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JUNE 2026
The Monthly Build
A newsletter for the alumni, students, faculty, staff and friends of the University of Maryland's Department of Computer Science.
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Features
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UMD CS Celebrates More Than 1,100 Graduates
CS students who graduated with bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in August 2025, December 2025 and May 2026 were honored at last month’s commencement ceremonies. Read More » |
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Ashok Agrawala to Retire After 55 Years
His career spans the department’s early years, decades of work in systems, networking and mobile computing, and the program’s growth into a top-ranked computer science program. Read More »
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Creating a Virtual World that’s a Feast for the Eyes … and Ears
Ruohan Gao and Ming Lin turned a single image into an explorable world that sounds like the real thing. Read More »
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Students
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Mokhtarzada Hatchery Showcased Student Startups at Fifth Annual Demo Day
The event featured ventures focused on mindfulness, financial access, property monitoring and AI-supported research. READ MORE »
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CS Ph.D. Student Hillary Owusu Receives ACM-W Scholarship
Her research examines how irrelevant information can influence reasoning in large language models. READ MORE »
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CS Students Receive Grant Family and Ben Shneiderman Awards
The awards recognize undergraduate double majors in computer science and mathematics and doctoral research in human-computer interaction. READ MORE »
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CS Majors Build Construction Safety App at Ironsite Hackathon
Neel Mokaria, Rajveer Singh and Ananth Sriram took first place with an AI-powered dashboard that identifies safety risks in construction footage. READ MORE »
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UMD’s Putnam Team Finishes in Top 15 for Ninth Straight Year
CS majors Sujay Konda and Ishan Raghavendra ranked in the top 200 out of more than 4,300 competitors at one of the most prestigious undergraduate mathematics contests in North America. READ MORE »
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Faculty & Research
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Milijana Surbatovich Receives NSF CAREER Award to Study Battery-Free Devices
Her research focuses on helping intermittent computing platforms operate correctly when harvested energy causes repeated shutdowns. READ MORE » |
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UMD Celebrates National Academy Members
CS faculty members and affiliates John Baras, Ming Lin, Dinesh Manocha and Uzi Vishkin were among those recognized for national academy memberships. READ MORE »
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Rob Patro Makes Biological Data Easier to Search
He discusses his path into computing, his work in computational genomics and advice for students interested in computational biology. READ MORE »
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Alan Liu Receives NSF CAREER Award to Improve Monitoring of AI and Cloud Systems
The five-year project will develop new telemetry methods to help operators monitor large-scale AI and cloud systems more efficiently. READ MORE »
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UMD Researchers Take on AI’s Hardest Problem: Teaching Machines to Reason
Mohammad Hajiaghayi and CS Ph.D. students are developing AI systems that can generate, test and refine mathematical ideas. READ MORE »
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Marine Carpuat Advances the Role of Language in AI Research
Her work examines how multilingual AI systems can facilitate cross-language communication, including in settings where translation errors can affect how people understand information. READ MORE »
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Rethinking the 'Charisma Trap' in Human-AI Interaction
Michelle Mazurek and collaborators examine how chatbots’ polished responses can lead users to mistake confidence for reliability. READ MORE »
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QuICS Researchers Advance to Final Phase of $5M XPRIZE Quantum Applications Competition
Andrew Childs and CS Ph.D. student Mahathi Vempati are part of two finalist teams in the international quantum computing challenge. READ MORE »
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CS Faculty Members Receive AIM Grants to Develop AI-Focused Courses
The three courses will give students hands-on experience with autonomous systems, embodied AI and AI-assisted software development. READ MORE »
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We are grateful to alumni and friends whose generosity supports current and future students. To learn more about how you can make a difference, please visit cs.umd.edu/giving.
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