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20 Criminal Calculations
Students in UMD’s forensic accounting club assist a local police department in investigating fraud cases and securing justice for victims. They never expected to help solve a murder.
BY JOHN TUCKER
24 A Second Family, a Limitless Future
A unique scholarship program has transformed the lives of hundreds of UMD students. Twenty- ve years later, its pioneers share how.
BY SALA LEVIN ’10
Alum Shifts Cycling to School Into High Gear
Phys ed teacher Sam Balto ’07 leads students on group bike rides to school. His “bike bus” is gaining traction worldwide.
A Tuna-Inspired Robotic Fin
32 Solutions to Bird Flu Hatched On the farm and in the lab, UMD researchers are ghting a virus that’s pushing up food prices and threatening a new pandemic.
BY KAREN SHIH ’09
A UMD engineer designs a drone to undertake tasks that are often costly and unsafe for humans.
7 Facts You Never Knew About Maryland
To mark the other Maryland Day, a state holiday, a professor shares snippets about Washington’s resignation, famous authors and Annapolis’ own “tea party.”
FROM THE PRESIDENT
AS I WRITE THIS, I’m looking forward to the unusual opportunity of sharing the stage at Commencement with Kermit the Frog. The beloved Muppet is scheduled to address graduates at the ceremony, and the entire Terp community has been so enthusiastic—as have millions around the world who learned of our green guest speaker. This is a homecoming for Kermit, who was created by a UMD student: Jim Henson ’60. His imagination and artistry were nurtured here then, and the university remains committed to cultivating young artists today.
The arts have the power to shape how we view the world, to encourage empathy and kindness, and to expand understanding. Through the Arts for All program that’s sparking unique collaborations across campus as well as our academic o erings and hundreds of events each year, we welcome students, alums, faculty and others to turn their ideas into thought-provoking performances, experiences and visual works. With these investments, maybe we’re helping prepare the next Jim Henson to reach their potential.
In this issue of Terp, you’ll nd other examples of how the university is inspiring Terps—students, sta and faculty— to greatness.
A $6 million gift to our Maryland Democracy Initiative (page 16) from Marsha ’64 and Henry Laufer will expand its research on increasing civic engagement among students from kindergarten to graduate school. We launched, with another generous gift from an alum, the new Edward & Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine in collaboration with the University of Maryland, Baltimore and support from the MPowering the State strategic partnership (page 5). And through a new billion-dollar initiative with the state, UMD is cementing its place as the Capital of Quantum (page 4).
And don’t miss the hopeful feature story about the Incentive Awards Program (page 24). Started 25 years ago by my longtime mentor and predecessor as president, C.D. “Dan” Mote, Jr., IAP has changed the lives of hundreds of local students who have demonstrated exceptional perseverance and promise. It is one more example of how the University of Maryland is continuing to forge progress through higher education.
Sincerely,
Darryll J. Pines President, University of Maryland
Glenn L. Martin Professor of Aerospace Engineering
DARRYLL J. PINES
President Advisers
ANNE BUCKLEY Vice President, Marketing and Communications
MARGARET HALL Executive Director, Creative Strategies Magazine Sta
LAUREN BROWN University Editor
JOHN T. CONSOLI ’86 Creative Director
VALERIE MORGAN Art Director
CHRIS CARROLL
ANNIE KRAKOWER
SALA LEVIN ’10
KAREN SHIH ’09
JOHN TUCKER Writers
LAUREN BIAGINI
CHARLENE PROSSER CASTILLO Designers
STEPHANIE S. CORDLE
Photographer
JANNA SINGER-BAEFSKY Digital Asset Manager/Archivist
RILEY N. SIMS PH.D. ’23
DYLAN SINGLETON ’13 Photography Assistants
RUBY SIEFKEN ’26 Editorial Intern
JAGU CORNISH Production Manager
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The University of Maryland, College Park is an equal opportunity institution with respect to both education and employment. University policies, programs and activities are in conformance with pertinent federal and state laws and regulations on nondiscrimination regarding race, color, religion, age, national origin, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation or disability.
COVER Collage by Valerie Morgan
State, UMD to Build “Capital of Quantum”
High-Tech Field Will Bring Transformative Advances, Leaders Say
he university of maryland, the state of Maryland and a leading quantum computing and networking firm in January launched a landmark public-private partnership that positions the region as a global center of quantum information science and technology while underscoring UMD’s research preeminence in the field.
TThe “Capital of Quantum” initiative was introduced during an event held at IonQ, a company that sprang from discoveries made in UMD labs and is headquartered in the university’s Discovery District, home to a growing business ecosystem of smaller quantum startups.
“Quantum has the potential to transform every part of our economy and society, from national security to health care,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at the event. “With extraordinary assets and partnerships, Maryland can and should lead in this new emerging sector, and we are moving forward with a clear strategy to make that vision a reality. Together, we will make Maryland the quantum capital of the world.”
This strategic partnership aims to unlock more than $1 billion in investments—a combination of state funds, matching federal grants, private-sector investments and philanthropic contributions—over the next five years.
Moore signed an executive order identifying quantum computing, which draws on exotic physics to speed up certain calculations exponentially over current computers, as a priority industry for state investment and support. In April, Moore signed into law $52.5 million as the state’s initial investment toward the Capital of
Quantum initiative, which is expected to spur more than $200 million in UMD and partner investments for academic, technical, workforce and ecosystem support.
The governor’s administration has also committed continued funding for the construction of Stanley R. Zupnik Hall, a state-of-the-art engineering building that includes $58 million in private investments and $185.4 million from the state, and which will add more quantum labs to the UMD campus.
“We are deeply grateful to Gov. Moore for his visionary investment in building a brighter future for Maryland’s economy,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “He recognizes the immense potential of quantum technology and the possibilities we can explore if we work together to position our region as the global Capital of Quantum.”
The initiative includes plans for the university to grow its ranks of 200-plus quantum researchers by recruiting top
S. CORDLE
From left: IonQ Executive Chair and Chairman of the Board Peter Chapman takes Maryland Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller, Gov. Wes Moore and UMD President Darryll J. Pines on a tour of the company’s College Park headquarters.
scientists and engineers worldwide; expand students’, researchers’ and entrepreneurs’ access to quantum computers and scientists at the National Quantum Laboratory (QLab), a partnership with IonQ; bolster the Quantum Startup Foundry, a business accelerator based in the Discovery District that provides resources and support to bring quantum technologies to market; and launch education, outreach and training initiatives, from high school to graduate level to professional training.
IonQ also plans to grow its corporate headquarters into a 100,000-square-foot facility with a data center, laboratories and office space in the Discovery District, and double its corporate headquarters workforce to at least 250 people in the Maryland region over the next five years, as well as spur many other jobs in diverse fields from construction to software engineering.
“Investing in quantum computing is investing in Maryland’s future,” said Peter Chapman, IonQ executive chair and chairman of the board.
$10M Gift Propels New Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine
State Initiative Adds $12.5M to Investment From Edward and Jennifer St. John
A $10 MILLION GIFT to the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) will launch a transformative collaboration to tackle a broad spectrum of health challenges and drive medical innovations that benefit patients in Maryland and beyond.
The Edward & Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine, named in honor of the benefactors, is being further supported by a $12.75 million grant from the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower).
The center will foster partnerships among clinicians at the University of Maryland School of Medicine at UMB and bioengineers at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at UMCP
“This collaboration will be one of the premier partnerships in the country that fully bridges the gap between engineering and medicine to rapidly accelerate solutions on public health, disease and wellness,” said UMCP President Darryll J. Pines. “Whether it is the invention of new devices and instruments or improved analysis, this center will be leading the way in advancing how clinicians work and how patients heal.”
The MPower grant will support research and education as well as new offices, labs and faculty at CTEM, a state-of-the-art shared space at the University of Maryland BioPark in Baltimore. MPower is a state initiative that leverages the complementary strengths of UMB and UMCP to pursue research and impact that surpasses what each institution could do independently.
Edward St. John ’61 earned an engineering degree at UMD and went on to become a noted Baltimore-based business leader and philanthropist. He previously gave $10 million to help build the Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center on the UMCP campus. This new gift will establish endowed and current-use professorships in bioengineering, undergraduate and graduate student awards in translational engineering and medicine, and ongoing operating funds for the center.
“It is our great pleasure to support this transformational, lifesaving and life-altering work, knowing that our contribution helps pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries that will improve and extend lives for years to come,” said Jennifer St. John.
New “Image,” Name for UMD’s Tour Guides
Walk Back Through 40 Years of Fun Facts and Surprising Perks
FORTY YEARS AGO, all it took to become a University of Maryland tour guide was a reasonably clean Terps T-shirt, a love for the red, black and gold, and the ability to walk backward while talking.
Over time, the process to become a Maryland Imager required another kind of balancing act: auditioning, doing a multipart interview and memorizing dozens of fun facts while weaving in personal anecdotes.
UMD’s most visible ambassadors took another step toward
professionalism in December by adopting a new name and standardized uniforms. They’re now Terp Guides a change spurred by its members becoming student employees, rather than volunteers and they can be spotted across campus waving (and wearing) a little Maryland flag-bearing Testudo (shown on facing page) on their matching sweatshirts and gear.
As Terp Guides step forward into a new era, take a stroll through UMD tour guide history:
BURMAN BERGER ’85
Proud to tout the top-ranked Terps football team led by quarterback Boomer Esiason, Berger paved the way for plenty of prospective students to come to UMD, including three of his own. Eli ’19 even stepped into his father’s shoes—though he and his peers walked forward.
