UT Dallas has experienced tremendous success in receiving early faculty awards resulting in over $65 million since 2010, including 55 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER awards. Geared toward helping beginning faculty establish their career and teaching path, fund labs, and provide a stable source of support, these career making awards afford a rare opportunity for early-career faculty to jump start their independent research, as well as compete for major grant support. Aimed at fostering creative discoveries, innovating research, and increasing the sustainability of the research workforce, the National Institutes of Health NSF, and Department of Defense have many opportunities targeting early stage investigators. For a quick snapshot of the over 6,000 available opportunities for new faculty/investigators, visit our blog.
2024
Dr. Xinya Du – 2024: National Science Foundation – CAREER: Learning to Extract Consistent Event Graphs from Long and Complex Documents. Dr. Du is an Assistant Professor of Computer Sciences. His research interests include Natural language processing, computational linguistics, machine learning, deep learning.
Dr. Kelly Jahn – U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Act – Biomarkers of Hyperacusis in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Dr. Jahn is an Assistant Professor of Speech Language Hearing. Her research area is to improve treatments for hearing loss by studying how auditory perception changes across the lifespan and following acoustic injury.
Dr. Yaqing Jin – U.S. Army Research Lab – Aerodynamic Performance of Rotor Blades in Air-Sand Two-Phase Flows. Dr. Jin is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research areas include fluid mechanics, renewable energy, fluid-structure interactions, turbulent flow, and energy-efficient locomotion.
Dr. Justin Koeln – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Set-based Dynamic Modeling and Control for Trustworthy Energy Management Systems. Dr. Koeln is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include Dynamic systems and control, energy systems, distributed and hierarchical control.
Dr. Berrak Sisman – National Science Foundation – CAREER: What is in a Voice?: Scientific and Machine Learning Advancement for Voice Conversion. Dr. Sisman is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests include Artificial intelligence; machine learning; speech synthesis; emotion.
Dr. Pumpki Lei Su – National Institutes of Health – Word Learning from Infant-Directed Speech in Autistic Children. Dr. Pumpki Lei Su is an Assistant Professor of Speech Language Hearing. Her research area is Language development and caregiver-child interaction in children with autism and bilingual children, and language assessment in bilingual children.
2023
Dr. Joseph Boll – 2023: National Institutes of Health – MIRA: Reinforcing the Barrier: Understanding How Cell Envelope Modifications Promote Intrinsic Antimicrobial Tolerance and Resistance in Acinetobacter Baumannii. Dr. Boll is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences. His research interests include understanding how Gram-negative bacteria survive without lipopolysaccharide and characterizing chemical modifications that promote antimicrobial resistance in nosocomial Gram-negative pathogens.
Dr. Polimyr (Dave) Dingal – 2023: National Institutes of Health – MIRA: Natural and Synthetic Mechanisms of Ligand Formation. Dr. Dingal is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. His research focuses on cell biophysics, molecular biology, and synthetic biology.
Dr. Sheel Dodani – 2023: National Science Foundation – CAREER: Discovering and Engineering Protein-Based Sensors for Nitrate in Biology. Dr. Dodani is an Associate Professor of Chemistry. Her major research goals are to study the interactions between biologically relevant anions and proteins to engineer new technologies for applications relevant to human health and the environment. To achieve these goals, we employ a multi-disciplinary approach spanning synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, protein engineering, computational biophysics, bioinformatics, spectroscopy, molecular and cellular biology, and microscopy.
Dr. Caroline Jones – 2023: National Science Foundation – CAREER: A Systems Approach to Create Multiplexed Microfluidics to Study Human Immune Cell Dynamics. Dr. Jones is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. Her research focuses onImmunoengineering, Sepsis, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Inflammation, Lab-on-a-chip technology, Biosensors, Host-pathogen interactions.
Dr. Rizwanur Khan – 2023: National Science Foundation – CAREER: L-Functions and Subconvexity. Dr. Khan is an Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences. His research interests include analytic number theory, automorphic forms, and L-functions.
Dr. Brian Kim – 2023: National Science Foundation – CAREER: Superresolution Neurochemical Probe based on Stochastic Neurotransmitter Localization. Dr. Kim is an Associate Professor in Bioengineering. His research interests include Multimodal Neural Interfaces, Brain-Machine Interfaces, Neurochemical Sensors, Single-Cell Electrophysiology, and Medical Diagnostics.
Dr. Rodrigo Bernal Montoya – 2023: National Science Foundation – CAREER: Revealing the Atomistic Fundamentals of Probabilistic Strength Distributions in Nanomaterials via High-Throughput Experimentation. Dr. Bernal Montoya is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include mechanical properties of nanomaterials, multiphysics phenomena at the nanoscale, nanoscale metrology, MEMS and NEMS, electron microscopy.
