In West Baltimore, a new kind of classroom is taking shape, one where students design, build, and bring ideas to life. At The Village at Mondawmin, Terrapin Works Baltimore—the first community-facing Terrapin makerspace—is inspiring creative thinking and opening doors to engineering pathways through hands-on learning and collaboration.

Through classes and open shop hours, students, youth, neighbors, and program partners can explore, learn, create, and foster connections through the power of making.

Inspiring the next generation through the power of making

Brian Palmer welcomes guests to Terrapin Works Baltimore (Photo by Maximilian Franz)

Hands-on design and build experiences—using simple hand-held tools, computer-aided and even additive and subtractive manufacturing tools—cultivate competence in basic STEM concepts while encouraging problem solving and innovation. By facilitating the engineering design process, makerspace projects are aimed at building real-world skills and confidence in community members at all ages and stages.

This is the beginning, says India Alexander, faculty specialist for Experiential Learning Programs at UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, who has developed and coordinated a series of experiential learning events that have reached hundreds of students and families across Baltimore City. Having soft launched in 2025, Terrapin Works Baltimore is staffed with a manager, Brian Palmer, and equipped with state-of-the-art resources, including a woodshop and cutting-edge fabrication tools.

“The makerspace not only gives the university visibility in the West Baltimore community, but it also gives us a hub where we can expose students to career paths and life skills through engineering concepts and makerspace technology,” Alexander says. “With our community outreach and workshops, we’re helping K-12 students, young adults, and other community members be as creative and innovative as they want to be.”

Partnerships fuel the pipeline—and community programming

Experiential learning to foster an interest in STEM

The Village at Mondawmin in Baltimore (Photo by Maximilian Franz)

In 2024, Maryland Engineering began collaborating with the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company and community partner TouchPoint Baltimore to establish the experiential learning program at The Village at Mondawmin, a hands-on introduction to engineering through design-and-build projects aimed at exposing students and families to STEM—to inspire the next generation, provide real-world skills, and also expand the engineering pipeline.

The program initially focuses primarily on K-12 outreach within the Baltimore community, fostering connections with Clark School faculty and staff, undergraduate students, and community organizations and corporate partners.

Through long-term, cumulative educational offerings, these collaborations will help support students with a strong interest in STEM, guiding them successfully through their higher education journey wherever it may lead.

In 2024 and 2025, Baltimore City students and families engaged in diverse programming including a STEM fair, a career exploration day, a community festival, and workshops that gave students hands-on experience learning about engineering fundamentals and disciplines and the engineering design process, while learning how STEM can be applied to global sustainability.

Field trips to work sites and college makerspaces

Outside of the Mondawmin site, students experienced a field trip where they met industry professionals and toured a construction site at Morgan State University.

They also traveled to College Park for a tour of UMD’s campus—the first college visit for many participants—and a visit to UMD’s Terrapin Works, where they explored 3D printing and laser cutting.

Introducing pilot workshops for local student groups

(Photo by Maximilian Franz)

In late 2025, Terrapin Works Baltimore activated its makerspace with several pilot workshops tailored especially for local student groups, including school-based community nonprofit Harlem Lacrosse Baltimore.

The workshop introduced high school students to 3D printing through a hands-on exploration of fused deposition modeling technology. Using beginner-friendly computer-aided drafting software and printing tools, the participants were instructed in the designing, slicing, and printing of a miniature lacrosse stick, while learning from a session facilitator how engineers use this technology for real-world applications, including sports equipment, medical prosthetics, and footwear.

“They came in curious,” Alexander says of the students. “They learned how to do 3D modeling and how to send the design to the printer. They learned the code. By the end they were all working in teams—and excited.”

A space for innovation and skills-building

Providing 3D printing, laser cutting, and fabrication equipment for Baltimore residents and students, the community partnership has brought STEM technology—among many other investments—into community spaces. “The makerspace’s long-term vision of “uplifting students in the community with more access, more skills, and more options,” is within reach, Alexander says.

A woodshop and prototyping lab anchor the space

(Photo by Maximilian Franz)

Two main rooms comprise the makerspace: an approximately 18-by-35-foot woodshop with professional woodworking equipment plus entry-level tools, such as coping saws, for younger and less-experienced students.

“It’s a working woodshop and also a showpiece,” says Palmer, who manages the Baltimore makerspace and works with Terrapin Works in College Park, where there are 15 on-campus makerspaces, to coordinate efforts. “Because of our location in The Village at Mondawmin, facing into the rest of the building, there’s a lot of foot traffic. It’s a way to get people aware of our partnership.”

An approximately 10-by-18-foot prototyping lab catering to digital design projects houses computers, 3D printers, power supplies, breadboards for circuit building, and soldering stations. In an attached display space, two large and two smaller monitors continually run UMD content providing more advertising for the makerspace partnerships; further plans for the space include displays of student projects.

