Recent News & Accomplishments
2022
A University of Maryland expert in machine learning has been awarded significant funding by two separate entities to tackle pressing problems in the field. Soheil Feizi , an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies , is principal investigator of two $300K awards. The first comes from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Computing and Communication, with the goal of understanding robustness via parsimonious structures. Although deep neural networks have led to significant... read more
A University of Maryland expert in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) has been selected for MIT Technology Review’s Asia Pacific “ Innovators Under 35 ,”an annual list recognizing 35 of the brightest young minds working in technology today. Furong Huang , an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), was among the 35 entrepreneurs, humanitarians, inventors, and researchers honored for their groundbreaking work in biotech, AI, materials science, energy, computing... read more
Growing up with professors for parents, junior and computer science major Ipsa Mittra was immersed in academia from the get-go. She knew from a young age that she wanted to conduct research to make a difference. In high school, Mittra found her niche in computational biology through the STEM magnet program at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Md. This spark of interest eventually led her to a prestigious summer fellowship this year conducting research at the Broad Institute and presenting at the 2022 National Diversity in STEM Conference. “SACNAS was my first time presenting my... read more
Researchers affiliated with the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) had six papers accepted to the 2022 Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Computer and Communications Security (ACM CCS), including two that received honorable mention awards. The annual conference brings together information security researchers, practitioners, developers and users from around the world. It was held this year from November 7–11 in Los Angeles. “It's great to see MC2 faculty, students and postdocs continue to produce strong work on so many important topics, from the web’s certificate... read more
This article is republished from CMNS website. University of Maryland Department of Computer Science Professor Rance Cleaveland has been named associate dean for research in the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS), effective immediately. Cleaveland, who also has joint appointments in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and the Institute for Systems Research , joined UMD in 2005 and served as executive and scientific director of the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering from 2005 to 2014. From... read more
A University of Maryland expert on processing and organizing high-throughput genomics data has been awarded $350K from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), a philanthropic research organization launched in 2015 by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Rob Patro (left in photo), an associate professor of computer science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies , will use the CZI funding to improve upon a “constellation” of interrelated tools his lab has developed to process genomic data. This includes alevin-fry , a... read more
If you’ve ever done a Google search or chatted with Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa, you have seen natural language processing (NLP) at work. This form of artificial intelligence (AI) teaches machines human language, allowing them to interpret and generate text in much the same way a person would. While NLP models can convincingly mimic human language, they may also reflect human biases toward various social groups. With the goal of minimizing harm and enabling more equitable language in AI, University of Maryland computer science graduate student Yang “Trista” Cao (pictured left), and... read more
A team of researchers from the University of Maryland has received a best paper award for their work to make visual question answering (VQA) systems more effective for people with visual impairments. “ What’s Different between Visual Question Answering for Machine ‘Understanding’ Versus for Accessibility?” aims to improve VQA systems by nudging them toward a more human-centric model where the goal is to answer questions that are likely to be useful to potential blind and visually impaired users, as opposed to questions written to test how well a machine “understands” images. The paper was... read more
The UMD team presented a total of four papers at the 2022 International Conference on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST) held from October 29–November 2, 2022, in Bend, Oregon, USA.
Researchers at the University of Maryland recently received recognition for their innovative work on developing a set of rapid prototyping techniques to fabricate high-resolution, flexible circuits on demand using a fiber laser engraver. Out of the 63 demos, the UMD team—co-led by Zeyu Yan and Anup Sathya , along with Sahra Yusuf, Jyh-Ming Lien, and assistant professor Huaishu Peng —received the “People’s Choice Best Demo Award” for their paper titled Fibercuit: Prototyping High-Resolution Flexible and Kirigami Circuits with a Fiber Laser Engraver at the 2022 International Conference on User... read more
New rankings published by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.
New rankings published in October 2022 place the University of Maryland in the Top 4 for most bachelor’s degrees awarded in computer and information sciences and support services overall and to minority groups. UMD ranks No. 4 overall (No. 2 among non-online programs) for conferring the most bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences and support services, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education . UMD conferred 1,188 degrees between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020, and 345 were conferred to women (29%). UMD ranks No. 3 overall (No. 1 among non-online programs) for the total... read more