News and Events
Recent News & Accomplishments
2026
CS alum Ananth Sankaralingam turned early startup experiments into a Y Combinator-backed AI platform for government contractors.
Two weeks into an internship at Amazon, alum Ananth Sankaralingam (B.S. ’26, computer science) watched his assigned senior employee leave the company to start a business. The decision stayed with him because it challenged how he had been thinking about work and what he wanted from his own career. Several years later, Sankaralingam is building Chromie.dev , an artificial intelligence platform for government contractors, from San Francisco. The company was accepted into Y Combinator’ s 2026 summer batch after changing direction several times and abandoning an earlier product that failed to... read more
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly integrated into sectors such as healthcare, finance and government, organizations face a critical challenge: how to use powerful machine learning tools without compromising confidential data. At the University of Maryland, fifth-year computer science doctoral student Yvonne Zhou is developing a new framework designed to bridge the gap between privacy-preserving theory and practical, real-world performance. Her work focuses on protecting sensitive information throughout the machine learning pipeline—from the moment data is sent to a cloud server... read more
Zhicheng Liu and Fumeng Yang received a $559,048 NSF grant to develop tools and design guidelines for more effective science infographics.
Scientific discoveries can influence decisions about health, climate and technology, but the research behind them is often difficult to explain outside laboratories and academic journals. Two University of Maryland computer scientists are examining how infographics can present those findings to the general public effectively. Department of Computer Science Associate Professor Zhicheng Liu and Assistant Professor Fumeng Yang received a $ 559,048 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how science infographics are designed, interpreted and evaluated. The researchers will study... read more
Haizhao Yang is developing an AI platform that turns everyday questions into mathematical models for complex decision-making.
When an emergency like extreme weather strikes, making the right decision in real time can become a matter of life and death. Yet the mathematical optimization tools used to calculate the safest evacuation routes or allocate emergency resources typically require significant computing power and specialized expertise in programming and mathematics. Haizhao Yang, an associate professor with joint appointments in the University of Maryland's Department of Mathematics and Department of Computer Science, wants to change that. Supported by a $20,000 seed grant from the Artificial Intelligence... read more
Mihai Pop and Philip Resnik delivered keynote addresses and held leadership roles at international conferences focused on artificial intelligence and computational biology.
University of Maryland computer science faculty members Mihai Pop and Philip Resnik joined fellow UMIACS faculty member Joshua Weitz in taking on leadership and speaking roles at major international conferences in July 2026. Their participation highlighted research across artificial intelligence, computational biology and microbiome science. Philip Resnik, a professor of linguistics and an affiliate professor of computer science, delivered the opening keynote address at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2026) in San Diego. His presentation, A New... read more
The University Career Center survey shows strong employment outcomes, higher starting salaries and continued graduate school enrollment for the class of 2025.
The University of Maryland’s Department of Computer Science reported a 95% job placement rate for its class of 2025, according to a survey conducted by the University Career Center . The annual graduation survey, which covers students who completed degrees in August and December 2024 and May 2025, found that graduates continued to secure employment across the technology sector while also pursuing advanced degrees at universities nationwide. "These results reflect both the strong technical foundation our students develop and the many ways they engage with research, internships and other... read more
Raghav Thind, Nghia Truong and Priya Tyagi received funding to support summer research, conference travel and career development.
Every year, the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) Alumni Network offers awards to help undergraduates defray the costs of conducting research, attending conferences or interning over the summer. Read below how this year’s award recipients are furthering their career development with funding from the CMNS Alumni Network Endowed Undergraduate Awards program . Raghav Thind Since becoming a senior computer science major at UMD, Raghav Thind has been drawn to research and development. He is using this award funding to attend the prestigious Summer@EPFL program, a three... read more
She discusses her path into computing, her work on privacy and data de-identification, and why communication matters in human-centered security research.
University of Maryland Professor of Computer Science Michelle Mazurek studies how people navigate security and privacy decisions in everyday digital systems. Affiliated with the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) and the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2), her research connects technical questions with the human choices behind them, from how software developers handle secure coding to how researchers protect sensitive data before sharing it. In this Q&A, Mazurek discusses the early experiences that drew her to computing, her work on data de-... read more
UMD Ph.D. student Ryan Synk is developing a machine-learning system designed to help researchers search a growing federal archive of raw genetic information.
A single biological sample can produce millions of fragments of genetic information. Multiply that output by years of experiments involving humans, animals, plants, viruses and environmental samples, and researchers face a problem that is as computational as it is biological: How do they find the DNA sequence they need? University of Maryland computer science Ph.D. student Ryan Synk is studying whether machine learning can make that search faster and more reliable. Advised by Professor of Computer Science Ramani Duraiswami , Synk is developing LOCALE , a system designed to search the National... read more
An AI model may be designed to behave safely, but that doesn’t mean the system delivering it is secure, according to new research from the University of Maryland. The study —currently under review for presentation at a major conference on neural processing systems later this year—found that critical security vulnerabilities often lie not within AI models themselves, but in the complex software infrastructure that serves them to millions of users. To uncover these flaws, researchers developed a testing tool called GRIEF (Greybox Inference Engine Fuzzer), which uses a cybersecurity technique... read more
Featured Videos
When Transfer Learning Meets Deep Learning
Professor Qiang Yang, Hong Kong UniversityNovember 27, 2017
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Cryptographic Perspectives on the Future of Privacy
Jonathan Katz, Department of Computer Science, University of MarylandSeptember 06, 2017
An Expanding and Expansive View of Computing
Jim Kurose, National Science FoundationJanuary 30, 2017
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Data, Predictions and Decisions in Support of People and Society
Eric Horvitz, Technical Fellow and Director at MicrosoftOctober 24, 2016
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The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence: An Enduring Study on AI and its Influence on People and Society
Eric Horvitz, Technical Fellow and Director at MicrosoftOctober 24, 2016