Recent News & Accomplishments
2012
The Department is pleased to announce the Larry S. Davis Doctoral Dissertation Awards for 2012, for dissertations in Computer Science. The awards have been made to recent graduates: Derek Monner Title: A Neurocomputational Model of Grounded Language Comprehension and Production at the Sentence Level Advisor: Jim Reggia and Christopher Hayden Title: Clear, Correct, and Efficient Dynamic Software Updates Advisors: Jeff Foster and Mike Hicks In addition, one other thesis was given honorable mention: Nicholas Chen Title: The Use of Multiple Slate Devices to Support Active Reading Activities... read more
A paper by Amitabh Varshney and his student, Cheuk Yiu Ip, in collaboration with Joseph JaJa , has won the Best Scientific Visualization Paper Award that will be presented at the IEEE VisWeek Conference to be held during October 14-19, in Seattle. IEEE VisWeek is the largest and most prestigious visualization conference attracting close to 1000 attendees. Their paper, " Hierarchical Exploration of Volumes Using Multilevel Segmentation of the Intensity-Gradient Histograms ", presents an intelligent interface that facilitates interactive and meaningful exploration of volumes that arise in a... read more
Professor Jon Froehlich has been named the recipient of the 2012 University of Washington Distinguished Dissertation Award . Froehlich, who received a Ph.D. from UW's Computer Science and Engineering Department in 2011, received the award for his dissertation Sensing and Feedback of Everyday Activities to Promote Environmental Behaviors . It focuses on creating new types of sensors to monitor and infer everyday human activity with the goal of increasing awareness and promoting environmentally responsible behavior. read more
Professor Ashok Agrawala was recently recognized with two awards for his contributions to public safety by developing M-Urgency , the wireless campus safety application. The Wireless Foundation and CTIA-The Wireless Association with a VITA Wireless Samaritan Award at their 18th Annual Achievement Awards dinner July 23. "By recognizing the ubiquity of wireless devices on campus, Dr. Agrawala's app is an innovative use of mobile technology that is, at its core, a public safety tool. I'm pleased to present Dr. Agrawala with a VITA Wireless Samaritan Award for creating this app," said Steve... read more
ACM SIGKDD announced that Prof. Vipin Kumar is the winner of its 2012 Innovation Award . Vipin received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland in 1982 under the guidance of Professor Laveen Kanal . Prof. Kumar is currently William Norris Professor and Head of Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. ACM SIGKDD Innovation Award is the highest award for technical excellence in the field of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD). It is conferred on one individual or one group of collaborators whose outstanding technical... read more
We are pleased to announce that S. Cenk Sahinalp has been named a University of Maryland Computer Science Department Distinguished Alumnus. Dr. Sahinalp is a Professor of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Bilkent University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Maryland, College Park in 1997 under the supervision of Prof. Uzi Vishkin . He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, a faculty member at University of Warwick, a research fellow at Center for BioInformatics, University of Pennsylvania... read more
The Department is pleased to announce that Tom Reinhardt has been hired as an instructor starting in the Fall term. Tom joins the department having worked in a number of different positions in both industry and teaching. He has worked in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT in the 1980's, commercial software development in the 1990's, and devoted nearly a decade to teaching computer science within the Montgomery County Public School System. Mr. Reinhardt holds an M.A. in Computer Science from Boston University and a B.A., in Philosophy/Political Science from Boston College. He is... read more
The Department is pleased to announce that Elaine Shi and Nick Feamster will be joining our faculty this summer. Nick and Elaine are world-class researchers, with a focus on computer systems and security. Both will have appointments in UMIACS and in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center . Elaine Shi Elaine Shi will join as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. She obtained her Ph.D. and Masters degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and her B.E. from Tsinghua University. Before joining the University of Maryland, she was... read more
The Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) Symposium will be held on May 15-16 in the Riggs Alumni Center. Features cutting edge research on cybersecurity being done at the University of Maryland, tutorials by Maryland faculty, and panels and keynotes from outside experts. More details at http://umiacs.umd.edu/mc2symposium/ read more
The Wall Street Journal's recent Path to Professions feature ranked the Department 10th among schools producing the best CS graduates, according to recruiters. read more