Director's Message to UMIACS September 2026

What an exciting time to take the helm of UMIACS. The institute is growing in size and impact, our researchers are tackling complex challenges in science and technology, and new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration are emerging across campus and beyond.

I want to thank Andrew Childs for his service as interim director over the past 14 months. Under Andrew’s leadership, UMIACS remained a vibrant research powerhouse, and I am grateful for his thoughtful stewardship during this transition.

I also want to thank everyone who makes UMIACS such an extraordinary place. Through groundbreaking research, educating and mentoring students, and providing the administrative, technical and operational expertise that supports our mission, this community has built one of the nation’s leading interdisciplinary research institutes.

UMIACS enters its next chapter from a position of strength. I look forward to broadening our engagement with the Washington, D.C., technology and policymaking community, deepening partnerships with industry, and creating workshops and symposia that showcase our expertise in rapidly growing fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and microbiome sciences.

AI, in particular, is transforming interdisciplinary computing research across many fields. UMIACS has deep expertise in this area, creating significant opportunities to support research across campus and bring our work to broader audiences.

The accomplishments featured in this month’s newsletter illustrate the breadth of research underway across UMIACS. The NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation, led by UMD and managed by UMIACS, recently received a five-year renewal expected to total $37.5 million.

Another project brings together Maria Molina, Chris Metzler, Abhinav Bhatele and Haizhao Yang, combining generative AI and Earth system modeling to produce faster, more detailed forecasts for floods, droughts and water resources.

Our nearly 250 graduate students, representing more than half a dozen academic departments, are also making important contributions. Yvonne Zhou developed a framework for securely training AI in the cloud while reducing processing delays by up to 15 times. Connor Baumler led a study showing that AI-assisted writing retains the technology’s stylistic fingerprints even after extensive human editing.

These accomplishments capture what makes UMIACS distinctive: researchers across disciplines and at every career stage—from senior faculty to Ph.D. students—bringing their expertise together to tackle challenging problems. I look forward to building on that collaborative foundation in the months ahead.

Sincerely,

David Jacobs
UMIACS Director