Room to grow

Among potential future pathways and opportunities, Alexander lists experiential learning modules, cumulative series, micro-credential certification courses, and the possibility of makerspace interns and contractors to ensure students and community members are gaining cumulative skills and career options.

Collaboration and looking ahead

(Photo by Maximilian Franz)

Spring 2026 plans for the makerspace include a 3D printing workshop and a rapid prototyping workshop for area high school students, where they will use woodworking hand tools to build a model of a new Francis Scott Key Bridge—adding a local, real-world design element to the project.

Maryland engineering majors will likely serve as facilitators.

Expanding Opportunities—and Solutions—Around the State

Terrapin Works Baltimore is part of a powerful network of partnerships and programs around the state of Maryland helping to accelerate solutions to the most pressing problems facing our state, nation, and world:

• In Southern Maryland, the MATRIX Lab anchors the state’s autonomy corridor, providing researchers with unparalleled resources to research, design, manufacture, and test the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.
• In Prince George’s County, educators are empowering thousands of rising high schoolers each year through the Get Outside and Learn Engineering Kit Program and other initiatives that jumpstart engineering learning.
• In Shady Grove, college students are preparing for the next wave of health care utilizing AI and big data.
• In Baltimore, the Edward and Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering in Medicine joins together Fischell Department of Bioengineering faculty with the University of Maryland School of Medicine to develop and translate next-generation bioengineering technologies that drive research and innovation in the development of interventions that improve patients’ lives.

And Terrapin Works Baltimore is igniting imaginations, developing skills, expanding the engineering pipeline, and helping to inject new investment in West Baltimore.

For the eighth consecutive year, the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland ranks among the country’s top 10 public universities in graduate engineering, according to U.S. News & World Report’s 2026–27 rankings.

With more than 960 graduate students pursuing research degrees under the guidance of 215 tenure-track faculty, Maryland Engineering ranks 18th overall for the third consecutive year among more than 200 public and private engineering schools.

“The world’s most exciting technologies are developing at an unprecedented pace, and it’s engineers who are helping them mature: ethical and impactful use of artificial intelligence; the development of improved and sustainable energy sources and storage systems; expansion of quantum computing and networking systems; creation of smart manufacturing systems that strengthen our nation’s economy; integration of AI and advanced technologies into health care solutions that are accessible, affordable, and personalized to the patient; and more,” Clark School Dean Samuel Graham said.

“Our school is home for people with a passion to lead technological advancements that impact society, and the innovation and ingenuity to do it,” said Dean Graham. “I cannot thank our students, faculty, and staff enough: I am extremely proud of their sustained commitment to excellence in graduate research and education, and their focus on improving society.”

All degree programs ranked in the top 25 among publics

Three were ranked in the top 10.

In January 2026, the school’s online graduate engineering program was ranked 11th overall among all U.S. schools and 8th among publics.

When our students, faculty, and staff share innovate, people tune in

The Clark School is continuing its trendsetting research in engineering and medicine, microelectronics, energy storage and production, autonomy, quantum technology, robotics, batteries, and more.

We have one-of-a-kind educational and research opportunities

• At the Edward & Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine in Baltimore, working with the University of Maryland School of Medicine, students can create technologies that improve clinical practice and patient care.
• At the MATRIX Lab in St. Mary’s County, they can help build new autonomous systems that will deliver medical supplies and disaster relief and address national security needs.
• In our engineering AI program, they can master the skills needed to apply AI to specific engineering fields.

We have trendsetting institutes and centers

Including ones focused on systems engineering, robotics, energy, extreme battery technologies, industrial AI, transportation, biomedical devices, disaster resilience, rotorcraft, advanced computer studies, and many more.

The Clark School also recently co-hosted a National Academy of Engineering-member led event, “Closing Strategy Gaps for the Future of AI Infrastructure,” focused on the needed advances in electronics and hardware, energy and water resources in data centers and physical AI systems, thermal management, export control and policy, and workforce development for AI.

We offer robust fellowship and award opportunities

• The Clark Doctoral Fellows Program supports up to 30 new high-performing engineering Ph.D. students each year as an impetus for research in strategic and vital areas
• We recognize excellence with Clark Doctoral Fellows Mid-Career Awards, Outstanding Graduate Assistant Awards, and the Charles A. Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award

We are proudly training future educators and researchers

Our Future Faculty Program aims to:

• Increase the number of highly qualified educators produced by the Clark School
• Prepare selected doctoral students for successful careers as educators and researchers
• Place students in leading institutions for maximum impact and continued partnership with the Clark School

We prepare our students for meaningful careers

• Facilitating internships for mid-career students in our region, a hub of industry and government collaborative research
• Supporting research and professional development with an array of school and university-level award programs
• Collaborating with student leaders in the Engineering Graduate Student Society and Engineering Graduate Student Leadership Network to better tailor programs to graduate student needs
• Expanding Engineering Career Services with moderns and always-available tools to help students develop application materials and practice with AI-powered interviews before rehearsing with our experienced professional staff

New facilities that support future innovation and breakthroughs

During summer 2026, the school’s new $214.4 million interdisciplinary engineering building, Stanley R. Zupnik Hall, will reach substantial completion and move into preparation for our opening celebration. This new facility will support research in structures, environmental engineering, transportation, energy storage, data centers, quantum engineering, and physical AI. We are looking forward to inviting interdisciplinary teams to work in these spaces to create solutions to grand challenges in these fields.