2022
Dr. Joseph S. Friedman – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Bottom-Up Localized Online Learning with Spintronic Neuromorphic Networks. Dr. Friedman is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His research focuses on the conception and design of novel logical and neuromorphic computing paradigms based on nanoscale and quantum mechanical phenomena, with particular emphasis on spintronics.
Dr. Mona Ghassemi — National Science Foundation – CAREER: Accelerated Insulation Aging due to Fast, Repetitive Voltage Pulses from Wide Bandgap Power Electronics. Dr. Ghassemi is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research areas include transportation electrification, clean energy, electrical insulation materials and systems, high voltage/field engineering and technology, power systems, and plasma science.
Dr. Mona Ghassemi — U.S. Air Force (through Virginia Tech) – YIP: Characterization, Multiphysics Modeling, and Mitigation of Insulation Material Degradation and Breakdown. Dr. Ghassemi is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research areas include transportation electrification, clean energy, electrical insulation materials and systems, high voltage/field engineering and technology, power systems, and plasma science.
Dr. Shuang Hao — National Science Foundation – CAREER: Empowering White-box Driven Analytics to Detect AI-synthesized Deceptive Content. Dr. Hao is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include network security, large-scale measurement, anomaly detection, and underground economics.
Dr. Kelly Jahn — National Institutes of Health – K01: Neural Signatures of Enhanced Central Auditory Gain in Hyperacusis. Dr. Jahn is an Assistant Professor of Speech Language Hearing. Her research area is to improve treatments for hearing loss by studying how auditory perception changes across the lifespan and following acoustic injury.
Dr. Ifana Mahbub — National Science Foundation – CAREER: Next-generation of Wirelessly Powered Implantable Neuromodulation and Electrophysiological Recording System for Long-term Behavior Study of Freely-Moving Animals. Dr. Mahbub is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research areas include antennas, analog, and RF Integrated Circuits.
Dr. Justin Ruths – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Going Beyond Linear Models for Attack Detection and Defense in Control Systems. Dr. Ruths is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include control & optimization of complex dynamical systems and networks, cyber-physical system security, neuroscience, quantum control.
Dr. Wei Yang — National Science Foundation – CAREER: Enhancing Deep-Learning-based Code Analyses via Human Intelligence. Dr. Yang is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include software engineering, interpretable machine learning, formal method and programming language, mobile security, IoT security, adversarial machine learning, cyber-physical security and natural language processing.
Dr. Yue Zhou — National Science Foundation – CAREER: Fast-Charging Energy Storage Devices Enabled by Modulating Internal Electric Field of Heterostructure. Dr. Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research areas include energy storage, energy conversion, advanced manufacturing, and electronic materials and devices.
2021
Dr. Michael D. Burton – 2021: National Institutes of Health – MIRA: Mechanisms Involved in Postoperative Recovery: A Focus on Pain, Delirium, and Neuroinflammation. Dr. Burton is an Assistant Professor of Neuroscience. His research focuses on how the immune system modulates peripheral sensory neurons to regulate pain and energy homeostasis.
Dr. Fatemeh Hassanipour – National Science Foundation – MCA: Physics-Informed and Geometry-Informed Machine Learning for Analysis of Multi-scale Distensible Biological Structures. Dr. Hassanipour is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Her research focuses on heat transfer and fluid mechanics with applications in bioengineering, health, and energy conservation.
Dr. Xianming Dai – National Science Foundation-CAREER: Vapor-Liquid Separation for Sustainable Condensation Heat Transfer. Dr. Dai is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include superhydrophobic surfaces, wetting, nanofabrication, and thermal management.
Dr. Tyler Summers – National Science Foundation-CAREER: Data-Driven Control of Dynamical Networks: Robustness, Risk, and Network Architectures. Dr. Summers is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests focus in feedback control and optimization in complex dynamical networks, emphasizing theoretical tools and computational methods and driven by applications to electric power networks and distributed robotics.
Dr. Lin Jia – National Institutes of Health–K01: Role of Hepatocyte TLR4 in Alcohol-induced Steatohepatitis and Insulin Resistance. Dr. Jia is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. Her long-term research interest is to identify critical mediators and important pathways that contribute to the development of advanced liver damage (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) and associated metabolic disorders, including insulin resistance and chronic inflammation.
Dr. Jerillyn Kent – Brain & Behavior Research Foundation- NARSAD Young Investigator Grant: Elucidating the Role of Abnormal Motor Resonance in Social Cognition Deficits in Schizophrenia. Dr. Kent is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Her research area is motor abnormalities in psychopathology, with a particular interest in cerebellar abnormalities in individuals with psychotic disorders.
