Faculty / Staff
Entomologist Michael Raupp is enjoying Swarmageddon...Raupp, a cicada expert at the University of Maryland in College Park, is tracking the emergence of cicadas in several locations in Maryland and New Jersey, adding to a growing database collected by scientists and citizens. He is watching the behaviors of immature cicadas, called nymphs, as they prepare to emerge from the soil and is also studying adults’ escape behaviors.
Steven D. Cohen, managing director of the oral communication program at the University of Maryland is quoted in a Baltimore Sun story on commencement speakers.
Leigh Wilson Smiley, the new director of University of Maryland's theater school, is from New York—you can hear it in her "r" and in her "a," she says. "I'm from Noo Yawk," she says, adopting a rough-around-the-edges Brooklyn tone.
Peter Morici, professor of international business, discusses U.S. investors in English pro soccer, global banking and other economic developments.
Engaged Students
Students at the University of Maryland want to make aviation history by building the world's first human-powered helicopter. In 1980, the American Helicopter Society announced an award for the first person to accomplish such a feat. The $250,000 Sikorsky Prize would go to a vehicle that could hover for 60 seconds, not stray beyond a three-meter-square area, and at some point in the flight reach an altitude of three meters.
University of Maryland students took over public space in the Long Branch neighborhood and put a spotlight on an area that may soon get even more attention with the Purple Line. “This piece is called Thirsty for Change,” says Kristen Fox, a graduate student at the University of Maryland. Her piece consists of 3,444 plastic bottles.
For college students, final exams are like the lethal combination of dubstep and country, the end of the semester assessment they wish they could avoid at all costs...But while the majority of 20-somethings cringe at the idea of final exams, freshmen engineering students at University of Maryland look forward to them, and rightly so. Students at University of Maryland have to create their own hovercraft in order to pass a first year engineering course, likely the coolest final exam ever...
Who raps with a viola? University of Maryland Senior David Porter, that who, and it's catching on. Nora Keller, a freshman at the university, told us, "I was passing someone and I heard 'hip hop orchestra,' and I said 'Hip Hop Orchestra?'" Sophomore Marcus Moody came up with the idea for the Hip Hop Orchestra. Porter pens the words while Moody arranges the music.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
You know you’ve built a pretty good robot when nature itself has been fooled. And a group of robotics researchers at the University of Maryland got that compliment last month, when their robotic bird, dubbed “Robo Raven” was attacked by a hawk. Professor S.K. Gupta has been working on creating a robotic bird for over 8 years now, and other engineering groups across the world have also been working on robotic birds.
Long before the Wright Brothers took their first flight, people have tried to take to the skies with all sorts of wacky contraptions—from Leonardo Da Vinci’s helicopters to people who haphazardly strapped wings to their arms. Now, thanks to a team of researchers at the University of Maryland, we have Robo Raven, a robot that flaps around like a real bird. It’s even agile enough that it can swoop and dive like a real bird of prey!
Research
Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply...“We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines.
What were you interested in when you were six years old? Maybe it was riding your bike or playing with dolls. Most likely, you weren't interested in brain research, but we found one little girl who is fascinated with medical science at the University Of Maryland campus. When you're six years old, one of the things you learn how to do is read a map. Isabella Taylor is learning to do that...but with a map of her brain. She's only in kindergarten but can't get enough when it comes to brain...
Big Issues
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama came Tuesday to the University of Maryland to discuss peace as the guest speaker for the Anwar Sadat Lecture, named after the late Egyptian president.
While the University of Maryland won't be able to reap most of the rewards of joining the Big Ten athletic conference until the move becomes official in July 2014, it will start benefiting from its academic counterpart — the Committee on Institutional Cooperation — this year.
Students and faculty at the University of Maryland have access to 4 million volumes in the libraries of College Park. But by fall, they will also have borrowing privileges for more than 90 million volumes in the libraries of 14 other prominent universities in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. That’s one of the side benefits of U-Md.’s decision to move its athletics from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big Ten starting in 2014.
The Dalai Lama urges peace, compassion and dialogue — all of which seem in short supply in Tibet, the land he fled in 1959 and now is roiled by tensions between its Chinese rulers and nationalists yearning for their spiritual leader's return. He never mentioned Tibet's troubles Tuesday in a lecture at the University of Maryland. But he decried violence to solve political problems. "The worst thing about it, it is always unpredictable," he said. "It may create unexpected consequences."
Dalai Lama delivered a lecture to a sold-out crowd of 15,000 at the University of Maryland in College Park on Tuesday afternoon. The Tibetan spiritual leader delivered the annual Sadat Lecture for Peace at the school’s Comcast Center. Tickets to the event sold out within minutes after the speech was announced in February.
He pulled on a Terps visor, to the crowd's delight. He rubbed noses with Gov. Martin O'Malley. And the Dalai Lama was met Tuesday with rounds of applause from a crowd of 15,000 at the University of Maryland, College Park's Comcast Center.
His English was terribly broken, and punctuated by sudden fits of giggles. But for nearly an hour, the Dalai Lama entranced an arena full of admirers, who said his message came across just fine. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, speaking to an audience of 15,000 at the University of Maryland Tuesday (May 7), described himself as “a simple Buddhist monk” with a simple message: We are all human beings and should be good to one another.
Nothing Gov. Martin O’Malley said made news Tuesday morning when he greeted the Dalai Lama at a lecture at the University of Maryland. But photos of what O’Malley did upon meeting the Dalai Lama quickly went viral.