The school is already home to some of the country’s signature entrepreneurial and research hubs, including the E.A. Fernandez IDEA (Innovate, Design and Engineer for America) Factory and the $86 million Southern Maryland Autonomous Research and Technology (SMART) Building, offering unique resources for innovating the next generation of AI and autonomous systems.

Welcome to our 2026 history and heritage months, celebrating the people that make our community unique, and the individual and collective accomplishments that benefit us all. We begin with Black History Month.

Black engineers—from pioneering civil engineer Archie Alexander to NASA’s first black woman engineer Mary W. Jackson—have contributed to our discipline in ways that continue to inspire progress and service to the public good.

Here at UMD, the late John Slaughter, a groundbreaking engineer and our university’s first Black leader, opened the door for generations of Terp engineers to come, including the late Kevin C. Greenaugh Ph.D. ’98, UMD’s first Black doctoral graduate in nuclear engineering.

Jamaica-born Clark Opportunity Transfer Scholar Joshua Budram says being a Black man has meant he’s had to overcome barriers. “But rather than let that determine my opportunities, it gives me the motivation to push forward,” he said. The junior aerospace engineering major, who has interned at NASA, credits CMSE, the Black Engineers Society, and Coordinator for Retention for Clark Foundation Scholarship Programs Guerda Mervilus for helping him tackle challenges and “really feel like an engineer.”

CMSE was established at the Clark School in 1981 and remains a beacon for pre-college, undergraduate, and graduate students in engineering and other STEM fields. UMD’s Black Engineer’s Society, housed under CMSE, celebrated 50 years of impact in 2025. One of the first chapters in the U.S., it has been recognized by the National Society of Black Engineers with awards and appointments to the national executive board. Taken together, CMSE’s work has fostered generations of successful Black Maryland engineers and encouraged them to provide the same opportunities to others.

For example, Terp engineer Garrett Childs M.S. ’91 (materials science engineering) and his wife Dr. Marcella Childs, along with their daughter Elizabeth Childs ’21 (mechanical engineering), were inspired by Elizabeth’s interactions with CMSE and established the new Pay It Forward Scholarships for CMSE Bridge students entering Maryland Engineering.

This year marks 100 years since the founding of national Black History Month. In observance, the Multicultural Involvement and Community Advocacy (MICA) Office established the theme, “A Century of Black Commemoration.” Let us all reflect, engage with, and build on this history. I encourage you to visit MICA’s calendar of campuswide events, open to all.

Sincerely,

Akua A. Asa-Awuku
Associate Dean, Community Success and Workforce Development
she/her/hers

The A. James Clark School of Engineering ranks #12 among the country’s public colleges and universities in undergraduate engineering, according to U.S. News & World Report’s (USNWR) 2025–26 rankings of more than 200 degree programs. Overall, Maryland Engineering ranked #21, marking the 23rd consecutive year the school is among the nation’s top 25 undergraduate programs. 

“The world’s most promising technologies are developing at an unprecedented pace. It is engineers who will help them realize their potential, and Clark School engineers are leading the way,” said Dean Samuel Graham. “Our undergraduate experience prepares and empowers students to benefit society by combining top-tier academic programs, research opportunities, experiential learning, study abroad, career placement, and more. We are proud to have a supportive community where everyone is welcome and anyone can pursue their passion, and encourage the future’s difference-makers to join us here at Maryland.”

Six programs in the top 20

In addition to ranking #12 among public and #21 among all institutions, six of the Clark School’s departments rank among the top 20 public programs in the country; five rank in the top 15 (U.S.)

A full-circle student experience, including research opportunities for undergrads

The Clark School offers one of the most dynamic undergraduate programs in the country. Its curriculum responds quickly to changes in the nation’s economy and its workforce needs. New programs include one in Engineering Artificial Intelligence (AI), where students can master the skills needed to apply AI to specific engineering fields; the Edward & Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine in Baltimore, working with the University of Maryland School of Medicine, to create technologies that improve clinical practice and patient care; and a minor in quantum science and engineering.

