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UMd-led Consortium Wins $93 Million NOAA Climate Institute

The University of Maryland will lead a new climate research partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), North Carolina State University and 16 other institutions.

The nationwide consortium led by Maryland won a competition for a new NOAA-supported Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS) that will receive up to $93 million in funding over the next five years, with approximately two-thirds of this funding expected to be managed by the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) of the University of Maryland.

The new institute will focus on collaborative research into satellite observations and Earth System modeling conducted by scientists in the consortium institutions together with researchers in NOAA's Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) and in the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) of NOAA and the National Weather Service. Work to turn this data acquisition and modeling research into applications and services will be led by institute researchers working with those in the National Climatic Data Center of NOAA/NESDIS.

Phil Arkin, ESSIC, will be the Director of the new institute.

UM Tops in Defense Dept. MURI Grants for Third Year: Physics Professors Head All Four MURI Projects

Department of Physics faculty have won four primary program awards from the highly competitive federal Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. Physics alone received more MURIs than the total awarded to any other university. The MURI program supports multidisciplinary basic research in areas that have potential both for defense and commercial applications. The four lead researchers are:

Michael Fuhrer, Physics and Maryland Nanocenter, “Tailoring the electronic properties of graphene at the nanoscale.”

Richard Greene, Physics, “Searching for New, Practical Superconductors.”

Paul Julienne, Physics, NIST and JQI, “Investigating New Phases of Matter for Quantum Information/Computing.”

Christopher Monroe, Physics and JQI, “Studying Quantum-Optical Circuits of Hybrid Quantum Memories.”

HONORS AND AWARDS:

Jeffrey Adams, Mathematics, has been awarded the 2009 Kirwan Faculty Research and Scholarship Prize, recognizing his fundamental breakthrough in the unitary dual problem through the mapping of the E8 Lie Group and the compiling of the Atlas of Lie Groups and Representations. This annual prize recognizes highly significant work of research, scholarship or artistic creativity by a faculty member within the last three years.

Stuart S. Antman, Mathematics and IPST, Howard Elman, Dianne O'Leary and Pete Stewart, all Computer Science and UMIACS, have been selected for the initial class of Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Fellowship honors distinguished SIAM members who have made outstanding contributions to the fields served by SIAM.

Andrew Ballard, Chemical Physics Graduate Student, has received a Fellowship from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program and will spend the 2009-2010 academic year in the research group of Professor Christoph Dellago, University of Vienna, Austria.

Nicholas Chen, Computer Science Graduate Student, has been selected as the recipient of a Google Fellowship Award in Human-Computer Interaction. The 2009 fellowships, awarded to 13 recipients nationwide, highlight contributions to research and supports the recipients through their graduate studies.

Rita Colwell, UMIACS, received honorary doctorates from the University of New England and the University of Arkansas. She was also appointed Chair of the RIKEN Advisory Board in Japan and reappointed to the National Research Foundation of Singapore’s Scientific Advisory Board.

Jordan Goodman, Physics, has been selected to join the inaugural class of Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Teaching Scholars on the subject of Marquee Courses in Science and Technology.

Graduate students Moshe Adrian, Mathematics, Ricardo Arevalo, Geology, Sorelle Friedler, Computer Science, Jordan Horowitz, Physics, Kevin McGoff, Mathematics and Kathleen Scheiderich, Geology, are recipients of Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowships for the Fall 2009 semester from The Graduate School.

Graduate students Warren Huelsnitz, Physics and Suriyanarayan Vaikuntanathan, Chemical Physics, are recipients of a special Summer Research Graduate Fellowship, awarded competitively by The Graduate School.

Doron Levy, Mathematics and CSCAMM, has been awarded a 2008-2009 Departmental Award for Excellence and Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching from the Center for Teaching Excellence for his development of a new calculus course, in cooperation with the College of Chemical and Life Sciences, that specifically targets Biology majors.

Rabindra Mohapatra, Physics, was awarded a Doctorate of Science (Honoris Causa) by North Orissa University, India for his outstanding contributions in the field of science.

Stanley Ohaka, Geology Undergraduate, with colleagues Trevor Young, Environmental Economics and Shavon Holland, American Studies, were winners in the University of Maryland Business Plan Competition. The team won in the undergraduate division and also received the Warren Citrin Social Impact Award for developing a system to provide sustainable electricity to rural communities in the developing world and help improve the quality of life in these communities. The company, Tseai Energy Unlimited, plans to design and build micro-power plants using renewable energy sources.

Jan Plane, Computer Science, has been selected as the Provost’s Faculty Academic Advisor of the Year.

Eitan Tadmor, Mathematics, CSCAMM and IPST, has been awarded the 2009 Distinguished Scientist Award (Mathematics) by the Washington Academy of Sciences. James Yorke, Mathematics, Physics and IPST, received the award in 2008.

