The second COEIT Research Day was held on April 11, 2025. Faculty and students showcased their research during four concurrent morning sessions or in the afternoon poster session. (Agenda 2025)
**Student Awards** are indicated by academic level and BOLD name indicates academic level of student talk and poster award winners.
COEIT Research Day Talks 2025
AI Foundations and Applications
- Kasra Darvish, Aidan Newell, An May, Ruchen Wen, Cynthia Matuszek, and Francis Ferraro
Multimodal Reasoning About Human Intentions - Tejas Gokhale
Cognitive Vision: Concepts, Contexts, and Semantics - Seyedali Mohammadi, Bhaskara Hanuma Vedula, Hemank Lamba, Edward Raff, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Francis Ferraro, and Manas Gaur
Do LLMs Adhere to Label Definitions? Examining Their Receptivity to External Label Definitions - Omobolanle Niyi Owoeye, Srushti Rajesh Dharmale, Uzma Hasan, Patricia Ordonez, and Edward Dillon
Exploring the Impact of ChatGPT on Computational Learning: Insights from Early-Stage Information Systems Students in an Introductory Programming Course - Anuradha Ravi and Nirmalya Roy
Collaborative Sensing and Task Execution for Distributed Autonomous Systems
Education
- Karen Chen and Jennifer Posada
Intelligent Coaching of Data Storytelling in the era of AI - Gautom Das
Does Generative AI Help or Hurt Student Writing in Engineering Labs? - Jamie Gurganus, Yashin Brijmohan, Lani McGuire, and Michael M. Malschützky
COIL Multidisciplinary Global Engineering Capstone Class Impact: Faculty and Student Insights Across Four Countries - Rebecca Marie Williams, Afrin Unnisa Syed, and Krishna Vamsi Kurumaddali
Increasing Visual Literacy With Collaborative Foraging, Annotation, Curation, and Critique
Interdisciplinary Research Talks
- Ishraq Md Anjum, Ergun Simsek, Seyed Ehsan Jamali Mahabadi, Thomas F. Carruthers, and Curtis R. Menyuk
Sources of Nonlinearity in Phase Noise of MUTC Photodetectors at Comb-Line Frequencies - Mostafa Cham, Olivia Zhang, Haotong Jing, Weikang Qian, Yixin Wen, and Jianwu Wang
NS-QPE: Leveraging Neuro-Symbolic Approach for Balancing Accuracy and Interpretability of Polarimetric Radar-Based Precipitation Estimation - Foad Hamidi and Lara Martin
Leveraging large language models (LLMs) to Create Personalized Augmentative and Alternative Communication Systems (AACs) - Luis Pinzon-Herrera, Shayan Manuchehrfar, Kwesi Halm, Roaa Hadi, Jorge Almodóvar, and Molly Y. Mollica
Cellular Force Generation on Extracellular Matrix Mimetic Surfaces
Physical Systems
- Md Badrul Hasan, Meilin Yu, and Tim Oates
Assessment of Invariance-Embedded Machine Learning Models for Sub-Grid Scale Stress in Meso-Scale Hurricane Boundary Layer Flows - Sumya Hamid Oishe and Ergun Simsek
A Multi-Objective Topology Optimization for Object Classification at the Speed of Light - August Phelps, Juan Augusto Paredes Salazar, and Ankit Goel
Data-driven Fuzzy Control for Time Optimal Aggressive Trajectory Tracking
Security and Privacy
- Zainab Balogun, Melissa Carraway, Jainam Basra, and Tera Reynolds
Analyzing Cybersecurity Risks in the Digital Health Ecosystem with Patients with Complex Care Needs - Aryya Gangopadhyay and Neil Kpamegan
Optimal Resource Allocation in Distributed Systems for Cybersecurity - Jiajie He, Yuechun Gu, and Keke Chen
Privacy Scoring in Recommender Systems - Ida Ngambeki, Deborah Kariuki, Matt Bishop, and Jun Dai
Strengthening Workforce Education: Excellence in Programming Securely (SWEEPS)
COEIT Research Day Posters 2025
Accessibility and Human-centered Technology
- Kirk Crawford and Foad Hamidi
Communication in Disabled and Neurodivergent LGBTQIA+ Romantic Relationships - Agnny Vannessa Morant, Krystal Zhang, Erin Higgins, Foad Hamidi, and Maria Sanchez
