Dear UMBC community,

I am pleased to announce Anupam Joshi has been named vice provost and chief AI officer beginning July 1. Anupam brings almost three decades of experience at UMBC to the new role. For the last two years he has served as the interim dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology in addition to his position as the Oros Family Professor and director of the UMBC Cybersecurity Institute.

While I had previously announced Anupam would be serving as a special assistant to the provost for AI and computing, I was continually impressed with his forward-thinking leadership as we worked to fill out the provost leadership team. In light of Anupam’s ongoing contributions to the leadership team, as well as budgetary considerations, I have made the decision to eliminate the open senior vice provost for academic affairs position and appoint Anupam as vice provost and chief AI officer.

In this newly created role, Anupam will oversee various areas previously managed by the vice provost for academic affairs (e.g., academic resource planning and management, space management), provide leadership to academic affairs strategic initiatives, and lead the university’s strategy for AI and computing. This includes coordinating and leveraging current efforts in AI and computing, leading the strategic planning for university goals in this area, and leveraging new resources and university partnerships.

A prolific scholar, Anupam obtained a B.Tech degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)  Delhi in 1989, and a master’s and Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1991 and 1993. His research interests are at the intersection of AI and systems. He is a pioneer in data management and security for mobile and ad-hoc networks using AI approaches.

Over the last decade, Anupam has explored this intersection to improve cybersecurity – using distributed AI approaches for attack detection and resilience in CPS/IoT systems that undergird critical infrastructure and policy-driven approaches to security and privacy. He has worked with scholars from areas as diverse as medicine, psychology, linguistics, gerontology, and public policy to explore AI-based approaches in those domains that have led to publications and extramural funding.

Anupam is an affiliate faculty in the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and in UMBC’s Erickson School of Aging Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at IIT Delhi’s School of IT. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and serves on the Maryland Cybersecurity Council chartered by the Maryland legislature. Anupam has published more than 300 technical papers with an h-index of 97 and over 34,000 citations (per Google scholar), been granted nine patents, and has obtained research support totaling more than $22 million from the National Science Foundation, NASA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Dept of Defense, NIST, IBM, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin amongst others.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Peggy Re who has served for the past year as interim vice provost for academic affairs. Peggy has been an incredible resource as I started my first year as provost and has been instrumental in academic affairs making significant progress this past year. I look forward to continuing to work with Peggy as she returns to her position as associate provost for academic affairs. 

Please join me in congratulating Anupam on his new role as vice provost and chief AI officer.

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

On June 4, Dr. James DeVita, assistant vice president for academic partnerships and high-impact experiences, and Christine Routzahn, director of the Career Center, were featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “The Edge” newsletter, which included an article on the impact of federal cuts on the job market in Maryland:

“Christine Routzahn, director of the Career Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, noted that destinations for UMBC students have long included the alphabet soup of federal agencies. ‘We have astounding relationships with NSA, FDA, CIA, you name it," she said. Even though the university’s spring career fair, in early February, had 13 cancellations within two days, she expects the federal sector to continue to be an important destination for graduates.

The university’s status as a magnet for international students, particularly at the master’s-degree level, is cause for concern, said James DeVita, UMBC’s assistant vice president for academic partnerships and high-impact experiences. ‘Our international students are maybe one of the groups that are kind of taking it the hardest, probably because it’s not just one factor but the confluence of factors.’ One such factor is the general scrutiny on international students, but a bigger part of the stress may come from students’ need to find optional practical training as part of their F-1 visa, a program that one of President Trump’s nominees has said he wants to end.

UMBC is trying to emphasize its strengths to help students generate workplace opportunities. The university’s data shows that work experience before graduation has been key to success. ‘Roughly 50 percent have accepted opportunities where they interned or worked while there were students, and that has been consistent year after year,” said Routzahn. The university plans to increase the work-based learning opportunities students have as undergraduates and graduates.’”

UMBC offers services and opportunities that displaced federal workers can access for support. In addition, the UMBC Alumni Engagement and Career Center offices offer several resources specifically for alumni and the UMBC community. More information is available for displaced federal workers and beyond on UMBC’s Information and Resources Related to 2025 Federal Orders and Actions website.