The school’s undergraduate research programs are also among the nation’s most robust, working under the philosophy that undergraduates should begin discovering new knowledge as early as possible in their academic careers. Examples include the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Model for Experiential Learning; the MATRIX Lab in St. Mary’s County, which is building autonomous systems to deliver medical supplies, disaster relief, and  national security needs; and our Capstone Design Expo, giving undergraduate students a chance to create real-world solutions and receive feedback from industry experts. 

In addition to those opportunities—and clubs, competition teams, internships—students can participate in:

• The Keystone Program, providing comprehensive support for students in first- and second-year engineering courses, pairing top faculty with students in a smaller setting

• Terrapin Works, with an extensive network of makerspaces for ideating, prototyping, and fabricating cutting-edge designs

• Study abroad, enabling nearly 30 percent of undergraduate students to have an international experience before graduation

• xFoundry, a campuswide entrepreneurship program based in the Clark School 

UMD is also home to a successful student-run business incubator, Startup Shell, supporting more than 300 ventures and providing a network with more than $1 billion in venture value.

From innovative startups and entrepreneurship to whole-student education, Maryland Engineering empowers students to imagine, create, and launch solutions that shape the future.

Track record of ranking success: graduate, online programs

In April 2025, the Clark School ranked among the country’s top 10 public universities in graduate engineering programs for the seventh consecutive year. Overall, Maryland Engineering ranked #18 for the second consecutive year among more than 200 public and private engineering schools. In January 2025, the Clark School ranked ninth in the nation for online graduate engineering programs.

Inaugural Capstone Design Expo Highlights Real-World Innovations

How do we make medicine safer and more accessible for all? How do we design and build our infrastructure to be future-ready? What lessons can Earth learn from its moon? And as our planet heats up under the pressures of climate change, how do we keep cool? These are just a few of the pressing societal challenges facing the next generation of engineers and problem solvers — including the talented and hardworking students of the A. James Clark School of Engineering.

At the Clark School, we provide many exciting opportunities for our students to demonstrate leadership through experiential learning while creating solutions to some of our world’s greatest challenges. Among the opportunities for Clark School students, the year-long capstone courses that culminate in a design showcase are vital to training tomorrow’s engineers.  

Our first annual Capstone Design Expo brings together more than 500 senior-level students from across Maryland Engineering’s civil and environmental, aerospace, mechanical, and bioengineering programs. Approximately 100 teams will showcase their capstone design projects, which will be judged by experts in their respective fields — with top team designs receiving cash prizes. One team will receive the overall Dean’s Award, presented by Samuel Graham, Jr., dean of the Clark School. “The Capstone Design Expo is a unique time to celebrate and a time for the community to learn about the great innovation happening in Maryland Engineering,” Graham said. 

Early in the capstone design process, student teams are presented challenges from corporate partners, including event sponsor the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company. Working under the guidance of faculty members and industry experts, students engage in an engineering project process that helps them become career-ready. “We want our graduates to be prepared from day one,” said Graham. “What better way than to have our students team up with local industry and governmental agencies to address the problems that exist in the real world today?” 

The Capstone Design Expo invites members of the Maryland Engineering community, along with friends and family to witness what Clark School seniors are doing to change the world. (For information on student teams and visitor registration visit the Capstone Design Expo site.)

What to expect at the Capstone Design Expo? 

Taking flight:

Teams of aerospace engineering students on the space track will present their innovative space system designs. Air track student teams from UMD’s Design Build Fly chapter and teams competing in Vertical Flight Society competitions will present their aircraft projects. New this year, a mixed team of space and air track seniors embarked on a hypersonics capstone co-taught by Igor Sikorsky Distinguished Professor in Rotorcraft James Baeder and Kevin Bowcutt ’82, M.S. ’84, Ph.D. ’86. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and a recognized expert in hypersonic aerodynamics, propulsion integration, and vehicle design, Bowcutt is senior technical fellow and chief scientist of Hypersonics for Boeing and provided collaboration from an industry perspective. The project’s prompt? To design a viable supersonic or hypersonic passenger transport jet.

The team is designing a supersonic vehicle that could fly at Mach 3.6 from Los Angeles to Tokyo within three hours instead of the 12 hours it takes on a conventional airliner. The project involves eight disciplines: configuration, aerodynamics, propulsion, thermal, structural design, mass properties, performance, and market and cost analysis. Team and propulsion lead Adin Goldberg has learned a lot over the course of the project — from the ins and outs of designing a jet propulsion engine to project management and communication skills. He’s excited to present the team’s poster and prototype: a toy-sized, 3-D-printed model. He hopes to test the model in the High-Speed Aerodynamics and Propulsion Laboratory before the competition. His big project takeaways? 

“Even though it’s aircraft design — wing design, engine propulsion, and vehicle configuration — it’s still a lot of what we learned in our lower level classes, like iteration through equations and thermal analysis questions,” he said. “That makes some of these projects that sound unfeasible seem feasible with the numbers to back them up.”

