Director's Message to UMIACS June 2025

As you can see from this month’s feature story, our colleague Andrew Childs was just named interim director of UMIACS. Andrew has been an important asset to UMIACS, and to the University of Maryland, for 10 years now.

He has provided leadership to several of our important quantum efforts on campus—the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS) and the Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation (RQS)—and has been active on many levels within our UMIACS community.

Now, he will bring his superb management skills to our vibrant research enterprise that includes 128 faculty from 16 departments on the UMD campus, more than 200 graduate students, and a support staff of 36. We’re fortunate to have Andrew taking on this new role, and I wish him the best moving forward.

Given that this is my last director’s message, I’d like to reflect on my own tenure as director for the past eight years. It’s been an honor and a privilege to work with all of you, particularly in that the research undertaken in UMIACS is innovative, timely and meaningful.

This is evidenced by our projects impacting human and environmental health, data security, autonomy, language and cognition, trustworthy AI, and much more. Some of the emerging areas of research we’re active in—quantum computing and the microbiome, for example—are expected to offer rich dividends to science and to society.

The fact that UMIACS is a leader in many of these areas should not be a surprise. Our track record for the past four decades has been one of research excellence, aptly maintained by administrative and technical support that is second-to-none. Don’t just take my word on this—both external reviews undertaken in the past 10 years have identified our institute as an efficient, forward-looking research powerhouse.

For that, I thank each one of you that has contributed to our success. We’re willing to take scientific risks because we have the talent and computational support to push through most challenges. Keep pushing. Keep taking risks. Keep having an impact.

I will be forever grateful for my time as director, and I look forward to continuing to support our vision and mission as an active member of UMIACS.

—Mihai Pop, UMIACS director