FAVORITE FUN FACT: The Roy Rogers at the Stamp Student Union was the largest by volume in the world at the time.
TOUR GUIDE PERK: He once gave a special tour (in a limo!) to Jane Cahill Pfeiffer ’54, a member of the Board of Regents who was the first chairwoman of NBC—which led to a job interview for Berger in New York City.
LORI HILL ’89
When Hill joined, Terps were reeling from basketball star Len Bias’ recent death. Other big changes included the leadership transition from Chancellor John Slaughter to President Brit Kirwan and overcrowding that led to enrollment cuts of 10%.
FAVORITE FUN FACT:
Engineering building Glenn L. Martin Hall had two parts, and the old portion was designed like a slide ruler while the new part was designed to look like a calculator.
STANDOUT MEMORY: “We would give people a 3x5 card for them to take 30 seconds and describe the tour,” Hill says. “They were looking for something like, ‘bubbly and informative,’ but one time someone wrote: ‘Between 5’6 and 5’9, blonde!’”
ARI LEVINE ’99 AND GRETCHEN RICKS ’98
Both transplanted New Englanders, the tour partners bragged about plentiful computer labs and the powerhouse Terps men’s basketball team under Coach Gary Williams.
FAVORITE FUN FACT: Kermit was created by Jim Henson ’60 as a student by cutting up his mother’s felt coat.
TOUR GUIDE PERK: Given a UMD letter opener as a parting gift, Levine says, “I remember thinking at the time—and I think my face showed it—’What was I going to do with this thing?’ Twenty-six years later, I use that same exact letter opener almost every single day!”
LISA BERGLUND ’12 AND CORIE SUNDER ’12
Roomies for all four years and “Dynamic Duo” winner at Maryland Images’ annual awards, Berglund and Sunder joined Maryland Images as freshmen and never looked back.
DANTE EVANS ’18
“Maryland Images was like our co-ed fraternity on campus,” says Evans. “We did everything together. It was our family.”
FAVORITE FUN FACT: The Hootie and the Blowfish video for “Only Wanna Be With You” was shot on campus in 1994, so Berglund and Sunder sang the song during their audition.
STANDOUT MEMORY: “Our rain boots would get holes in the back of the heels because we walked backward the whole time, and tours were held rain or shine,” says Sunder.
FAVORITE FUN FACT: Queen Elizabeth II attended her first and only American football game at UMD
STANDOUT MEMORY: “Students would ask about internships, athletics. But one mom asked me, ‘Is ‘Sex Week’ a week where there’s just a big orgy on campus?’” (In fact, it’s a week about sex education and health.)—KS
Tribal History Meets Modern Tech
BOBBY ALBAN ’25, an aerospace engineering major and technical coordinator for the Terrapin Works, removes 3D-printed peace medals from an advanced metal printer in the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building in November. The Piscataway Tribe, upon whose ancestral lands the University of Maryland sits, collaborated with the 3D printing and rapid prototyping service in the A. James Clark School of Engineering to create replicas of three medals, which were originally given to American Indian tribes by English colonists and later found stowed in museum storage. The models “become a physical reminder that people can come see and touch to be able to understand this aspect of not only colonial Maryland history or colonial Pennsylvania history, but also early American history,” says Mario Harley, a Piscataway tribal member and historian.—AK
Students Put Their Stamp on the Stamp
Art Purchasing Program Puts Terps in Charge of Creative Choices for Gallery’s Collection
unique exercise has long been playing out on campus, not in the weight room of the Eppley Recreation Center or on the basketball court of Ritchie Coliseum, but on the walls of the Adele H. Stamp Student Union.
ASince 2006, the biennial Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP) has given a small group of students from any major a sizable budget, roughly $50,000, to decide together how to spend on artwork to add to the Stamp’s collection.
For students, CAPP represents an opportunity to dip their paintbrushes into the world of art collecting, visiting galleries and artist studios locally and in New York City. “We have a really great group of students who are passionate about the best way to get our UMD community to engage with art and really use art to learn about new perspectives and to consider global issues,” says Trin Tatum ’26, one of six current participants.
To celebrate CAPP’s 10th cohort, Tara Youngborg, manager of the Stamp Gallery and Studio A and CAPP adviser, takes Terp on a guided tour of some of the most memorable pieces purchased by the program’s participants.—sl
“GAME CHANGING (ACE, KING, QUEEN, JACK)”
DERRICK ADAMS , 2014, SILKSCREEN AND GOLD LEAF
These striking pieces elevate playing cards into images of Black royalty. “They remix and interrogate the symbolic codes underlying coats of arms … by incorporating African textile patterns and garments,” says Youngborg. “These are the pieces I get the most emails about from people who want to buy them from us.”
“FAIRY RING WITH WHITE CLOVER”
PATRICK JACOBS , 2010, PAPER, ACRYLIC, EXTRUDED STYRENE, COPPER, ACRYLIC GEL MEDIUM, HAIR, STEEL, ACRYLITE, TIN
This whimsical piece is nestled above the bustling Food Court. A 3-inch lens in a hole cut into the wall serves as a portal to a meadow scene contained within a 2-foot-wide box. “It’s a hidden delight in the collection,” says Youngborg. “It feels really magical, and it’s something you could lose yourself in.”
TOP PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; ART COURTESY OF STAMP GALLERY
“FEAR ON THEIR FACES (PAGE 7)”
HUNTER REYNOLDS , 2011, PHOTOWEAVING, C-PRINTS AND THREAD
This 4-by-5-feet photo collage of newspaper articles about the LGBTQ+ community and AIDS is intensely personal; Reynolds also included photographs of himself as a teenager, the lipstick signature of his performance-artist alter ego and photographs of his own HIV-positive blood. “The combination of personal and public and political is really resonant to students,” says Youngborg.
“SILVER LAKE OPERATIONS #1, LAKE LEFROY, WESTERN AUSTRALIA”
EDWARD BURTYNSKY , 2007, DIGITAL CHROMOGENIC PRINT
“15 MOUTHS”
LORNA SIMPSON , 2002, PRINTS ON VELOUR PAPER MOUNTED ON HAHNEMUHLE COPPERPLATE PAPER
The first CAPP cohort purchased this set of close-up photos of mouths in 2006. “That group called it their home run,” says Youngborg. Simpson, the first Black woman whose art was shown in the famous Venice Biennale cultural exhibition, “uses the camera to shine a light on the Black female experience and the Black experience in general.”
The aesthetic beauty of this aerial photograph of a gold mining operation stands at odds with the destruction it depicts. “As you get a sense of the scale, you realize how much damage has been done to the landscape,” says Youngborg. Purchased by CAPP’s second cohort, this piece was the first to touch on environmental themes that have been prominent in artwork acquired since.
An Unforgettable “Kermencement”
Sticking to Success
Powerhouse Men’s Lacrosse Program Celebrates 100th Season
A CENTURY AGO, lacrosse was a relatively new college sport, but already the University of Maryland’s yearbook joked that the “gentle” in this gentleman’s game “may be very nicely dispensed with.”
The rough-and-tumble Terps, known back then as the Old Liners, had already developed a taste for stuffing Johns Hopkins and Navy and were en route to becoming one of the sport’s most storied and successful programs.
Varsity men’s lacrosse began on campus in 1924, when Maryland joined the new Intercollegiate Lacrosse League’s southern division under coach Reginald Van
RED, BLACK AND GOLD Terps were seeing green at Commencement on May 21, when Kermit the Frog addressed Summer 2024, Winter 2024 and Spring 2025 graduates and their families and friends at SECU Stadium.
His appearance (scheduled to take place after Terp’s press time) honored UMD’s long history with Muppets creator Jim Henson ’60. The home economics major built the original Kermit puppet using one of his mother’s coats and a ping-pong ball cut in half.
“Nothing could make these feet happier than to speak at the University of Maryland,” Kermit said in March. “I just know the Class of 2025 is going to leap into the world and make it a better place, so if a few encouraging words from a frog can help, then I’ll be there!”
Trump Truitt. Throughout the following years—with the exceptions of 1944 and 1945, when the Terps didn’t field a team due to World War II—UMD has never posted a losing record, a feat no other major college lacrosse program has accomplished.
“You go anywhere in the world, and people know what Maryland lacrosse is. It means a lot to a lot of people,” says John Tillman, UMD’s ninth and
current head coach. “Because of that, there’s a standard that I think all of us feel like we need to uphold and make sure we do our part.”
Through the team’s longtime “Be the Best” mentality, consistent tournament runs and even a historic undefeated campaign, the Terps surged into their 100th season this year. See how they’ve packed the trophy case.—AK
29 73 45 32
TEWAARATON AWARD WINNERS: MATT RAMBO (2017), JARED BERNHARDT (2021) AND LOGAN WISNAUSKAS (2022)
TEWAARATON LEGENDS: FRANK URSO (2016) AND DOUG SCHREIBER (2023) 13 13 3 3 2
USILA HALL OF FAMERS DRAFT SELECTIONS IN PROFESSIONAL OUTDOOR LEAGUES
Rather than simply funneling more money to top players, student-athletes would need to provide an actual service, like signing autographs. And a clearinghouse would vet any deal over $600 to determine a fair market value.
How would student-athletes handle this potentially substantial income— something they might not see again if they’re not drafted?
