Director's Message to UMIACS December '24

My first job at the University of Maryland—it’s been more than 20 years now—was as an assistant research scientist in UMIACS. Like many when they first arrived here, I was quite impressed with the scope and efficiency of the institute’s operations.

UMIACS was expanding at that time—there was an ongoing surge of new federal funding for computational linguistics and computer vision applications for national security, with additional research dollars for computational biology and cybersecurity soon to follow.

What I discovered was that in addition to forward-looking leadership from the UMIACS director at that time (V.S. Subrahmanian, now at Northwestern University), there was another powerful force driving much of the day-to-day activities of UMIACS.

That force was Johanna Weinstein, who died earlier this month after having served for more than three decades as director of administration and operations for the institute, retiring from that role in late 2016.

“Jo” as she was known to us, had the uncanny ability to “make things happen.” Need new faculty lines and support staff to launch a major interdisciplinary center? Talk to Jo. Want to elevate the pre-and post-award management of research funding to a premiere level that is, in my opinion, second-to-none at our university? Jo would find and mentor staff to make that happen. Having an issue with office space for 12 new hires? Jo will figure it out.

We owe a lot to Jo’s expertise and commitment to advancing our institute. She could quickly cut through all the “academic speak” and provide workable solutions to most any operational challenge that UMIACS faced.

And many of us, including myself, looked to her for personal advice when needed.

She will be missed, but not forgotten, as we continue to move forward. Thank you, Jo, for all that you did on our behalf!

—Mihai Pop, UMIACS Director