Improving medical care:

Ethics, clinical trials, and entrepreneurship are just a few of the topics covered in the capstone design course for bioengineering and biocomputational engineering students. This year, 20 student teams used what they’ve learned to create their own engineering designs — from concept to product to business plan. Advised by Fischell Department of Bioengineering Lecturer Kyung Koh and working with Children’s National Health Center mentors, one team set out to create affordable and accessible telemedicine headphones tailored for diagnosing middle ear conditions in children ages zero to eight.

The engineering problem: hospital emergency rooms are overburdened with children suffering from ear infections, and testing equipment is expensive. Using a custom printed circuit board and designing their own casing and an interactive user interface, the team’s in-ear device would do the testing and send results to the parent or guardian through an app, while it sends raw data to the child’s doctor. The proposed telehealth solution has the potential to make ear health management more accessible, reduce unnecessary antibiotic use, and mitigate preventable hearing loss in children. 

Team member Maya Wheeler, a graduating bioengineering senior on the public health policy track in the Federal Fellows Program at UMD, said the complicated hardware and software problem posed technical challenges. To meet them, the team got help from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Maryland Robotics Center, and computer engineering junior Alfredo Santiago, whom Wheeler knew through her involvement in the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers. While the team is still debugging code, Wheeler is proud of how far they’ve come. “Making this equipment easy to use and getting it down to $200 from more than $2,000 is a big deal,” she said. “This work makes medicine more accessible.”

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Building adaptive devices:

Mechanical engineering seniors highlight their talents and creativity in a capstone design course that challenges them to present project prototypes built to solve selected engineering problems. This year, two project teams presenting at the Capstone Design Expo are sponsored by Volunteers for Medical Engineering (VME), which provided each team a $350 spending budget to design and build assistive devices for Baltimore customers. Team 26 is working under guidance from Assistant Professor Davis McGregor on a bedside workstation. Team 9 is working under guidance from Assistant Clinical Professor Aris Cleanthous on a voice-activated treadmill for a little person.  

The most special aspect of the capstone projects with VME is that students get to work on a “real and pressing problem for a real and specific customer, while having the support of an incredible organization,” Cleanthous said. “At the end of the semester, these teams get to deliver their creations to the customer who becomes the beneficiary of their hard work. You can't beat this kind of reward.”

Graduating mechanical engineering senior Owen Quinn is happy to see his team’s hard work pay off, from pen and paper design drafts to a functioning, physical project with possible future applications. “We are confident that our design is easily modifiable enough to be used as a basis for other treadmills, potentially helping other people who may need something similar,” he said.

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Streamlining construction:

The capstone experience for civil and environmental engineering seniors emphasizes student creativity, design methodologies, evaluation of alternate solutions, feasibility considerations, and detailed system descriptions. Students build on skills acquired throughout their coursework and have hands-on experiences similar to those encountered by new engineers working in professional engineering and construction practice. This year, new Clark School corporate partner Allan Myers sponsored several student teams tackling problems posed by the civil contractor.

Working under the guidance of Professor Deb Niemeier, the Clark Distinguished Chair in Energy and Sustainability, and with Senior Project Manager at Allan Myers Will Sigafoose as client contact, one team aimed to solve the problems public agencies experience in the management of public construction projects. These commonly include schedule delays, cost overruns — and frustration. The proposed solution? A dedicated management team, or on-call group, responsible for internal and external communication, streamlining contract oversight, and enforcing clear roles, responsibilities, and deadlines for all parties of a conceptual Baltimore City project.

Graduating senior and team lead Justin Wu is a civil engineering major with a focus on transportation and project management. “This project is a good example of how to move public construction projects along more quickly and more efficiently,” he said. “We’re improving communication and coordination — factors that play a huge role in project schedule and cost.” Plus the project is “good preparation,” he said, for life after graduation, when he will go to work as a traffic design engineer at JMT.

From water systems to transportation networks to energy grids, the foundational structures that are vital to civilization are rapidly aging—and failing. Talented engineers with strong technical capabilities and exceptional leadership skills are needed to develop solutions to these and the world’s other intractable problems.

At the University of Maryland, Terp engineers are at the forefront of developing integrated solutions for our species and planet. Stanley R. Zupnik Hall is symbolic of Maryland Engineering’s exciting potential to break the mold of traditional approaches to research: When the facility is completed in 2026, students, faculty, and staff across multiple engineering disciplines will come together with cross-campus institutes and external partners to take on society’s most pressing grand challenges.

The Fall/Winter 2023 issue of Engineering at Maryland magazine asks four of the faculty leaders who will innovate within the labs, classrooms, and collaborative spaces of Zupnik Hall to take us inside their processes, priorities, and plans for the future. Cozy up to the latest issue of Maryland Engineering’s biannual magazine and learn how these civic-minded thinkers are using their prowess to build a better world—for everyone.

