Milton Halem receives Research Faculty Excellence Award

Dr. Milton Halem, Research Professor in the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department, has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the UMBC Research Faculty Excellence Award.  The award recognizes overall excellence in research, and where appropriate, significant contributions to teaching and service/leadership while at UMBC.  

Dr. Halem joined UMBC in 2003, after retiring from a highly successful career at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he still holds an Emeritus position as Chief Information Research Scientist to the Director of the Earth Sciences Directorate.

Upon joining UMBC, Dr. Halem served as the founding Director of UMBC’s Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research (CHMPR) and today continues to serve as the UMBC Site Director for this major NSF-supported multi-institutional center that works closely with government and private sector sponsors in the areas of big-data computation, next generation computing and software tool development. 

In 2013, Dr. Halem was instrumental in negotiating and securing a major equipment donation from NASA Goddard that significantly enhanced our high-performance computing capacity through the donation of a 512 -node supercomputer to the UMBC campus.  

Dr. Halem’s scholarly achievements include more than 150 scientific publications in the areas of atmospheric and oceanographic sciences and computational and information sciences.  He is most noted for his groundbreaking research in simulation studies of space-observing systems and for development of four-dimensional data assimilation for weather and climate prediction.  

Over the years, Dr. Halem’s achievements have earned him numerous awards including the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the NASA Medal for Outstanding Leadership, and NASA’s highest award – the NASA Distinguished Service Medal – in 1996.

Keith J. Bowman, Dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology, comments: “Dr. Halem’s exceptional vision and his unrelenting drive for excellence continue to serve our UMBC community well.  His dedication to pushing the scientific and engineering boundaries serves as a model for our campus and beyond.”

Karl V. Steiner, Vice President for Research, adds: “ I could not think of a more deserving member of our UMBC research community to receive this inaugural Research Faculty Excellence Award than Milt Halem.  UMBC is the academic home to over 180 Research Faculty who contribute their expertise and personal commitment to making UMBC a destination for cutting-edge research while providing our students with remarkable insights and opportunities.  Milt Halem is clearly one the leaders in the field of high-performance computation and his energy and expertise have been a major factor in UMBC being recognized as a major contributor to high performance computation and data analytics.”