News

A $1.4 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will support a University of Maryland-led study to assess the impact of a nationwide move to make the SAT and ACT tests optional for college admissions, or to eliminate their use altogether. Associate Professor of Education Julie J. Park and colleagues will examine whether higher education institutions’ swift moves to alter their admissions processes in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic improved college access or equity for different student populations.

This month, the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB) conducted a disaster response planning exercise based on its Mechanism for Cooperation in Disasters (MECODE) using the ICONSnet simulation platform run by START’s ICONS Project.

The University of Maryland (UMD) and UMD start-up, HighT-Tech, announced receipt of a total $5.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The funding is part of the ARPA-E OPEN 2021 program, which prioritizes funding technologies that support novel approaches to clean energy challenges. The selected projects will advance energy storage and catalysis technology respectively.