Read the Fall/Winter 2023 issue

Additional issue highlights include:

• IN THE NEWS: Maryland engineers turn crab shells into batteries
• INVENTION OF THE YEAR: Device harvests water from air
• SPACE: Alum becomes the 19th Black astronaut in history
• RESEARCH: Women faculty receive prestigious NSF CAREER awards

The Fall/Winter 2023 cover and feature illustrations were created for Engineering at Maryland magazine by Philadelphia-based artist Mark Harris, whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and others.

Send letters to the editor:

Melissa L. Andreychek
Engineering at Maryland magazine
A. James Clark School of Engineering
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
email

Engineering at Maryland magazine is published twice a year for alums and friends of the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. Digital issues are available on the Maryland Engineering website.

Since 2016, students in the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation’s A. James Clark Scholars Program represent some of the most promising engineers, scholars, researchers, and community members in the country. With the ambition of continuing that tradition, the Clark Foundation and University of Maryland (UMD) today announced that the program—implemented at 11 of the nation’s top engineering institutions—will have a new permanent home at UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering, and known as the Clark Scholars Program Network.

“We are proud to introduce the Clark Scholars Program Network, the first-of-its-kind program to outlive the sunsetting foundation that created it. The sense of community between program staff and scholars across all 11 university partners is part of what makes this program so unique. The network will forge an even closer-knit community of collaboration among program leaders along with their universities, Clark Scholars Programs, students, and alums,” said Joe Del Guercio, president and CEO of the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation.

Clark Scholars Program Network: Ensuring Student Success Continues

The newly announced Clark Scholars Program Network will maintain the Foundation’s successful Clark Scholars Program and evolve to meet future students’ emerging needs and success:

• Enabling the continuation of the program community in perpetuity
• Establishing the infrastructure to lead and guide the program across its 11 partner universities

Network team members will collect, analyze, document, and disseminate data from across the network to bring about more effective student recruiting and success.

“[As] a Clark Scholar, I am given the opportunity to pursue a career in the engineering field and work with mentors and like-minded students who are passionate about changing the world.”

Matthew Cimifranca, Penn State Clark Scholar

By facilitating opportunities to convene and discuss best practices and new ideas, the network will also foster more community between scholars, alums, leadership, staff, and partner institutions. The network will additionally establish a strong alum network as well as host an annual Clark Scholars Summit at partner institutions. Partner institutions include Duke University, The George Washington University, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins University, Penn State, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, and Virginia Tech.

“Jim Clark would often say, ‘This is our home; we should build it.’ And build it he did. He believed that if you gave a person a chance, they would create greatness. The Clark Scholars Program has given hundreds of students a chance, and the greatness they are creating will shape the world for decades to come. We are excited and honored to carry forward Mr. Clark’s legacy of impact,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines.

UMD’s Clark Scholars Program was established as part of Building Together, the Foundation’s $219.5 million investment in the University of Maryland announced in October 2017. As a longtime partner to the Clark Foundation, the Clark School is poised to continue the Clark Scholars Program legacy, honoring its mission and values.

Addressing Society’s Grand Challenges

The Clark Scholars Program is the Clark Foundation’s signature academic program, combining engineering, business, leadership, and community service. The goal of the Clark Scholars Program is to graduate participants with little to no college debt and for these graduates to join the network of alums who are advancing technology through innovation.

“‘Grateful’ is an understatement. The Clark Scholars [Program] helped me and so many others finance college, and it was amazing meeting Clarks from other schools. Every day, I’m thankful for the opportunities this program has given us, including the chance to study abroad and go to incredible Broadway shows, sports games, and cooking classes, and for introducing me to lifelong friends.”

Emily Ng, Alum, Stevens Clark Scholar

The Clark Scholars Program is designed to recruit, retain, and graduate exceptionally talented engineering students with financial need who are poised to take on society’s grand challenges. Clark Scholars confront these challenges with a multidisciplinary, socially aware, and entrepreneurial background. Program participants take engineering and business classes, participate in community service, and attend seminars and events with leaders in the field.

“By translating innovative science into technology solutions, engineering is poised to address critical societal challenges facing humanity. We are proud to educate the next generation of engineers; the Clark Scholars Program is indispensable in this endeavor,” said Samuel Graham, Jr., dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering.

Legacy of Impact, Helping Students Pursue Their Dreams

To date, the program has provided support to 591 Clark Scholars at 11 universities. Year after year, the program outperforms the national averages of students from demographics underrepresented in STEM, women, and Pell Grant-eligible students enrolled in undergraduate engineering degree programs:

• 50 percent of Clark Scholars are women, compared to 25 percent of engineering students nationally; and
• 46 percent of Clark Scholars are from demographics underrepresented in STEM, compared to 26 percent nationally.

“The investment into [Clark Scholars] at Georgia Tech by [the] Clark Foundation has enabled us as an educational institution to be attentive to the direction our students are moving. What do they value? What do they need for what lies ahead?”

