Three CS Terps Received CMNS Alumni Network Endowed Undergraduate Awards

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-month summer research fellowship hosted by the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne in Switzerland.

“Not only will this award impact my outcome this summer, but it will also play an important role in helping me to continue developing as a research scientist and make me capable of contributing to impactful, real-world innovation,” Thind said.

After graduation next year, Thind plans to pursue a Ph.D. to become a research scientist “at the forefront of technological innovation.”

Nghia Truong

Junior computer science and mathematics double-degree student Nghia Truong used his award funding to travel to present his first-author paper at the 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing in Barcelona.

This summer, Truong will continue his research with UMD Mathematics Associate Professor Yun Yang on the theoretical foundations of transformer attention and its connections to kernel methods. He will also participate in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) with Computer Science Professor Jordan Boyd-Graber focused on building a multimedia quiz system that challenges artificial intelligence systems.

“As an international student conducting research without a stipend, this scholarship has made a significant difference by helping alleviate financial burdens,” Truong said. “Beyond that, it is deeply encouraging and motivates me to continue pursuing research with dedication and purpose.”

After graduation, Truong hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics and machine learning theory and looks forward to making meaningful scientific contributions and mentoring the next generation of students. 

Priya Tyagi

Receiving a total hip replacement at age 17 due to slipped capital femoral epiphysis inspired senior computer science major Priya Tyagi to pursue computational solutions to biological problems.

Tyagi is using her award funding to continue her research in Bioengineering Assistant Professor Alexander Xu’s Spatial Biology Lab. Her project examines whether atomic force microscopy tissue measurements could be replaced by computational predictions trained on imaging data—thereby saving both time and money. Tyagi is focusing on the pipeline’s image processing, feature engineering and machine learning components to accelerate this research.

After graduation, Tyagi plans to pursue an M.D.-Ph.D. in computational biology.

“The goal is to become a physician-scientist,” Tyagi said. “I am interested in using computational approaches to uncover medical mysteries about diseases that clinical practice alone cannot address, and eventually translating those discoveries into clinical interventions.”

—Story by CMNS