Maryland Athletics, with the help of partners like SECU, will continue providing financial literacy training, Sorem says, helping student-athletes understand how to save and invest money and pay their taxes. This will continue to be a significant priority for the athletic department.
What about former Terps who missed out on these payments?
Besides allowing payments to current
student-athletes, the settlement also calls for approximately $2.8 billion in back pay to all Division I athletes who played from 2016 on, to be distributed over a 10-year period. As a member of a Power 4 conference, UMD would lose $1.5 million per year over that decade, Sorem says.
This sounds like a lot. Who’s managing all this?
In January, Maryland Athletics named former Terp wide receiver and Canadian Football League (CFL) Hall of Famer Geroy Simon its executive director of revenue share management and general manager. In this new role, the former CFL front office executive has been meeting with coaches, working with a data analytics team and reviewing film to help with contract negotiation and salary cap management. “He’s done all these things that are starting to come to bear within our world of intercollegiate athletics,” Sorem says. Cody
Gambler, a member of Athletics’ staff for more than a decade, would take on additional responsibilities to manage UMD’s Olympic sport revenue-share program.
Are the days of “student-athletes” as we knew them gone?
“In my eyes, no,” Sorem says. “I believe that we still have to keep education at the forefront of what we do—the majority of our student-athletes are still coming to campus to receive an education. However, I do understand that some people may view us differently, especially when looking at men’s and women’s basketball and football student-athletes. I understand trying to process this and seeing 18- to 22-year-olds getting these types of financial resources can be difficult for some. But there’s this little saying I go by: ‘The key to success is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’”
ELEGANT DINING, handcrafted cocktails and Terps basketball fandom team up to create an upscale experience at the new Maryland Club. Overlooking Gary Williams Court at the Xfinity Center, the private social club features a high-end bar, dining room, lounges, and private rooms and workspaces, offering an air of sophistication on gamedays and a year-round campus venue for workshops, private events, live music and other performances. For details, visit themarylandclub.com —AK
Crystal Clear
Centuries-Old Stones Uncovered by Archaeologist Reveal Stories of Ireland’s Mystical Past
The four small crystals found on the land in County Cork where a farmhouse had been torched a century ago stood out among more typical artifacts. There were no natural deposits of quartz in this rustic hillside near the Irish coastline.
University of Maryland Associate Professor of anthropology Stephen Brighton and his students had dug 23 inches into the soil in the summer of 2018, also revealing a foundation and a cast-iron pot still attached to a kitchen wall, along with cufflinks, a glass inkwell and a copper alloy candlestick.
But with thousands of other items to collect, Brighton tucked the translucent stones away and eventually forgot about them.
Six years later, four more quartz crystals turned up in the dirt of an adjacent field, leading to his latest discovery about a neglected corner of Irish history—the 19th- century potato famine and the decades surrounding it.
excavate a tract in Lower Manhattan where disease-infested tenements once housed 19th-century Irish immigrants. (The historical neighborhood, the Five Points, was featured in the 2002 film “Gangs of New York,” with sets informed by Brighton’s dig.)
Later, as a Boston University doctoral student, he explored why many Irish immigrants abandoned their culture and spent a decade excavating Irish American sites: Blue Ridge Mountain camps built during railroad construction; Baltimore backyards used as garbage dumps; a Maryland quarry that supplied granite for the Washington Monument.
“We put a face on those broken teacups, children’s toys and sewing materials to demonstrate that these nameless people were human, and they were here,” says Brighton, the only American authorized to lead excavations in the country and one of a small group worldwide focused on that era of abject poverty under British rule.
His Irish forebears had fled to the U.S. during the famine, and he carried his family’s reticence about the period into his career. He couldn’t avoid the topic, however; the company he worked for after graduation from Montclair State University was tapped to
Brighton dug into his own ancestry, too. “I had an idea of this imaginative homeland but no notion of where home was,” he says. “It was this rootlessness.”
He joined the UMD faculty in 2005, and for the past decade he’s led annual field schools in Ireland near the southwestern town of Skibbereen, an epicenter of 19th century emigration.
The cabin where the team uncovered the crystals, in the townland of Lackaghane, was typical for its day: built of stone with a thatched gable roof and two hearths. It once housed a farming family of 12.
New occupants arrived in 1911 and immediately fell into a dispute with neighbors, Brighton learned through archives. Evicted, the family refused to leave, but after a court appearance one day, they returned to find the home burned down.
His team in 2018 found the first quartz crystal (left) buried alongside a Virgin Mary medallion and piece of burnt cloth, then three more near what appeared to be cow stables.
Last summer, the team moved to an adjacent field, where an 18th-century home was thought to have stood. Students eventually uncovered a cornerstone, then a crystal. Again three additional crystals surfaced near what may have been cow pens.
Kate O’Sullivan, a second-year anthropology graduate student with a background in Irish paganism and assistant field director for the dig, was ecstatic.
“They’re not just in the ground,” she recalls. “People must have been using them.”
After poking around a University College Dublin repository, Brighton and O’Sullivan found an explanation: During the centuries leading up to and including the famine, Irish families used quartz for protection against malevolent fairies who they believed appeared the first week of every May, summoned by people to attack enemies or curse the damned with bad luck, illness, even death.
Emma Weikert ’24 and Brooke Ayers ’25 point to a nearly whole 19th-century cream pan they uncovered from an old trash heap in Lackaghane, County Cork. Since 2018, Associate Professor of anthropology Stephen Brighton has led students in excavations of 18th- and 19th-century cabins in the townland.
Another Price of Stress: Brain Aging
MOST OF US KNOW stress and anxiety are bad for our hearts, but it turns out they’re bad for our brains, too.
In a forthcoming study in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers in UMD’s School of Public Health and the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore showed that experiences of stress and anxiety over one’s lifetime are associated with brains that appear older than they actually are—a warning sign of future dementia.
The researchers analyzed the MRI brain scans of around 23,000 participants aged 40-69, provided by a health research database in the United Kingdom. They focused on white matter, which plays a key role in communications between brain regions; its aging can potentially lead to memory and cognitive problems. Using a machine learning method, the researchers estimated each person’s brain age based on the MRI scans and compared it to their actual age. Next, they measured each person’s chronic stress based on physiologic functions such as breathing and blood pressure.
The findings showed that long-term experiences of stress can accelerate brain aging, regardless of sex, socioeconomic status and lifestyle behaviors like smoking, diet and exercise.
The study, funded by a UMD Grand Challenges Grant, suggests that daily life experiences may contribute to low-level but chronic stress and anxiety. It also underscores the importance of long-term management to sustain brain health and lower dementia risk.
“These people with chronic stress don’t have onset of the disease yet, so they still have hope,” says Tianzhou “Charles” Ma, UMD associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, who led the project with UMD Professor Edmond Shenassa.—JT
A Vote for Civic Education
Gift to Maryland Democracy Initiative Supports Political Engagement, Literacy
Well Before she hosted political fundraisers, worked on candidate campaigns or was even old enough to head to the ballot box, Marsha Laufer ’64 found her lifelong passion in an assignment from her seventh-grade civics teacher.
The task was simple: Read the party platforms and choose a side for a class debate. It encouraged Laufer to ask her parents about their politics for the first time.
“That background facilitated a conversation and growing political awareness,” she says. “And later in life, it stimulated my recognition of the significant need for and importance of civics education.”
Now, she and her husband, Henry Laufer, hope to inspire similar political interest and involvement among the next generation of voters. The couple’s $6 million gift to UMD’s Maryland Democracy Initiative (MDI), announced in May, will support projects to boost civic literacy and democratic engagement in K-12 classrooms, higher ed and beyond.
“One of the goals of civics education has to be that young people leave these classes and interactions with the knowledge that their voice makes a difference,” Marsha Laufer says.
MDI, a nonpartisan program launched in 2023 with funding from a Grand Challenges Impact Award, incorporates expertise from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, College of Education, Philip Merrill College of Journalism and School of Public Policy to encourage civic participation and tackle threats to democracy.
That mission resonated with Henry and Marsha Laufer, the latter of whom left her career as a speech-language pathologist to become a full-time political activist during New York’s 2000 U.S. Senate race, when she joined
FACULTY Q&A CLIFFORD ROSSI
Losing a Game of Risk
Insurance Expert Proposes Plan to Save Homeowners’ Coverage
FROM HURRICANE-DRIVEN
floods that roared down valleys in western North Carolina last fall to terrifying wildfires earlier this year in Los Angeles and Maui in 2023, it feels like deadly and destructive natural disasters now lurk around every corner.
Last year’s insured losses totaled $145 billion, making it one of the costliest on record, and 2025 is already off to an ominous start, with homeowners in the most riskprone areas struggling (or failing) to find affordable coverage as insurance companies try to stave off financial meltdown.
Now the crisis is beginning to spread nationwide, says Clifford Rossi, professor of the practice and executive-in-residence at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. Rossi, who has served as a risk executive for some of America’s largest financial institutions, spoke to Terp about his plan that’s gaining attention from state and federal policymakers as well as on Wall Street.—CC
Are major disasters really ramping up, or is it just a matter of perception, or the 24/7 news cycle?
It’s real. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tracks billion-dollar-plus disasters, and the number and intensity have gone up compared to previous decades.
We see a lot of weather-related volatility and damage where we previously didn’t, like catastrophic flooding in Asheville, N.C., or more hailstorms hitting the Northeast.
Is this climate change, or simply more people living in more places?
