Recent News & Accomplishments
2016
From August 8-9 2016, members of the computer science faculty at the University of Maryland will travel to Kaiserslautern, Germany to meet with faculty from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) . They will be discussing plans for the newly-established joint Ph.D. program in Computer Science in which University of Maryland students will be co-advised by faculty at both institutions. This two-day Max Planck Maryland Faculty Summit will give members of each group an opportunity to meet in person, learn more about each other’s research, identify common interests, and look for opportunities to... read more
For their work entitled "Imitation Learning as Cause-Effect Reasoning," PhD students Garrett Katz and Di-Wei Huang won Best Student Paper at the Ninth Annual Conference for Artificial General Intell igence (AGI 2016) held in New York, New York from July 16-19, 2016. Professor Jim Reggia advises both students. Katz and Huang have also collaborated with Professor Rodolphe Gentili of the Kinesiology Department. (L-R: Katz, Huang) Katz explained what comprises imitation learning in robots. "The robot learns new skills by observing a human demonstrator rather than being programmed... read more
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to announce the affiliate appointments of Dr. Eric Denna and Dr. Keith Marzullo and the adjunct appointment of Dr. Peter Druschel. The faculty voted for and ratified these appointments in February, and the appointments officially began on July 1, 2016. Eric Denna is the Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) here at the university. He leads the Division of Information Technology and participates in President Loh's cabinet. In addition, Denna serves as Vice Chair of the Kuali Foundation, and works with the CIOs of the CIC (Big Ten... read more
The Department of Computer Science is pleased to announce the first two recipients of the Victor Basili Fellowship : Thomas Gilray of the University of Utah, and Niki Vazou of the University of California, San Diego. Thomas Gilray’s work involves static analysis of higher-order languages (also called control-flow analysis). His interests also include semantics, language design, compilers and implementations, safety and verification, parallelism and high-performance solvers (e.g., constraint solving on the GPU). He has recently authored a paper with Professor David Van Horn. Niki Vazou... read more
Professor V.S. Subrahmanian has been named editor-in-chief of IEEE Intelligent Systems (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). From their website : “IEEE Intelligent Systems is a bimonthly publication of the IEEE Computer Society that provides peer-reviewed, cutting-edge articles on the theory and application of systems that perceive, reason, learn, and act intelligently. The editorial staff collaborates with authors to produce technically accurate, timely, useful, and readable articles as part of a consistent and consistently valuable editorial product.” Subrahmanian... read more
Professor Adam Porter has been awarded one of five seed grants to study emerging technology security challenges from the MITRE Corporation’s National Cybersecurity Federally Funded Research and Development Center (NCF) and the University System of Maryland (USM). Porter will be applying source code analysis technologies to analyze modern web software. "These grants were awarded to the most compelling of 37 proposals from the NCF Academic Affiliates Council. They help establish collaborations that extend MITRE, USM and our sponsors’ research capabilities," said Mark Maybury, Ph.D., MITRE vice... read more
Each year, the Department of Computer Science awards outstanding professors, instructors, and teaching assistants for the ingenuity, intelligence, thoughtfulness, and care that they bring to the classroom. This year, awardees have been recognized for their dedication, love of science, and the ways that they help to make the department one of the best at the University of Maryland. Professor Pete Keleher, Professor Mihai Pop, and Lecturer Nelson Padua-Perez served on this year’s committee. Congratulations to all award winners, and we will be celebrating their achievements this fall semester... read more
This summer, the Department is hosting several computer science students from around the country for the Research Experience for Undergraduates for 2016 (REU). The REU students arrived on June 2nd 2016 and will be working with several faculty members on challenging research projects including the following: Bill Gasarch : Fun with Probability Clyde Kruskal : The Can't Stop game Tom Goldstein : Deep Learning Jon Katz : Theoretic Approaches to Public Key Crypto Samir Khuller : Scheduling Jobs in data centers, online and offline The students will work in teams with their mentors through August... read more
Jeff Hollingsworth has been elected Chair of ACM SIGHPC (special interest group for High Performance Computing) for a three-year term starting July 1st. He currently serves as Vice-Chair. From their website: "SIGHPC is the first international group within a major professional society that is devoted exclusively to the needs of students, faculty, and practitioners in high performance computing. SIGHPC's mission is to help spread the use of HPC, help raise the standards of the profession, and help ensure a rich and rewarding career for people involved in the field." As the Chair, Hollingsworth... read more
The Department is pleased to announce that Jan Plane has been promoted to Principal Lecturer. This is the highest rank of the professional instructional faculty track, and Plane is the first to receive this title. The qualifications include: "In addition to the qualifications required of the Senior Lecturer, appointees to this rank shall have an exemplary teaching record over the course of at least 5 years full-time service or its equivalent as a Senior Lecturer (or similar appointment at another institution) and/or the equivalent of 5 years full-time professional experience as well as... read more