The coronavirus pandemic put a spotlight on multiple societal issues including inequality, economic unsustainability, and the need to create safer environments for work and school.

Maryland engineers addressed these grand challenges by designing innovative solutions that will not only ease the impact of the pandemic today, but will also improve the wellbeing and socioeconomic resilience of our future society.
Researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Maryland associated with the Air Force Center of Excellence on Nature-Inspired Flight Technologies and Ideas (NIFTI) have developed “Smellicopter,” an autonomous drone that uses a live antenna from a moth to navigate toward smells. Smellicopter also can sense and avoid obstacles as it travels through the air.
Laurie Locascio and Ramalingam “Rama” Chellappa have been named to the National Academy of Inventors’ Class of 2020 Fellows, joining the ranks of some of the nation’s most prestigious and creative academic inventors.
They are among 175 new fellows who represent 115 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes worldwide and collectively hold over 4,700 U.S. patents.
A new study by University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and New York University researchers for the first time provides measurable physical evidence of diminished neural processing within the brain after a stroke. The paper has just been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

An interdisciplinary team from the University of Maryland—led by students, faculty, and staff from the A. James Clark School of Engineering—has won a finalist slot in the U.S. Department of Energy’s second annual Solar District Cup. UMD was one of 35 teams from 34 collegiate institutions (progressing from the original 59 teams from 57 institutions) in the United States selected to advance to the finals and vie for solar victory in April 2021.