Devarajan Thirumalai, IPST and Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He also received a Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists in recognition of his past accomplishments in research and teaching.

Undergraduate students, Matthew Barr, Physics and Computer Science, Isaac Carruthers, Computer Science and Physics, and John Silberholz, Mathematics, Business and Computer Science, were awarded Senior Summer Scholars funding from the Maryland Center for Undergraduate Research.

CONTRACTS/GRANTS:

Phillip Arkin, AOSC and ESSIC, NOAA, $350,000, “Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS).”

Kenneth Berg, Mathematics, US National Security Agency, $121,810, “Math SPIRAL (Summer Program in Research and Learning).”

David Doermann, UMIACS, BBNT Solutions, $100,000, “Multilingual Automatic Document Classification Analysis and Translation (MADCAT).”

Bonnie Dorr, Computer Science and UMIACS, Johns Hopkins University, $120,679, “Center of Excellence in Human Language Technology.”

Thomas Haines, Mathematics, NSF, $177,773, “Shimura Varieties and the Bernstein Center.”

Dan Lathrop, Physics, Geology, IREAP and IPST, NSF, $180,000, “Vortex Dynamics in Quantum and Classical Fluids.”

M. Coleman Miller, Astronomy, NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center, $110,000, “Application of General Relativistic MHD to Merging SMBH.”

James Porto, Physics and JQI, Army Research Office, $293,700, “Engineering Quantum Dissipation.”

Edo Waks, IREAP, ECE and JQI, Army Research Office, $172,843, “Superconducting Magnetic System for Quantum Information Processing with Semiconductor Spin States.”

V.S. Subrahmanian, Computer Science and UMIACS, Army Research Office, $137,500, “PAGE: Policy Analytics Generation Engine.”

V.S. Subrahmanian, Computer Science and UMIACS, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, $436,753, “Scaling Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents.”

WHAT'S NEW:

On May 13-14, Google held a global fixit for UMD’s FindBugs tool – a static analysis tool for finding coding mistakes in Java software. More than 700 engineers ran FindBugs from dozens of offices, with over 250 of them entering more than 8,000 reviews of the issues, filing more than 1,700 bug reports, of which 600 have already been marked as fixed. Current members of the FindBugs development team include Bill Pugh, Computer Science and UMIACS and graduate student Ben Langmead.

Michael Brown, Geology, gave an invited talk at The Geological Society’s Evolution of the Continental Crust meeting, London, May 28-29 on “Precambrian Metaporphic Conditions and Patterns Record Secular Change in Mantle Temperature, Subduction Style and the Supercontinent Cycle.”

Rita Colwell, UMIACS, was a keynote speaker at the International Association of Great Lakes Research conference held at the University of Toledo, May 18-22. Her talk was entitled “Climate, Oceans, Infectious Diseases, and Human Health: The Cholera Paradigm.” Colwell was also the graduation speaker at the University of New England’s College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Health Professions at their 39th Commencement exercises, May 9.

Sankar Das Sarma, Physics. Physics Review B listed two articles by Das Sarma in their 2007 Top Ten most-cited papers, “Dielectric Function, Screening and Plasmons in Two-dimensional Graphene” and “Many-body Interaction Effects in Doped and Undoped Graphene: Fermi Liquid Versus Non-Fermi Liquid.” The papers were listed numbers 1 and 3 respectively. Also of note, Reviews of Modern Physics identified his paper “Spintronics: Fundamentals and Applications” as the most-cited in the decade, 2000-2009: Physical Review A listed “Hilbert-space Structure of a Solid-state Quantum Computer: Two-electron States of a Double-quantum-dot Artificial Molecule” as the 4th most-cited article in 2002 and Physical Review Letters identified “Carrier Transport in Two-dimensional Graphene Layers” as the 5th most cited paper in 2007.

James Gates, Physics, was the Spring 2009 Commencement Speaker. Gates has long been known for his groundbreaking, ongoing work in supersymmetry and supergravity, areas that are closely related to string theory. In 1983, he co-authored the book "Superspace or 1001 Lessons in Supersymmetry," which, more than two decades later, remains a standard in the field. Gates is also well known for outstanding contributions to the popularization of science and the promotion of science education and science careers to young people. In 2007 the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society, named Gates as the winner of its 2006 Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award.

Thomas Holtz, Geology, was one of three keynote speakers at the Frenchmen Formation Terrestrial Ecosystem Conference, hosted by the T.rex Discovery Centre, May 17-20, with a topic of “It’s Good to be King: Paleobiology of a Latest Maastrichtian Apex Predator.”

Rabindra Mohapatra, Physics, gave an invited plenary talk at the Annual American Physical Society meeting, May 4, in Denver, CO, with a topic of “Neutrino Mass and the Origin of Matter.”

