Director's Message to UMIACS December 2025

As 2025 draws to a close, I want to thank our entire UMIACS community of faculty, students, and staff for a job well done. Your efforts continue to advance science, education, and innovation on a broad scale.

Space constraints don’t allow a listing of all our accomplishments for the past 12 months. Instead, I encourage you to visit our newsfeed, which shows the breadth and depth of research and scholarship undertaken by UMIACS.

This month’s newsletter further highlights our endeavors, including a feature video on the UMD Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences, novel research that uses AI to advance sustainable, biodegradable plastics, and AI-powered tech that helps us better understand music.

All these activities involve powerful computing resources that UMIACS provides. They also rely on human talent—from faculty to graduate students to our superb technical and administrative staff—all working together to advance scientific discovery and cultivate new knowledge.

While our success is certainly a group effort, I want to take this opportunity to single out an individual. At the end of December, Yerty Valenzuela will retire after almost 30 years with the institute.

As most of you already know, Yerty has been invaluable in helping manage our research enterprise, handling multiple senior-level administrative duties for many of the major centers in UMIACS. On behalf of our entire community, thank you, Yerty, for all that you have done!

I look forward to seeing all of you in 2026 when we return from a well-deserved break. I hope you have a restful holiday!

Best,

Andrew Childs, Interim UMIACS Director