The Digital Fabrication/Assistive Technology Project - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Jennifer Posada Granados
Reflection at Your Fingertips: Reducing Effort in Chronic Condition Data Engagement - Hasan Mahmud Prottoy, Yaxing Yao, and Foad Hamidi
Infrastructuring for Access to Online Subscription-Based Services in Bangladesh - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Krystal Yangmengzi Zhang, Erin Higgins, Vannessa Morant, and Foad Hamidi
What’s Next for DIY-AT? Exploring the Lasting Impact of a State-Supported Assistive Technology Program
AI Foundations and Applications
- Alabi Jamiu Ahmed and Vandana Janeja
Detecting Deepfakes in Conversations: Addressing the Challenges of Multi-Speaker Audio Deepfake Detection - Haishi Bai
Unified Management Experience Across Cloud-Edge Continum with Orchestration as Code - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Don Engel, Avi Donaty, and Jacob Rubinstein
Exploring Virtual Photogrammetry Techniques and Applications For Advancement of Digital Twin Generation - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Muhammad Hasan Ferdous and Md Osman Gani
DCD- Decomposition-based Causal Discovery from Autocorrelated and Non-Stationary Temporal Data - **Doctorate Student Award**
Uzma Hasan and Md Osman Gani
DKC: Data-driven and Knowledge-guided Causal Discovery Using a Tailored Scoring Criterion - **Master Student Award**
Jennifer Marie Giolitti and Kevin Smith
AI-Driven Culinary Innovation: Leveraging LLMs to Develop a Chemically Aware Recipe Generation Model - **Master Student Award** and **Doctorate Student Award**
Tamil Selvan Gurunathan, Muhammad Shehrose Raza, Aswin Kumar Janakiraman, Md Azim Khan, Biplab Pal, and Aryya Gangopadhyay
Edge LLMs for Real-Time Contextual Understanding with Ground Robots - **Master Student Award**
ASM Mobarak Hossain, Neil Kamlesh Advani, and Md Osman Gani
Advancing Wheelchair Accessible Navigation through Crowd-Sourced Data: Development of the MyPath System and A Computational Model for Accessibility - Emam Hossain and Md Osman Gani
Identification of Causal Representation in Variational Autoencoders - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Jumman Hossain, Emon Dey, Snehalraj Chugh, Masud Ahmed, MS Anwar, Abu-Zaher Faridee, Jason Hoppes, Theron Trout, Anjon Basak, Rafidh Chowdhury, Rishabh Mistry, Hyun Kim, Jade Freeman, Niranjan Suri, Adrienne Raglin, Carl Busart, Timothy Gregory, Anuradha Ravi, and Nirmalya Roy
SERN: Simulation-Enhanced Realistic Navigation for Multi-Agent Robotic Systems in Contested Environments - Md Azim Khan and Aryya Gangopadhyay
Frequency domain gating for multimodal Mixture of Expert (MoE) models - **Honorable Mention Master Student Award**
Mohana Kundurthi, Tamilselvan Gurunathan, Md Azim Khan, Muhammad Shehrose Raza, and Aryya Gangopadhyay
Real-time Object Tracking on the Edge - **Doctorate Student Award**
Seraj Mostafa, Chenxi Wang, Jia Yue, Yuta Hozumi, and Jianwu Wang
Enhancing Satellite Object Localization with Dilated Convolutions and Attention-aided Spatial Pooling - Shamita Nandeeswaran, Josephine Namayanja, and Lydia Fletcher
A Comprehensive Assessment of Open Science Platforms: Through the Lens of Interdisciplinary Research in Polar Science - Quentin Romero Lauro, Aakash Gautam, and Yasmine Kotturi
BizChat: Scaffolding AI-Powered Business Planning for Small Business Owners Across Digital Skill Levels - Gaurav Shinde, Anuradha RavI, Emon Dey, Jared Lewis, and Nirmalya Roy
TAVIC-DAS: Task and Channel-Aware Variable-Rate Image Compression for Distributed Autonomous System
Bioengineering/Biomimetics
- **Master Student Award**
