?
  • Camee Maddox-Wingfield (Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy): An Ethnographic Assessment of Bèlè’s Rebirth in Contemporary Martinique
  • Zoe McLaren (School of Public Policy): Estimation in the Presence of Selection on Unobservables: An Approach Using Econometric and Machine Learning Methods
  • Chelsea Pace (Theatre): Staging Sex: Manuscript Completion
  • Se Mi Park (Economics): Adaptability, Globalization and Inequality
  • Sanjay Purushotham (Information Systems): Multimodal Deep Learning Framework for Medical Data Analysis
  • Rebecca Schacht (Psychology): Assessing PTSD-Substance Use Disorder Comorbidity in a Clinical Sample
  • Eric Stokan (Political Science): The Final Stage of the Policy Process: Policy Abandonment of State and Local Economic Development Incentives
  • Evan Tedlock (Visual Art): The Air We Breathe
  • Sharon N Tran (English): Asian Girls Growing Sideways: An Aesthetics and Politics of Vulnerability
  • Peng Xu (Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering): Optimizing CRISPR-Cas12 based genome-editing tools in oleaginous yeast to biologically synthesize nanoparticles