Five New Faculty Join UMIACS

The University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) has announced five new faculty appointments for 2014–2015.

“These talented scientists and educators will play a key role in advancing our cross-disciplinary research and innovation in bioinformatics, quantum computing, cybersecurity, scientific computing, human-computer interaction and more,” says Amitabh Varshney, director of UMIACS.

Eytan Ruppin will join UMIACS in August as a professor of computer science and director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Ruppin is an expert in computational systems biology, with an emphasis on genome scale metabolic system modeling of human, microbial and plant metabolism. He received his doctoral degree in computer science in 1993 from Tel Aviv University, where he also earned a medical degree.

Andrew Childs will arrive this fall as an associate professor of computer science and will co-lead new efforts in quantum information and computer science. Childs is an expert in the theory of quantum information processing, with a particular emphasis on algorithms for quantum computers. He earned his doctoral degree in physics from MIT in 2004.

Michelle Mazurek will also arrive later this fall as an assistant professor of computer science. Mazurek is the latest addition to the Maryland Cybersecurity Center, where her research will involve computer security with an emphasis on human factors. She received her doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2014.

Thomas Goldstein will join UMIACS from a postdoc position at Rice University, where he was involved in large-scale optimization and algorithms for big data, particularly as it relates to machine learning and image processing. Goldstein received his doctoral degree in applied mathematics from UCLA in 2010.

Niklas Elmqvist will have a joint appointment as an associate professor in the iSchool and in UMIACS. Elmqvist is an expert in information visualization, human-computer interaction and visual analytics. He received his doctoral degree in computer science in 2006 from Chalmers University of Technology.