It’s multiple factors. Population has grown in places prone to disasters like coastal flooding, hurricanes and fires. And climatologists tell us, in the 150 years since the Industrial Revolution, humans have affected climate; the jury may still be out on how exactly, but we’re seeing more and more events causing great expense to homeowners, businesses and government.
How’s the risk in Maryland?
If you look at individual hazards, you see some significant risk like flooding near the Chesapeake Bay; but for the 15 natural hazards that FEMA tracks, we’re in pretty good shape relative to other states.
What’s the issue?
On a national scale, we’re looking at a market failure. Home insurance premiums on average jumped 27% nationwide from 2021-24, according to Insurify, and in Florida, they’re 4.6 times the national average. An insurance crisis is pending, and we can’t keep doing business as usual.
What’s the solution?
I’ve called for a new public-private partnership: the Federal Natural Hazard Insurance Corp. The federal government is able to step in and help take on catastrophic risk that companies, state governments and others simply can’t. This would be a federally chartered enterprise in the spirit of what we did for
housing finance with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
What will this take to get implemented?
It would take congressional approval to establish this new federal charter—and of course, in this day and age, getting everyone to agree on something is difficult. But since the wildfires in L.A., I’ve gotten a fair amount of attention for this, and I’ve talked about it with senators from some of the states most affected.
How would it work for homeowners?
You’d have two policies: a standard homeowner’s policy covering things like trip and fall, theft, kitchen fires. Alongside that, this new entity would issue one hazard policy for all the hazards that exist wherever you live—a price everybody would have access to. It might not be cheap, but the other option could be you don’t have insurance, period.
CRIMINAL CALCULATIONS
HOW STUDENTS IN UMD’S FORENSIC ACCOUNTING CLUB HELPED CRACK A MURDER CASE
BY JOHN TUCKER
LT. JOSEPH BELLINO stared at his computer screen until his head hurt. The commander of the Financial Crimes Unit for the Prince George’s County Police Department had just received a particularly voluminous le of bank statements from detectives. The evidence was part of a murder case that had gripped the region: A Landover-area woman stood accused of killing her 71-year-old mother.
The suspect’s 19-year-old daughter had told authorities that her unemployed mother was stealing from her grandmother, who had a healthy retirement account. But the allegation needed to be corroborated with facts.
With no eyewitnesses or confessions, establishing the woman’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt might come down to motive, and the proof could be buried in the trove of documents Bellino was staring at. He needed a nancial expert with an unimpeachable reputation to assess the records. He had just the person in mind.
For the past year, Samuel Handwerger, a local accountant with a forensic bent, had helped police interpret nancial evidence, aiding in several criminal indictments. The murder case was more complex than the others, but even so, “it was a perfect marriage,” Bellino says now.
Part of Handwerger’s appeal was that he didn’t work as a solo investigator. But his associates weren’t a bunch of hotshot accountants either. They were University of Maryland students, members of a club that investigates nancial fraud.
ONE EVENING IN FEBRUARY, a clutch of undergraduate and graduate students huddled inside a Van Munching Hall classroom discussing a pair of police investigations. In one, a man was suspected of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars by purchasing everyday items with his company credit card and submitting
expense reports as if he had used his personal card. The students were assigned to comb through receipts and enter key information such as transaction dates and purchase amounts into a massive spreadsheet.
“There are some days he bought things like crazy,” noted one student, citing a transaction for hundreds of dollars’ worth of cheap personal items. Another student, who’d tracked down a publicly available toll-violation record and matched it with the suspect’s car, joked, “We have his license plate number. If you see it driving around Maryland, that’s probably our man.”
The students, who represent di erent majors across campus, are part of the Justice for Fraud Victims Project, which launched in the fall of 2023. Each semester, they serve the Prince George’s County police on a pro bono basis, mainly by auditing nancial records subpoenaed by grand juries. They recalculate transactions, scrutinize data for irregularities, quantify damages and report back to law enforcement. Some see the club as a starting point for an FBI career path.
“We follow the dollar,” says Handwerger, a full-time lecturer at the Robert H. Smith School of Business and the club’s adviser.
In his four-decade accounting career, he was always stoked by fraud inspections,
his best chance to help society. When he learned a few years ago of the Justice for Fraud Victims Project, created in 2010 at Gonzaga University, he sought to build an a liate at UMD
“Forensics was becoming a buzzword in accounting, and who doesn’t love this stu ?” he says.
Each year, Prince George’s County detectives struggle to keep up with approximately 4,000 fraud cases worth millions of dollars. The county is hardly alone. Fraud losses in the United States jumped to $10 billion in 2023, a 14% increase over 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission. There are multiple reasons: an aging population vulnerable to scams, the emergence of unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges and spikes in identity theft online. Many cases are di cult to prosecute because they cross jurisdictional lines.
After hearing Handwerger’s pitch to the police department o ering free assistance, it signed on. “We have a handful of forensic fraud investigators, but they’re not trained
PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI
Working with Smith School Lecturer Samuel Handwerger (second from left), students (from left) Jessica Faby ’25, Caris Konath ’27, Amol Ajmera ’25 and other Justice for Fraud Victims Project members have helped Prince George’s County authorities secure several indictments.
CPAs,” says Bellino, who was recently promoted to captain.
Still, allowing teenagers access to sensitive information carried risk, and the department needed a year to approve the deal. Bellino, meanwhile, taught the students about security clearances and the high stakes of criminal indictments.
They all signed nondisclosure agreements and dived in. In one case, they investigated the treasurer of a volunteer re ghter company who was later convicted of skimming funds; in another, they probed a suspect accused of falsifying paperwork to rent a residence and turn it into a drug stash house.
Just a year into the program’s existence, the students never expected to be pulled into a murder case.
ON THE SCALE OF BRUTALITY, the killing of Margaret Craig might break the balance. In May 2023, the retired nurse dealing with the e ects of a stroke was su ocated with a trash bag in her home, and her decomposing body was kept in a bin for several days. Later her corpse was set on re, dismembered with a chainsaw and burned again.
Candace Craig, then 44, who lived there with three daughters, ages 12 to 19, and was Margaret’s caregiver, was arrested, and a
grand jury handed up an indictment alleging rst-degree murder and other crimes. She pleaded not guilty and blamed the slaying on her daughters.
While the initial evidence seemed to implicate Candace, police knew they needed more to sway a jury. Bellino secured Handwerger’s buy-in and referred him to the county’s O ce of the State’s Attorney. He and his students began meeting with prosecutors to discuss the nancial documents.
“The students were incredibly prepared,” said Julia Hall ’11, an assistant state’s attorney with the Special Victim’s Unit, who was co-assigned the case. “There just seemed like a lot of synthesis between them and Professor Handwerger.”
Around that time, Candace’s oldest daughter, Salia Margaret Hardy, who had learning disabilities, was charged and convicted for helping to cover up the murder. (She later spent a year and a half in jail.) But prosecutors were focused on sending their main suspect—Candace, who they suspected acted with premeditation—to prison for life.
FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING double major Amol Ajmera ’25 joined the Justice for Fraud Victims club in January of 2024, when there were just four members, a far cry from the
current 40. Collaborating with police seemed like a resumé-booster, and he embraced the work. In an embezzlement case, Ajmera produced a report that helped prosecutors quash a defense motion, after which a judge tossed a frivolous countercomplaint made against the victim.
“Being in the courtroom was amazing, seeing both sides argue over the report,” he recalls. “I never thought that as a college student I’d ever have an impact on someone’s life like that.”
In addition to working with law enforcement, the club o ers free risk assessments to small businesses and nonpro ts. Students also counsel homeowners’ associations and get mentoring from Ernst & Young accountants.
When information systems major Caris Konath ’27 joined the club, three other students had already spent months poring over nancial data and agging suspicious transactions in Margaret Craig’s bank account.
dents with 30 hours of recorded phone calls
“I NEVER THOUGHT THAT AS A COLLEGE STUDENT I’D EVER HAVE AN IMPACT ON SOMEONE’S LIFE LIKE THAT.”
—AMOL AJMERA ’25
Prosecutors had also provided the stuporting to be Margaret. The job of listening to
between bank employees and a woman purporting to be Margaret. The job of listening to the recordings fell to Konath.
In many calls, the woman asked the bank to unfreeze assets and wire money into Candace’s account. In others, a caller with a higher-pitched, adolescent-sounding voice requested new debit cards. And in the rest, a person claiming to be Margaret sounded
Club members use spreadsheets to audit nancial records and scrutinize data for irregularities. Some students see the organization as a starting point for an FBI career path.
bewildered and older as she questioned recent purchases, noting that she’d never used DoorDash or Lyft.
For Konath, hearing the woman’s voice was eerie. “I just wanted someone to help this old lady, but I had to remind myself she was already gone,” she recalls.
The students matched the ow of withdrawals from Margaret’s account with deposits funneled into her daughter’s account. In addition, the credit card that Candace routinely used—sometimes for large purchases like a $211 pair of collectible sneakers—was linked to Margaret’s account.
During discovery, prosecutors had noted that some purchases were made after Margaret’s death, and they asked the students to lo look into it. One day, during a Zoom work session, accounting major Jessica Faby ’25 noticed a trio of Home Depot transactions in Margaret’s ledger following her murder.
Suddenly it hit her: Margaret was killed by su ocation, but Faby knew that her body had been dismembered several days later. One of the Home Depot receipts showed a $126 purchase.
