Recent News & Accomplishments
2014
Ph.D. alumnus Aaron Schulman was recently awarded the SIGCOMM Doctoral Dissertation Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis in Computer Networking and Data Communication. [An Interview with Aaron] read more
On Friday, March 8th 2014, Aaron Schulman (Ph.D. 2014) heard that he won the ACM SIGCOMM Dissertation Award. Aaron sat down with us to talk about the Award, his Post-doctoral work at Stanford and what being a graduate student in the CS Department meant (and still means) to him. Walk us through the day that you found out that your advisor nominated you for the award, and then let us know how you felt when ACM SIGCOMM let you know that you had indeed won the award. Before I started working on the dissertation, my advisor, Neil Spring, and I wondered if the community would be as intrigued by the... read more
The University of Maryland Department of Computer Science hosted the 24th annual University of Maryland High School Programming Contest on Saturday, March 1st, 2014. On Saturday, twenty-eight teams of D.C. area high school students gathered in the Computer Science Instructional Center to use their programming and problem solving skills to solve several “Despicable Me” themed programming problems. Contest Directors Amol Deshpande and Chau-Wen Tseng, as well as faculty members Evan Golub, MohammadTaghi HajiAghayi, and Dave Mount, and graduate student Saeed Seddhighin, devised... read more
Snigdha Chaturvedi, a Computer Science Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Hal Daume III, and Kotaro Hara, a Computer Science Ph.D. student advised by Dr. Jon Froehlich, have each been awarded a 2014 IBM Ph.D. Fellowship. IBM Ph.D. Fellowships honor exceptional students worldwide who “have an interest in solving problems that are important to IBM and fundamental to innovation.” Chaturvedi’s research areas of interest include Machine Learning, Data Mining, and Information Abstraction, while Hara’s research focuses on Human Computer Interaction and using crowd-sourcing to solve accessibility issues... read more
Computer Science Department Alumnus Ben Langmead was awarded the 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. Granted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this award identifies 126 early-career scientists based on their potential to contribute fundamentally significant research to a wider academic community. Langmead received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science in 2009 and 2012, respectively. Langmead was co-advised by Computer Science Professor Mihai Pop and Dr. Steven Salzberg during his M.S. work and was advised by Dr. Steven Salzberg during his Ph.D. work... read more
University of Maryland Computer Science Professor Elaine Shi is honored for her early-career achievements in cybersecurity research. read more
Computer Science Department Professor and Director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center Dr. Jonathan Katz has been named one of the 2014 Influential Marylanders by The Daily Record newspaper. The Influential Marylander Awards were created in 2006 to honor those who are leaders in the state of Maryland and who have made significant impact in their fields. The awardees are selected from the following categories: civic leadership, communications, education, finance, freestyle, health care, law, philanthropy, real estate and technology. Dr. Katz is honored in the technology category for his... read more
Computer Science Department graduate student Rajiv Jain, along with co-authors Dr. Douglas Oard and Dr. David Doermann, were awarded the Best Student Paper Award at the 21st Document Recognition and Retrieval Conference for their paper, “Scalable ranked retrieval using document images". Learn More "Scalable ranked retrieval using document images" full paper 21st Document Recognition and Retrieval Conference Rajiv Jain's Personal Website Douglas Oard's Personal Website David Doermann's Personal Website read more
Oculus VR, a company led in part by three UMD alumni, Chief Software Architect Michael Antonov (B.S. ’01), Chief Executive Officer Brendan Iribe (B.S.), and the late Andrew Reisse (B.S. ’01), won the 2014 Tech Crunch “Crunchie” award for Best Hardware Startup of the Year. About Oculus Oculus VR’s revolutionary product, the Oculus Rift, is a virtual reality headset designed for immersive gaming. Oculus Rift began as a Kickstarter project in 2012, and an early version Rift headset is now shipping to select customers. Oculus VR is further developing a consumer-ready version of the Rift with... read more
Computer Science Department Affiliate Professor Dr. Rama Chellapa has been named a 2014 ACM fellow for his contributions to image processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition. read more