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. Lei Su – National Institutes of Health – Word Learning from Infant-Directed Speech in Autistic Children. Dr. Lei 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.

Dr. William Gerard Hubert Vandenberghe— Defense Threat Reduction Agency— Performing Ultra-Low-Power Matrix-Vector Multiplications using Topological-Insulators. Dr. Vandenberghe is an Assistant Professor of Materials Science & Engineering. His research focuses on electron transport at the nanoscale using theoretical methods.

Dr. Cong Liu— National Science Foundation— CAREER: D3: Addressing Emerging Data-Induced Challenges in Embedded and Real-Time Systems. Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include real-time and embedded systems, cyber-physical systems, mobile and cloud computing.

Dr. Benjamin Raichel— National Science Foundation — CAREER: AF: Giving Form to Data with a Geometric Scaffold. Dr. Raichel is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. His research interest is in Computer Science Theory with a focus on Computational Geometry and Geometric Approximation Algorithms.

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.

Dr. Chadwin Delin Young – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Fundamental Electronic Device Performance and Reliability Investigation on Chalcogenide- and Oxide-based N- and P-type Materials for Large Area/Flexible Electronics. Dr. Young is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He has participated in several Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conferences and workshops and has served as a guest editor for IEEE Trans. Device and Materials Reliability – IIRW. His research interests focus on electrical characterization methodologies, reliability characterization methodologies, solid state device physics, electrical properties of materials, MOS modeling (quantum effects, etc.), nanotechnology, flexible electronics, and future energy needs (renewable, low power operation, etc.).

Dr. Vibhav Giridhar Gogate – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Fast, Accurate Estimation and Prediction using Markov Logics. Dr. Gogate is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has participated in the UAI 2016 Probabilistic Interference Evaluation. His research interests include machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), data mining, and big data.

Dr. Jeremiah Joseph Gassensmith – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Viral Capsids as Smart Nanocontainers. Dr. Gassensmith is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research focuses on three areas of research, wherein biologically inspired viral capsids are used to improve the performance and process-ability of new materials that otherwise would not be as easily accessible without the noncovalent forces provided by these unique scaffolds.

Dr. Tyler Holt Summers – US Army Research Office – YIP: Quantifying network controllability and observability using optimal control and estimation metrics. Dr. Summers is an Assistant Professor in the Department 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.

2016

Dr. Lunjin Chen – US Air Force Office of Scientific Research – YIP: Investigation of Wave Particle Interaction in the Earth’s Magnetosphere using Conjugated Observations. Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics. His research focuses on the nature of electromagnetic waves in our geospace and the effect of wave-particle interaction.

Dr. Karen Michelle Rodrigue – Alzheimers Association – New Investigator Research Grant: Links Between Brain Iron and Beta-amyloid Deposition in Aging and MCI. Dr. Rodrigue is an Assistant Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Center for Vital Longevity. Her research focuses on mapping the changes that the healthy human brain undergoes with aging and understanding how these changes affect behavior.

Dr. Fabiano Da Silveira Rodrigues – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of the Electrodynamics and Structuring of the Low-Latitude Ionosphere. Dr. Rodrigues is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and in the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences, a research center in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. He has conducted research at some of the largest and most sensitive radio observatories in the world, including the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in Peru. His research focuses on physics of the upper atmosphere, ionospheric electrodynamics and irregularities, development and application of remote sensing techniques for fundamental and applied studies of the upper atmosphere, numerical modeling studies of the thermosphere and ionosphere, and studies of ionospheric irregularity effects on signals used by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).

Dr. Michael D. Burton – National Institutes of Health – K22: The Role of Cell-specific TLR-4 Signaling in Developing Chronic Pain. Dr. Burton is an Assistant Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is currently a member of the Texas Pain Research Consortium. His research focuses on how the immune system modulates peripheral sensory neurons to regulate pain and energy homeostasis.

Dr. Kenneth Leon Hoyt – National Institutes of Health – K25: Molecular Ultrasound Imaging of Cancer Response to Antiangiogenic Therapy. Dr. Hoyt is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering. He is a member of the Technical Standards Committee of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) and Technical Committee member of the Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). His research interests focus on cancer research, medical imaging, signal and image processing, and ultrasound.

