AMSC Faculty Accolades: May - September 2026

Dr. Abba Gumel, Distinguished University Professor and the Michael and Eugenia Brin Endowed E-Nnovate Chair in Mathematics, was elected president of the Society for Mathematical Biology.

SMB was funded in 1973 as an international society to promote the development and dissemination of research and education at the interface between the mathematical and biological sciences.  Abba will be replacing the current president, Reinhard Laubenbacher from the University of Florida.

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Dr. Mohammad Hajiaghayi, the Jack and Rita G. Minker Professor of Computer Science, received two Test of Time Awards from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Economics and Computation for papers that helped shape the modern field of algorithmic economics and online mechanism design.

Hajiaghayi co-authored two papers that received an ACM SIGecom Test of Time Award, one of the field’s highest honors recognizing research that has had a lasting impact on the intersection of computer science and economics. 

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Dr. Michael Pecht, Distinguished University Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is among the top international scientists included in Research.com’s 2026 Best Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Scientists ranking. The organization ranked him No. 40 in the world and No. 21 in the United States.

Dr. Pecht’s recognition reflects his long-standing contributions to reliability engineering, prognostics and health management, electronics reliability, battery safety, and risk assessment. His work through CALCE has helped advance research, standards, and industry practices in the reliability and safety of electronic systems. Together, this recognition highlights the continued impact of CALCE research and Dr. Pecht’s leadership in electronics reliability and advanced system safety.

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Dr. Kaiqing Zhang, Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor, received the 2026 Donald P. Eckman Award from the American Automatic Control Council for his work in reinforcement learning in multi-agent systems and dynamic games, and applications in generative-AI agents and robotics.

Professor Zhang joined ECE in 2022 after postdoc positions with the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS) and the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as a Research Fellow at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at Berkeley. 

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Dr. Derek A. Paley, Willis H. Young Jr. Professor of Aerospace Engineering Education at UMD, was named Fellow by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in recognition of his outstanding engineering achievements in advancing the field of collective dynamics and controls.

Paley’s research focuses on dynamics and control, including cooperative control of autonomous vehicles, adaptive sampling with mobile networks, spatial modeling of biological groups and bioinspired robotics. His work has spanned autonomous air vehicles, underwater robotics and, more recently, AI-enabled robotic perception.

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Please join us in congratulating Dr. Gumel, Dr. Hajiaghayi, Dr. Pecht, Dr. Zhang, and Dr. Paley on their accomplishments!