Dr. Giacomo Valerio Iungo – National Science Foundation- CAREER: Scalar Transport in High Reynolds Number Boundary Layer with Heterogeneous Roughness and Source Flux: Modeling Marine Aerosol in Coastal Regions. Dr. Iungo is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include experimental fluid mechanics, power harvesting from turbulent flows, Wind LiDAR technology, subsonic wind tunnel design, wake instability, vortex dynamics, bluff body aerodynamics, road vehicle aerodynamics, and signal processing and time-frequency analysis.
Dr. Gabriele Meloni – National Science Foundation- CAREER: Plasticity, Promiscuity and Transport Mechanism in Transmembrane Metal Pumps. Dr. Meloni is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His lab focuses on the development and application of biochemical and biophysical tools to characterize the structure, reactivity and metal binding properties of soluble and membrane proteins and biomolecules involved in transition metal homeostasis.
Dr. Shiyi Wei – National Science Foundation- CAREER: Improving the Practicality of Configurable Static Analysis Tools through Analysis, Testing, Refinement and Adaptation. Dr. Wei is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include program analysis, software engineering, programming languages, and software security. The goal of his research is to make program analysis practical for improving the security and reliability of real-world software.
Dr. Anthony Cummings – National Science Foundation- CAREER: Land-Use and Land-Cover Change Impact on Biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples’ Livelihoods. Dr. Cummings is an Associate Professor of Geospatial Information Sciences. His research interests include human-environment interactions, particularly within swidden agriculture landscapes of the tropics.
Dr. Hejun Zhu – National Science Foundation- CAREER: Developing a Multi-Parameter Seismic Model of North America. Dr. Zhu is an Assistant Professor of Geosciences. His research interests include large scale Earth structure, including crust, upper mantle and lower mantel and reservoir scale imaging and inversion, which involves development of high resolution imaging and inversion techniques.
2020
Dr. Caroline Jones – National Institutes of Health- MIRA: Microsystems to Decipher Leukocyte Decision-Making. Dr. Jones is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering. Her research interests include immunoengineering, sepsis, immunology and infectious diseases, inflammation, lab-on-a-chip technology, biosensors, and host-pathogen interactions.
Dr. Qing Gu– National Science Foundation— CAREER: Environmentally Stable Electrically Pumped Perovskite Laser. Dr. Gu is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. Her research interests include the design, fabrication and characterization of nano- and micro- scale semiconductor devices (such as lasers, waveguides and sensors), quantum behavior analysis in nanostructures, and integrated photonic circuits.
Dr. Jie Zhang– Office of Naval Research— YIP: Deep Learning-based Reliability and Resilience Enhancement of Future Navy Ships and Their Integration into Power Networks under Extreme Events. Dr. Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include multidisciplinary design optimization, complex engineered systems, power & energy systems, renewable energy, grid modernization, big data analytics, and probabilistic design.
Dr. Faruck Morcos– National Institutes of Health— MIRA: Characterizing the Effects of Protein and RNA Variability in Molecular Function and Interactions. Dr. Morcos is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. His research interests include biomolecular structure and function, methods: statistical inference, information theory and simulation, molecular evolution, and biomolecular interactions and networks.
Dr. Kyle Fox– National Science Foundation— CAREER: Exploiting Topology in Graph Algorithm Design. Dr. Fox is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include geometric algorithms (computational geometry and topology), and combinatorial optimization. He is particularly interested in applications of these topics to graph algorithms and analysis of geometric data.
Dr. Michael Kolodrubetz– National Science Foundation— CAREER: Floquet Route to Non-Equilibrium Phases of Matter in Cavity QED. Dr. Kolodrubetz is an Assistant Professor of Physics. His research interests include the theoretical quantum dynamics and topology in both conventional solid-state systems and engineered settings such as ultracold atoms. One major focus is periodically driven (Floquet) systems, which use strong drive to engineer physics often inaccessible in equilibrium. In addition to using Floquet drive to create novel effective Hamiltonians, he studies how drives enable non-equilibrium phases of matter that cannot be captured by a static Hamiltonian.
Dr. Yang Hu– National Science Foundation— CAREER: Rethinking the Architectures and Systems for Autonomous Driving Infrastructure. Dr. Hu is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research interests include data center scale computing, sustainable computing, power/energy-efficient computing, architectural support for network system, and heterogeneous architectural support for deep learning.
Dr. Lingming Zhang– National Science Foundation— CAREER: Maximal and Scalable Unified Debugging for the JVM Ecosystem. Dr. Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include software engineering, focusing on building advanced software testing and debugging systems to predict, detect, localize, and fix software bugs automatically. His research also involves the synergy between machine learning and software engineering, as well as the synergy between programming languages/formal methods and software engineering.
