As part of Forward: the University of Maryland Campaign for the Fearless, the University of Maryland Alumni Association recently hosted “Maryland Minds: Shaping the Future of AI,” where faculty and students gave TED-Talk-style presentations, called TERP-Talks, about their AI-focused projects. The projects ranged from improving the safety of autonomous vehicles to improving access to food assistance in the DMV area. Though seemingly disparate, the four projects shared a common theme: solving real problems for real people. As one presenter, Associate Professor of aerospace engineering Mumu Xu, said, “The really great part about Maryland is that we really do want to do good. I think that’s what motivates all of our work.”

Xu studies federal safety certification for planes and cars. Her overarching goal is to figure out how to safely integrate AI into people’s lives. In her TERP-talk, she described how she and her students programmed an AI to play Mario Kart. They used an AI technique called deep reinforcement learning to teach the AI to improve its driving accuracy and safety profile. “It’s not enough for AIs to perform well or better than they used to. We have to really think about safety and trust,” said Xu.

John Fisher, professor and chair of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, and Ph.D. candidate Ryan Felix ’26, presented next. Falling under the umbrella of AI in healthcare, Fisher and Felix’s project focuses on bioprinting, which uses 3-D printing to build tissue. Such tissues could include an areola and nipple for a post-mastectomy patient, as only one example. When printing, a researcher has to select numerous parameters by making educated guesses and tweaking as the process goes on. Felix is using AI to adjust these parameters to reduce the tedious guess work. According to Felix, integrating AI into bioprinting will lead to automated, precise and large-scale manufacturing of tissues while lowering the cost and increasing the speed at which research can progress.

The third project moved the focus from healthcare to public health. Sylvette La Touche-Howard, assistant dean of the Office of Public Health Practice & Community Engagement, and Tracy Zeegern, assistant dean of the Office of Public Health Practice & Community Engagement, discussed how they are using AI to avoid breaking trust while also accelerating public health research. They are building an AI community-powered chatbot, created with data from Prince George’s County residents. A student can input a health intervention they have designed and receive feedback from the chatbot based on the real-world experiences of Prince George’s County residents. If a student makes a mistake while interacting with the chatbot, they will not negatively affect a relationship with a resident that took years to build, while they also learn the importance of cultural competency.

This human focus remained in the final project. UMD undergraduate students Amira Abujuma ’27 and Arden Lawson ‘27 worked with the Capital Area Food Bank for their project. With a network of 400 partners, Capital Area Food bank sources and distributes food in the DMV area. The food bank has hundreds of partners, stocked warehouses and infrastructure for distribution, but they wanted to improve their system. Research showed that their phone lines were overcrowded, their hours of operation ended at 5:00 p.m., they had limited staff capacity and had significant language barriers. Abujuma, Lawson and their peers built an AI-powered text-messaging and voice model that connects food insecure community members to resources that are available. It’s operational 24/7 and offers 30+ languages. “When someone asks for help we want to make sure the answer is immediate and assured,” said Lawson.

Hal Daumé III, the director of the AI Interdisciplinary Institute at UMD (AIM), hosted a brief Q&A after the TERP-Talks to conclude the evening. He emphasized the power of AI to “uplift people” but was also quick to point out that “we can only do this by truly uniting across all the disciplines.” AIM, which has more than 200 affiliate faculty members, exists to facilitate these connections. “AIM provides this opportunity across research, education, internal community building and external partnerships to ensure we really can build this future where AI is uplifting for everyone,” said Daumé.

UMD is harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to boost human potential, promoting its trustworthy and responsible use in industry, government and society. In doing so, we are preparing students from all majors to thrive in an AI-integrated workforce.