UMBC News talked with recent NSF CAREER award winner Chenchen Liu about her research, the future of AI, and the need for responsible AI use. Continue Reading Building next-gen AI chips at UMBC: A Q&A with NSF CAREER award winner Chenchen Liu
Sanjay Purushotham recently received a prestigious NSF CAREER award to support his team’s efforts to develop new ways to train healthcare-focused machine learning models. Continue Reading Harnessing AI to improve healthcare: Sanjay Purushotham wins $590,000+ NSF CAREER award
Tyler Josephson’s lab sits off a main corridor in the department of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering at UMBC. Open the door, though, and you’ll see nary a beaker, chemical closet, or lab coat. Inside, a few computers sit on tables. You might see equations scrawled on the white board or a few students poring over lines of code. Using this modest setup, Josephson has launched an ambitious project to equip computers to make scientific discoveries—starting in the realm of chemistry. This March he won a prestigious NSF CAREER award to advance the project. Continue Reading Creating “AI Scientists”: Tyler Josephson advances a new field of research through $650,000 NSF CAREER award
Diseases such as polio, the common cold, and meningitis are all caused by closely related enteroviruses and the way that these viruses multiply in the body is poorly understood. Deepak Koirala hopes to change that by investigating how the RNA structures within these viruses’ genetic material enable them to multiply. The answers could lead to drugs that attack specific mechanisms critical for viral replication, stopping these diseases in their tracks. Continue Reading Deepak Koirala to grow understanding of how enteroviruses replicate with $786K NSF CAREER Award
“The questions I’m asking in this CAREER grant set the stage,” she says, for discovering how arachnid species that can reproduce both sexually (with a mate) and asexually (without a mate) “control whether it’s going to be one reproductive mode or the other,” Mercedes Burns says. “Ultimately we want to understand what allows for this kind of reproductive strategy in these systems, which we don’t see commonly in animals.” Continue Reading Mercedes Burns to study arachnid evolution in Japan through prestigious NSF CAREER Award
Deepa Madan, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, has received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for research on materials that could improve wearable medical devices, reduce energy waste, and power sensors to monitor everything from the safety of infrastructure to the paths pollutants travel. Continue Reading Unlocking the secrets of materials that turn heat into electricity: UMBC’s Deepa Madan wins NSF CAREER Award
“Dr. Clay’s research demonstrates the importance of bringing a social science lens to the understanding of disaster science, management, and resilience,” says Christine Mallinson, director of UMBC’s Center for Social Science Scholarship. Continue Reading Tackling food insecurity in disasters: UMBC’s Lauren Clay develops a new model through $520K NSF CAREER award
Robots are becoming increasingly capable of complex tasks and are moving into roles that previously could only be done by people, in sectors like healthcare, education, and elder care. UMBC’s Cynthia Matuszek has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to study how robots learn about the physical world from spoken language to improve how they work with people. Continue Reading UMBC’s Cynthia Matuszek receives NSF CAREER Award to study how robots understand spoken language
Implementing an AI algorithm is often presented as a trade-off, Foulds explains. Do you want the program to be as productive as possible or as fair as possible? Foulds sees this as a false and harmful dichotomy. His research shows that developing an AI algorithm that prioritizes fairness can in fact yield more robust results. Continue Reading UMBC’s James Foulds receives NSF CAREER Award to improve the fairness, robustness of AI
Jianwu Wang is the most recent UMBC faculty member to receive a prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. It will support his work to develop more efficient and reproducible causality analytics for use in climate science. Continue Reading UMBC’s Jianwu Wang receives NSF CAREER Award to help climate scientists make discoveries from massive, complex data sets
“Metals open up the toolbox for the protein to be able to accomplish so much more,” Aaron Smith says. His new NSF and NIH funding will allow Smith’s lab to increase understanding of how one metal, iron, is involved in adding molecules to proteins after they are made. This process can significantly change a protein’s function and play a role in disease. By focusing at the molecular level, “We think that we fit in very nicely in this research space,” Smith says. “We’re filling a niche that remains really uncovered at this point.” Continue Reading UMBC’s Aaron Smith examines molecular role of iron in human health with $1.5M in new grants
Through this NSF award, Roy will develop algorithms and create Cross-domain Autonomous Health Assessment (CATS) technology that can account for the broad range of information reported by diverse users and their devices. Continue Reading UMBC’s Nirmalya Roy receives NSF CAREER Award to advance smart home and wearable technologies
