News

Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, an associate research professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences, was recently awarded Uganda’s Highest Civilian Award, the Golden Jubilee Medal for her efforts to improve food security in Africa. The award was presented to her parents by His Excellency the President of Uganda, Mr. Yoweri Museveni, at a ceremony in Nakalembe’s hometown, Kampala, on Jan. 26, 2022. 

Ariane de Bremond, an associate research professor in the University of Maryland’s Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG), co-led a new paper containing 10 facts that land use scientists around the world believe are oft-overlooked in global policy debates about sustainability, conservation, climate change and more.

A predictive algorithm developed by University of Maryland machine learning researchers to improve Facebook’s notification system for blood donations prompted 5% more people to roll up their sleeves in a test last year—an increase that could mean 140 million more lifesaving donations worldwide if applied to all of the social media platform’s 2.8 billion users. Their results are detailed in a working paper presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Economics and Computation.