Second Annual Corporate Affiliates Day Features UMD Research and Innovation in Computing

Representatives from organizations and businesses interested in the latest advances in computer science-driven research, innovation and education will gather at the University of Maryland on May 7 for the second annual Corporate Affiliates Day.

The event, open to current participants in the Corporate Partners in Computing and Cyber Partners programs, will feature presentations from UMD researchers and tours of several labs on campus. Visitors will get a close-up view of the latest in research and education on topics ranging from cybersecurity to natural language processing to computational biology.

The Department of Computer Science and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) are sponsoring the daylong event.

“We want to provide an overview of the research being conducted in computing at UMD and to demonstrate how it might impact industry and the larger community,” says Savannah Renehan, assistant director of corporate relations for computer science and UMIACS. “We hope this event will bring about more research collaborations.”

Computer Science Chair Samir Khuller and UMIACS Director Amitabh Varshney will welcome guests to the event. They will be followed by faculty presentations from Héctor Corrada Bravo (computer science) from the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; Michelle Mazurek (computer science) and Charalampos “Babis” Papamanthou (electrical and computer engineering) from the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2); and Naomi Feldman (linguistics) and Louiqa Raschid (information systems) from the Computational Linguistics and Information Processing laboratory.

Attendees will also visit the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, as well as another laboratory that features UMIACS research in autonomous robotics. Another stop will include the Virtual and Augmented Reality Laboratory, known as the “UMIACS Augmentarium,” where faculty and students are working on new applications for virtual and augmented reality in areas related to national defense, industry and health care.

“We find the synergy between academia and the private sector is beneficial to everyone looking for new solutions for scientific and societal challenges that can be addressed by computer science,” says Varshney.

The Corporate Partners in Computing, a joint effort between computer science and UMIACS, promotes collaboration between industry and academia with an emphasis on developing strong partnerships in education, research and technology development.

There are currently 26 companies in the program, including Google, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft.

“The program is a great resource for companies wanting to interact with our talented students—whether through educational seminars, internships or an inside track on recruitment once they graduate,” says Khuller.

The Cyber Partners program joins faculty researchers in MC2—one of 16 centers and labs in UMIACS—with industry representatives interested in the latest advances in wireless and network security, secure software, cyber supply chain security, privacy in social networks, cybersecurity policy, cryptography, and more.

There are currently 13 companies in the program, including Amazon Web Services, Leidos and Cisco.