Handwerger took the stand on behalf of the students, who had helped prep him for tough questions. Believing the witness chair was too low for his modest stature, he rose to his feet and addressed the jury like the professor he is. A police detective later said that he’d never seen a jury so engaged.
During his testimony, Handwerger made eye contact with his students in the courtroom gallery. “I thought, This is all because of them,” he recalls. “They’re the reason I’m up here.”
On the trial’s eighth day, the jury deliberated for less than an hour before returning a guilty verdict of rst-degree murder. In February, the parties reconvened for sentencing. After hearing arguments, Circuit Court
Judge Karen Mason noted that two things stood out in the di cult case: Candace Craig exploited her children, and the murder stemmed from nancial crimes.
“We’re talking about pension, income, checks,” Mason said. If that were the end of it, Craig might have been prosecuted and put on probation. Instead, her crimes escalated into something “unimaginable,” the judge declared. She sentenced Craig to life without parole. Craig showed little emotion.
During a press conference following the conviction, Hall took the podium. Thanking the UMD team, she said their investigation “brought it home for the jurors,” helping prove that Craig acted with premeditation and ensure that justice was served. TERP
Retired nurse Margaret Craig (at left, with daughter Candace Craig) was recovering from a stroke when she was murdered in her Landover, Md., home. UMD students pored over nancial records to connect Candace to the crime.
determined that Candace had embezzled
thousands of dollars from her mother in the months before and after the murder. Home Depot receipts showed Candace’s purchase of an electric chainsaw, a box of 13-gallon trash bags, paper towels and a plastic drop cloth. The students’ 48-page report was admitted into state’s evidence—a critical proof point that helped establish a motive in the state’s case, Hall says.
When Candace’s trial opened in October, prosecutors argued that Margaret confronted Candace over banking discrepancies, and Candace killed her to continue her scheme.
BY SALA LEVIN ’10 PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHN T. CONSOLI
A SEC O ND FA MILY, A LI M ITLESS FUTU R E
A UNIQUE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM HAS TRANSFORMED THE LIVES OF HUNDREDS OF UMD STUDENTS. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER, ITS PIONEERS SHARE HOW.
BY THE TIME Essence Jordan ’05 reached high school, she’d already endured enough adversity for a lifetime. During a childhood marked by abuse, she frequently moved between relatives’ homes.
Yet teachers at the struggling and now-shuttered Southern High in Baltimore, where she started 10th grade, soon noticed her sterling grades, involvement in extracurriculars and determination to go to college.
During Jordan’s senior year, en route to becoming salutatorian, a guidance counselor approached her about a new scholarship at the University of Maryland. It would allow her not only to attend for free—tuition, room and board, and books would all be covered—but to get an unprecedented level of support as part of a group of similarly promising city public high school students who had persevered, often through the toughest of circumstances.
Jordan was thrilled to learn she’d been accepted into the Incentive Awards Program. “In my family, my first cousins and I were the first generation to go to college. My grandma had an eighth-grade education. Everybody was
happy for me.”
Twenty-five years ago, she was among nine freshmen in the first cohort of what is now known as the C. D. Mote, Jr. Incentive Awards Program (IAP), named for the former UMD president who brought the idea from his previous role as vice chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley.
It’s been led from its inception by Jacqueline W. Lee, who set out to get the students to recognize their own potential and buy into the chance to fully realize it through her fledgling program: “That was the challenge but also part of the joy of that year, trying to accurately and convincingly convey what it was that we were trying to achieve,” she said. “I was laying the bricks as we were walking.”
This spring, IAP is expected to cross the milestone of graduating 250 students. The most recent class is the largest yet, with 32 students from Baltimore, Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and Charles County.
While that first cohort at times struggled with professors who didn’t believe in
them and feelings of imposter syndrome, much of their Terp experience was joyful, eye-opening and indelible. The group ate mozzarella sticks during late-night dining hall hours, harmonized together at karaoke nights and buddied up to try out clubs and activities that were new territory for them.
“What IAP promoted the most was that we were a family,” says Ebony Washington, a member of Cohort 1. “You’re not in this alone. You’re a part of this team. Whenever we heard ‘program,’ we heard ‘family.’”
As IAP marks its silver anniversary, Terp reconnects with seven members of that inaugural group about their victories, their challenges and the way the program shaped the rest of their lives.
“I learned to be a person that’s adaptable to change.”
MYRON GOLDSTEIN ’05
Southwestern Senior High School in Baltimore, shuttered in 2007, wasn’t known for producing collegebound students, says Myron Goldstein. “It was more of, ‘Let’s just get these kids ready to enter the workforce.’”
But in eighth grade, he had visited a different high school, one “where students were happy to be,” showing him the possibility of a better kind of education.
Guidance counselors at Southwestern helped him identify college scholarships. His family and school community were “ecstatic” to find out that he’d been accepted to UMD through IAP, he says. “When they did the morning announcements (at school), the
teacher reading the announcements read my entire acceptance letter. I could hear his voice cracking.”
At Maryland, Goldstein started out shy and quiet. Lee encouraged him to push aside his nerves to try different clubs and activities. “I learned to be a person that’s adaptable to change,” he says. “A lot of those things I was able to translate into my career.”
Now a supervisor in denials and appeals at Johns Hopkins Health System, Goldstein says IAP changed the trajectory of his life. “It’s an impactful program that really helps a lot of kids see the goal of a college degree as attainable.”
REGINALD JONES ’05
An all-around athlete in high school, Reginald Jones seriously contemplated accepting a football scholarship from Rutgers. But when he learned about IAP, he considered a different path. A graduate of a vocational high school in southwest Baltimore, where he created schematics for machinery, as well as housing and floor plans, he’d developed an interest in engineering. “I didn’t have to worry about what would happen if I got injured” at Maryland, he says.
“The program teaches you resilience. You have to readjust and make it through.”
At Maryland, Jones began as an engineering major but eventually switched to criminal justice. The support of Lee and his cohort, he says, encouraged him to make the leap when he found himself struggling in math classes.
“The program teaches you resilience,” he says. “You have to readjust and make it through.”
Jones’ mentor, Thomas P. Mauriello, taught a criminalistics class that intrigued Jones. He began focusing on a career in law enforcement, interning during college with the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Now, Jones is a detective in the Baltimore City Police Department and a special deputy with the U.S. Marshals Service, tracking down violent offenders in hiding.
Jones attributes his transformation from introvert to extrovert to his experience in IAP. “To be able to express yourself and drive conversation that is the scariest thing I ever experienced,” he says. “But I did it because of the process of the program.”
“Looking back, I realize everything was to help prepare us for the real world.”
ESSENCE JORDAN ’05
Since middle school, Essence Jordan had been set on going to college. Southern High in Baltimore’s Federal Hill neighborhood didn’t have a great track record for that. “It felt prison-like,” Jordan says. “Dim lights and windows you couldn’t see out of.”
But she excelled in science and English, delivering performances at poetry slams, running track and writing for the school newspaper, and eventually graduating salutatorian.
Joining IAP was “exciting, but an adjustment,” Jordan says. “It’s the same thing as a teenager and a parent: They give you boundaries and you try to push them.” Soon, though, Jordan realized the program’s benefits, sharpening her public speaking skills through oratory exercises and learning how to navigate professional settings.
At UMD, a meeting with a recruiter at a career fair led to Jordan’s longtime job as a federal police officer with the Department of Defense’s Pentagon Force Protection Agency.
Now medically retired, Jordan says that her experience in IAP was critical to her professional and personal success. “Looking back, I realize everything was to help prepare us for the real world,” she says.
TIANA WYNN ’05
“Maryland was always my only choice,” says Tiana Wynn ’05. Though few of her relatives had pursued higher education, she and her aunt, who raised her, had “always talked about going to college.” During her time at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Wynn took part in programs at colleges around Baltimore, getting a taste of what higher education had to offer her.
Weekly IAP meetings “fostered stability,” says Wynn. Students learned about campus clubs and activities, went to plays in Washington, D.C., and took dining etiquette lessons, where they learned proper name tag placement and how to balance plates, silverware and glasses during cocktail parties.
Wynn was the first IAP student to study abroad, spending a semester in London. It was her first time out of the country, and she seized the opportunity to travel to Paris, Florence and Rome. “It opened this window of wanting to see the rest of the world, to see how other people live,” she says.
She snagged her first internship, at First Mariner Bank, through IAP and later interned at EY. In 2010, Wynn joined SB & Company, one of the largest minority-owned public accounting firms, where she is now a partner.
“When I go and meet people, I always say that I am a graduate of IAP,” says Wynn. “It gives me an ability to let people know the impact that it has had on me and my life.”
“[The IAP cohort] supported me. They encouraged me and pushed me the whole way.”
EBONY WASHINGTON
Ebony Washington’s childhood was characterized by instability. Her family moved around Baltimore frequently, causing her to attend four elementary schools and three high schools. As she neared graduation, the idea of college was “an escape,” she says. “I wouldn’t have to go back and forth anymore.”
Joining IAP helped Washington, who had struggled to make friends, find her people. Overnight, she felt the eight strangers in her cohort had turned into brothers and sisters.
Washington got married and became pregnant during her sophomore year of college.
“Going to statistics class 8 months pregnant is not fun,” she recalls of her junior year, but she pushed through. “I remember struggling with that homework, every night coming back to my dorm room and tearing that math book apart.”
