Recent News & Accomplishments
2014
Professor Jacob Lurie of Harvard University’s Mathematics Department has won the Inaugural Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics . Professor Bill Gasarch mentored Lurie from 1992-93; at the time, Lurie was a high school student at the Montgomery Blair Magnet Program . Together, Gasarch and Lurie worked on Recursion theory and Surreal numbers. Gasarch has mentored many students from Montgomery Blair over the years. Read more about Professor Lurie and his prize here: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/06/lurie-wins-award/ read more
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to announce that Ramani Duraiswami and Jeff Foster have both been promoted to the rank of Professor. Ramani joined the department in 2004, and he currently directs research at the Perceptual Interfaces and Reality Laboratory (PIRL). His primary research interests include computer audition, computer vision, machine learning and scientific computing. Ramani is also a member of UMIACS (University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies). Jeff joined the department in 2003, and he currently serves as the Associate Chair of the Graduate... read more
UMD CS Alumnus Amnon Lotem (Ph.D. 2000) and co-authors Ronald Fagin and Moni Naor have been honored with the 2014 G ö del Prize for their paper, Optimal Aggregation Algorithms for Middleware. This paper introduces the “threshold algorithm”, which is used for gathering multi-sourced information, and provides a framework to design and analyze algorithms that can help aggregate information from multiple data sources. The G ö del prize recognizes outstanding papers in theoretical computer science and is presented by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and ACM’s... read more
Sergey Ivanov, the IT Systems Administrator for the CS Department, participated in the 117th Boston Marathon on April 24th 2014. On that cool, clear day, Sergey ran 26.2 miles through Massachusetts. Starting in Hopkinton, he ran 13.1 miles northeast to Wellesley, then ran another seven miles to Newton’s Heartbreak Hill, and then on to the finish line in Boston. Sergey competed in what can only be described as barefoot running sandals (entirely reminiscent of footwear that might have been worn by athletes in the ancient Olympics). He finished the race in an impressive time of 3:37:55 at a pace... read more
Bitcamp supported in part by the UMD Computer Science Department
Bitcamp, the University of Maryland’s first Major League Hackathon, drew nearly 700 students from colleges as far away as Toronto, Canada. Bitcamp opened with a keynote speech from Brendan Iribe and Michael Antonov, of Oculus VR. read more
Computer Science Department undergraduate student Fang Cao has been awarded a 2014 Truman Scholarship. read more
Computer Science Department Ph.D. Student Rajesh Chitnis has been awarded the University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences Board of Visitors Outstanding Graduate Student Award. read more
Computer Science Department Professor Hanan Samet has been awarded the 2014 W. Wallace McDowell Award, the highest technical honor awarded by the IEEE Computer Society. read more
Computer Science Department Ph.D. student Vahid Liaghat has been awarded an Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship for the 2014-2015 academic year. read more
Dr. Jandelyn Plane, Director of the Maryland Center for Women in Computing, has been awarded the 2014 Women in Technology Social Impact IT Leadership Award. read more