Recent News & Accomplishments
2017
In May 2017, Jagdeep Singh,’86, Qiang Yang Ph.D.,’89 and Rajiv Gandhi Ph.D.,’03 will be inducted into the Alumni Hall of Fame. Jagdeep Singh Jagdeep Singh is cofounder and CEO of QuantumScape Corporation, a startup working on a fundamental disruption in the energy storage sector. Prior to founding QuantumScape, he was cofounder and CEO of Infinera Corp (NASDAQ: INFN), developer of the world’s first large-scale photonic integrated circuits and optical transmission systems based on these chips. At Infinera, Singh led the company to the number one market share position in North America. Shortly... read more
Daniel Abadi, a world-renowned expert in databases, is set to join the Department of Computer Science in July of 2017 as the Darnell-Kanal Professor of Computer Science. The professorship was established by Mr. Christopher Darnell, to honor Emeritus Professor of computer science, Laveen Kanal. "We are delighted to welcome Daniel as the Darnell-Kanal Professor,” said Samir Khuller, the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science. “He is a world leader in the area of databases and high volume transaction processing, and Maryland is rather fortunate to land him. Daniel also has an... read more
In spring of 2016, Juliana Lu-Yang, a senior at Montgomery Blair High School Magnet program, contacted PhD student Elissa Redmiles to work with the high school's new programming club for women. Redmiles worked with the program, and then decided establish it further to welcome all women from the Montgomery Blair especially those who are not a part of the magnet program. Redmiles applied for and has received a NCWIT Student Seed Fund Award (also funded by Google) to fund the new part of the program with materials and activities to encourage all women from the high school to learn about Computer... read more
2016
Bryant Lee, '06, who is also a graduate of Harvard Law School, has founded a start-up called Justice Toolbox , which helps individuals find the best attorneys for their cases. He has combined his work in the law and his degree in computer science to help people search for lawyers using sophisticated data and machine learning techniques. Lee was kind enough to sit down with us to talk for a few minutes about his life after the University of Maryland, what is like to found a startup dealing with law, and his future plans. Listen to an audio interview with Bryant Lee Listen to an audio interview... read more
Continuing a tradition of excellence in undergraduate research in Computer Science, Prayaag Venkat and Ashton Webster were awarded Honorable Mention by the Computing Research Association for their undergraduate research projects on December 9th 2016. Venkat conducted research with Professor Samir Khuller and Professor Dave Mount. Webster conducted research with Professor Jim Purtilo and Professor Michel Cukier (of Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering). While they were preparing for exams, Venkat and Webster kindly corresponded about their research that they conducted... read more
Junior computer science majors Spencer Chen and Saurav Das teamed together with first year PhD student Willem Wyndham to compete in the Kaspersky Lab Cyber Security Case Study . Chen, Das, and Wyndham represented the Maryland Cybersecurity Center . Kaspersky labs invted students from all over the world to submit a proposal in order to solve a cyber security issue. Kaspersky Lab chose their Chen, Das, and Wynham's proposal as one of the three best. The team was awarded $5,000.00 for their second place finish. The students were challenged to come up with a technical solution to the problems... read more
After competing in the Mid-Atlantic ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Regional contest the Computer Science Department’s three competing teams scored in the top 15 out of 182 teams. The top team, UMDblack, placed third. Mahsa Derakhshan, John Tan, and Hadi Yami have earned a spot to compete in the ICPC World Finals to be held in Rapid City, South Dakota from May 20-17th 2017. Their coaches are PhD student Peng Shangfu and Jack and Rita Minker Professor of Computer Science Mohammad Haghiagyahi. After their competition this May, we will interview the students about their... read more
On Saturday, December 3rd, Terrapin Hackers hosted Major League Hacking’s annual Local Hack Day , with over 100 registered students. At 9am, thousands of eager high school and university students in different locations begin to code. Local Hack Day acknowledges the “local hacker community around the world.” University of Maryland and local high school hackers gathered at Collider--the Terrapin Hackers meeting and coworking space--to participate in the festivities. For twelve consecutive hours, students worked on creating personal or group projects related to software or hardware. Participants... read more
Emerita Professor Bonnie Dorr (now also of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition , IHMC) has been named an ACL ( Association for Computational Linguistics ) Fellow for 2016. Fellows are recognized for their “enduring and outstanding contributions to the field of computational linguistics." Professor Dorr was specifically recognized for her “significant contributions to machine translation, summarization, and human evaluation.” Dorr also served as the Vice President of the ACL in 2005. Professor Dorr joined the Computer Science Department in 1992 after she earned in PhD in... read more
Professor Vipin Kumar (PhD, '82), Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, and the William Norris Endowed Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, is the 2016 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award , one of IEEE Computer Society's most prestigious awards. This award honors Kumar's outstanding contributions in the application of high-performance computers using innovative approaches. Currently, Kumar's research interests include data mining, high-performance computing, and their applications in Climate/Ecosystems and Biomedical domains. Kumar... read more