Recent News & Accomplishments
2015
For anyone who wasn't able to attend the Friday May 8th meeting with Dean Jayanth Banavar.
After a tense week following the surprising news that the University of Maryland would be implementing differential pricing , Dean Jayanth Banavar held an impromptu meeting on Friday May 8th to listen to student concerns. The main concerns addressed in the meeting were where the money will be going and how to avoid springing news like this onto students in the future. For where the money is going, Department Chair Dr. Samir Khuller explained that it would go to funding more TA support, bringing in more lecturers, and expanding faculty. Right now, it costs $1.5 million to pay for all the TAs... read more
Bitcamp has grown. After attracting 750 students at its 2014 inauguration, Bitcamp's 2015 return was complemented by well over a thousand hackers from across the country and world as well as sponsorships from top industry names like Red Hat, Microsoft, and Twitter. A record 660 UMD students attended the hackathon, with hundreds of CS majors and graduates filling Cole Field House with demonstrations of their hacks for the weekend. In step with its name Bitcamp 2015 continued the camping theme of the previous year, bringing back both the center-place “campfire” and the extremely popular late... read more
Chris Testa, class of 2007, has a few problems with the state of the Internet. “The wires of the Internet are […] chokepoints,” he says [to me over a video conference]. “Once [they] have the wires of the Internet, they can gain control.” To Testa, 'they' is the NSA, Verizon, or any other group capable of doing unsavory things with our data – whether it be censorship, bandwidth restriction, or indiscriminate surveillance. Whitebox, therefore, is a response to these dangers: an open source, open hardware, wireless-framework-meets-radio rolled into one big challenge against the domination of... read more
Five graduate assistants from the department were among the award's distinguished winners.
It was announced Thursday, April 30 , that five Computer Science graduate students at the University of Maryland—Ioana Bercea, Mohammad Reza Khani, Matthew Mauriello, Andrew Miller, and Shangfu Peng—were recognized as recipients of the University-wide 2015 Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award. The award, which is awarded to 80 of some 4,000 Graduate Assistants annually, was created by the University's Graduate School "to recognize and honor the outstanding contributions that Graduate Assistants provide to students, faculty, departments, administrative units, and the University as a whole,"... read more
You may have seen Amelia bouncing from one student to the next in the TA room of AV Williams, or maybe heard her distinct voice calming another frantic student who is failing a release test. If you’re a witness to this, then you can probably attest to seeing that same student’s submit server go from a whole lot of red, to all green after just a few minutes of conversing with her. It seems as though Amelia’s position as a TA was inevitable. “I noticed a pattern in high school. All of the volunteer work and groups I’d been a part of involved some form of working with kids and teaching.” Her... read more
With well over twenty-thousand students and more than eight-hundred clubs and organizations, finding a niche at Maryland can be overwhelming. For Adam Weiner, it was his early interest in music production and DJ’ing that eventually led him to the Terrapin Beats Society. read more
The University of Maryland Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year award recognizes faculty members for outstanding support of and involvement with their graduate students. This year, UMD presented the award to Professor Hajiaghayi, who, in the past year, has worked with a huge group—nine graduate students, plus his post-docs. Hajiaghayi tries to be more than just an academic mentor and likes to help his students in every way he can. “I advise them on everything—life! I tell them the tricks—even in doing an interview or buying a house,” Hajiaghayi says. His advising has a proven track record—many... read more
The AWC's first ever dress week showed that being feminine and a programmer were not mutually exclusive.
Last week, the AWC hosted the first ever Dress Week, an event to show that presenting feminine and being a competent computer scientist are not mutually exclusive. The idea came in response to an article by a female computer scientist who goes by the handle Sailor Mercury, who wrote about the struggles of being feminine in a male dominated field. She explained how people said that she didn’t look like a programmer when she wore dresses, did her makeup, and was feminine. The article was posted to the AWC group by senior Margaret Gratian, who said, “There was definitely a time when I stopped... read more
The Department plans to make a strong showing at the annual celebration.
The 17 th annual Maryland Day will occur this Saturday, April 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event, a "campus-wide celebration of innovation, creativity and academic excellence," will feature a bevy of over 400 interesting, fun, and compelling events from various colleges, departments, clubs, and organizations at the University. The Computer Science department and related organizations are planning to run some of their own events during the celebration! Here's a quick rundown of what you can expect to see Saturday: CompSciConnect Showcase (10 a.m. – 1 p.m., CSI 1121) – Students in the... read more
The Maryland Center for Women in Computing hosted the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Awards for high school girls.
This past Saturday on April 18th, the Maryland Center for Women in Computing hosted the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Awards for high school girls. Twenty-four young women with their parents and siblings filled the Multi-Purpose Room of Prince Frederick Hall. After a quick meet and greet with professionals from Northrop Grumman, the company that sponsored the event, the award winners split from their parents. Their families stayed in the room to learn about what computer science is, what it means to work in the field, and the stereotypes of computer science. It was a chance for the parents... read more