Recent News & Accomplishments
2016
At the fourteenth Copper Mountain Conference on Iterative Methods , PhD Candidate Kookjin Lee gave a paper entitled “A Preconditioned Low-Rank Projection Method with a Rank-Reduction Scheme for Stochastic Partial Differential Equations” to over 200 conference attendees in an informal and relaxed atmosphere. Lee’s paper was one of four recognized as ‘Best Student Paper’ at the conference which was held in Copper Mountain, Colorado from March 20-25, 2016. Both Lee, and his advisor Professor Howard Elman were kind enough to take a break from their busy schedules and speak about the conference,... read more
The Computer Science Department is pleased to announce that Héctor Corrada Bravo (also of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology ) has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. Corrada Bravo's research focuses on statistical and machine learning methods for high-throughput genomic data analysis. This includes pre-processing of measurements from high-throughput assays, disease risk models that integrate high-throughput genomic and other data, and cancer epigenetics and biomarker discovery. He also works on the development of new methods and tools from multiple areas in... read more
On April 15, 2016, Professor Ramani Duraiswami (also of UMIACS) will be presented with a University System of Maryland Board of Regents ’ Faculty Award for Scholarship, Research or Creative Activity . Each year, the UMD Board of Regents recognizes faculty in this category for their "exceptional scholarship or research that extend or deepen the bounds of knowledge or of creative activities that are recognized as innovations in the nominee’s discipline." Professor Samir Khuller, Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair of Computer Science, and a faculty committee nominated Duraiswami for his creative... read more
Where is the Marriott? What do I wear? What can I win?
This Thursday, April 7th at 6pm, is Casino Night 2016. In case any of you are freshmen or transfer students, the Association of Women in Computing Casino Night is an annual fundraiser to support women in technology. This is an event where for $5 for students ($10 at the door) you get a night of delicious food, fake gambling with your professors, and very real prizes. Your ticket gives you $500 in funny money that you can use at blackjack, craps, and more, which you can turn in at the end of the night for raffles. This year is bigger and better than ever, and while this post can’t give... read more
On March 29, 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that Senior Andrea Bajcsy and Alumna Talia Ringer were awarded NSF Graduate Fellowships. This year the NSF made 2,000 award offers after receiving 17,000 applications. Both Bajcsy and Ringer will be using their awards towards PhDs in computer science. Ringer is currently a first year PhD student at University of Washington, and Bajcsy is still in the process of choosing a university. When asked about both fellowship winners, Professor Samir Khuller, Elizabeth Iribe Stevinson Chair of Computer Science said, “Talia Ringer... read more
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to announce that Mossaab Bagdouri has been named as one of IBM's PhD Fellows for 2016. Bagdouri is entering his final year as a graduate student in the Computer Science Department, where he works on making machines understand human language through Information Retrieval, Text Classification, and Computational Linguistics. Bagdouri currently conducts research with Doug Oard in the Computational Linguistics and Information Processing (CLIP) Lab . Bagdouri holds a Ingénieur d'Etat en Informatique from École Nationale Supérieure d'... read more
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to announce that Michael Antonov, Brendan Iribe, and Andrew Reisse are the newest inductees to the Alumni Hall of Fame. Each year, the department celebrates the contributions that alumni have made to the field of computing and the impact that these contributions have had on society: Michael Antonov (B.S., Computer Science, 2003 ) currently serves as Chief Software Architect at Oculus VR (he is also a co-founder of the company) where he leads the development of virtual reality software including game integrations, sensor-based tracking and system... read more
Brendan Iribe will be speaking with participants at the bitcamp hackathon on April 8th at 9:30pm. The Computer Science Department is a proud sponsor of the event, which seeks to bring students from all over the US together to spend 36 hours developing software, and engineering creative "hacks" for a panel of distinguished judges. Many CS undergradates are responsible for putting on this event, and we'll be sure to highlight student projects after the event. read more
On March 23, 2016, Professor Eytan Ruppin of Computer Science and The Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology published a new article in Cell Systems entitled "Metabolic Network Prediction of Drug Side Effects" with Itay Shaked, Matthew A. Oberhardt, Nir Atias, and Roded Sharan (all of Tel Aviv University). The team of researchers are examining ways to quickly determine side effects from medications using machine learning methods. They use m edical informatics resources and a human genome-scale metabolic model to present the array of model-based phenotype predictors (AMPP) to... read more
On March 10th, Alum Arijit Biswas (PhD ‘14) was named by Live Mint in conjunction MIT Technology Review as one of eight of India’s Top Innovators under 35. He has been identified as someone whose innovations will shape the future for decades to come. Biswas is currently working as a research scientist at the Xerox Research Centre India . Biswas joined the Computer Science Department in 2009 after completing his undergraduate degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. His research advisor here was Professor David Jacobs. Of his experience... read more