It’s hard to overstate the environmental importance of trees, which among other functions pull climate change-inducing carbon from the atmosphere, clean the air of toxins and help control runoff. While it can likewise be hard to quantify some of these effects, a new study by University of Maryland researchers helps clarify the role of urban trees in mitigating stormwater flows, and finds that even isolated trees lining a street or planted in a park may have a significant effect.

Twenty-seven University of Maryland researchers have been recognized in Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers 2021 list.

You’re feeling nervous as finals week approaches. A friend passing you on McKeldin Mall stops to ask how you’re feeling. “Good,” you reply with wince and a shrug. The friend can plainly see from your facial expression and body language that “good” alone doesn’t capture the truth about your emotional state. Now, a UMD computer scientist has created a virtual “friend”—an artificial intelligence-driven virtual conversational assistant—which also can understand the subtleties about how you convey emotion.

A $3 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support a new effort at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD); the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); and Morgan State University to expand the pipeline of women faculty and Black, Hispanic and American Indian/Alaskan Native faculty in the arts and humanities to the ranks of academic leadership.

In November 2021, NASA extended a cooperative agreement with the University of Maryland, providing $32.5 million for UMD to continue managing and administering the Small Bodies Node (SBN) of NASA’s Planetary Data System. The Planetary Data System program ensures that data collected on NASA missions is cataloged, archived and made publicly accessible for future studies. The SBN is the branch of that system that houses data on asteroids, comets, meteorites and other small objects in space.

If you’ve recently felt more pain at the pump or groceries have taken a bigger bite out of your wallet, it’s not just about your choice of gas station or brand-name cereal. An old economic foe has reared its head.

A University of Maryland expert in computational imaging has received funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) to develop novel algorithms for fusing multimodal sensing data.

Three new gifts to the University of Maryland’s College of Arts and Humanities and College of Education will foster increased engagement with the arts across the campus and provide resources to education majors. Nancy ’78 and Chuck Clarvit’s gift of $2.25 million will bolster the art department through faculty and graduate student research opportunities, arts programming, cutting-edge technology, renovated studios and an outdoor exhibition space that will highlight work produced by UMD students, faculty and visiting artists.

The University of Maryland secured its place among the nation’s top schools for entrepreneurship in new rankings that reflect its commitment to innovation education during the height of virtual learning amid the pandemic.

The University of Maryland’s world-renowned quantum enterprise was front and center throughout today on a series of segments on CNBC. Correspondents with the cable financial news network spoke to some of UMD’s hundreds of quantum scientists and engineers, interviewed President Darryll J. Pines, toured labs and the Discovery District and delved into a new business environment where a leading quantum computing company based on UMD breakthroughs—IonQ—is making waves. Original article by Maryland Today Staff