Recent News & Accomplishments

 2013

CBCB researchers Héctor Corrada Bravo, Joseph Paulson, and Mihai Pop together with their colleague O. Colin Stine from the University of Maryland School of Medicine publish a new statistical package for performing differential analysis in metagenomic data. The new package, metagenomeSeq, implemented as part of the Bioconductor package, appeared today in as advanced online publication in the journal Nature Methods. This package addresses several challenges specific to metagenomic data, including the high level of sparsity due to insufficient sequence coverage, and provides accurate and robust...  read more
Professor Ben Bederson was recently quoted by the Baltimore Business Journal (subscription required) for an article about Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Bederson's involvement in the recent Coursera collaboration with Vanderbilt University was also mentioned.  read more
The 1st Annual Silver Spring Maker Faire was recently held on September 29. Jon Froehlich was selected as one of the event's four "Inventors in our Midst". His research focused on interactive technology, sustainability, computer accessibility, and personalized health and wellness was highlighted. Maker Faire Program: http://caralesser.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/ssmmf_program_final_lr.pdf  read more
In the symbolic launch of a five-year initiative to transform undergraduate computer science education at the University of Maryland College Park, Professor Emeritus Bill Pugh has pledged to make a $500,000 donation, seed money for a $1 million fund to help use technology to innovate in the classroom.  read more
Descriptive Image for Bill Pugh Receives ACM/IEEE Supercomputing
Emeritus Professor Bill Pugh has received the first ACM/IEEE Supercomputing "Test of Time" award for his paper in Supercomputing 91: "The Omega test: a fast and practical integer programming algorithm for dependence analysis". The paper was selected from all the papers published at the Supercomputing conference between 1988 (the first Supercomputing conference) and 2003. This is the first time the award has been granted, in celebration of Supercomputing's 25th anniversary. Bill will receive the award and give an award talk at Supercomputing 2013 on November 21st. The “Test of Time” award...  read more
android robot mascot in front of easel with mobile phone (14657)
UMD and Vanderbilt University will introduce a significant, new wrinkle in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) next year – a two-part, two-semester collaboration offered through Coursera. It begins with Maryland faculty and concludes with Vanderbilt's. "Programming Handheld Systems with Android," will be taught by Professor Adam Porter. Then, the sequence continues with Vanderbilt computer science professor Douglas Schmidt and electrical and computer engineering professor Jules White, who will teach "Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture." This will focus on connecting mobile applications to...  read more
The FIA Seed Grant Competition is designed to encourage teams of students to engage in research projects that lead the way to innovative solutions for key information-related challenges. With generous support from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, up to four teams of students and their faculty mentors will be chosen to receive up to $25,000 per team to carry out a project during the spring semester of 2014. A Kickoff informational meeting will be held on September 24, 2013 at Stamp Student Union. For more information, visit http://www.fia.umd.edu  read more
Professor V.S. Subrahmanian's work on the terrorism analytics tool STONE (Shaping Terrorist Organizational Network Efficacy) was recently highlighted by several media outlets. Subrahmanian was quoted in Federal technology magazine FCW on August 27 and in FastCompany on August 28. Additionally, the WJLA program "Government Matters" broadcast a feature on STONE in which Subrahmanian was interviewed.  read more
3 new scholarships for students applications due October 4 (14629)
The Department of Computer Science, in conjunction with three of its corporate partners, is pleased to unveil three new scholarships for talented CS students to apply for this fall semester. Applications for all three scholarships are due by October 4 th . For more information, contact Andrew Nolan anolan [-at-] cs [dot] umd [dot] edu . We are extremely appreciative and thankful to our corporate sponsors for their support to CS at UMD: 1. The Appian Scholarship: A $5,000 scholarship is available for junior or senior-level standing (at least at the 300 level of CS coursework) CS majors with a...  read more
Prof. Elaine Shi has been awarded a Google Faculty Research Award for her proposal titled, "Truly Practical Dynamic Proofs of Retrievability." Google Research Awards are one-year awards structured as unrestricted gifts to universities to support the work of world-class full-time faculty members at top universities around the world.  read more