Dr. Faruck Morcos — National Science Foundation— CAREER: Developing Novel Models of Sequence Evolution for Protein Design and Molecular Recognition. Dr. Morcos is an Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences. His research interests include biomolecular structure and function, methods: statistical inference, information theory and simulation, molecular evolution, and biomolecular interactions and networks.
Dr. Fan Zhang National Science Foundation— CAREER: Realization, Manipulation, and Interaction of Majorana Kramers Pairs. Dr. Zhang is an Associate Professor of Physics. His research interests include condensed matter physics and quantum materials. His research focuses primarily on topological states of quantum matter and interaction effects in many-body systems.
2019
Dr. Sheena D’Arcy— National Institutes of Health— MIRA: Molecular Mechanisms Underlying the Regulation of Local Chromatin Structure. Dr. D’Arcy is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Her research interests include macromolecular protein complexes that influence chromatin dynamics during transcription, enzymes with allosteric regulation, and continued expansion of the HDX tool box.
Dr. Zhenpeng Qin— National Institutes of Health— MIRA: Optical Control of Protein Activity in Live Cells by Plasmon Assisted Light Inactivation. Dr. Qin is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include biotransport, neuro nanotechnology, and point-of-care diagnostics.
Dr. Feng Chen— National Science Foundation— CAREER: SPARK: A Theoretical Framework for Discovering Complex Patterns in Big Attributed Networks. Dr. Chen is an Associate Professor of Computer Science. His research interests include anomaly, event, and fraud detection, spatial-temporal data analysis, big data analysis, graph mining and network science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Golden Kumar— National Science Foundation— CAREER: Understanding of Intrinsic Size-Effects in Deformation of Metallic Glasses. Dr. Kumar is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His primary research interests include nanomanufacturing, metallic glasses, nanomechanics, surface engineering, phase transformations, and photothermal properties.
Dr. Crystal Engineer— Brain & Behavior Research Foundation—NARSAD Young Investigator Grant: Enhancing Speech Processing in a Rat Model of Autism Using Vagus Nerve Stimulation. Dr. Engineer is a Research Assistant Professor for the Texas Biomedical Device Center. The Engineer lab is dedicated to understanding and improving the speech processing impairments observed in neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism.
Dr. Yifei Lou— National Science Foundation—CAREER: Mathematical Modeling from Data to Insights and Beyond. Dr. Lou is an Assistant Professor for Mathematical Sciences. Her primary research interests include compressive sensing and its applications, image analysis (medical imaging, hyperspectral, imaging through turbulence), numerical analysis and optimization algorithms.
Dr. Qing Gu— US Army Research Office— YIP: Optoelectronics: Ultrafast Directly Modulated NanoLED for On-chip Optical Interconnect. Dr. Gu is an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. Her research interests include the design, fabrication and characterization of nano- and micro- scale semiconductor devices (such as lasers, waveguides and sensors), quantum behavior analysis in nanostructures, and integrated photonic circuits.
Dr. Xianming Dai— US Army Research Office— YIP: Water-harvesting and Self-cleaning Air/liquid Independent Surfaces. Dr. Dai is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include superhydrophobic surfaces, wetting, nanofabrication, and thermal management.
2018
Dr. Gabriele Meloni— National Institutes of Health— MIRA: Principles of Selectivity and Translocation in Transition Metal Transporter. Dr. Meloni is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. His lab focuses on the development and application of biochemical and biophysical tools to characterize the structure, reactivity and metal binding properties of soluble and membrane proteins and biomolecules involved in transition metal homeostasis.
Dr. Sheel Chandra Dodani— National Institutes of Health— MIRA: Optical Imaging Tools for Elucidating the Roles of Anions and Anionic Modifications in Cellular Signaling. Dr. Dodani is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry. Her major research goals are to identify the cellular sources, protein targets, and signaling roles of biologically relevant anions in human health and disease, with a particular interest in the brain.
2017
Dr. Ill Ryu— Oak Ridge Assoc University— Powe Faculty Enhancement Award: Probing the Dynamic Evolution of Crystalline Defects and their Effects on Mechanical Behaviors. Dr. Ryu is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include computational material modeling, fracture mechanics, dislocation dynamics, and mechanical behaviors of crystalline materials.
2016
2015
2014
Dr. Anton Malko – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Engineering Efficient, Thin-film Hybrid Photovoltaic Elements Based on Excitonic Energy Transfer. Dr. Malko in an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics. He is a member of the American Physical Society. His research focuses on experimental condensed matter, optical spectroscopy of nanoparticles, optical properties of semiconductors, nano-optics, femtosecond spectroscopy, time-resolved photoluminescence, nanostructured solar cells, energy transfer in nanoscopic systems, and quantum optics.