Recent News & Accomplishments
2020
Professor William Gasarch recently published a book titled “Mathematical Muffin Morsels: Nobody Wants a Small Piece.” The book is co authored by Erik Metz, Jacob Prinz and Daniel Smolyak. The idea of the book sprouted when Gasarch found a pamphlet having a muffin problem proposed by Alan Frank “How can you divide and distribute 5 muffins to 3 students so that every student gets 5/3 where nobody gets a tiny sliver?” “This began as an undergraduate project, but we just kept getting more and more results in interesting ways,” said Gasarch. “A coherent story emerged that just had to be told.” The... read more
Kianté Brantley , a fourth-year doctoral student advised by Professor Hal Daumé III received the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for 2020 for his dissertation titled “Practical Techniques for Leveraging Experts for Sequential Decisions and Predictions.” An undergraduate and masters in computer science from University of Maryland Baltimore County, Brantley’s research focuses towards designing algorithms that efficiently integrate domain knowledge into sequential decision making problems (e.g. reinforcement learning, imitation learning and structure prediction for natural... read more
Professor Matthias Zwicker has been appointed as the interim chair of the Department of Computer Science, effective July 20, 2020. Zwicker joined UMD in March 2017 as the Reginald Allan Hahne Endowed E-Nnovate Professor in Computer Science with a joint appointment in UMIACS . His research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence and computer graphics to enable new applications in virtual reality, digital entertainment, multimedia, and data visualization. As chair, Zwicker will oversee a department that currently ranks 16th in the nation according to the U.S. News & World... read more
UMDCS faculty will be presenting 13 papers at ICML, 8 papers at ICLR and 2 at IJCAI for 2020
UMDCS researchers will present papers at premier, renowned global conferences focused on Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence. The International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) (July 12 to July 18, 2020) is a globally renowned venue for presenting and publishing cutting-edge research on all aspects of machine learning used in closely related areas like artificial intelligence, statistics and data science, as well as important application areas such as machine vision, computational biology, speech recognition, and robotics. UMD researchers will present 14 papers in the main track... read more
Dear UMD CS Community, We, the CS diversity and inclusion committee, are reaching out in response to recent events. For centuries, Black people in the United States have carried a weighty burden, subjected to implicit and explicit messages that they are inferior and are somehow not fully part of “We the people.” Tragically, these messages have too often been accompanied by violence, even government-condoned violence. All of this is antithetical to our values and our laws, and this has to stop. We want to state clearly that such racism has no place in our department and in our university. All... read more
Distinguished University Professor is the highest academic honor bestowed by the university
Paul Chrisman Iribe, Professor Dinesh Manocha and Professor Aravind Srinivasan have been named 2020 Distinguished University Professors. The title is the highest appointment bestowed on a tenured faculty member. This distinction is honored to only 7% of the tenured faculty, in recognition of the significant and impactful contribution in teaching, research and service. Dinesh Manocha An undergraduate in computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, Manocha joined UMD in 2018. Prior... read more
Jack and Rita G. Minker Professor Mohammad Hajiaghayi has been named the finalist of the prestigious Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists in the Physical Science & Engineering category for 2020. He was chosen as one of the 31 finalists (includes only 2 computer scientists) selected from 305 nominations from 161 academic and research centers across 41 US states. The Blavatnik Family Foundation, administered by the New York Academy of Sciences was founded in 2013, to elate and recognize the transformative research of early-career scientists, at America’s top academic and research... read more
Assistant Professor Leilani Battle has been named to the 2020 MIT Technology Review Innovators under 35. In addition to being an assistant professor in computer science, Battle holds joint appointment in UMIACS and is affiliated with the UMD Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (HCIL) . Battle is one of the 35 young innovators chosen for this honor. The award was established in 1999, to recognize exceptionally talented innovators younger than 35 years from all over the globe whose work has the greatest potential to transform the world in a wide range of fields, including biotechnology,... read more
Assistant Professor Michelle Mazurek joins a national research project to build secure smart homes. The five-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on increasing security and privacy of the tech products used in smart homes. The project -- Security and Privacy in the Lifecycle of IoT for Consumer Environments (SPLICE) -- aims to develop new scientific understanding and novel engineering principles in order to help people to live in a trustworthy Smart Home and protect their privacy at the same time. “We don’t think people who buy smart devices should be asked to make... read more
Professor Emeritus Bonnie Dorr has been named to DARPA's Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group. The ISAT Study group brings together 30 scientists and engineers from across the country who provide assessments of advanced information science and technology as it relates to the U.S. Department of Defense. A leading researcher in the field of natural language processing, Dorr's research focuses on cyber-event extraction and natural language understanding for detecting attacks, discerning intentions of attackers, and thwarting social engineering attacks. Dorr is currently an... read more