David Torello, Georgia Tech Clark Scholars Program Leader

In addition, 71 percent of Clark Scholars did not have to take on private student loan debt due to the Clark Program scholarship during the 2022–23 academic year.

“Mr. Clark was a visionary who built a successful business but never lost his connection to his local community. We are honored to carry forward Mr. Clark’s legacy, opening the doors of opportunity for aspiring engineers and continuing his commitment to community service,” said Dean Graham.

A new approach to teaching advanced fabrication skills is leading the way in preparing a semiconductor manufacturing workforce for the future. The University of Maryland (UMD) now offers ENEE 419M, “Advanced Manufacturing Lab” (AML), an innovative, multidisciplinary class for undergraduates and select graduate students. A new teaching method being pioneered in this course eventually will allow universities to teach in-demand skills and provide broad access to state-of-the-art technology throughout the country. This course is now being taught at the College Park campus and will be offered at the University System of Maryland at Southern Maryland UMD MATRIX Lab in Fall 2025.

“The Advanced Manufacturing Lab teaches students a variety of highly sought-after microelectronics fabrication skills useful in graduate research and technical workplaces,” said University of Maryland Herbert Rabin Distinguished Chair in Engineering Dr. Reza Ghodssi, one of the course’s creators. “The course provides state-of-the-art opportunities and access to cutting-edge technologies, independent of clean room environments.”

The AML is a joint effort between Dr. Ghodssi and Assistant Professor Dr. Kevin Daniels (ECE); they created the course with input from their students and alumni. It is relevant to and supported by multiple UMD units: A. James Clark School of Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, Bioengineering, and the Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices.

The course includes four modules: benchtop soft materials lithography, hybrid manufacturing, nanomaterial – nanoparticles, and system integration/case study. Fabrication topics and skills can be updated as technology advances. In addition, individual modules can be taught as stand-alone short courses—helpful to attract more types of students including area high school STEM teachers and industry partner employees. AML students will gain knowledge and experience typically only acquired in on-the-job training.

“This modular, interdisciplinary teaching method is an innovative way to approach education,” Dr. Daniels said. “Students will learn the latest and greatest skills and be able to apply them in many engineering fields.”

Recently, both the federal government and industry have invested in increasing chip production in the U.S. through the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 and the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021. There are many economic, security, and technological reasons for producing chips domestically. As an article from The Economist points out, the country needs a skilled workforce to run the new chip facilities. Chips are used in consumer products, automobiles, computers, micro medical devices and more.

The AML’s portability allows the course to be taught across University System of Maryland campuses. Future sites could include the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and the Universities at Shady Grove. The course contributes to UMD’s “Grand Challenges” mission. It is a real-life engineering research investment that addresses complex issues facing the state, nation, and world.

 

To learn more about microelectronics workforce development, read our story about DREEM, a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant funded by NSF’s Experiential Learning for Emerging and Novel Technologies (ExLENT) program.

The ceremony will be held Wednesday, September 13 at 2 p.m. at Memorial Chapel (7600 Baltimore Avenue, College Park, MD 20740). In an academic setting, convocation is a time for the university community to gather, officially usher in the academic year, and celebrate achievements across the campus. Academic and service honorees, selected by their peers, wear robes and caps befitting the formal tone of the occasion, as would professors during commencement ceremonies. The word convocation is taken from the Latin words com (meaning together) and vocare (to call).

