UMBC’s 2021 grads advance research with public impact

A culture of supportive mentorship has helped sustain all of these students on their path to commencement. For Hana Flores, her first mentor on campus was none other than President Freeman Hrabowski.

The CEO of Prince George’s County Public Schools connected Flores with Hrabowski after hearing her deliver the valedictorian address at Bowie High School and learning that she would attend UMBC. On the day of their meeting, when Flores heard Hrabowski’s booming voice from the anteroom to his office, she was nervous. “But once he entered the room, any nerves I had went away,” she recalls. “He was so interested, and genuinely wanted to know what my goals and aspirations were.”

Soon thereafter, she joined the lab of Michael Summers, Distinguished University Professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. And she’s been conducting research with his team on the structure of HIV since. 

Postdoc Pengfei Ding, in particular, spurred her growth by encouraging his mentees to contribute to the intellectual direction of the research, rather than simply teaching them specific laboratory techniques. “Dr. Pengfei Ding essentially was a catalyst for me to grow into a more independent researcher,” Flores says.

Her many professors in chemical engineering also had a role to play. “They are really focused on students being able to achieve. I felt comfortable going to office hours,” she says. “And I feel like they didn’t just care about me accomplishing in my classes, they also cared about how I was as a person.”

Flores has presented at national conferences, conducted summer research at MIT, and joined the UMBC Honors College and U-RISE Program. Shes also a contributing author for one published and two pending research articles. This fall, she’ll begin a Ph.D. at MIT as a Dean of Science Fellow, where she hopes to pursue interests in protein engineering and regeneration.