When her son was born, Washington left UMD to care for him. Eventually, she earned her associate’s degree in nursing from University of Maryland Global Campus, then a bachelor’s degree from UMGC in 2020. (She later completed a master’s degree in public health from Purdue Global.) Throughout her academic journey, “the IAP cohort was right there with me,” Washington says.
“They supported me. They encouraged me and pushed me the whole way.”
Now a registered nurse with the Maryland Department of Health, focusing on high-risk maternal and child health programs, Washington says, “It’s all on the foundation of IAP. I would not have the career I have if it wasn’t for IAP.”
YAVONA PIRALI ’06
Raised largely in East Baltimore’s Belair-Edison neighborhood, Yavona Pirali loved her middle school’s extracurriculars: She ran track, played badminton and performed in the marching band. But “academically, it was boring,” she says. That changed when she arrived at the selective Baltimore City College, known as City, where she took honors and International Baccalaureate classes.
Pirali knew her family couldn’t afford to send her to college, so she became a regular at City’s counseling office, asking for SAT waivers and information about scholarship programs. She wanted to blaze a path different than the one her parents had. “My mom was pregnant her senior year of high school, so she didn’t get to go to prom or any of those things,” she says. “It was a big point of pride that I wasn’t pregnant.”
After being accepted into IAP, Pirali was excited about leaving her crowded house, where she lived with her parents, two siblings, two cousins and a young nephew. But UMD was a culture shock in many ways. Her freshman year roommates were obsessed with a television show Pirali had never seen: “Friends.”
The IAP cohort was a family, she says. “You had an inner group of people that you know and can depend on, talk with, venture out with.” Pirali excelled in her classes and went on to become the first IAP alum to earn a graduate degree: a master’s of arts in teaching from Towson University.
Today, Pirali is back at City as assistant principal, and some of her own students have become IAP participants at UMD. “I have a legacy,” she says. “Now I know I did some things right.”
$46,502,944 RAISED FROM 1,730 DONORS — 98% ONE-YEAR RETENTION RATE — 11% WITH DOCTORAL DEGREES, SURPASSING UMD’S AVERAGE BY THE NUMBERS
245 GRADUATES + 20 STUDENTS ON TRACK TO EARN THEIR BACHELOR’S DEGREE IN 2025 —
107 ADVANCED DEGREES COMPLETED OR UNDERWAY —
112 STUDENTS HAVE STUDIED ABROAD —
THAT CHILL IN THE EGG AISLE isn’t just refrigeration. Grocery runs these days can feel a bit Soviet, with signs announcing carton rationing and apologizing for low stock. Even Waffle House—known for holding the line on prices—added a 50-cent surcharge to egg dishes.
The once-affordable source of protein has become scarce for one reason: the latest strain of avian influenza, H5N1, a highly contagious and fatal virus. Over 168 million birds have either died of the virus or been culled over the last three years. Most of those were egg-laying hens, which drove the average price of eggs up more than 60% by the end of 2024, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicting a 40% spike in 2025.
The disease is spreading rapidly through wild birds, decimating waterfowl and even killing our national bird, the bald eagle. Alarmingly, it’s jumped to mammals as well. Cats are particularly susceptible, including pets, wildlife and zoo animals like lions and tigers; dairy cattle are a new host, putting at risk another grocery staple, milk.
And as of April, 70 people have been infected after contact with diseased animals and one has died, fueling worries about human-to-human spread and a possible next pandemic.
But long before most of us had heard of bird flu, University of Maryland researchers were already working to better understand it and curb its spread. Extension specialists are developing and disseminating the best biosecurity guidance to keep farms secure. Epidemiologists are tracking the virus’ path into and across the country. Lab researchers are using novel methods to understand the origins of avian influenza itself.
“We have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” says veterinary medicine Assistant Professor Mostafa Ghanem. “We have to do our best to contain it outside of humans as much as we can. No one can predict how (bird flu) will evolve.”
Researchers have tracked “low-pathogenic” strains that
produced mild symptoms like weight loss or lower egg production. In the 1990s, however, the far more dangerous H5N1 emerged in China and spread among wild birds, before conquering other nations in Asia and moving west. (In 2015, a related H5N2 strain reached the U.S.; farmers were able to eradicate it the next year by culling more than 50 million birds at a cost of $1.6 billion.)
Then the H5N1 strain evolved and reemerged in 2021 to affect more wild birds, including raptors like owls and scavengers such as black vultures. It has since spilled over into domestic poultry as infected birds stop at a farm or surrounding areas, leaving virus particles in saliva, nasal secretions or feces. Outbreaks are most common during fall and winter migrations.
Now the virus persists year-round, says Associate Professor Jennifer Mullinax of the Department of Environmental Science and Technology. “We’re not seeing the drop-off we expect. The normal pattern is changing.”
OUT WHERE MARYLAND’S EASTERN SHORE shrinks to a narrow strip, sandwiched between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, sits Farhan Nasir’s poultry farm. He rises every day at 5 a.m. to check his 18 chicken houses in Pocomoke City, where he’s raised about 1.25 million broilers—meat chickens—each year for Perdue Farms for more than a decade.
When bird flu reemerged with a vengeance this winter, striking eight farms on the Delmarva peninsula in January, he and his fellow farmers were terrified. Nearly half of Maryland’s agriculture production comes from chickens, and on the Eastern Shore, it rises to about 75%.
“There’s a general sense of doom around,” says Nasir. “It’s very stressful psychologically and financially for the community.”
When bird flu strikes, chickens show symptoms like coughing plus swelling and discoloration in the legs and head. The state Department of Agriculture then works
The virus itself is constantly changing.
... It’s a wickedly complicated system.
—JENNIFER MULLINAX,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
away, preventing further spread of the virus.
Soon, Nasir and his colleagues will have a new and improved tool to pinpoint farms that are most at risk, thanks to a College of Agriculture and Natural Resources team.
Mullinax and researchers from her Applied Spatial Wildlife Ecology Lab have been tracking H5N1 since it emerged in the U.S. in 2022. They documented its routes across the country, examining where it’s spilling over from waterfowl into domestic poultry, between farms and occasionally, back into the wild.
“The virus itself is constantly changing,” says Mullinax. “I wish we could tell you, ‘It’s this bird in that place’ (carrying it), but that’s not reality. It’s a wickedly complicated system.”
Now she and postdoctoral researcher Matthew Gonnerman, in collaboration with Diann Prosser of the U.S. Geological Survey, have developed a model incorporating waterfowl habitats, environmental factors like waterways and topography, the prevalence of disease in different avian species, as well as farm locations and biosecurity measures. Once they publish their data, they’ll release their models for broader use, tailored for state and federal agencies as well as commercial and backyard farmers, who can use the results to prepare for oncoming waves of the virus.
With more data, “we hope to not just understand correlation, but be able to predict what’s coming next, and who’s most vulnerable throughout the year,” Mullinax says.
WHAT’S COMING, UNFORTUNATELY, could bring economic and health consequences far broader in scope than just wild birds and chicken farms.
In March 2024, H5N1 was detected in dairy cattle in the U.S.—the first infection in cows anywhere. Cattle respond differently; rather than exhibit respiratory symptoms, they had reductions in milk production and mild fever, so farmers initially didn’t think to check for avian flu or take steps to stop it. The disease has since spread to cattle in 16 states.
The virus was likely introduced by wild birds and then transmitted from cow to cow, says Ghanem, who studies the molecular epidemiology of infectious diseases and manages a USDA-funded project on bird flu biosecurity.
Then it made another jump. As of April, 41 people have been infected with bird flu via dairy cows, reported the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), though human symptoms have mostly been mild. The challenge is that dairy farms require far more human workers than poultry farms, which are largely automated, Ghanem says. Milking is still done manually, and many people interact with the milk as it’s processed.
“We don’t want the virus to adapt to humans,” he says, so increased biosecurity efforts, ranging from personal protective equipment to better testing, is key.
A cattle vaccine in development by the chair of UMD’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, Professor Xiaoping Zhu, could help stop that jump. In April, Zhu and Wenbin Tuo from USDA’s Agricultural Research Service received funding from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to adapt nasal spray technology they originally developed for COVID-19 and human influenza. By delivering a protein to the nasal passages that blocks viruses from infecting cells in the respiratory tract and preventing infections from starting, this greatly reduces the likelihood of humans and other animals contracting the virus from cows.
And another mammal is at risk, with even closer ties to humans.
Felines have long been susceptible to avian influenza, dating back at least 20 years to cases in Asia among both large cats on wildlife preserves and barn cats. The newest strain is particularly deadly, with about a 90% mortality rate, presenting a clear risk for the more than 74 million pet cats in the United States.
Cats “are not being monitored for H5N1. It’s a big black box,” says School of Public Health Assistant Professor Kristen Coleman, an airborne infectious disease researcher who previously studied animal-human spillover events in
We’re trying to understand: How are new strains of avian influenza made?
—ANDREW BROADBENT ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF AVIAN AND ANIMAL SCIENCE
Asia. She’s found a drastic increase in the number of cats reported with the disease, starting in 2023.
Along with outdoor feral colonies contracting it from wild birds, the virus started showing up in indoor-only cats. The culprit is raw pet food, an unregulated industry that can source its meat from anywhere, including wild game, Coleman says.
“In the best-case scenario, pets remain a dead end and don’t become a vector” to humans or other species, she says. “But even in that case, cats are the victims, and a lot of people’s hearts will be broken if they lose their pets.”
