Recent News & Accomplishments
2022
Graduate student Nitin Sanket was recently announced as the winner of the Drones 2021 PhD Thesis Award. The award is intended to be granted to a Ph.D. student who has produced a highly anticipated academic thesis that shows great potential. Sanket’s dissertation, “ Active Vision Based Embodied-AI Design for Nano-UAV Autonomy ,” introduces concepts used to develop a novel framework for algorithmic sensorimotor design of multirotor vehicles. Sanket’s research focuses on four methods that achieve activeness on an aerial robot. “I am honored to receive the award and excited to see all the doors a... read more
Researchers from the University of Maryland recently received a best paper award for their work in developing an algorithm that helps combat adversarial attacks on machine learning models involving real-time sequential decision-making systems. “Who is the Strongest Enemy? Towards Optimal and Efficient Evasion Attacks in Deep RL ,” explores how to tackle evasion attacks in reinforcement learning (RL), wherein machine learning models are trained to make a sequence of decisions. This type of adversarial attack—where data is (imperceptibly) perturbed to evade detection or to be classified as... read more
2021
The program honors the university’s most successful seniors, who each recognize a UMD faculty member and high school teacher for contributing to their education.
Senior computer science and mathematics double major Naveen Raman was named a University of Maryland Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar. The Merrill Presidential Scholars Program honors the university’s most successful seniors, who each recognize a UMD faculty member and high school teacher who helped guide, inspire, coach, tutor and challenge them in both big and small ways. “Programs like these are critical to our students’ success,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “They celebrate invaluable mentorship that will have a long lasting impact on the lives of our students, while on campus... read more
Junior Amy Hein and master’s student George Klees were selected to attend RSA Conference 2022.
Two computer science students from the University of Maryland were selected to participate in the Security Scholar Program at the RSA Conference (RSAC) 2022: Junior Amy Hein and master’s student George Klees (B.S. ’21, computer science). Now entering its sixth year, the RSAC Security Scholar Program nurtures the professional growth of 50 select undergraduate, master's and Ph.D. students by providing them with the opportunity to share their academic work with attendees; network with industry thought leaders; and gain insights on global trends, groundbreaking solutions and next-era strategies... read more
The paper argues that topic model developers should use a combination of artificial intelligence tools coupled with human input.
Topic modeling—a machine learning technique originally developed as a text mining tool for computer scientists—is now widely used by historians, journalists and analysts to make sense of large collections of text. These probabilistic models produce various lists of related words, and each list corresponds to a subject in the collection. But despite their popularity, there are flaws in the way that topic models are evaluated for their accuracy, which ultimately affects how useful they are to the people that rely on them. In a paper being presented this week at the Conference on Neural... read more
Lin is a noted innovator in virtual reality, computer graphics and robotics.
The University of Maryland’s Ming Lin has been elected Fellow by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), joining the ranks of some of the nation’s most prestigious and creative academic inventors. The NAI Fellows Program “highlights academic inventors who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society. Election to NAI Fellow is the highest professional distinction accorded solely to academic inventors.” “I am very honored to be elected as a... read more
The endowed professors in computer science and electrical and computer engineering will conduct research in robotics, autonomy, artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The University of Maryland will receive $1.14 million from the Maryland E-Nnovation Initiative (MEI) to fully match a private donation establishing the Brendan Iribe Endowed Professorship in Computer Science and the Brendan Iribe Endowed Professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering . These new endowed professorships, made possible by the generosity of alum Brendan Iribe (ee-REEB’), will be held by experts in robotics, autonomy, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. “There has never been a more exciting time to be in computing than now,” Iribe said. “We’re at the forefront... read more
Being conferred Fellow status is the highest grade of IEEE membership, and one that is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.
Rance Cleaveland , a professor of computer science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies , was just named a Fellow of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest technical professional organization for the advancement of technology. Cleaveland joins 310 other researchers worldwide in receiving Fellow status, the highest grade of IEEE membership, and one that is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement. Each year, only 0.1%, at most, of the 400,000-... read more
The three-year project seeks to develop artificial intelligence-based multimodal sensor fusion algorithms that are fully self-supervised and do not require training data
A University of Maryland expert in computational imaging has received funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop novel algorithms for fusing multimodal sensing data. Chris Metzler , an assistant professor of computer science with an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), was one of 36 researchers in the U.S. to receive a $450,000 grant from AFOSR as part of its Young Investigator Program . The competitive program—175 proposals were submitted this year— was established to foster creative basic research in... read more
From creating a virtual avatar that performs human-like gestures, to detecting internet censorship, to exploring content moderation in online communities, undergraduate women and non-binary individuals focused on computer science are collaborating this week with leading experts on these topics—and more—at a three-day workshop at the University of Maryland. “ Tech + Research: Welcoming Women to Computing Research ,” which kicks off this Friday and runs through November 14, brings together more than 60 undergraduates from across the country interested in meaningful computing research. The... read more