Babadi, Dachman-Soled and Dumitras Receive Academic Promotions

University of Maryland Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Members Behtash Babadi, Dana Dachman-Soled and Tudor Dumitras have been promoted to the level of full professors. Their appointments will be effective July 1, 2026.

Behtash Babadi is the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in ECE. He holds a joint appointment with the Institute of Systems Research (ISR), and is an affiliate faculty of the Brain and Behavior Institute (BBI), Program in Neuroscience & Cognitive Science (NACS), and the Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation Program (AMSC). He joined the University of Maryland Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2014.

Prior to joining ECE, Babadi was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his M.Sc and Ph.D. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University.

Babadi’s research interests include statistical and adaptive signal processing, neural signal processing, machine learning and systems neuroscience. He has been recognized for his work as the recipient of the Clark School of Engineering E. Robert Kent Teaching Award for Junior Faculty and an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER).

Dana Dachman-Soled holds a joint appointment with the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). She is an affiliate of the Institute for Systems Research (ISR) and the Department of Computer Science, and a faculty member with the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2).

Dachman-Soled’s research interests are cryptography, security, and complexity theory. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University. Before joining ECE in 2013, she held a postdoc position with Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She is a recipient of numerous awards, included the ECE George Corcoran Award for Faculty, a UMD Summer Research and Scholarship Award (RASA), the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), a NSF CAREER Award, and two JPMorgan Faculty Research Awards.

Tudor Dumitras holds a joint appointment with the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) and is a core faculty member for the Maryland Cybersecurity Center(MC2). He conducts research at the intersection of Computer Security and Artificial Intelligence.

Dumitras earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Before joining ECE in 2013, he worked for Symantec Research Labs, where he created the Worldwide Intelligence Network Environment (WINE), a platform for experimenting with Big Data techniques in computer security.

His work was published in the top-tier conferences in computer security and machine learning, and it was featured in the Research Highlights of the Communications of the ACM. Additionally, it was recognized with first place in the CSAW Applied Research Competition, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, and an honorable mention in the NSA contest for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper. Several of his papers have received coverage in the popular press, including the MIT Technology Review, Forbes, the Cyberwire, and the Economist.

Published June 23, 2026