Maryland Engineering’s 2023 honorees

	Director of Global Engineering Leadership Ramsey Jabaji Honored with: President's Distinguished Service Award Jabaji began working at UMD in 2005 and joined the Office of Global Engineering Leadership in 2011; as director since 2020, he has more than doubled the number of Terp engineers studying abroad. While engineering students have traditionally been limited in their study abroad options because of the program’s highly structured curriculum, Jabaji worked with advising staff and faculty to curate approved course packages at universities in Singapore, Denmark, Australia, and more; he also developed the Clark in Madrid program in 2017, which offers 40 engineering courses across two Spanish universities, drawing more than 120 participants last school year. Today, 30 percent of engineering students graduate with study abroad experience (the highest rate of any school or college at UMD). Jabaji additionally piloted the ClarkLEAD program in 2018, now part of UMD’s TerrapinSTRONG initiative, which discusses issues of identity and the importance of having teams with different backgrounds tackle society’s grand challenges. To expand that work, he adapted Belonging & Community at UMD’s Intergroup Dialogues course for engineering, and joined a committee to help expand these efforts across campus.
	Professor and Center Director Liangbing Hu Honored as: Distinguished University Professor Hu, who is the Herbert Rabin Distinguished Professor, has published some 400 research papers, including 10 papers in the prestigious Science and Nature journals. He has received a number of honors for his work, including the Highly Cited Researchers list by Clarivate Analytics (2016–2023); Blavatnik National Awards Honoree; TAPPI Nano Middle Career Award (2019); R&D 100 Winners (2018, 2020–2022); Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2016); University of Maryland Invention of the Year (2019, 2014, 2022); and Air Force Young Investigator Award (2013). He is the director of Center for Materials Innovation in the Clark School and has co-founded multiple startups at UMD, including InventWood Inc., HighT-Tech Inc., and WH-Power Inc. His research group focuses on materials innovations, device integrations, and manufacturing in general with ongoing research activities on wood nanotechnologies, 3000 K extreme materials, and beyond Li-ion batteries. Hu is a fellow of the Materials Research Society.
	Professor and Department Chair Sennur Ulukus Honored as: Distinguished University Professor Ulukus is the first woman faculty member from engineering to be named a Distinguished University Professor. Since joining Maryland in 2001, she has been named a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, received the named Anthony Ephremides Professorship in Information Sciences and Systems, served as the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)’s associate chair for graduate studies, and co-founded the Professional Masters Program in Machine Learning; since 2022, she has served as chair of ECE. Ulukus has been honored with an IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications, NSF CAREER Award, IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, IEEE Communications Society Women in Communications Engineering Outstanding Achievement Award, and IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Green Communications and Computing Distinguished Technical Achievement Recognition Award. She is a Fellow of IEEE.
	Professor Don DeVoe Honored as: Distinguished Scholar-Teacher DeVoe is a Wilson H. Elkins Professor and associate chair of research and administration in the Department of Mechanical Engineering; he holds affiliate appointments in the Department of Bioengineering and Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and is a core faculty member of the Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997 with a focus on microsystems technology. His current research interests include microfluidic systems for applications in nucleic acid diagnostics, cancer immunology, liposomal nanomedicines, and aerobiology. DeVoe is a recipient of the 2013 University System of Maryland Regents Award for Research, was named a 2008 Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and was recognized with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Science Foundation in 2000 for advances in microsystems technology. He recently served as a senior editor for the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, and as treasurer for the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Read more about the 2023 UMD Convocation honorees.

A violence-detection system took the top prize in yesterday’s Northrop Grumman Student Challenge, an Internet of Things (IoT) hackathon.

Developed by information science major William Byrne, computer science students Ethan Huegler and William Meagher, and Zoe Poppert, an immersive media design major, the team took home bragging rights—and $2,500—for its Guardian smart system. It was one of three finalist teams selected from 11 entries.

The competition was part of Northrop Grumman Day, an all-day event for executives with the aerospace and defense company to connect with University of Maryland leaders, students, and faculty. It highlights the university’s close partnership with Northrop Grumman as well as the company’s investment in fostering talent and technology to meet industry needs.

“It’s not every day you have such a leader of the international defense community and leader of such a corporation come to College Park,” university President Darryll J. Pines said during CEO Kathy Warden’s meet-and-greet with students. “Northrop Grumman is one of our most strategic partners across campus.”

The Student Challenge was open to Terp undergraduate teams of two to four students from any major, who were challenged to create a proposal and prototype for a novel IoT device—hardware that connects to the Internet—using a provided computer board. An increasing number of consumer electronics, from smart watches to home security systems to medical testing devices, are part of the IoT. With guidance and mentorship from Northrop Grumman engineers, the teams worked over just three weeks to build their system.

The Guardian combines a camera with machine learning to alert remote users in real time to perceived violence. “Similar home security systems have proven successful, but we found nothing out there that’s implementing a model looking for violence in a space like a campus,” Poppert said.

As for commercial viability of the system, Meagher called it “extreme,” noting the global security camera market in 2021 was $31.88 billion.

The second prize and $1,500 award went to SmartSort, created by mechanical engineering and computer science junior Urjo Nahid and mechanical engineering and robotics junior Billy Rust. While automated sorting and storage are already available in industrial settings, the team wanted to offer an option for  homes and businesses. The desk-sized prototype was built with a camera to label and detect the item to sort, and a motorized spool and track, mechanical arm, and small bins to sort and retrieve items.

The third-place team of computer science majors Andrew Bumgardner, Matt Coley, Asher Weiman, and Quinn Carmack (a double major in mathematics) won $1,000. Its device, called Pair, consists of a website and Python programming library that users can install on any system, such as a home’s sprinkler system, to push sensor data online.

Before the Student Challenge event in A. James Clark Hall, Pines moderated a question-and-answer session with Warden and students. When asked about plans for growing the workforce, she noted the importance of continuing education and on-the-job training and highlighted the company’s mentoring program. “I believe strongly that all of us are on a learning journey, forever,” she said.

As for students beginning their career journey? Warden stressed the importance of personal relationships and of pushing out of one’s comfort zone. “Experiment. Take a little risk,” she said.

Story by Rebecca Ruark for Maryland Today.