Benjamin Kale and Meilin Yu
Complex Owl Geometry Smoothing and Meshing for High-fidelity Numerical Simulation - **Bachelor Student Award**
Cahree Myrick, Rajasekhar Anguluri, and Ramana Vinjamuri
Robust Principal Component Analysis for Dimensionality Reduction in Control and Coordination of the Human Hand - **Bachelor Student Award**
Tithi Prajapati, Anino Mebahganje, Michael Tolosa, Pegah Rezaei, Venkatesh Srinivasan, Xudong Ge, and Govind Rao
Non-Invasive Wearable Device for Transcutaneous CO2 Based Early Detection of Opioid Induced Respiratory Depression - **Bachelor Student Award**
Mesha Shajahan, Chad Sundberg, Vikash Kumar, Elias Gilotte, Mike Tolosa, and Govind Rao
Optimizing Cell-Free Biomanufacturing to Facilitate Personalized Immunotherapy Production in Clinical Settings - Julia Van Der Marel, Chad Sundberg, Elias Gilotte, and Govind Rao
Monitoring of NADH Concentrations in Cell-Free Systems
Education
- Prakhar Dixit and Tim Oates
SBI-RAG: Enhancing Math Word Problem Solving for Students through Schema-Based Instruction and Retrieval-Augmented Generation - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Deborah Kariuki, Hidare Debar, and Ida Ngambeki
Building Cyber-Ready Classrooms through Community Driven Research. A CyberCell Project - Kevin Lemus, Christian Ruiz, Stephanie Lunn, and Edward Dillon
Faculty Preparation Strategies: Empowering Computing Students to Achieve Technical Interview Success - **Honorable Mention Master Student Award**
Feng Li, M. Nicole Belfiore, and M. Ali Yousuf
Applications of Generative AI for Students with Learning Challenges - Maria Lopez Delgado and Ravi Kuber
State of Computational Thinking and Creative Technologies in Early Childhood Education - **Honorable Mention Master Student Award**
Ida Ngambeki, Deborah Kariuki, Miracle Onyebuchim, and Hidare Debar
Developing Interest in Computing: The Role of Access – A CyberCELL Project - Patricia Ordóñez and Jamie Gurganus
Computing for All: Cultivating a Culturally Responsive and Inclusive Computing Ecosystem - Marjory Pineda, Patricia Ordóñez, Foad Hamidi, and Ravi Kuber
Envisioning a Culturally-Responsive and Accessible Makerspace in the Global South
Environment and Sustainability
- **Doctorate Student Award**
Kamal Acharya, Mehul Lad, Liang Sun, and Houbing Song
Demand Modeling for Advanced Air MobilityBipendra Basnyat, Kishan Haravu Pradeep, Nirmalya Roy, Snehalraj Chugh
Multi-Scale AI Monitoring for Smarter Urban Farming - **Doctorate Student Award**
Sai Vikas Amaraneni, Sudip Chakraborty, and Vandana P. Janeja
Predicting Sea Ice Concentration over the Antarctic region using Conv-LSTM - Bipendra Basnyat, Kishan Haravu Pradeep, Nirmalya Roy, Snehalraj Chugh
Multi-Scale AI Monitoring for Smarter Urban Farming - Maloy Kumar Devnath, Sudip Chakraborty, and Vandana P. Janeja
Graph-Based Anomaly Detection for Identifying the Interaction Between Sea Ice Retreat and Ice Sheet Melting in the Antarctic Region - Omar Faruque, Sahara Ali, Xue Zheng, and Jianwu Wang
TTCD: Transformer Integrated Temporal Causal Discovery from Non-Stationary Time Series Data - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Emam Hossain, Md Osman Gani, Devon Dunmire, Aneesh Subramanian, and Hammad Younas
Time Series Classification of Supraglacial Lakes Evolution over Greenland Ice Sheet - **Bachelor Student Award**
Olivia Patterson and Rebecca Williams
Glacial Guardians: Development of a Data-Driven Educational Video Game Exploring Antarctic Iceberg Lifecycles - **Doctorate Student Award**
Rohan Putatunda, Vandana Janeja, and Sanjay Purushotham
Deep Learning for Ice Calving Front Analysis: Advancing Understanding through AI-Driven Techniques - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Tartela Tabassum, Pavan Raj Ravi, and Jianwu Wang
Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) and Neural Networks for Bedrock Topography Prediction: A Study of PDE-Regularized Models and SIA-Based PINNs - Bayu Adhi Tama, Mansa Krishna, Mostafa Cham, Omar Faruque, Gong Cheng, Jianwu Wang, Mathieu Morlighem, Vandana Janeja, and Homayra Alam
Deep Learning for Subglacial Topography Reconstruction in Greenland - Zahid Hassan Tushar, Adeleke Ademakinwa, Jianwu Wang, Zhibo Zhang, and Sanjay Purushotham
Cloud Optical Thickness Retrievals Using Angle Invariant Attention Based Deep Learning Models - **Doctorate Student Award**
Zahid Hassan Tushar, Adeleke Ademakinwa, Zhibo Zhang, and Sanjay Purushotham
Enhancing Aerosol and Cloud Retrievals Based on Hyperspectral Observations with Deep Learning: A Case Study with PACE-OCI - Zahid Hassan Tushar, Adeleke Ademakinwa, Jianwu Wang, Zhibo Zhang, and Sanjay Purushotham
Joint Retrieval of Cloud properties using Attention-based Deep Learning Models - Zafira Wasma, Emam Hossain, and MD Osman Gani
Predicting Arctic Sea Ice using Machine Learning: A Data-Driven Approach
Healthcare
- **Doctorate Student Award**
Pronob Kumar Barman, Tera L. Reynolds, and James Foulds
Enhancing Online Support Group Formation Using Topic Modeling Techniques - **Doctorate Student Award**
Ommo Clark and Karuna P. Joshi
Evaluating Causal AI Techniques for Health Misinformation Detection - Hidare Debar and Deborah Kariuki
Barriers to Continuous Glucose Monitoring Adoption Among Vulnerable Populations in Central Maryland - **Master Student Award**
Riishav Guptaa and Dong Li
Continuous Blood Pressure Monitoring Using Smartphones and Wearables: A Survey of Recent Advances and Challenges - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Md Alomgeer Hussein, Lu He, and Tera L. Reynolds
A Patient-centered Approach to Evaluating Large Language Model-generated Responses to Patients’ Questions - **Master Student Award**
Anjali Jha and Kai Sun
Data-Driven Clinician Scheduling Under Resource Uncertainty in an Outpatient Clinic: A Predict-Then-Optimize Approach - Yiming Liao and Yiheng Li
A New Benchmark Solution for T-cell Receptor Epitope Binding Prediction - **Doctorate Student Award**
Shadman Sakib, Gaurav Shinde, Snehalraj Chugh, Mohammad Saeid Anwar, and Nirmalya Roy
MultiRespNet: An Edge-Optimized Multi-Model Ensemble Approach for Real-Time Contactless Respiratory Rate Estimation
Interdisciplinary Research Posters
- Abhay Andar, Nilanjan Banerjee, Samrat Bojanola, and Neha B. Raikar
Large Language Models for Simplified Microfluidic Manufacturing - Sanorita Dey, Maria Sanchez, and Isabella Lopez
Impact of Role Models in Building Self-Efficacy and Career-Adaptability of Underrepresented Students in STEM Disciplines - **Honorable Mention Master Student Award**
Karuna Joshi, Nilanjan Banerjee, Javed Tamboli, and Samrat Bojanola
Automating Cybersecurity Compliance in Manufacturing using Data-driven Digital Twins - Mohammad Samarah, Melissa M. Sahl, Abhijit Dutt, and Charissa Cheah
The Digital Nutrition Label: Promoting Healthy Choices and Feeding the Need for Transparency - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Parthan Olikkal, Oritsejolomisan Mebaghanje, Viraj Janeja, Golnaz Moharrer, Andrea Kleinsmith, Anne Sophie Clemmensen, and Ramana Vinjamuri
The role of interlimb coordination and human-robot symbiosis in dance interventions for mental health and wellbeing - Soumik Sarker, Swarnendu Das, Pawan Vedanti, Eric Stach, Rajasekhar Anguluri, and Alok Ghanekar
Understanding Thermal Degradation of Nanostructures at High Temperatures - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Chaoqian Yuan and Ye Lu
