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MARYLAND SOFTWARE DAY will be held on Friday, JANUARY 18, 2008 from 8am to 5pm at the Orem Alumni Hall in the Riggs Alumni Center here on campus. Come hear about the exciting software research being undertaken at the university and interact with professors, scientists, students and professional from academia, industry and government. To learn more and register please visit www.cs.umd.edu/softwareday

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Rama Chellappa, CS, UMIACS and ECE, was the recipient of the Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Jim Hendler, CS and UMIACS, was named a Fellow of the British Computing Society.

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Michael A’Hearn, Astronomy, $500,000, NASA; “EPOXI”

Yuval Carmel, IREAP, $148,990, DOD-Air Force; “A Plasma Assisted Megawatt Class Microwave Source with an Output Energy of kJ/Pulse”

Alan Kaufman, Geology, $125,201, NASA; “A Stratigraphic Study of pCO2 Variations across Neoproterozoic Glacial Cycles by Ion Microprobe Carbon Isotope Analysis”

Christopher Lobb, Physics and JQI, $1,582,000, NIST; “Cooperate Research Program for the Joint Quantum Institute”

Cole Miller, Astronomy, and Derek Richardson, Astronomy, $390,874, NASA; "Development of a Tree Code for Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals"

Derek Richardson, Astronomy, $217,192, NASA; “Gravitational Aggregate Dynamics"

Eun-Suk Seo, Physics and IPST, $378,333, NASA; “Cosmic Ray Energetics and Mass (CREAM)”

Gregory Sullivan, Physics, $144,576, University of Wisconsin; “IceCube Neutrino Observatory Maintenance and Operation”

John Trasco, Astronomy, $1,447,023, NASA; “The Goddard Center for Research and Exploration”

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Thomas Holtz, Geology, had his new book “Dinosaurs” selected as an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12 for 2008 by the National Science Teachers Association and the Children’s Book Council.

Jack Minker, CS and UMIACS, was published in the the Annals of the History of Computing. The piece published in December is a companion piece to an earlier one on  the start of computing at the University of Maryland that appeared in the Annals. The papers can be found under the following titles: Jack Minker, "Developing a Computer Science Department at the University of Maryland,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 29, no. 4, October-December 2007, pp. 64-75 and, Jack Minker, “Forming a Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, vol. 29, no. 1, January-March 2007, pp. 49-64.

Jan Sengers, IPST, gave an invited lecture at a Thermophysics Symposium held at the University of Vigo in Ourense, Spain on December 5.

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Michael A'Hearn, Astronomy, was quoted on NASA.gov on December 14 in an press release about the EPOXI mission which is scheduled for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Oct. 11, 2010. The EPOXI mission melds two compelling science investigations -- the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization and the Deep Impact Extended Investigation. Both investigations will be performed using the Deep Impact spacecraft. A’Hearn is the principal investigator for the EPOXI mission. This story was picked up by Space.com and MSNBC on December 14 and the New Scientist on December 17. A’Hearn and the projected were part of a discussion on NPR’s Science Friday on December 21.

Thomas Holtz, Geology, was mentioned as “King of Dino Geeks” in the Washington Post on December 3 in an article about a new dinosaur exhibit at National Geographic's Explorers Hall and Holtz’s life long study of dinosaurs.  Holtz was also mentioned in the Washington Kids Post on December 5 in another article about dinosaurs and his life’s work in paleontology.

Alan Kaufman, Geology, was quoted in the Agence France-Presse, Science and Nature on December 6 speaking about a new theory postulating how carbon in the ocean, dissolved from mineral deposits on the sea floor, prevented the Earth from becoming a giant snowball at critical junctures in its history.

Nick Hadley, Physics, Chad Jarvis, Ph.D. Physics, ’07, (advisor Nick Hadley, Physics) and Michiel Sanders, Physics, were featured in FermiLab Today on December 6. The story covered the team’s research on the DZero experiment in which the team detected four leptons at once and used this rare four-lepton state to search for the production of Z boson pairs.

Derek Richardson, Astronomy, was co-author of the paper "Saturn's Small Inner Satellites: Clues to Their Origins" published in Science on December 6 and also quoted in a NASA press release on the same date.

Ross Salawitch, AOSC and ESSIC, was mentioned in Nature on December 5 in an article discussing the beginning of the Kyoto Protocol's five-year commitment to keep strict bookkeeping system for greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet for the countries who have ratified the treaty and scientists world wide, there is no consensus on how to pinpoint where the carbon gases originate and where
they end up.

Ben Zaitchik, ESSIC, was mentioned in the Baltimore Examiner on December 5 commenting on a new report released by a private research group called Environment Maryland about the increasing extreme precipitation in the area.

The Joint Quantum Institute, a partnership between the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, the NSA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, created a short-lived 'proof of concept' of perpetual motion. Though the state persisted only ten seconds, team members say it will one day lead to real-world applications. The story ran in the
Daily Tech on December 3.

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Sergey Brin, BS CS and Mathematics, ’93, was mentioned in the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal on December 3 as Google will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in clean energy solutions over the next few years and has laid out an ambitious goal: To produce a gigawatt of renewable energy that is cheaper than coal, more quickly than the current pace of clean technology development. The story was also printed in the Windsor Star of Ontario.

Mary Glackin, BS, CS, ’82, was appointed the Deputy Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Calandra Tate, Ph.D., Mathematics, ’07, advisors Eric Slud, Mathematics and Bonnie Dorr, CS and UMIACS, was featured in the Baton Rouge Advocate on December 21.  Tate joins a select group of African-American Women with a Ph.D. in mathematics and the University of Maryland has received national recognition as an institution graduating African-American Women with doctoral degrees in mathematics.

Dara Zeehandelaar, MS, Astronomy, ’05, was featured in a Washington Post story on December 23. While pursuing her Ph.D. in astrophysics, she took a hiatus to teach and is now a successful DC math teacher. She was quoted as saying “everybody has their thing, my thing is public education.”

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WE GREATLY ENCOURAGE ALL OUR READERS TO KEEP US INFORMED OF THEIR NEWS AND
ACCOMPLISHMENTS

PLEASE SUBMIT ITEMS TO: Larry Liff (lliff@umd.edu)

COLLEGE OF COMPUTER, MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES

Astronomy Department - Dr. Stuart Vogel, Chair
Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Department - Dr. James Carton, Chair
Computer Science Department - Dr. Larry Davis, Chair
Geology Department - Dr. Michael Brown, Chair
Mathematics Department - Dr. James Yorke, Chair
Physics Department - Dr. Drew Baden, Chair
CSCAMM - Dr. Eitan Tadmor, Director
ESSIC - Dr. Antonio Busalacchi, Director
IPST - Dr. Rajarshi Roy, Director
IREAP - Dr. Dan Lathrop, Director
UMIACS - Dr. V.S. Subrahmanian, Director

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