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. 

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has made inroads into almost every industry and socioeconomic sector in recent decades, with a promise of making life easier and more efficient. Smart home appliances keep refrigerators stocked and temperature controlled, while social media apps connect people to networks and online shoppers find just what they need with targeted ads. But these AI applications have also introduced new concerns for privacy, implicit bias and a host of potentially harmful, unintended consequences.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Monday announced two new world records for “megaflashes” of lightning in notorious hot spots in North and South America, and a University of Maryland scientist helped certify the results, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society:

There are a number of critical issues that threaten the food security of Marylanders. Climate change, supply and demand, food deserts, and a rapidly growing population are on the shortlist. However, the past two years have been particularly challenging due to the negative impacts of COVID-19, which have further complicated food access and availability. This new reality now exists in tandem with pre-existing inequities that contribute to a high percentage of food-insecure households across the state.

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.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded the University of Maryland (UMD) nearly $4 million to support data collection efforts on projects related to terrorism and other asymmetric threats.

Artful camera work couldn’t fully hide the fact that Beijing’s National Stadium was far from full on Friday as athletes paraded into the opening ceremony for the XXIV Olympic Winter Games—one of many pandemic-inspired restrictions stretching throughout the competition that mirror similar ones at the recent Summer Games in Tokyo. And then there's the diplomatic boycott, as government officials from the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia who would normally attend the Games stayed home to protest human rights violations in China.

We don’t normally think about how our Amazon packages get to our door so quickly – unless they show up late. And we definitely notice when we’re hungry and our DoorDash order is cold or takes too long to arrive.

When designing vehicles that travel at very high speeds, engineers must be able to predict how flow fields interact with vehicle surfaces. Particularly critical is the transition between two kinds of flow regimes: laminar, in which the flow moves in orderly, parallel lines, and turbulent, characterized by chaotic movement in many directions.