Director's Message to UMIACS May '25

Teamwork and intelligence aptly describes our work ethic in UMIACS. We rely upon each other to create, execute and sustain a wide range of projects, most of which require a strong computational infrastructure to succeed.

For more than three decades, our institute has benefitted from a professional technical support staff. Initially formed ad hoc to manage specific machines in several of our early centers and labs, the staff grew in the mid-1990s in both size and impact and has subsequently become a vital part of UMIACS.

Today, we are fortunate to have nine full-time staff that are tasked with building, managing and maintaining security over numerous computing, storage and networking infrastructures.

Equally important to the institute’s success are the almost-20 undergraduates staffing the UMIACS Help Desk. These talented students are chosen through a competitive selection process, and when hired, are responsible for providing support that comes in all shapes and sizes: from uploading new software on a laptop to helping build and maintain a million-dollar GPU cluster used for computer vision applications.

Our newsletter this month highlights our tech staff, as seen through the eyes of Derek Yarnell, our director of computing facilities. Derek recalls his own history as a student worker, and how that experience helped shape the training program now in place for current Help Desk employees.

It’s worth noting that of the nine full-time staff currently employed as engineers, developers and security experts for UMIACS, all but two started in UMIACS as students at our Help Desk.

I encourage all members of UMIACS to pause and reflect on the level and quality of services we receive though our technical staff. In my opinion—and this view is reaffirmed by many of our colleagues and validated via a comprehensive external review in 2024—our tech support is excellent.

Thank you, Derek and company, for all the work you do in helping make UMIACS a championship team.

—Mihai Pop, UMIACS director