Phase field modeling of grain growth in metal additive manufacturing
Manufacturing
- Elias Gilotte, Chad Sundberg, Vikash Kumar, and Govind Rao
Uncovering The Relationship Between Oxygen Availability And Energy Sources In Cell-free Protein Synthesis - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Mei-Lian Vader, Marjory Pineda, and Ravi Kuber
Investigating the Work Practices of Assembly Line Workers with Visual Impairments - Paris von Lockette, Swapna Kshirsagar, Tamia Bowers, Ben Bazasuren, Mia Merritt, and Deepak Bhukya
Advanced Manufacturing and Soft Robotics in the ElectroMagnetically Active-Composites and Structures (eMACS) Lab at UMBC
Physical Systems
- **Doctorate Student Award**
Sanzida Akter, Pradyoth Shandilya, Logan Courtright, Giuseppe D’Aguanno, Rajasekhar Anguluri, Omri Gat, and Curtis R. Menyuk
An Efficient Algorithm for Modeling the Slow Evolution of Soliton Molecules Due to Interaction and Noise in Microresonators - Abdullah Al Imran and Meilin Yu
Integration of the High-Order Flux Reconstruction Method with Actuator Disk Models for Wind Energy Applications - **Doctorate Student Award**
Cindy Almeida, David T. Booth, John T. Hrynuk, and Meilin Yu
Spectral Proper Orthogonal Decomposition Flow Analysis of Gust Mitigation With the Morphing Airfoil Technology at Low Reynolds Number - Logan Courtright, Pradyoth Shandilya, Thomas F. Carruthers, and Curtis R. Menyuk
Formation of Multiple Stable Regions for Single Solitons in the Presence of an Avoided Crossing - Raonaqul Islam, Ishraq Md. Anjum, Curtis R. Menyuk, and Ergun Simsek
Plasmonic Phototransistors with Improved Heat Dissipation - Alioune Niang, Pradyoth Shandilya, Logan Courtright, Gary Carter, and Curtis R. Menyuk
Soliton dynamics in singly and doubly pumped microresonators - Nicholas Pankow, Gary Carter, and Alioune Niang
Quality Factor and coupling condition analysis in microresonators - Akila Sampath, Omar Faruke, Azim Khan, Vandana Janeja, and Jianwu Wang
Physics Informed Machine Learning for Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Prediction
Security and Privacy
- **Honorable Mention Master Student Award**
Zhiyuan Chen, Meilin Yu, Md Badrul Hasan, and Suyash Kalwani
Stealthy Long-Term Cyber Attacks Detection on Wind Turbines Using Physics-Informed Neural Networks - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Kelvin Echenim and Karuna Joshi
Automating IoT Data Privacy Compliance by Integrating Knowledge Graphs with Large Language Models - Yuechun Gu and Keke Chen
Calibrating Practical Privacy Risks for Differentially Private Machine Learning - Yuechun Gu, Jiajie He, and Keke Chen
Adaptive Domain Inference Attack with Concept Hierarchy - Yuechun Gu, Jiajie He, and Keke Chen
Data Privacy in Fine-tuning Machine Learning Models - Sara Khanjani, Vandana Janeja, Christine Mallinson, and James Foulds
ALiRAS: Audio Linguistic Representation for Audio Anti-Spoofing - **Doctorate Student Award**
Mariel Maughan, Ravi Kuber, Sy Saulynas, and Marilyn Nguyen
Not allowing older adults to be left behind: the need for cybersecurity advocates - **Honorable Mention Doctorate Student Award**
Ida Ngambeki and Aniqa Afzal
Global Trends of Evolving Social-Engineering (SE) Attacks
Software Engineering
- Ainaz Jamshidi, Janakan Sivaloganathan, Andriy Miranskyy, and Lei Zhang
Automating quantum software maintenance: flakiness detection and root cause analysis - Dongchan Kim, Khushdeep Kaur, Ainaz Jamshidi, and Lei Zhang
Identify flakiness in quantum code: a machine learning approach - Mahsa Radnejad and Carolyn Seaman
Games Designed to Teach or Practice Technical Debt Management: A Systematic Mapping Study