Recent News & Accomplishments

 2014

Computer Science Department Professor and Director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center Dr. Jonathan Katz has been named one of the 2014 Influential Marylanders by The Daily Record newspaper. The Influential Marylander Awards were created in 2006 to honor those who are leaders in the state of Maryland and who have made significant impact in their fields. The awardees are selected from the following categories: civic leadership, communications, education, finance, freestyle, health care, law, philanthropy, real estate and technology. Dr. Katz is honored in the technology category for his...  read more
Computer Science Department graduate student Rajiv Jain, along with co-authors Dr. Douglas Oard and Dr. David Doermann, were awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the 21st Document Recognition and Retrieval Conference for their paper, “Scalable ranked retrieval using document images". Learn More "Scalable ranked retrieval using document images" full paper 21st Document Recognition and Retrieval Conference Rajiv Jain's Personal Website Douglas Oard's Personal Website David Doermann's Personal Website  read more
Oculus VR, a company led in part by three UMD alumni, Chief Software Architect Michael Antonov (B.S. ’01), Chief Executive Officer Brendan Iribe (B.S.), and the late Andrew Reisse (B.S. ’01), won the 2014 Tech Crunch “Crunchie” award for Best Hardware Startup of the Year. About Oculus Oculus VR’s revolutionary product, the Oculus Rift, is a virtual reality headset designed for immersive gaming. Oculus Rift began as a Kickstarter project in 2012, and an early version Rift headset is now shipping to select customers. Oculus VR is further developing a consumer-ready version of the Rift with...  read more
Computer Science Department Affiliate Professor Dr. Rama Chellapa has been named a 2014 ACM fellow for his contributions to image processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition.  read more
Computer Science Department Alumnus and Affiliate Senior Research Scientist Dr. David Doermann, Ph.D. ’93, has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for contributions to research and development of automatic analysis and processing of document page imaging. The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the Board of Directors upon a person with an extraordinary record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. Learn More: Dr. David Doermann 's Website Listing of 2014 IEEE Fellows  read more
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Computer Science Ph.D. student Mohammad Rastegari was awarded the Facebook Fellowship for 2014-2015.  read more
Dr. Moustafa Youssef has been named an ACM Distinguished Speaker as part of the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program. Dr. Youssef graduated with his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in 2004. He was advised by Dr. Ashok Agrawala; he concentrated on wireless networking. Dr. Youssef is now an Associate Professor at the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology and the Alexandria University in Egypt. He is also the Director of The Wireless Research Center at the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology. The ACM Distinguished Speakers Program is an ACM outreach program...  read more
Justin Searles graduated from UMD in 2008 with a B.S. in Computer Science. During his time at UMD he founded the UMD Startup Shell, a student startup accelerator, with fellow Computer Science department students Eric Rosenberg and Deonna Hodges. Most recently, Justin founded VentureBoard, a web platform that allows startup founders to build their teams, stay organized and motivated and leverage a variety of tools such as Google docs, Heroku, and MeetUp.com. Justin co-founded VentureBoard with UMD students Avi Eisenberger and Scott Block. Computer Science department Staff Writer Elissa...  read more
Dr. Eytan Ruppin (incoming UMD Computer Science Department Professor and Director of the UMD Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology) and his Ph.D. student Keren Yizhak (Tel Aviv University, Israel) have developed an algorithm that predicts which metabolic genes need to be 'switched off' to prevent aging. Their work was motivated by previous research that has shown the efficacy of caloric restriction as a mechanism to increase life span in a variety of mammals, including humans. Dr. Ruppin and Ms. Yizhak sought to determine which combinations of genes should be targeted by drugs...  read more
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Computer Science Department Senior Lecturer Dr. Jan Plane is a Finalist in the 15th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Awards. Women in Technology is a Washington-D.C. area women's technology community organization, which is honoring Dr. Plane and the 30 other finalists from the Washington D.C. area for their exemplary and leading work in the technology arena. “We’ve received many outstanding nominations in our 15th year of the Leadership Awards; our finalists distinguish themselves through the unprecedented impact they are having on the technology industry,” says Phyllis Kolmus, President...  read more