Raghu Murtugudde, AOSC and ESSIC, has been appointed to the Editorial Board of the new journal, “Current Opinions in Environmental Sustainability.” He is retiring this summer as an editor of “JGR-Oceans” after serving for seven years.

Roberta Rudnick, Geology, was a keynote speaker at The Geological Society’s Evolution of the Continental Crust meeting, London, May 28-29. Her talk was entitled “Cratons and Continental Evolution: Perspectives from Tanzania and North China.”

Ellen Williams, Physics and IPST, co-authored, as a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the final report “America’s Strategic Posture” which provides over 100 findings and recommendations on critical issues related to U.S. nuclear strategy. The Commission was tasked by Congress to "examine and make recommendations with respect to the long-term strategic posture of the United States."

IN THE NEWS:

Ashok Agrawala, Computer Science and UMIACS, was quoted in Campus Technology, May 22, in an article on MyeVyu, a downloadable software package for cell phones and PDAs that provides a direct link between the user and campus police dispatch.

Ian Appelbaum, Physics, was mentioned in Chemistry World, May 2009, in an article on researchers around the world endeavoring to develop advanced computers based on electrons’ spin, rather than just their charge.

Ben Bederson, Computer Science and UMIACS, Allison Druin, UMIACS and CLIS, Anne Rose, Computer Science and Ann Weeks, CLIS, published an article in Children, Youth and Environments, May edition, on seven years of strategies and methods learned in co-designing and deploying the International Children’s Digital Library with children in multiple countries.

Rita Colwell, UMIACS, et al., published a commentary article in Nature, May 14, on the crucial roles of marine microorganisms in maintaining the well-being of the planet and discussing how new technologies in biological sciences can be recruited into oceanography to improve knowledge of these processes. Colwell was also quoted in the Toledo Blade, May 26, in an article on the International Association of Great Lakes Research conference, May 18-22, University of Toledo.

James Farquhar, Geology and ESSIC, with collaborator Donald Canfield, published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 19, proposing that sediment mixing by bioturbating organisms resulted in a several-fold increase in seawater sulfate concentration. Nature News and Sindh Today (Asian News International) published follow-up articles.

Michael Hicks, Computer Science and UMIACS and Iulian Neamtiu, 2005 M.S. and 2008 Ph.D. Computer Science, advisor Michael Hicks, were quoted in MIT’s Technology Review, May 20, in an article on the Ksplice company developing "live" (on-the-fly) software updating for Linux. Hicks’ team project web site, Ginseng, detailing their research on dynamic software updating, was linked in the article.

Thomas Holtz, Geology, was mentioned in the Shaunovon Standard (Saskatchewan), May 12, in an article on the Frenchmen Formation Terrestrial Ecosystem Conference (see above.)

David Jacobs, Computer Science, was mentioned in a New York Times article, May 10, on a hand-held electronic field guide for iPhones which identifies tree species based on the shape of their leaves. Jacobs developed the matching algorithms. A follow-up article appeared on CNN-SciTechBlog.

Alan Kaufman, Geology and ESSIC, James Farquhar, Geology and ESSIC, and graduate student Margaret Baker, et al., co-authored an article published in Geology, May 2009, uncovering evidence that the oxygenation of Earth's atmosphere - generally known as the Great Oxygenation Event - coincided with the first widespread ice age on the planet. Follow up stories appeared in GMagazine, ScienceDaily, Asian News International and PhysOrg.

Rosemary Killen, Nelly Mouawad and Matthew Burger, Astronomy, et al., co-authored an article published in Science, May 1, on observations by the Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer during MESSENGER’s second Mercury flyby revealing the presence of neutral magnesium in the tail region of the exosphere, as well as differing spatial distributions of magnesium, calcium and sodium atoms in both the tail and the night-side, near-planet exosphere. A follow-up story appeared in PhysOrg.

Zhanqing Li, AOSC and ESSIC, was quoted in the Atlantic Journal Constitution, May 11, in an article on critical thinking and China.

Ludmilla Kolokolova, Astronomy, et al., co-authored an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 12, reporting on the detection of circular polarization in light scattered by photosynthetic microbes, showing that the circular polarization appears to arise from circular dichroism of the strong electronic transitions of photosynthetic absorption bands.

Luis Orozco, Physics and JQI, et al., published an article in Nature Physics (Advance Online Publication), May 18, on devising and describing a new technique for real-time detection of freely moving individual neutral atoms. A follow-up article appeared in Red Orbit.

Edward Ott, Physics, ECE and IREAP, Wolfgang Losert, Physics, IPST and IREAP, Michelle Girvan, Physics and IPST, and graduate student Andrew Pomerance, published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 19, presenting a general method for determining the stability of large Boolean networks of any specified network topology and predicting their steady-state behavior in response to small perturbations.

