An interdisciplinary research team led by the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and in partnership with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has entered into a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) worth up to $68 million.

The agreement brings together a large, diverse collaborative of researchers—leveraging the University System of Maryland’s national leadership in engineering, robotics, computer science, operations research, modeling and simulation, and cybersecurity—to drive transformational advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy. The five-year agreement will accelerate the development and deployment of safe, effective, and resilient capabilities and technologies, from wearable devices to unmanned aircraft, that work intelligently and in cooperation with each other and with human actors across multiple environments.
Shelby Bensi, Gregg Duncan, Katrina Groth, and Katharina Maisel are recipients of CAREER grants, the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty. The grants will support their research in hazard assessment, harnessing adeno-associated virus for gene therapy applications, probabilistic risk assessment, and drug delivery strategies to improve the efficacy of vaccines and immunotherapies.
The Quantum Technology Center (QTC) has received $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for their project titled “High-Field Quantum Diamond Magnetometers”. Led by Ronald Walsworth and Matthew Turner, the project utilizes advancements in quantum sensing with Nitrogen Vacancy centers in diamond to enable diagnostic capabilities in extreme environments necessary for practical commercial fusion device operation and other applications using high magnetic fields. 
An interdisciplinary team of University of Maryland students has landed a hard-earned spot as one of the “Digging Dozen” finalists in the first-ever Not-a-Boring Competition, hosted by Elon Musk’s The Boring Company. The team, UMD Loop, originally created in 2015 to compete in Musk’s SpaceX Hyperloop competitions, is switching gears to tackle a whole new challenge: building UMD’s first ever tunnel-boring machine, which will be capable of quickly boring a thirty-meter hole underground. 
Established in 2017 by the Maryland General Assembly, the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute (MEI2) was founded to support the development of clean-energy technology innovations from companies and universities across Maryland, thereby boosting economic growth and jobs in the state’s clean-energy sector.

The institute supports entrepreneurial engineers and scientists working on technologies poised to revolutionize the energy industry. From groundbreaking energy research, to seed grants that enable demonstration of the technology in working prototypes, to accelerator programs that prepare fledgling companies for the crucible of the open market, MEI2 offers a range of clean energy business development opportunities.