iHARP Collaborators

Donna Ruginski, is an Associate Vice President for Center Development in the Office of Research and Creative Achievement (ORCA) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She is an International Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (INCS-CoE) community fellow, recipient of the 2021 Maryland Cybersecurity Award–Cyber Warrior Woman of the Year, and named in The Daily Record’s 2023 Cybersecurity Power List. Donna serves as Executive Director for the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity (UCYBR), Associate Director for the Center for Research in Emergent Manufacturing (CREM), and Collaborator for the NSF HDR Institute for Harnessing Data and Model Revolution in the Polar Regions (iHARP). She is co-PI for workforce development grants aimed to improve Cybersecurity for Manufacturing Operational Technology (CyMOT), co-PI for the Digital Enterprise Technology for the XM30 Infantry Fighting Vehicle program, and co-developer of the UMBC Operational Technology Cyber Range. Donna serves on the Cyber Advisory Board for bwtech@UMBC Research Park and is a mentor in the Maryland New Venture Fellows bwtech program.

Edward Boyda a physicist, teacher, data scientist, and satellite journalist, working with the environmental non-profit Earth Genome. He leads Genome’s Earthrise Education initiative, along with Kim Young, to bring satellite-based Earth observation and investigation into classrooms.

Currently, he is finalizing data updates for Amazon Mining Watch, proving out use cases for a planetary search tool built on AI – remote sensing foundation models, and writing about moving with his family to a small town in arctic Sápmi / Norway. Before joining Earth Genome, he was an Associate Professor of Physics at Saint Mary’s College of California.

Kim Young is a public high-school Social Studies teacher and a co-founder of Earthrise Media, where she runs satellite-based investigations for environmental and human rights reporting. As a 2019 National Geographic Explorer and 2020 National Geographic Education Fellow Young worked to scale curricular innovation around student activism through design thinking and technology. She is also a 2014 Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching recipient.

Lee Boot is the Director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center and an affiliate Associate Professor in the Departments of Visual Arts and Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. He is a media artist and researcher who assembles and manages interdisciplinary teams of researchers to improve the capacity of media to serve public interests. This work has largely been in the area of multi-modal data visualization for immersive analytics using mixed methods. He has been the Principal Investigator of research projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and private foundations. He has created commissioned work for the National Academy of Sciences and produced award-winning films that have been screened nationally and internationally.

Dr. Yusuke Kuwayama, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a Fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington, DC. Dr. Kuwayama’s research focuses on the economics of water resource management. He strives to conduct economic analysis that leads to effective and efficient policy solutions for water quality and scarcity problems. Dr. Kuwayama is particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to address questions involving sustainable use and management of coupled human-natural systems, especially work that requires modeling human decision-making, hydrologic and ecological processes, and the connections between them.

Dr. Anita Komlodi, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information Systems and the Associate Director of the Imaging Research Center at UMBC. Her research areas span the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Human Information Behavior. She studies information behavior in various contexts. In her current projects she focuses on virtual reality and sensemaking in immersive analytics.

Taylor Goad, first year MFA student in the IMDA program at UMBC and working as a graduate assistant at the Image Research Center. In Taylor’s artistic studio practice he works in various mediums relating to animation and illustration. Through character design Taylor frequently explores vulnerability while conveying authentic feelings and moods through their art, drawing from their personal experience with mental health. Their work serves as a medium for self-expression and aims to foster open dialogues around human emotions.

Tobi Williams, is a senior undergraduate student in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is currently working under Dr. Anita Komlodi and Prof. Lee Boot at the Imaging Research Center to develop Virtual Reality experiences to promote positive, proactive responses to climate change.