Dr. Karl V. Steiner serves as the Vice President for Research & Creative Achievement, holds the academic rank of Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and an affiliate appointment as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

Dr. Steiner joined UMBC in September 2013, building upon a highly successful research and administrative career at the University of Delaware (UD), where he ascended to the position of Senior Associate Provost for Research Development and held academic appointments as Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and in the Biomedical Engineering Program.

Dr. Steiner led UMBC’s effort to achieve Carnegie R1 status, as designated in 2022 by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, recognizing UMBC as a Doctoral University with Very High Research Activity and placing the institution among the top 146 research universities in the Nation.  UMBC is one of just three institutions in Maryland with Carnegie R1 status.  UMBC is just as proud of its distinguished Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, which was originally awarded in 2020.

Over the past decade, Dr. Steiner has created a strong research culture across UMBC, leading to more than a doubling of the research portfolio during his tenure – from $68M in 2014 to $144M in 2023 – as reported to the annual NSF HERD submissions.

Dr. Steiner has been focused on growing UMBC’s research infrastructure and reputation by building on UMBC’s long-standing existing interdisciplinary, collaborative, and vibrant culture supporting research, scholarship, and creative achievement.

UMBC’s key research themes are focused on Environmental Resilience and Sciences, especially Earth & Space Science and Technology, Ecology & Remediation, Clean Energy Generation and Storage, and Environmental Economics, Ethics and Policy; on Health & Life Sciences, including Marine Biotechnology, Aquaculture, and Biosciences and Engineering; on Data Sciences, AI, and National Security, with special focus on the intersection of Cybersecurity, Quantum, and AI, Cognitive Computing,  Autonomy, and IT for Operations Technology; on Community, Equity and Social Justice, including Health Equity and Policy Studies, on History, Identity and Society; and Public Humanities and the Arts.

Recent results include strategic efforts to establish sustainable research partnerships between UMBC and the professional schools at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), including a strategic partnership with UMB under the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), successful, competitive renewals for three Cooperative Research Centers with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center valued at over $150 million to UMBC over five years, an award from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) to MITRE, UMBC and other academic partners, for the creation of the National Cybersecurity FFRDC (NCF) focused on non-defense cybersecurity issues; and international leadership to launch the International Cybersecurity of Excellence (INCS-CoE), that has grown into a global research partnership among leading Universities across eight Nations in four continents.

Dr. Steiner has been developing sustainable research partnerships with academic institutions and federal labs in Maryland and across the region; promoting economic development efforts through the bwtech@UMBC incubator; and initiated international research partnerships with leading institutions in Europe, Israel, India, and Japan. He serves as a member of the UD College of Engineering Advisory Council, as Chair of the New Hampshire INBRE Advisory Council, served as Chair of the Board for the international Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (INCS-CoE) in 2023, and is a member of the Executive Committee for APLU-COR – the Council on Research for the Association for Public & Land-Grant Universities.

Dr. Steiner established innovative mechanisms and events to recognize faculty achievements across campus, including UMBC’s community of innovators; UMBC’s senior faculty that have achieved Fellow status at professional associations or societies and UMBC’s growing community of NSF-CAREER award recipients. These initiatives have enhanced both the internal and external visibility of the many research achievements of UMBC faculty and have been highly effective to foster peer group support across the campus.

At the University of Delaware Dr. Steiner served in leadership roles for numerous major multi-disciplinary programs, including several Centers of Excellence, funded by the Department of Defense (ARO, ARL, ONR, DARPA), the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, the State of Delaware, foundations and the private sector. He has been instrumental in securing and leading over $150 million in externally funded programs for research and infrastructure programs supporting institutional, statewide and regional initiatives.

He served in key leadership positions for the Delaware Health Sciences Alliance (www.dhsa.org), Delaware Biotechnology Institute (www.dbi.udel.edu), the Fraunhofer Center – Delaware (www.fraunhofer.org) – a partnership with the German Fraunhofer Gesellschaft – and the Center for Composite Materials (www.ccm.udel.edu). Dr. Steiner served as Director of the NIH-NIGMS-funded IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), a statewide partnership among Delaware’s academic and medical institutions, to develop a competitive and sustainable biomedical research capability, and as Co-PI of Delaware’s NSF-funded EPSCoR program with a focus on complex environmental issues. He represented Delaware on the Board of the National EPSCoR/IDeA Foundation from 2006 to 2013, and was instrumental in developing the Northeast Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (NECC) between 2007 and 2013, a regional initiative to improve access to upgraded networking capabilities among the Northeast Regional IDeA States – Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Dr. Steiner received his Doctorate in Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from the Institute for Composite Materials (www.ivw.uni-kl.de) at the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany, his Master’s degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Delaware (www.udel.edu) and completed his Engineering Diploma in Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies at the Technical University Braunschweig/Wolfenbüttel – now known as Ostfalia – in Germany (www.ostfalia.de).

His recent research activities have been focused on interactive immersive visualization methodologies for the life sciences, primarily in complex multi-variant data analysis and in biomedical imaging with a focus on haptics and virtual surgery simulations. In 2003, Dr. Steiner was recognized for his work on immersive visualization in the life sciences as a Computerworld Honors Laureate during a reception at San Francisco’s City Hall.

Dr. Steiner has advised or co-advised 23 Ph.D. and master’s students, and over 40 senior theses by undergraduate students. He has been instrumental in establishing successful exchange programs with the German Carl Duisberg Society and other academic institutions that have enabled over 30 exchange students from across Europe to conduct a part of their research training at UD.

Dr. Steiner has contributed over 85 technical publications to international journals and conference proceedings, related to computer visualization, image analysis methodologies, haptic simulations, nondestructive evaluation and manufacturing science. He serves as frequent member on NSF review panels and NIH study sections and as a program review member for AAAS.  Dr. Steiner has served as conference and session chair in numerous regional, national, and international conferences and workshops, as reviewer for journals focused on composite materials and nondestructive testing and is presenting invited research seminars and presentations at international conferences, academic institutions and industrial sites across the world.