Recent News & Accomplishments
2020
Jack and Rita G. Minker Professor Mohammad Hajiaghayi has been named the finalist of the prestigious Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists in the Physical Science & Engineering category for 2020. He was chosen as one of the 31 finalists (includes only 2 computer scientists) selected from 305 nominations from 161 academic and research centers across 41 US states. The Blavatnik Family Foundation, administered by the New York Academy of Sciences was founded in 2013, to elate and recognize the transformative research of early-career scientists, at America’s top academic and research... read more
Assistant Professor Leilani Battle has been named to the 2020 MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35. In addition to being an assistant professor in computer science, Battle holds joint appointment in UMIACS and is affiliated with the UMD Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL) . Battle is one of the 35 young innovators chosen for this honor. The award was established in 1999, to recognize exceptionally talented innovators younger than 35 years from all over the globe whose work has the greatest potential to transform the world in a wide range of fields, including biotechnology,... read more
Assistant Professor Michelle Mazurek joins a national research project to build secure smart homes. The five-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on increasing security and privacy of the tech products used in smart homes. The project -- Security and Privacy in the Lifecycle of IoT for Consumer Environments (SPLICE) -- aims to develop new scientific understanding and novel engineering principles in order to help people to live in a trustworthy Smart Home and protect their privacy at the same time. “We don’t think people who buy smart devices should be asked to make... read more
Professor Emeritus Bonnie Dorr has been named to DARPA's Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group. The ISAT Study group brings together 30 scientists and engineers from across the country who provide assessments of advanced information science and technology as it relates to the U.S. Department of Defense. A leading researcher in the field of natural language processing, Dorr's research focuses on cyber-event extraction and natural language understanding for detecting attacks, discerning intentions of attackers, and thwarting social engineering attacks. Dorr is currently an... read more
Professor Leila De Floriani was recently elected as the 2020 European Association for Computer Graphics Fellow for her outstanding contributions, leadership and service to the fields of Computer Graphics, Visualization and to the Eurographics Association in particular, and for her foundational contribution to starting up one of the most vital research communities in Geometry and Graphics in Italy. A Fellow of IEEE and of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR) as well as a Pioneer of the Solid Modeling Association , De Floriani’s research focuses on geometric modeling and... read more
Assistant professor Dave Levin was recently added to serve as a co principal investigator for the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES) program’s Scholarship for Service grant. The grant is funded by the National Science Foundation in an effort to provide better opportunities for the exceptional students including research and internships with government agencies. More on the story: Here read more
Distinguished University Professor and Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair Ming Lin has been named to the 2020 Association for Computing Machinery SIGGRAPH Academy in recognition of her contributions in collision detection, physics simulation, natural phenomena, crowd animation, haptics, and sound rendering. The ACM SIGGRAPH Academy Academy was established in 2018 to recognize individuals whose work is influential and who are having a direct impact on the field as proven through the development of new research or innovations in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Lin was a part of a... read more
Three faculty members, Marine Carpuat , Michelle Mazurek and Rob Patro have been promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure. The academic promotions of Carpuat, Mazurek and Patro are in recognition of their outstanding research, excellent teaching, and strong commitment towards service. Carpuat’s research focuses on multilingual natural language processing and machine translation to help people communicate across languages. Her work aims at designing computational models and methods to detect and explain nuanced differences between words and sentences in various... read more
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2020 will be held online from May 31st to August 31st
Robotic and automation experts from across the globe will convene virtually for technical paper presentations and online discussions for the International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2020 conference which will be held from May 31st to August 31st. ICRA is the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s flagship conference and the premier international forum for robotics researchers to present and discuss their work. UMD Computer Science researchers, some of who are also faculty members of Maryland Robotics Center (MRC), will present 14 papers at the conference. UMD MRC faculty and... read more
Ben Shneiderman was profiled in a New York Times article on May 22. “A Case for Cooperation Between Machines and Humans” written by John Markoff
Distinguished University Professor Emeritus Ben Shneiderman encourages designers to focus on the reliability, safety and trustworthiness of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HCAI) as compared to the autonomous Artificial Intelligence In a recent article “ A Case for Cooperation Between Machines and Humans ” in the New York Times on May 22, 2020, by John Markoff, Shniederman expressed his concerns over “blindly automating tasks with computers.” “I think John Markoff’s article is very good and presents my position well,” he said. “However, Markoff portrays me as a critic of AI, but I’m... read more