Recent News & Accomplishments
2014
Computer Science Department Undergraduate Student Emily Aster Jones (B.S. ’14) and Computer Science Department Alumnus Matthew Richard McCutchen (B.S. ’11) have been awarded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships. Jones and McCutchen are among 2,000 students selected from over 14,000 applicants. During their time as undergraduates Jones and McCutchen conducted research with Computer Science Department faculty. Jones conducted research in computational biology with Computer Science Department Affiliate Associate Professor Sridhar Hannenhalli and McCutchen conducted research... read more
CS Ph.D. Student Vikas Shivashankar and CS Professor Dana Nau along with their co-authors Franc Ivankovic, Patrik Haslum and Sylvie Thiebaux have been awarded the 2014 Outstanding Student Paper Award at the International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS). Their paper, “Optimal Planning with Global Numerical State Constraints”, was selected from amongst 164 submissions this year. Learn More: Read the paper, “ Optimal Planning with Global Numerical State Constraint s” Vikas Shivashankar’s Personal Website Dr. Dana Nau’s Personal Website ICAPS 2014 read more
Dr. Leah Findlater, CS Affiliate Professor, has recently been awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award (NSF CAREER Award), which will support her research activities. Dr. Findlater’s work is in the area of human-computer interaction. She specifically focuses on lowering barriers to using technology and accessing information. Learn More Dr. Leah Findlater's Website read more
Computer Science undergrad Geoffrey Ji named 2014 Goldwater Scholar. Computer Science undergrad Daniel Farias named 2014 Goldwater Scholarship Honorable Mention, Daniel's past research includes work with CS Assoc. Professor Neil Spring. read more
UMD CS Professor Jeff Hollingsworth was interviewed on March 6th, 2014 by the HPCwire Soundbite podcast, which regularly hosts researchers and those who impact the world of high performance computing. Hollingsworth discussed the Experiencing HPC for Undergraduates Program that he and UMD CS Professor Alan Sussman launched to attract more undergraduate students to the field of high performance computing. Because of their program, two dozen undergraduate students travel to the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis every year. “The goal of this... read more
Ph.D. alumnus Aaron Schulman was recently awarded the SIGCOMM Doctoral Dissertation Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis in Computer Networking and Data Communication. [An Interview with Aaron] read more
On Friday, March 8th 2014, Aaron Schulman (Ph.D. 2014) heard that he won the ACM SIGCOMM Dissertation Award. Aaron sat down with us to talk about the Award, his Post-doctoral work at Stanford and what being a graduate student in the CS Department meant (and still means) to him. Walk us through the day that you found out that your advisor nominated you for the award, and then let us know how you felt when ACM SIGCOMM let you know that you had indeed won the award. Before I started working on the dissertation, my advisor, Neil Spring, and I wondered if the community would be as intrigued by the... read more
The University of Maryland Department of Computer Science hosted the 24th annual University of Maryland High School Programming Contest on Saturday, March 1st, 2014. On Saturday, twenty-eight teams of D.C. area high school students gathered in the Computer Science Instructional Center to use their programming and problem solving skills to solve several “Despicable Me” themed programming problems. Contest Directors Amol Deshpande and Chau-Wen Tseng, as well as faculty members Evan Golub, MohammadTaghi HajiAghayi, and Dave Mount, and graduate student Saeed Seddhighin, devised... read more
Snigdha Chaturvedi, a Computer Science Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Hal Daume III, and Kotaro Hara, a Computer Science Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Jon Froehlich, have each been awarded a 2014 IBM Ph.D. Fellowship. IBM Ph.D. Fellowships honor exceptional students worldwide who “have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation.” Chaturvedi’s research areas of interest include Machine Learning, Data Mining, and Information Abstraction, while Hara’s research focuses on Human Computer Interaction and using crowd-sourcing to solve accessibility issues... read more
Computer Science Department Alumnus Ben Langmead was awarded the 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. Granted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this award identifies 126 early-career scientists based on their potential to contribute fundamentally significant research to a wider academic community. Langmead received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Langmead was co-advised by Computer Science Professor Mihai Pop and Dr. Steven Salzberg during his M.S. work and was advised by Dr. Steven Salzberg during his Ph.D. work... read more