Research

Recognition of our research leadership across a range of fields continues as the faculty raised more than $400 million in external research support for the second year. The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) under Gary LaFree in Criminology and Criminal Justice anticipates receiving $12 million through 2011 from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is developing the most comprehensive database of worldwide terror incidents that have occurred since 1970. START awarded scholarships to undergraduate and doctoral students who agree to work in homeland security for a year after completing their degrees.

Studies on the avian flu virus in the National Avian Flu Research Project led by Daniel Perez in veterinary medicine received a second $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to support understanding the molecular basis of avian influenza and its risk to birds and humans.

R&D Magazine recognized two University creations among its "100 most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace" over the past year. One, a new optical method for detecting individual neutrons, was developed by Michael Coplan of the Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST) together with his colleagues at NIST. The other is a software tool to manage and track wildfires that was developed by Robert Sohlberg of Geography together with his colleagues at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA Ames Research Center.

Another UM-NIST partnership, the Joint Quantum Institute, has been awarded a most remarkable Physics Frontier Center by the National Science Foundation. The Principal Investigators are Bill Phillips, Luis Orozco and Chris Monroe. Chosen following a competition of more than 300 unniversity applicants, the center was awarded $14.5 million over five years to investigate quantum coherence and its importance to quantum information. A newly created UM Center for Applied Electromagnetics was funded at $20 million by the Office of Naval Research under the leadership of Patrick O'Shea, Executive Director, and Victor Granatstein, Research Director, both in electric and computer engineering.

Maryland's Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) along with international partners, is creating a digital archive of William Shakespeare's pre-1641 quartos. The Folger Shakespeare Library, which holds the largest collection of Shakespeare's quartos, is administering the supporting NEH grant. Another $1 million grant to MITH and Rice University from the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services supports development of interactive scholarly resources around the Americas.

Our university and six others are joined in a Google-IBM partnership called "cloud computing." Led by the College of Information Studies and located in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, cloud computing fosters parallel applications using remote data centers in contrast to the local one-server, one-application designs that we are accustomed to using.

The Department of Aerospace Engineering was selected by the Army Research Laboratory to lead a Micro Autonomous Science and Technology Center on "Microsystems Mechanics." Together with five other universities the department will develop autonomously operating, networked micro-vehicles that can crawl and fly in urban and complex terrains. The students' autonomous submarine that won the underwater prize this year seems to be the swimmer, while these micro-vehicles seem to be the flyers and crawlers.

For the second year in a row, the University of Maryland has led the nation by taking the lead on three, highly competitive, Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program awards. These awards support research on: the effect of culture on collaboration and negotiation under Michele Gelfand of psychology; remote multi-modal biometrics under Rama Chellappa of electrical and computer engineering; and rotorcraft brownout under J. Gordon Leishman of aerospace engineering. In addition to these six MURI lead-institution awards over two years, the University also participates in five other MURIs.

The new NOAA National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction is under construction in the M Square Research Park. Expected to open in 2009 the Center will make the greater University community one of the largest clusters of climate researchers in the world. Our Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center has already moved next door to the NOAA Center at 5825 University Research Court. Another new partner to join the park in a third new building is the newly created U.S. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). IARPA is charged with providing the intelligence community with the most advanced intelligence capabilities through high risk/high payoff research that is conducted mostly in the public domain. Construction is to begin in 2009.