Recent News & Accomplishments
2021
Professor Howard Elman has been reappointed as the director of The Applied Mathematics & Statistics and Scientific Computational Graduate Program (AMSC). A PhD in computer science from Yale University, Elman has been affiliated with the program for several decades and took over as the director in 2018. “I'm delighted to continue in my role as Director of the AMSC program," says Elman. Further he adds “This is an interdisciplinary graduate program that draws on the strengths the University has in Applied Mathematics across campus, with 150 affiliated faculty from 36 units on campus,... read more
The Maryland Robotics Center’s new MRC Graduate Research Assistantship Program is open to mid-career UMD Ph.D. students whose advisors are members of the Maryland Robotics Center. Each year, the program will provide up to three 12-month graduate research assistantships. The first recipients of this award for the academic year 2021–2022 are: • Kanishka Ganguly, Computer Science Department, advised by Professor Yiannis Aloimonos and Associate Research Scientist Cornelia Fermüller • Usman Fiaz, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, advised by Professor John Baras • Varun Suryan,... read more
Pavan Ravindra ’21 becomes the fifth UMD student since 2018 to win the Churchill Scholarship to study at the University of Cambridge. He’s also president of UMD’s Rubik’s Cube Club, having clocked some of the world's fastest times solving it one-handed.
This article is republished from Maryland Today. By Abby Robinson , Photo courtesy: Pavan Ravindra A University of Maryland senior studying biochemistry and computer science is one of only 17 students nationwide awarded a 2021 Winston Churchill Scholarship to pursue a one-year master’s degree at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Pavan Ravindra—who was named both a Goldwater Scholar and a Merrill Presidential Scholar in 2020—will pursue a Master of Philosophy degree in chemistry after completing his dual degree at Maryland. Five UMD students have received the award since 2018... read more
Starting in Fall 2021, the University of Maryland will offer a new undergraduate minor in Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS). With automated systems becoming more central to the STEM industries in which engineering and computer science graduates work, robotics has become a “must-know” field. Robotics courses generate long wait lists and a demand for more classes and sections. The new RAS minor will help meet this rising demand. It will be administered by the Maryland Robotics Center (MRC), part of the Institute for Systems Research within the Clark School of Engineering. The MRC currently... read more
Knittel received the ARCS Endowment Fellowship in Computer Science for 2021-22
Algorithms are a part of our daily lives. They’re at work when we search for something online, open our favorite social media app or even look up directions on our phones. But what you might not realize is that these algorithms can be biased. Last fall, Twitter made headlines for how its photo cropping algorithm prioritized white faces over Black ones . In 2019, questions were raised about whether Google’s search algorithm was politically biased against conservatives. Mitigating these types of biases in technology is how University of Maryland computer science Ph.D. student Marina Knittel... read more
Alumna Elizabeth Corderman lives her childhood dream of a career at NASA
When Elizabeth Corderman (B.S. ’94, mathematics and computer science; M.S. ’99, computer science) was 12 years old, her fascination with space launched a big dream. And she was serious about making it happen. “I’ve wanted to work at NASA all my life, and I always had enough sense to know that being an astronaut is a pie in the sky dream like being a movie star or a star athlete or something, obviously people get to do it but it’s very rare,” Corderman explained. “Then it dawned on me that for every astronaut in space, there’s all those people who do all the work on the ground supporting them... read more
The weekly talks will feature experts in artificial intelligence, machine learning and theoretical computer science.
A weekly seminar series focused on fairness and bias in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) virtually kicks-off at the University of Maryland on Monday, March 8. The hour-long talks—Mondays from 11 a.m. to noon—are sponsored by the University of Maryland Center for Machine Learning and technology and financial leader Capital One . The Fairness in AI seminar series will feature experts in AI, ML and theoretical computer science who will identify challenges—and seek input on solutions—to the plethora of questions regarding fairness and bias in software used for everything... read more
Presentations at the Feb. 26 event involved projects based in virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and immersive spaces.
Faculty, staff and students from nine departments and six colleges recently came together for a virtual workshop to showcase all-things-immersive at the University of Maryland. Hosted by the university’s Immersive Media Design (IMD) program and the Mixed/Augmented/Virtual Reality Innovation Center (MAVRIC), the Feb. 26 workshop was designed to stimulate conversations and open new pathways for increasing collaboration and support of all-things-immersive across the UMD campus. (A full recording of the four-hour workshop is available here .) “It was inspiring to see how researchers from computer... read more
Partnership with Break Through Tech is part of the Gender Equality in Tech (GET) Cities Initiative
The University of Maryland will build programs to propel more students who identify as women and non-binary into tech education—and ultimately tech careers—thanks to a new partnership with Break Through Tech . The goal is to increase the number of these students graduating with a tech degree at UMD by 12.5 percentage points by 2026, through curriculum innovation, career access and community building. “The University of Maryland is committed to making computing inclusive and accessible for all,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “Break Through Tech will contribute to our efforts with... read more
The funding supports Bhatele’s efforts to use data-driven machine learning models to optimize the efficiency and throughput of extreme-scale parallel systems, and the performance of parallel applications running on them.
A University of Maryland expert in high performance computing (HPC) has received a National Science Foundation award to develop innovative methods for optimizing the performance of parallel applications and runtimes, and the operational efficiency of supercomputers and HPC clusters. Abhinav Bhatele , an assistant professor of computer science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), is principal investigator of an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which is expected to total $550,000 over five years. The funding... read more