Director's Message to UMIACS July '24

Hot enough for you?

If you’ve been in Maryland for much of the summer as I have, you’re acutely aware of the above-normal-temperatures we’re experiencing.

The science behind predicting extreme weather—including overbearing heat that can harm humans, animals and our environment—continues to progress, due in no small part to scientists having new tools based in computing.

This month’s newsletter touches on that topic, with a video overview of research and scholarship by Maria Molina, an assistant professor of oceanic and atmospheric science who is also a member of UMIACS.

Maria uses powerful data science and machine learning tools—some of which are managed by our institute—to solve pressing questions on predicting the volatility of Earth systems.

Her work is important, and I am particularly pleased that she’s collaborating with our machine learning and computational imaging experts—people like Chris Metzler and others—to improve weather and climate forecasts.

It’s not an outlier that UMIACS is involved the Earth sciences. When I started here 20 years ago, we were still active in land cover and land use research involving satellite imagery.

Some of that research has ended, but other UMIACS-based projects continue to address global challenges brought on by changing climatic conditions and weather-related factors.

Rita Colwell has been actively researching environmental conditions that can lead to outbreaks of waterborne diseases like cholera for decades; others, like Vanessa Frias-Martinez, are continuing their groundbreaking work in data science as it relates to predicting human movement patterns during catastrophes caused by severe weather.

Rita is a computational biologist. Vanessa is a data scientist based in the College of Information. But their work, and the work of many others active in the Earth sciences, relies on cutting-edge computing platforms.

I am proud of the work we do in this area. And I’ll continue to support UMIACS faculty, postdocs and students who are intent on using technology to improve the health and sustainability of our planet.

—Mihai Pop, UMIACS Director