Recent News & Accomplishments
2019
Computer Science majors Hassan Syyid and Sandeep Ramesh are developing an app to find the safest route for the commuters
For people who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods, walking to work, school or even the grocery store safely can be stressful, if not outright dangerous. Two UMD computer science majors want to put an angel on their shoulders—or in their phones. Freshmen Hassan Syyid and Sandeep Ramesh are developing Path Angel, an app to help commuters find the safest route to their destination. It took triple honors last month at Cornell University’s Big Red Hacks: Hack to Save Your Community! The duo was inspired to create their app while walking around the Cornell campus and trying to find a shady path to... read more
The University of Maryland’s Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering has come up for praise for its architectural innovation and aesthetics. The American Institute for Architects (AIA) recently recognized the structure with an Award of Merit in the architecture category. The award praises the building’s interior design, mastery of composition, functionality, material and color palettes, as well as its well-integrated adherence to the highest levels of accessibility, health and safety, environmental, and occupant-comfort considerations, standards, and regulations. In... read more
Professor Emeritus Jack Minker was recently awarded the Brooklyn College Alumni Association Post 50th Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award on the occasion of the 70th reunion of the class of 1949. In an era when computer science was not a course of study, Dr. Minker majored in mathematics and earned a B.A. at Brooklyn College, an M.S. at the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. His career in industry began in 1951 at Bell Aircraft Corporation. This was followed by positions at RCA, and the Auerbach Corporation, where he served as Technical Director of the... read more
Saeed Seddighin was advised by Professor MohammadTaghi Hajiaghayi and Pan Xu was advised by Professor John Dickerson and Professor Aravind Srinivasan
Saeed Seddighin and Pan Xu have been named the 2019 recipients of the Larry S. Davis Doctoral Dissertation Award. This dissertation award recognizes the two most outstanding dissertations completed over the past year in the department. Seddighin was recognized by this award for his work entitled “Campaigning via LPS: Solving Blotto and Beyond." The competition between the Republican and the Democrat nominees in the U.S presidential election is known as Colonel Blotto in game theory. The Colonel Blotto game and its extensions have been used in a wide range of applications from political... read more
The test of time award his the highest honor given out by the VLDB endowment.
Prof. Abadi has received the VLDB Test of Time award for his paper "HadoopDB: An Architectural Hybrid of MapReduce and DBMS Technologies for Analytical Workloads.” VLDB Test of Time Award paper is selected from the VLDB Conference from 10 to 12 years earlier that best meets the “test of time”. The committee evaluates the impact of the paper in practice, e.g., in products and services. Impact on the academic community demonstrated through significant follow-through research by the community is also valued. Prof. Abadi’s work introduced a seminal, systems-level integration of large-scale data... read more
Department welcomes our new undergrad advisors: Tori Blackwell, Courtney Cabansag, Christine Denis, Brittany Johnson. read more
Distinguished University Professor is the highest academic honor bestowed by the university
The Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science Professor Ming C. Lin , has been named 2019 Distinguished University Professor by the University of Maryland. It is the highest academic honor bestowed by the university. Lin joined University of Maryland in 2018 as the Chair of department of Computer Science. She came from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was the John R. and Louise S. Parker Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and a faculty member for 20 years. Lin earned her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the... read more
Rising Stars is an intensive academic career workshop for early-career women. The annual event brings together a group of the world's brightest females in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering.
Aly’s research work focuses on spatial systems, mobile/wireless computing and crowdsourcing. She has worked on automatically building accessibility maps where indoor/outdoor spaces are marked with their accessibility state for the different disability types. She has worked on addressing different challenges to realize the system, e.g. accurate indoor and outdoor tracking, and valuation of spatiotemporal data. Aly’s research interests include intelligent systems, location determination systems and mobile/ubiquitous computing. She is interested in leveraging machine learning, signal processing... read more
Saha was advised by Professor Emeritus, Samir Khuller
Barna Saha receives Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers 2019. Saha, advised by Professor Emeritus Samir Khuller, is a theoretical computer scientist who also works on the mathematical foundations of data science. Saha’s career proposal focuses on building a unified theory of fine-grained algorithm design to study fast approximation algorithms, and understand the trade-offs between running time, approximation and randomness at the finest level. “Can we develop a faster algorithm for some of the very hard problems and if not, can we definitely say there is a... read more
Each year, the Department of Computer Science awards outstanding professors, instructors, and teaching assistants for the ingenuity, intelligence, thoughtfulness, and care that they bring to the classroom. This year, the committee solicited nominations to recognize STIC facilitators, in addition to the undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants, lecturers, and professors.The awardees have been recognized for their dedication, love of science, and the ways that they help to make the department one of the best at the University of Maryland. Congratulations to all the teaching award winners... read more