Coleman is now working to collect blood samples with animal rescues and veterinarians in California, where several cat deaths have been connected to cattle outbreaks as well as to contaminated pet food, and in Maryland, where cat cases are starting to emerge. She’ll identify how widespread the virus is and eventually alert workers in those industries about what precautions to take.
The CDC reported two possible cases of spread between felines and humans from May 2024, and there was at least one confirmed case in 2016. “Cats open up a whole new vulnerability,” she says.
YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT THINKING about ducks when you’re on day three of the flu, shivering under your sheets and surrounded by a pile of used tissues. But it’s deep in their guts (or the bowels of fellow waterfowl) that all flu viruses originate. Human seasonal flu—which likely jumped from birds to humans many years ago—is even part of the same family, influenza A, as bird flu.
To better understand how new influenza viruses develop, avian and animal science Assistant Professors Andrew Broadbent and Younggeon Jin, and cell biology
and molecular genetics Associate Professor Margaret Scull, supported by a UMD Grand Challenges Grant, are using “organoids”—lab-created stand-ins for intestines and tracheas cultured from tissues of chickens, turkeys and ducks—a more humane option than infecting live birds.
“We’re trying to understand: How are new strains of avian influenza made? Is it more likely to happen in duck hosts or chicken hosts? Which cells is it happening in?” says Broadbent.
As they infect the organoids with various strains of avian influenza, they’ll compare how the viruses interact with different types of cells, including how they break
WHAT YOU CAN DO
FOOD
• Buy only pasteurized milk. Avoid the raw product.
• Cook poultry and eggs to an internal temperature of 165 degrees F.
PETS
• Keep cats indoors so they don’t come in contact with wild birds.
• Don’t feed your cats raw pet food.
• Call a vet immediately if your pet has respiratory or rabies-like symptoms, and request that they be screened for avian influenza.
WILDLIFE
• Avoid dead animals and droppings.
• If you see a dead or sick bird, call the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Services hotline.
through the body’s natural protective barriers, and evolve within different bird species (and they hope to create organoids from other duck breeds and other wild bird species like gulls in the future). Eventually they’ll be able to determine which virus mutations make certain fowl more susceptible, which could help field researchers determine the strains most likely to jump from wild birds into different types of poultry.
Their work to date has focused on low-pathogenic strains, though they plan to move into high-pathogenic strains in the future. Their findings will have long-term implications, because avian influenza is here to stay. There’s no way to eradicate it from waterfowl, so even if this deadly strain is stopped, others will pop up again, whether next year or next decade.
But there’s good news: Scientists already know a lot more about influenza than about coronavirus. The USDA also has conditionally approved a vaccine for poultry, though it is not currently used because of poultry export agreements (some threatened wild species, like condors,
have been immunized, however). Now, Broadbent is partnering with School of Medicine Assistant Professor Lynda Coughlan through a University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State grant to test a new H5N1 vaccine in chickens this spring.
“This situation is very different from COVID, where we had to start from scratch,” he says, noting that vaccines exist for humans as well, though they haven’t been deployed because bird flu is still rare in people. In addition, “H5N1 is sensitive to antiviral (treatments), which we didn’t have against coronavirus.”
As of April, there are still no cases of human-to-human transmission, and the CDC considers the public health risk low. So while you might have to work in some egg substitutes and keep Mittens from slipping outside, it’s OK to keep living your life, UMD researchers say.
“We don’t need to go into panic mode,” says Mullinax. “The people at risk are the ones working in the industries every day. But we should be aware of what’s happening, because we will likely have to deal with this long-term.” TERP
Animal and avian science Assistant Professor Andrew Broadbent (left) examines poultry gut “organoids” under a microscope. Above, two mammal species susceptible to avian influenza meet in a barnyard—a setting where cows have recently passed the virus to humans.
Letter From the Senior Executive Director
AS A TERP working at the Alumni Association, I often get to experience UMD traditions with a new perspective.
One exciting example was our revival of the Valentine’s Dance in February after a 12-year hiatus. I met my husband on campus 25 years ago, and we have fond memories of attending the dance as recent grads. I hope you’ll join us next year to celebrate Terp love, whether it’s for a partner, a student group, or the friends and bonds you’ve made here.
Your Alumni Association is always innovating ways to connect alums to each other, to resources and to students. One thing we know: Terps support Terps. We just relaunched the Terp Business Directory, a place where all alums can support Terp-owned companies and where enTERPreneurs can showcase their ventures to our amazing community of more than 422,000 alums.
In January, nearly 1,000 alums took part in our fifth annual Career Week through in-person and online programming. New this year, we created four tracks to support Terps at every stage of their career journey. The tracks Job Readiness, Corporate and Industry, EnTERPreneurs and Business Leaders, and Lifelong Learning helped alums find the right sessions for their personal and professional goals.
As part of our commitment to offering personal development opportunities for alums, we debuted the Terp Book Fair at Maryland Day in April, kicking off our popular Summer Reading Challenge. Alums from around the world connecting over books and shared learning is a true testament to the strength of our Terp community.
While I travel the country meeting our alums, members, friends and fans, I thank everyone who supports the University of Maryland. Terp love comes in many forms, but one thing is certain: it lasts a lifetime. When you give back whether by mentoring a student, supporting a Terp-owned business or becoming a member of your Alumni Association you’re spreading that love even further.
Jessica K. Roberts ’02 Senior Executive Director University of Maryland Alumni Association
Love of a Lifetime
Couple Cultivates Terp Pride Through Membership
WHEN LAURIE (SHIELDS) LOVAAS ’12 lugged her belongings up to the fourth floor of Elkton Hall during freshman move-in, she had no idea that her future love was just two floors up.
She met Mike Lovaas ’12 in their second semester, when Laurie needed more players for an intramural soccer team. “I don’t think we stopped talking from that point forward,” Laurie said.
After winning the championship, the couple went on to wed in 2014 and are now raising sons Mason, 5, and Luke, 1, to share their love for the University of Maryland. The Lovaases stay engaged with their alma mater by bringing the boys to family-friendly Homecoming and Maryland Day, and a host of athletics events throughout the year.
As lifetime members of the Alumni Association, one of their favorite spots to show the kids is the Frann G. & Eric S. Francis Lifetime Member Wall, where the couple’s names are inscribed.
“It’s nice to have that legacy,” Mike said. “And if our kids do go to Maryland one day, the fact that they can walk by and see our names there is special to us.”
REASONS TO JOIN NOW
IT MAKES RETURNING TO COLLEGE PARK EVEN EASIER. Members get exclusive discounts to Alumni Association events, tickets to Maryland Athletics events and deals on nearby hotels.
If you’re like the Lovaases and have been attending events, mentoring students or tailgating at Riggs for years, an Alumni Association membership deepens your connection to the university you love. Or, if you’re looking for a place to start, it’s the perfect way to get connected. Join today at alumni.umd.edu/Terp
IT OPENS THE DOOR TO SPECIAL TERP PERKS.
You can get exclusive access to VIP member lounges at signature Maryland Alumni Association events, receive a discount to use on the Alumni Store and take advantage of specialty Terp swag, just for members.
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IT’S AN OPPORTUNITY TO CEMENT YOUR LEGACY. Lifetime members have their names engraved on the Frann G. & Eric S. Francis Lifetime Member Wall at the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center to show their Terp pride in perpetuity.
IT HELPS YOU MAKE YOUR IMPACT ON THE UNIVERSITY. Membership dues support student scholarships, alum-led community service projects and career resources for Terps around the globe.
IT HELPS YOU AND FELLOW TERPS MOVE FEARLESSLY FORWARD. Membership dues fuel programs that elevate and connect the Terp community, including networking, career development and lifelong learning, to help you grow personally and professionally.
“Jurassic Park,” a Little More Real
At New Dinosaur Museum Led by Paleontologist Alum, Visitors Can Dig In
Out on the wind-whipped steppes of Patagonia, it can take months of swinging a pickaxe and hauling buckets of rocks—subsisting on tuna and crackers and avoiding scorpions and puma—to find a fossil of note.
But now, Kenneth Lacovara M.A. ’88 is making it easier for budding paleontologists to unearth buried treasure with the March opening of the Jean & Ric Edelman Fossil Park and Museum of Rowan University in southern New Jersey. Visitors can dig alongside experts at an old quarry (and 66-millionyear-old dinosaur graveyard) and explore gleaming interactive exhibits, including more than 50 full-size models of Cretaceous creatures that roamed the North American East Coast.
“I’m really excited to give people that awe about
the amazing planet they live on,” says founder Lacovara, dean of the School of Earth and Environment at Rowan. The museum was named one of Smithsonian Magazine’s most anticipated openings.
Lacovara first fell in love with paleontology as a Boy Scout, when he pored over a box of fossils brought to a troop meeting. After a brief interlude into the jazz world (he was the house drummer at the Golden Nugget Casino for a year), he dedicated himself to geology and came to the University of Maryland for his master’s degree. He recalls taking advantage of local Metro stop construction to sneak through a fence and discover a “gorgeous” piece of petrified wood. “If you want to find a paleontologist, dig a hole!” he says with a laugh.
He’s taken his tools around the world, from the Gobi to the Sahara deserts, where he “got very lucky right out of the gate” as a new faculty member, co-discovering the world’s secondlargest dinosaur, the Paralititian. Then in 2005, he dug up an even bigger beast in Patagonia: a nearly complete skeleton of the 77-millionyear-old Dreadnoughtus, an herbivore the size of a dozen African elephants.
