Five UMIACS Researchers Receive Academic Promotions

In recognition of continued excellence in research, scholarship and outreach, five researchers in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) have received academic promotions, effective July 1.

David Van Horn and Tom Goldstein, both in the Department of Computer Science, have been promoted from assistant professor to associate professor.

Tudor Dumitraş and Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou, both in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, have also been promoted from assistant professor to associate professor.

And Gorjan Alagic, an assistant research professor in the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS), has been promoted to associate research scientist.

Van Horn’s research focuses on program analysis and how it is applied to programming languages, software engineering, verification and security. He recently received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award to develop next-generation programming languages that integrate strong correctness guarantees and verification technology—with the aim of elevating the quality and reliability of software.

Goldstein’s research lies at the intersection of optimization and distributed computing, and targets applications in machine learning and image processing. He designs optimization methods for a wide range of platforms. He is the recipient of several awards, including SIAM’s DiPrima Prize, a DARPA Young Faculty Award and a Sloan Fellowship.

Dumitraş’s research focuses on data-driven security. He conducts empirical studies of adversary behavior, builds machine learning systems for detecting malware and attacks, and studies the security of machine learning in adversarial environments. His work has been widely cited in the media, including The Economist, MIT Technology Review, Forbes, and The Register.

Papamanthou’s research focuses on computer security and applied cryptography, with a specific emphasis on technologies, systems and theory for providing secure computations in the cloud. He is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award, a Google Faculty Research Award, a NetApp Faculty Fellowship, and other honors.

Alagic’s research lies at the intersection of theoretical computer science and mathematics, with a particular focus on quantum algorithms and cryptography. He recently served as a co-organizer for the 14th Conference on the Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication and Cryptography (TQC 2019), which was held June 3–7 at UMD.

—Story by Melissa Brachfeld