Recent News & Accomplishments
2020
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to welcome our new Victor Basili Fellow for Fall 2020: Michael Coblenz . The Victor Basili Postdoctoral Fellowship Program focuses on supporting young researchers doing work on methods to ensure that software applied to pressing societal problems is trustworthy, reliable, and correct. A PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, Coblenz’s dissertation focused on user-centered design methods for programming languages. He has created Obsidian, a new programming language for blockchain smart contracts, which integrates a strong, static... read more
Assistant Research Professor Aniket Bera and Paul Chrisman Iribe Professor of Computer Science, Dinesh Manocha recently received a grant from the UMD Brain and Behavior Initiative (BBI) for the project titled “Learning Age and Gender Adaptive Gait Motor Control-based Emotion Using Deep Neural Networks and Affective Modeling. ” The project seeks to develop automated AI-based techniques for perceiving human emotions based on kinematic and kinetic variables—that is, based on both the contextual and intrinsic qualities of human motion. The proposed research will examine the role of age and gender... read more
Drew Hamilton, a rising junior majoring in Computer Science worked this summer for the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies ( CISESS ) under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2020 Young Summer Scholars program ( ncei.noaa.gov/news/2020-young-summer-scholars ). Each year NOAA hosts and mentors early-career scientists as they gain experience in science and technology. Hamilton’s work as an intern focused on experimentation and development of a new prototype data processing and data analysis system. He applied graph database architecture to increase... read more
Associate Professor Michelle Mazurek’s research group won two distinguished paper awards at the 2020 USENIX Security Symposium . USENIX Security provides a platform where researchers, practitioners, system administrators, system programmers, and others can share and explore the latest advances in the security and privacy of computer systems and networks. The papers were among 11 selected as distinguished papers out of the 157 presented. The two awarded papers are : A Comprehensive Quality Evaluation of Security and Privacy Advice on the Web (Elissa M. Redmiles, Noel Warford, Amritha Jayanti,... read more
Daniel Votipka , a fourth-year doctoral student, recently received the 2020 John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Student Research Award , in acknowledgment of his excellence in research, mentorship and community service. The award has been instituted by the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) in honor of John Karat, an internationally recognized researcher in the field of human-computer interaction, for his contributions to the usable privacy and security community and his dedication to mentoring students. Votipka’s research focuses on computer security, with an emphasis on the... read more
Distinguished University Professors Ming Lin and Hanan Samet recently received the distinguished career in computer science award by the Washington Academy of Sciences . A lifetime achievement award which acknowledges the significant impact of their work in the field of computer science. This award program started in 1940, to encourage the advancement of science and "to conduct, endow, or assist investigation in any department of science." An expert in virtual reality, Lin’s research focuses on computational robotics, haptics, physically-based modeling, virtual reality, sound rendering, and... read more
The department is pleased to announce our newest professors of computer science. This new group of professors, joining this fall, brings in research expertise ranging from cybersecurity to data visualization, from cryptography to natural language processing and more. “The department is delighted to welcome our new faculty members. They represent a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise in critical research areas that will further strengthen the educational and research capacity of our department.” said interim chair Matthias Zwicker . Jonathan Katz Katz conducts research on cryptography... read more
Each year, the Department of Computer Science awards outstanding professors, instructors, STIC facilitators and teaching assistants for their outstanding contribution, dedication, thoughtfulness and commitment towards teaching and learning. The nominations for the award were made by the students and faculty. Assistant professor Soheil Feizi and Lecturer Mohammad Nayeem Teli served on the award committee. The award committee selected the following recipients for this year's teaching awards: Best Undergraduate Teaching Assistant : Justin De Burgo nominated for CMSC 132 Object Oriented... read more
Senior lecturer Nelson Padua-Perez was recently nominated for the Donna B. Hamilton Teaching Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching for his work in CMSC131. Each year the Office of Undergraduate Studies recognizes two faculty members campus-wide for merit in teaching. The award is based solely on student nominations and is solicited from across campus. Padua-Perez teaches CMSC131:Object-Oriented Programming I, CMSC132: Object-Oriented Programming II and CMSC216 - Introduction to Computer Systems courses. In addition to this he has also designed and taught CMSC389N: Introduction to PHP... read more
A team of PhD students advised by Professor Yiannis Aloimonos and Professor Cornelia Fermuller achieved the first and second place over the two portions of the 2020 Epic Action Anticipation Challenge . Anticipating future human activity from video is an area of great importance in computer vision with applications in human-robot interaction, surveillance, navigation, etc. To motivate research towards solving this important problem, the EPIC Kitchens Action Anticipation Challenge was launched, where 20 international teams from leading companies and universities competed. EPIC-Kitchens is the... read more