CS Ph.D. Student Yuran Ding Receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

University of Maryland Department of Computer Science Ph.D. student Yuran Ding has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP), one of the most competitive honors available to graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields in the United States.

Advised by Professor Ashok Agrawala, and Dr. Paul Strohmeier (MPI) Ding is among a select group of students nationwide chosen for the 2025 cohort of the GRFP, which offers three years of financial support over a five-year fellowship period. The program is designed to promote the vitality and diversity of the U.S. scientific and engineering workforce.

Ding’s research focuses on bridging human augmentation and intelligent systems by designing technologies that align more closely with human intent. Her work builds on a background in haptics and embodied interaction, exploring how low-cost passive haptic surfaces, vibrotactile actuators and lightweight sensors can augment physical and cognitive experiences by responding synchronously to users’ actions and intentions.

Ding’s current research focuses on developing systems that recognize and adapt to how people naturally express themselves.

“Today, I design agentic workflows and multimodal systems that integrate speech, gesture, visual context and domain knowledge with large language models to enable adaptive, intent-driven interaction,” she said. “From haptic illusion systems and augmented presentation tools to LLM agents, my work aims to make intelligence responsive, intuitive, and expressive—leveraging mediums that are scalable and ubiquitous.”

The NSF GRFP supports graduate students who have demonstrated potential for significant research contributions in STEM disciplines. Fellows receive full tuition support, a monthly stipend and additional funds for professional development.

“I feel incredibly lucky and grateful to receive this fellowship. I’ve been fortunate to learn from and be supported by so many generous mentors, colleagues, and friends in academia,” Ding said. “This recognition affirms my belief that intelligent systems should be grounded in human experience in addition to technical capability. It’s especially meaningful to see work that centers human intent—through touch, speech, gesture, and embodied cues—being supported. I’m motivated to continue building systems that interpret and amplify how people move, speak, and interact, and to pursue research that connects innovation with human understanding and values.”

Ding’s work draws from philosophy of technology, including theories of mediation, to consider how computing systems influence human action. She is particularly interested in how intelligent systems can move beyond executing discrete tasks to serving as collaborative tools that support and shape expression and understanding.

Looking ahead, Ding plans to investigate how systems of intelligent agents can interpret and coordinate human goals through shared memory, multimodal input and collaborative workflows.

“My future work will explore how agentic systems can collaboratively interpret and decompose human intent into meaningful tasks,” Ding said. “I’m interested in how domain-specific agents can communicate, manage shared memory, and build contextual understanding over time. This direction also opens possibilities for integrating multimodal inputs, enabling systems that are adaptive, interpretable, and aligned with people’s intent.”

The NSF established the GRFP in 1952, and since then, it has supported over 60,000 graduate students, including many who have gone on to prominent roles in academia, industry and government.

—Story by Samuel Malede Zewdu, CS Communications