ICARE at UMBC

🎉Congratulations to Erin Hamner for presenting and successfully defending her Master’s Thesis, titled “Investigating the Spatial and Temporal Water Quality Patterns in the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Watershed”, on July 23rd!

🎉Congratulations to Samantha DiNatale for presenting and successfully defending her Master’s Thesis, titled “'Watch what he chews': The maternal burden for lead poisoning in Baltimore, MD”, on July 3rd, 2025!!

Congratulations to our most recent ICARE Master’s graduates: Isabella Molatore, Jessica Baniak, and Margaret Siao!

🎉 ICARE Day 2025 was a fantastic success! 🎉 We’d like to extend an enormous thank you to Dr. Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm for his wonderful presentation during the event’s closing ceremony, and also shout out our third cohort of trainees for presenting such excellent posters during the morning poster session. 👏👏

🎉Congratulations to Isabella Molatore for presenting and successfully defending her Master’s Thesis, “Investigating the Effects of the Reel Rewards Program on the Ecosystems & Communities of the Middle Branch”, on April 15th!

🎉Congratulations to Jessica Baniak for presenting and successfully defending her Master’s thesis, titled “Growing Horseshoe Crabs for Conservation and Environmental Education”, on April 2nd!!

🎉Shoutout to Margaret Siao for presenting and successfully defending her Master’s thesis, titled “Detection and quantitation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in Baltimore Harbor using anion-exchange membrane-based passive samplers”, on March 28th!

Samantha DiNatale recently wrote a blog post for UMBC Special Collections, which she has been volunteering with over the past semester. Check out the article here: https://shorturl.at/Xrd1D

Jessica Baniak’s research was recently featured in a UMBC Magazine story written by Sarah Hansen! Check it out here: https://umbc.edu/stories/horseshoe-crabs-in-the-classroom/

Samantha DiNatale is hosting a National Lead Poisoning Prevention event on Tuesday, October 22nd at 6pm in the AOK Library Gallery! The event will begin with a showing of "Hiding in the Walls," a documentary examining the history and legacy of lead poisoning in Baltimore, followed by a Q&A with Angel King Wilson and David Sebastiao, the producers of the film. Light refreshments will be provided.

🎉🎈 ICARE was delighted to celebrate Cohort 2 finishing up their final semester during our End of Year Celebration of Achievements! 🎈🎉

🎉Congratulations to Molly Finch for presenting and successfully defending her Master’s Thesis, titled “Planting Money. Exploring the Implications of Federal & State Environmental Justice Policy in Relation to Funding for Green Space Projects in Baltimore Neighborhoods”, on April 12th! 🌳🌲

Content credit: Rylee Wernoch (photo 1), Molly Finch (illustrations 2 & 3, photo 4)