Dr. Marie desJardins is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in UMBC's College of Engineering & Information Technology as well as a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering. Her research in artificial intelligence focuses on the areas of machine learning, multi-agent systems, planning, interactive AI, information management, reasoning with uncertainty, and decision theory. She has graduated 10 Ph.D. students and 25 M.S. students, and has worked with over 75 undergraduate researchers.
As a national leader in computer science education, Dr. desJardins has been the Maryland PI for the Exploring Computing Education Pathways Alliance, lead PI for the "CS Matters in Maryland" CS10K program, co-PI on awards from NSF's CE21, S-STEM, and TUES programs, and the university liaison and founding member of the CSTA-Maryland chapter. Dr. desJardins is an ACM Distinguished Member and a AAAI Senior Member, the 2014-17 UMBC Presidential Distinguished Teaching Professor, a CRA-W/CDC Distinguished Lecturer, and a recipient of the 2014 NCWIT Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award and the 2016 CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award."