Recent News & Accomplishments
2015
On November 11th 2015, Eytan Ruppin, Professor of Computer Science, and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computation Biology published a co-authored a paper entitled " Diversion of aspartate in ASS1-deficient tumours fosters de novo pyrimidine synthesis " in Nature . The team of scientists examined two types citrullinaemia ( amino acid disorders that do not allow cells to produce citrin--which is essential to removing urea, ammonia, and other toxic substances from the blood via the liver) to show that levels of Argininosuccinate synthase (ASS1), the missing enzyme that... read more
Before coming to the University of Maryland in 2002 to earn a master's degree in Computer Science, Pooja Sankar '04, earned a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science at IIT, Kapur. Ms. Sankar then took her talents to Oracle, Kosmix, and Facebook before founding her company Piazza while she earned her MBA at Stanford Business School. Piazza, is an online, educational platform that allows professors, teaching assistants, and students, to ask and answer questions as well communicate and exchange ideas. Ms. Sankar was recently interviewed on NPR , and she spoke about how this platform can help shy... read more
This October, the University of Maryland sent 44 students to Austin, Texas, for the 2015 Grace Hopper Conference. We also had 19 attend this year’s Code(Her) conference in Washington, DC. On October 21st, there was an event to recap the two diversity conferences as well as a dessert social for students and sponsors. The panel had 8 young women in computer science answering questions and was moderated by Phyllis Kolmus of AT&T Government Solutions. The first question was about what they learned at the conferences. Freshman Fonda Li, who went to Code(Her), got to participate in UI workshops... read more
Jagdeep Singh, ’87, graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science at the age of 19. After working at Hewlett Packard for a few years, he went on to found several companies including Airsoft, Lightera Networks (sold to CIENA) and Infinera. After he and his cofounders sold Infinera in 2010, Mr. Singh went on to found QuantumScape , a stealth battery start-up in Silicon Valley. With QuantumScape , Mr. Singh's is goal is make a battery that solves the ‘materials problem,’ is solid state, and has the density of fossil fuels. QuantumScape is the subject of a great deal of speculation, and it will be... read more
According to Online Course Report , Professor Adam Porter (CS, Fraunhofer, UMIACS) has the distinction of having taught over half a million students worldwide on Coursera (600,000, to be exact). His course, Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems – Part1, teaches students the "basics of developing mobile apps for the smartphones and tablets on the Android platform, from development environment setup to creating apps." This course has archived lessons, and the site indicates that Porter will teach more modules in the future. While a professor at the University of Maryland... read more
During the Friday November 6th, at 4pm in CSIC, the Computer Science Department will be hosting Ms. Kathryn Kleiman of the ENIAC Programmers Project . She will be showing her film The Computers . This 20-minute film tells the history of six women who greatly influenced the history of Computer Science, but who for many years were lost in the annals of history. The Computer Science Department hopes to help students at the University of Maryland to understand that computing has a complex, multi-faceted history that is full of a variety human experiences. RSVP to reserve your seat. Refreshments... read more
*/ If you've ever gone to a hackathon or belong to any sort of social coding group, then you've probably heard of MHacks . The 36-hour event, founded in 2013 at the University of Michigan and now in its sixth iteration, has established itself as one of the largest (hosting 1500 participants) and most prestigious hackathons in the collegiate scene. It should come as no surprise, then, that our very own Terrapin Hackers have established themselves as regulars at MHacks, sending a slew of eager first-time hackers and veterans alike to Ann Arbor each semester. I sat down with Colin King and Sean... read more
Assistant Professor Dr. Michelle Mazurek was awarded a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) September 1, 2015. Titled “Supporting Secure Mobile App Development”, the grant is for $333,714 over three years. Dr. Mazurek is the Principal Investigator on the grant, and the work will be done in collaboration with her students and researchers from Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. “The goal of the project is to improve security and privacy decision-making by developers of mobile applications (who are not security experts),”... read more
Associate Professor Dr. Mihai Pop was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) September 1, 2015. The grant, listed as “Scalable and Highly Accurate Methods for Metagenomics”, was awarded to Dr. Pop in collaboration with Professors Tandy Warnow and William Gropp from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. It is scheduled to last from September 1, 2015 to an estimated end date of August 31, 2019. The grant focuses on developing methods for “annotating metagenomic sequences”, as Dr. Pop puts it: determining which organisms are present in a sample... read more
The computer science department added a new office over the summer. The Office of Student Enrichment, directed by University of Pennsylvania alum and ex-associate professor at Maryland Rich Gerber, is a boon for students looking to get involved. For now, its physical presence is no more than Gerber’s own office, but it has already reached dozens of passionate undergraduates. When I talked to Gerber, he was in middle of his first major initiative: furnishing the first dedicated hacker-maker space inside the Computer Science Instructional Center. Despite the meteoric rise in the popularity of... read more