Recent News & Accomplishments
He and his brothers built two successful tech ventures and launched a startup incubator at UMD.
When Zeki Mokhtarzada (B.S. ’01, computer science and mathematics) delivers his commencement speech to undergraduates this May at the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, he’ll be speaking from a wealth of experience—and UMD memories. His own graduation 22 years ago was more than special. Two of his siblings also received their degrees from Maryland that day, but that commencement event—or more accurately, the moment he snuck out of it—marked the start of Mokhtarzada’s hugely successful career as a tech entrepreneur. "I remember my brother Haroon... read more
Program recognizes students for academic, extracurricular and personal accomplishments.
With flags waving at the University of Maryland’s Campuswide Commencement Ceremony on May 23, 2023, 80 stellar students led graduating Terps into commencement—including three students majoring in computer science and one minoring in computer science. The senior marshals, who carry the banners for schools, colleges and departments, are August 2022, December 2022 and May 2023 graduates who have stood out during their time at UMD for academic excellence, service to the university community, noteworthy extracurriculars and good character. “It is a joy and honor to lead the commencement procession... read more
Despite decades of eradication efforts, malaria remains a global cause of disease and death, with the greatest burden largely affecting young children in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2021, an estimated 247 million people worldwide were infected with malaria resulting in 619,000 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). That same year, the WHO approved the first malaria vaccine which has shown to significantly reduce deaths among young children. However, compared to other adolescent vaccinations, it has modest efficacy, preventing only about 30 percent of severe malaria cases... read more
The $500,000 award aims to increase the number of Black, Latina and Native American women receiving undergraduate computing degrees at UMD
The Reboot Representation Tech Coalition (Reboot Representation) recently awarded the University of Maryland $500,000 for the RESET Project , a new program housed in the Iribe Initiative for Inclusion and Diversity in Computing (I4C) that aims to reset tech culture to Represent, Excel and Support Equity in Tech (RESET). Black, Latina and Native American (BLNA) women represent approximately 16% of the total U.S. population, yet they make up only 4% of students obtaining bachelor's degrees in computing. The landscape at UMD is similar––BLNA women make up 13% of UMD undergraduates, but only 5%... read more
The recent Ph.D. graduate from George Mason University brings a deep background in data science, computational biology and machine learning
Fardina Alam will join the University of Maryland's Department of Computer Science in August 2023 as a lecturer. Alam, who recently earned her Ph.D. in computer science from George Mason University, was honored with the department's outstanding dissertation award for her research on utilizing deep learning techniques to extract meaningful information from protein structure data. “ We are excited to welcome Dr. Alam to our department,” said Department Chair Matthias Zwicker , who holds the Elizabeth Iribe Chair for Innovation and the Phillip H. and Catherine C. Horvitz Professorship. “ With... read more
Soheil Feizi shares his thoughts on the Insufficient Reliability of Publicly Available AI Detectors and its concerns for educators
New preprint research from assistant professor Soheil Feizi and colleagues at the University of Maryland finds that no publicly available AI detectors are sufficiently reliable in practical scenarios. “They have a very high false-positive rate and can be pretty easily evaded,” Feizi told me. For example, he said, when AI writing is run through paraphrasing software, which works like a kind of automated thesaurus, the AI detection systems are little better than a random guess. (I found the same problem in my tests of Turnitin .) He’s also concerned that AI detectors are more likely to flag the... read more
The cost of operating the systems is so high that companies aren’t deploying their best versions to the public
AI chatbots have a problem: They lose money on every chat. The enormous cost of running today’s large language models, which underpin tools like ChatGPT and Bard, is limiting their quality and threatening to throttle the global AI boom they’ve sparked. Their expense, and the limited availability of the computer chips they require, are also constraining which companies can afford to run them and pressuring even the world’s richest companies to turn chatbots into moneymakers sooner than they may be ready to. “The models being deployed right now, as impressive as they seem, are really not the... read more
The awards will enable the students to conduct research and present at scientific conferences over the summer
Every year, the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) Alumni Network offers summer awards to help undergraduates defray costs related to conducting research, attending conferences or interning. Read below how this year’s award recipients plan to further their professional and career development with diverse funding opportunities. Riya Kumari Senior computer science major Riya Kumari will be attending the 2023 I nternational Conference on Robotics and Automation in Lond on to present her research with the Perception and Robotics Group, led by Computer Science Professor... read more
The prestigious award has been granted for his remarkable work on mitigating spurious correlations in deep learning.
Soheil Feizi , an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, received an Amazon Research Award to continue his work mitigating spurious correlations in deep learning. These correlations occur when deep learning models mistakenly identify irrelevant or coincidental relationships in the data, leading to inaccurate results and potential biases. The award program aims to foster innovation and support cutting-edge research in machine learning, computer vision, and natural language processing. Feizi is one of 79 award recipients from 54 universities across 14 countries... read more
UMD artificial intelligence experts Soheil Feizi and Furong Huang share their latest research on large language models like ChatGPT, the possible implications of their use and what’s coming next.
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has made tremendous strides thanks to advances in machine learning and growing pools of data to learn from. Large language models (LLMs) and their derivatives, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s BERT, can now generate material that is increasingly similar to content created by humans. As a result, LLMs have become popular tools for creating high-quality, relevant and coherent text for a range of purposes, from composing social media posts to drafting academic papers. Despite the wide variety of potential applications, LLMs face increasing... read more