Recent News & Accomplishments
2026
Mohammad Hajiaghayi leads DARPA-backed GENIUS initiative at UMD to develop AI systems that can reason alongside mathematicians and advance complex problem-solving.
The University of Maryland will lead a new cross-institutional research effort designed to dramatically accelerate mathematical discovery by combining advanced artificial intelligence (AI) with deep human expertise in computer science and mathematics. As mathematicians tackle increasingly complex questions—from cybersecurity to algorithm design used to verify software in aerospace, healthcare, and autonomous vehicles—researchers aim to develop AI systems that can reason strategically alongside human experts, helping address problems whose scale and complexity have long limited progress. To... read more
A UMD postdoctoral researcher explores how cryptography and machine learning can work together to enable secure AI systems trained on encrypted data.
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence depends on access to vast amounts of data—much of it deeply sensitive. From medical records to financial histories, these datasets fuel powerful machine learning models while raising a fundamental challenge: how to train AI systems without exposing the underlying information. Natalie Lang , a postdoctoral associate at the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) and the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2), is working to solve that problem. “My goal for this postdoc is to move the needle on privacy and security in... read more
In collaboration with Adobe, CS Ph.D. student Sonal Kumar advances audio timestamp captioning to improve how AI understands speech and complex sounds.
From voice assistants answering questions to automated captions appearing on videos, artificial intelligence increasingly relies on audio to interact with people. Yet many systems still struggle to interpret sound the way humans do, especially when speech includes different accents or when multiple sounds occur at once. At the University of Maryland, Ph.D. student Sonal Kumar is working to address those challenges through timestamped audio captioning —an emerging approach that helps AI understand not only what it hears, but also when sounds occur. Advised by Professors Ramani Duraiswami and... read more
Admitted applicants attend the annual CS Visit Day, meeting faculty, exploring labs and connecting with graduate students at the Brendan Iribe Center.
The Department of Computer Science held its annual Graduate Visit Day on March 13, 2026, welcoming admitted prospective Ph.D. students to the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering. The event gave visitors the chance to meet faculty members, speak with current graduate students and learn more about the department’s research environment before making final enrollment decisions. The University of Maryland’s graduate computer science program is consistently ranked among the top programs in the United States. According to U.S. News & World Report, the program is ranked No... read more
The Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS) has announced 11 Broader Impact Awards designed to expand access, participation and understanding of trustworthy artificial intelligence. Unveiled March 11, the awards—up to $25,000 each—will support seed projects that help diverse stakeholder communities engage with and influence the future of AI. TRAILS leaders say the funding is intended to spark grassroots initiatives connecting academia, industry and local communities while expanding access to AI education and governance tools. “Our goal is to help close the loop among... read more
CS Ph.D. student Yajie Zhou develops NetArena benchmark to evaluate safety and reliability of AI agents managing complex systems.
As artificial intelligence systems take on a growing role in automating technical tasks, researchers are examining how those tools can be safely applied to critical infrastructure. In areas such as network and system operations, even a small error by automated software can disrupt services used by thousands of people. That risk has made many operators cautious about relying on AI tools, despite their potential to reduce the time required to diagnose and fix system problems. At the University of Maryland’s Department of Computer Science, Ph.D. student Yajie Zhou is studying how AI agents can... read more
Lee explores how large-scale human data can help robots perform everyday household tasks.
As scientists work toward a future where robots can handle everyday household chores like washing dishes, folding laundry and ironing shirts, one of the field’s biggest hurdles is ensuring these machines can operate reliably in the unpredictable environments of real homes. At the University of Maryland, doctoral student Seungjae “Jay” Lee is developing new data-driven methods designed to bridge the gap between impressive laboratory demonstrations and dependable real-world performance. His work centers on enabling robots to learn not only from their own physical experiences, but also from the... read more
UMD doctoral students recognized among the top 2% of graduate assistants for 2025–2026.
Ten doctoral students have received the Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award for the 2025–2026 academic year. Joseph Carolan , Pierce Darragh , Eadom Dessalene , Hiba El Oirghi , Peyman Jabbarzade , Donghyeon Joo , Dayeon Ki , Sonal Kumar , Yonghan Lee and Renata Valieva were recognized by the University of Maryland Graduate School for their contributions as graduate assistants across research and instruction. More than 4,000 graduate students serve the campus each year as research, teaching or administrative assistants. The Graduate School established the award to recognize the contributions... read more
In CMSC 435, Associate Professor James Purtilo’s software engineering class is helping transform scanned ant specimens into lifelike 3D models.
For more than a decade, Evan Economo’s lab has been using micro-CT machines to scan insect specimens. The resulting X-ray images help researchers study the form and structure of insects—a subfield of entomology known as morphology—but the process is costly and time-consuming. “One limitation is that you can get this rich 3D dataset, but it could take 10 hours to scan one specimen,” explained Economo, who chairs the University of Maryland’s Department of Entomology and holds the James B. Gahan and Margaret H. Gahan Professorship. As a senior author of a paper published in the journal Nature... read more
Inside the University of Maryland lab where researchers explore how signals such as sound and wireless waves can help machines better understand the physical world.
At the University of Maryland’s Department of Computer Science, the Intelligent Connected Secure Mobile Systems (iCoSMoS) Lab explores how machines can sense and interpret the environments around them. Led by Associate Professor of Computer Science Nirupam Roy , the lab studies how signals, such as sound and wireless reflections, can reveal information about space, movement and materials. Researchers combine sensing hardware, signal processing and machine learning to build systems that can operate on low-power devices. Among them is Ph.D. student Harshvardhan Chaturdas Takawale , whose work... read more