Dennis Papadopoulos, Physics and Astronomy, was quoted in the New York Times, May 5, in an article on Nikola Tesla, and a move to preserve his abandoned laboratory, Wardenclyffe.

Robert Park, Physics, was quoted in New Scientist, May 29, the Discovery Channel, May 27 and in McClatchy Newspapers, May 26 in an article on the debate over the benefits of the space station.

Chris Reynolds, Astronomy, was quoted in Medill Reports, May 14, in an article on radio waves from Sagittarius A*, the white-hot glowing gas in the heart of the Milky Way associated with the supermassive black hole scientists believe lies inside.

Steven Salzberg, Computer Science and UMIACS, was mentioned, with Raul Rabadan of Columbia University, in Nature, May 5, in an article on the evolution of A(H1N1) ….“These, and other researchers, have found that six of the swine flu’s genetic segments probably come from a North American strain of swine flu. The other two segments seem to come from Eurasian swine flu strains. The North American and Eurasian ‘parental’ strains contain genes from flu viruses that had previously infected birds and people.” Follow-up stories appeared in the Raleigh News and Observer, the Canadian Press and ScienceNews. Salzberg was also interviewed on Voice of America, May 6, in a follow-up story to his April article in Genome Biology on the genome of the domestic cow.

Roald Sagdeev, Physics and IPST, was interviewed by Russia Today, May 20, on nuclear disarmament.

Ben Shneiderman, Computer Science and UMIACS, was quoted in D-Lib Magazine, May-June edition, in an article referring to the meeting held at UMD in April (2009) where researchers discussed the creation of a National Initiative for Social Participation, with the goal of finding ways to use social networks to do serious collaborative research. A follow-up story appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Shneiderman was also mentioned in System I Network, May 19, in an article on Visual Volume Table of Contents (VTOC).

ALUMNI NEWS:

Kenneth F. Carey, 1982 B.S. Physical Sciences, was promoted to Senior Principal Systems Engineer at Noblis, a non-profit science, technology and strategy company based in Falls Church, VA. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and a recent winner of the Charles Franklin Brooks Award For Outstanding Services To The Society "…..For his extraordinary, long-term commitment to the Society across the public and private sectors, and for exceptionally energetic service on a variety of the AMS committees from local to national levels."

Joann Kline, 1984 M.S. Meteorology, graduated May 16, 2009 from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, MI. She received a Juris Doctor degree (with Business Transactions concentration), graduated Magna Cum Laude, and was ranked 6th in a graduating class of 402. Joann is currently the Director of Quality and Regulatory Affairs for Jackson Safety, a manufacturer of industrial personal protective equipment and division of Kimberly-Clark Professional. She received an M.S. degree in Engineering Management from Western Michigan University in 1993.

Martin O’Neill, 1983 B.S. Computer Science, has published the book “Building Business Value: How to Command a Premium Price for your Midsized Company,” a guide for business leaders to build greater value in their companies. O’Neill runs Corsum Consulting, is a member of the National Speakers Association and is a frequent speaker and consultant on leadership, corporate culture and building enterprise value. He sits on the Business Advisory Board for the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Tech Center and lectures in UMBC’s Entrepreneurship Program.

George Shaw, 1990 Ph.D. Physics, advisor Satindar Bhagat, is an assistant professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Cincinnati. He also holds a secondary appointment as an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Shaw is currently performing research in ultrasound-assisted thrombolysis and alternative thrombolytic therapies as adjuncts to treatment for acute ischemic stroke. He currently holds an NIH project grant in the SPOTRIAS Program of NINDS/NIH funding this work. He has also conducted clinical research examining the efficacy of serum markers in determining prognosis in closed head injury patients, and the utilization of imaging techniques to improve the treatment of cellulitis in the Emergency Department. Shaw received a B.A. in Physics from the University of Virginia in 1985, and engaged in postdoctoral work as an Office of Naval Technology Fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory. He received his MD from Georgetown University in Washington D.C. in 1997, and completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at the University of Cincinnati in 2001.

Kristin V. Stephens, 2009 B.S. Computer Science, was the student speaker for the Spring 2009 Commencement, held on May 22. Stephens participated in the University Honors Program, is the recipient of a Kendall Scholarship, a Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics Scholarship and a Guy Wassertzburg Scholarship. She plans to continue in the new Computer Science Combined Bachelor’s-Master’s 5 year program which enables our very best students to earn both a B.S. and M.S. in five years, and is interning at Google this summer.

David Stork, 1979 M.S. and 1984 Ph.D. Physics, advisor David Falk, was the subject of an article in The Washington Post, April 26, on his lecture “Computer Image Analysis in the Study of Art” which took place May 1 at the National Gallery of Art.

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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