Since then, he’s made it his mission to reframe how the public thinks about dinosaurs’ place in history, with a TED talk viewed nearly 4.3 million times and a book, “Why Dinosaurs Matter.” He hopes a museum visit—where visitors can see a 55-foot sea-dwelling mosasaur fossil discovered on site—will inspire people to take action to preserve the planet in the face of climate change and a biodiversity crisis.
“If you understand the broad swing of history, you realize how unlikely we are,” he says. “The chance of our species is almost zero. Each of us is a cosmic lottery winner. If people understand how precarious our place is on this planet, I hope that feeling doesn’t lead to hubris, but to gratitude.”—ks
KENNETH LACOVARA M.A. ’88
Beating the Drum for Brain Benefits
Alum’s Rhythmic Fitness Regime Exercises Body and Mind
AFTER A FALL from her horse a few years ago left Elizabeth Bock in a monthlong coma, extensive rehab helped the former hedge fund executive regain her footing. But it was a University of Maryland alum’s unique training regime, she says, that got her mind back in rhythm.
In Drumboxing, a “brain fitness” program created by percussionist John Wakefield ’89, participants jump and bang an array of conga drums, with ever-changing cadences aiming to promote short-term memory and new neural connections. This spring, he launched a subscription-based app to bring the beats to a wide audience.
“(Drumboxing) helps the mind connect with rhythms everywhere,” Wakefield says, “and with being comfortable with unpredictability.”
He grew up marching to the beat of
Terps’ drums, accompanying his dad, Director of Bands Emeritus John E. Wakefield, to rehearsals on Chapel Field. After majoring in music performance, he attended graduate school at the University of Southern California and settled in Los Angeles, where he drummed for movie soundtracks and the LA Opera.
In 2010, while at a boxing gym with his son, a trainer asked him to work with his client, who needed more rhythm in the ring.
“I noticed immediately how the changes in tempo improved focus,” Wakefield says.
He joined pro volleyball player Christina Hinds to expand the idea, going from small sessions in her driveway to a Malibu-based studio, where regulars soon included Cindy Crawford and LeAnn Rimes.
It closed in June, but Wakefield says the goal was always to take Drumboxing digital. App users can purchase drums or sub in a countertop, chairs or even their legs. This accessibility has helped the co-founders virtually offer Drumboxing to Parkinson’s patients, and Wakefield hopes future studies by interested neuroscientists can shed more light on its cognitive benefits.
“This is a wonderful service that John’s discovered,” Bock says. “He’s onto something.”—AK
Nine-time “Jeopardy!” winner ISAAC HIRSCH ’14 placed second in its 2025 Tournament of Champions in February, taking home $75,000 and increasing his total winnings to $215,390.
RICH ELLENSON ’02 , an information and communications manager at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, set the Guinness World Record for fastest pineapple cutting. The video of his peelingand-slicing achievement netted over 6 million views on X.
TRACY MARGOLIES ’96 was named president of luxury retailer Bergdorf Goodman. She was previously chief marketing officer at Saks.
“Return of the Terns: How Scientists Are Saving Island Birds” is the latest nonfiction children’s book by JENNIFER KEATS CURTIS ’91, M.A. ’93 , co-written with Kim Abplanalp of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program. It describes how the group created a 48-square-foot raft for the migrating terns after one they had long used eroded away.
“CBS Mornings” co-host GAYLE KING ’76 was part of the all-women crew for Blue Origin’s recent flight to the boundary of space. Pop singer Katy Perry, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen and film producer Kerianne Flynn were among the other members who in April traveled 62 miles up to the Kármán line, which is recognized as the spot that separates Earth’s atmosphere from space.
Submit your class notes and read many more at terp.umd.edu.
JOHN WAKEFIELD ’89
Building on a Legacy
Alum Strives to Help Residents Reclaim Vibrant Black Community in Redeveloped Barry Farm
RoM the RooFtop of the Asberry, a sleek new senior residence in Southeast D.C., rich history and a promising future converge in view. Five humble World War II-era houses sit just beyond mounds of dirt and clamoring construction vehicles, with the Anacostia River and Washington Monument on the horizon.
FMaia Shanklin Roberts M.C.P. ’11 is working to bridge the gap between the past and future. As vice president of real estate development at the nonprofit Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), she’s leading the redevelopment of the historic Black community of Barry Farm. The revitalized area—initially established for formerly enslaved African Americans, rebuilt as public housing and bulldozed after government neglect—has begun welcoming back previous residents alongside new ones, with Shanklin Roberts ensuring their voices are heard throughout the transformation.
be a very strong Black neighborhood. I think it’s important that we weave in this history.”
A D.C. native herself, Shanklin Roberts majored in urban studies at Stanford University before earning her master’s in community planning at UMD. She “fell in love with low-income housing tax credits” while at law school at American University, she says, and practiced as an affordable housing attorney until 2022. That’s when she came across the Barry Farm project in her hometown.
Its roots reach back to 1867, when a new federal agency called the Freedmen’s Bureau purchased the land to create a self-sustaining community for African Americans after the Civil War. Residents built their own homes, schools and churches, forming a close-knit neighborhood that fostered creativity and advocacy. Political activists, including Frederick Douglass’ family, called Barry Farm home.
Those themes continued into the
“What my goal is and what my organization’s goal is is to revive that sense of pride, revive that legacy of ownership and self-determination,” she says of the project, which is slated for completion in 2030. “This will largely still
1940s, when the government seized a section of the community to form the 442-unit Barry Farm Dwellings, a public housing project for Black residents.
“That is the story that I feel like is a little bit lost or at least dampened by some of the more recent history, which is the history that we see of a lot of public housing communities: high crime, high violence, poverty and substance abuse,” Shanklin Roberts says. The area, isolated
“This will largely still be a very strong Black neighborhood. I think it’s important that we weave in this history.”
—MAIA SHANKLIN ROBERTS M.C.P. ’11
MAIA SHANKLIN ROBERTS M.C.P. ’11
by two major highways, deteriorated as the city failed to provide maintenance and repairs, resulting in crumbling ceilings, leaky faucets, and infestations of rats and roaches.
Now, under the city’s New Communities Initiative, Shanklin Roberts’ team is helping residents reclaim their oncevibrant neighborhood. The Asberry, the site’s first residence, began leasing its 108 affordable units in November, and the project when completed will consist of 900 units in multifamily buildings and townhomes. Of those, at least 380 will be replacement units for former Barry Farm residents, who were relocated after demolition in 2019.
The site will also include 40,000 square feet of commercial space, a community center and park, plus new infrastructure and utilities—all of which has involved complex conversations with several D.C. agencies, says Rodger Brown, POAH managing director of real estate development.
Shanklin Roberts “has been a great thought partner as we figure out how to navigate the twists and turns of transforming a community in Washington while protecting the rights and interests of existing residents,” he says.
Regaining that resident trust has been what Shanklin Roberts calls a “beautiful challenge.” After tenants and allies pushed for a section of Barry Farm to earn historic landmark status, her team is preserving five original buildings. They’ll be repurposed, she says, as part of the new, thriving community.
“Everything that has been happening is for us,” says former Barry Farm resident Pamela House. “I’ve actually thought about packing up now because I am ready to leave this temporary place. Back home is where I want and need to be.”—Ak
A Towering Terp Achievement
STUDENTS PILE ON the fun during the Spring 1988 Cambridge Olympics, described in The Diamondback as a week of “almost-anything-goes events” in the North Campus community. Were you one of the human bricks in the pyramid? Or do you recognize any of these Terps rocking ’80s ’dos? Share your memories at terpfeedback@umd.edu, and check the next issue to read the responses and see another unique snapshot from UMD’s archives.—AK
FROM THE LAST ISSUE…
Laurie Zimmerman Savage ’95, co-owner of Brown Cow Creamery at Savage Acres Farm in Dickerson, Md., herded up some info about the Ag Day photo featured in the Winter 2025 issue. The cow candid originally appeared in the annual event’s 1994 program, which Zimmerman Savage still has after showing a dairy steer and other animals that year and winning the showmanship award.
SWEET SUCCESS
Senior guard Shyanne Sellers shoots as the Maryland women’s basketball team hosts Norfolk State in the NCAA Tournament’s first round. After defeating the Spartans, the Terps then overcame a 17-point deficit to edge out Alabama in a double-overtime thriller and reach the Sweet 16.
The madness and magic of March extended to the men’s squad: Freshman center Derik Queen’s buzzer-beater a day earlier vs. Colorado State sent the Terps dancing into the Sweet 16 too, marking the first time both teams advanced together.—AK
PHOTO BY AUSTIN DESISTO / MARYLAND ATHLETICS
Canadian Rockies
Holiday Markets Cruise: The Festive Rhine River
Cambodia, Vietnam & Mekong River
Swiss Alps & Italian Lakes
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THE WEST COAST HAS SILICON VALLEY. THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION BOASTS THE GROWING CAPITAL OF QUANTUM —AND AT THE CENTER IS THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. As one of the world’s leading hubs for quantum science and engineering, we bring together hundreds of brilliant researchers, robust partnerships and a vibrant business ecosystem that includes IonQ, a global leader in quantum computing spun out of UMD labs. Together, we’re building a new industry that will invigorate the state of Maryland’s economy while ushering in revolutionary tech to benefit the world.
It’s all happening now at the University of Maryland. Here, we lead Fearlessly Forward.