Recent News & Accomplishments
2017
Today marks the end of an era. Ben Shneiderman, Professor of Computer Science and founder of the Human Computer Interaction Lab here at the University is celebrating his retirement. Learn more about Ben and his career on this website . read more
Prayaag Venkat has been named a Goldwater Scholar for 2017. His accomplishment has been highlighted by the College of Computer Math and Natural Sciences on their website in Matt Wright's article congratulating the college's awardees: Prayaag Venkat—a computer science and mathematics double major who is also a member of the University Honors Program and a Banneker/Key Scholar—is interested in an area of theoretical computer science known as approximation algorithms, which look for the closest optimal solutions to complex problems for which exact solutions are impractical. Venkat has worked... read more
Naveen Durvasula headed to Intel ISEF
Professor Aravind Srinivasan and Assistant Professor John Dickerson mentor Naveen Durvasula, a Montgomery Blair Magnet High School student, who conducts research on improved kidney exchange methodologies. Durvasula has recently been selected to compete in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) in May. “The purpose of my project is to compute, for a given donor-patient pair who wishes to enter a kidney-paired donation system, the expected quality of the kidney they would receive, and how long it would take for them to receive that kidney,” said Durvasula. In order to... read more
Ahmed Elgohary has received a PhD fellowship from IBM for 2017-2018. Elgohary has a history of research with IBM, which resulted in a Best Paper the 42nd Annual Conference on Very Large Databases 2016 (VLDB) held in New Delhi, India. He interned at IBM Almaden Lab, where he worked with computer scientists from a variety of research backgrounds including systems, databases, algorithms, and machine learning. He worked with Mathais Boehm and Frederick R. Reiss at IBM, and at the university, Elgohary's advisors are Professor Philip Resnick and Professor Doug Oard ( from the i-School). About the... read more
Ph.D. students Milod Kazerounian and Elissa Redmiles have been named as National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellows for 2017. Kazerounian's advisor is Professor Jeff Foster, and Redmiles' advisor is Assistant Professor Michelle Mazurek. Two undergraduates computer science majors have been named NSF Graduate Research Fellows as well: Katherine Cordwell, who is a double major with mathematics, and Jonathan San Miguel who is a double majoring with physics. Congratulations to all! read more
Each year the University System of Maryland (USM) awards faculty members for excellence and their contributions to the university community. This year, one of the recipients for excellence in mentoring is Associate Professor of Computer Science, Neil Spring. According to USM, the awards represent "the highest honor presented by the board to exemplary faculty members. Presented in four categories, the awards honor excellence in teaching, public service, mentoring, innovation, and a combined category of research, scholarship and creative activity." Doctoral student Ramakrishna Padmanabhan... read more
Endowed professorship in virtual reality created with private and state support
Matthias Zwicker joined the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science and the university’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) in March 2017 as the Reginald Allan Hahne Endowed E-Nnovate Professor in Computer Science. “I am very excited to be at a major university with lots of great students and where research in graphics with virtual and augmented reality is on the cutting edge,” Zwicker said. “This area of study is not a traditional area of computer science, but the connection with Brendan Iribe and the building makes it very exciting, and I am happy to be here... read more
On February 24, 2017, Assistant Professor Michelle Mazurek gave the keynote address for the ACM Capital Region Celebration of Women in Computing (CAPWIC) 2017 held at Georgetown University. Mazurek’s talk was entitled Expanding Usable Security Beyond End Users . This yearly celebration “brings together women at the high school, undergraduate, graduate, and professional levels to promote the recruitment, retention, and progression of women in computing fields.” The conference also includes several technical talks as well as opportunities for women in computer science to interact and network. read more
Mohammad Taghi Hajiaghayi, the Jack and Rita Minker Professor of Computer Science, has been awarded an ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) award for 2017 . Over the last five years he has coached five teams of talented students who have advanced to the World Finals. Hajiaghayi will be presented with the award at the ACM-ICPC World Finals Opening Ceremony on Monday, May 22nd in Rapid City, South Dakota. "Congratulations to Mohammad and all of the students who have been in the teams the last few years. They are indeed fortunate to have had Mohammad as the coach," said Samir... read more
In early March of 2017, Professor Mike Hicks and Assistant Professor Michelle Mazurek were granted a Google Research Award for 2016 in the area of Security . Assistant Professor Jon Froehlich and Affiliate Assistant Professor Leah Findlater (Assistant Professor of the I-School) have been awarded a Google Faculty Award as well in the area of Physical Interfaces and Immersive Experiences. The Google grants cover tuition for a graduate student and give faculty and students the opportunity to work directly with Google researchers and engineers. According to the Google research blog, they received... read more