2015

Dr. Carlos Alberto Busso – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Advanced Knowledge Extraction of Affective Behaviors during Natural Human Interaction. Dr. Busso is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He has held many chair positions, including Program Chair for ICMI and Publicity Chair of Interspeech last year. His research interests are in digital signal processing, speech and video processing, and multimodal interfaces and his current research includes modeling and understanding human communication and interaction, with applications to automated recognition and synthesis to enhance human-machine interfaces.

Dr. Fatemeh Hassanipour – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Biofluid Dynamics of the Human Breast: Characterization and Fluid-Structure Interaction. Dr. Hassanipour is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. She has participated in several conferences, including “An Experimental Study on Human Milk Viscosity”, in November 2016. Her research focuses on heat transfer and fluid mechanics with applications in energy conservation, storage, and management, electronic cooling, health and bioengineering (modeling and simulation of biomechanical systems).

Dr. Arif S. Malik – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Highly-Efficient Dynamic Prediction Models for Quality Improvement in Cold Rolling. Dr. Malik is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He has organized several conferences, including “Engineering Brighter Futures for Autism” last year. His research focuses on computation mechanics, uncertainty analysis, reliability-based design optimization, rolling of metal alloys, micro air vehicle wing design, and laser peening.

Dr. Yonas Tegegn Tadesse – Office of Naval Research – YIP: Musculoskeletal System Design, Fabrication and Modeling for Robotic Systems. Dr. Tadesse is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests focus on humanoid robotics, emerging applications of smart materials, sensors, and actuators, mechatronic system, multimodal energy harvesting, modeling, controls and biomimetics.

Dr. Majid Minary-Jolandan – Office of Naval Research – YIP: Towards Advanced Nanoscale Additive Manufacturing (AM) of Metals: A Fundamental Theoretical, Multi-Physics Simulation and in situ Electron Microscopy Approach. Dr. Minary-Jolandan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on multifunctional materials, bioinspired materials, nanomanufacturing, advanced manufacturing, nanobiomechanics, and nanomaterials.

Dr. Andrian Marcus – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Management of Unstructured Information During Software Evolution. Dr. Marcus is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering. He currently serves on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, the Empirical Software Engineering Journal (Springer), and the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process (John Wiley and Sons). His research focuses on software engineering, with focus on software evolution and program comprehension.

Dr. Bilal Akin – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Real-Time Fault Diagnosis and Failure Prognosis of Next Generation Power Electronics Systems. Dr. Akin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He is a Senior Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Member. His research focuses on fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of power electronics components and drive systems; design, control, and diagnosis of electric motors and drives; power electronics, digital power control and management; and applications of control theory, machine learning, and signal processing to energy conversion systems.

2014

Dr. Majid Minary-Jolandan – US Air Force Office of Scientific Research – YIP: Lessons from Bone to Bioinspired Tough and Self-Remodeling Aerospace Materials. Dr. Minary-Jolandan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on multifunctional materials, bioinspired materials, nanomanufacturing, advanced manufacturing, nanobiomechanics, and nanomaterials.

Dr. Nikki Ayanna Delk – National Institutes of Health – K01: Cryptoprotective Autophagy in Bone Metastatic Prostate Cancer. Dr. Delk is the Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Her research focuses on inflammation in cancer initiation/progression; signaling pathways that regulate autophagy and autophagy-related proteins in the inflammatory tumor microenvironment.

Dr. Leonidas Bleris – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Versatile Transcription Activator-like Effector Libraries for Genome-wide Screens. Dr. Bleris is an Associate Professor with the Bioengineering Department. He has served with the Board of Mathematical Sciences and their applications and since 2008 has served as an Independent Expert with the European Commission under the “Science, Economy and Society” directorate. His research has focused on systems biology, mammalian synthetic biology and genome editing.

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.

2013

Dr. Walter Everett Voit – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – YFA: Smart polymer devices for chronic multifascicular microstimulation. Dr. Voit is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He is involved with Community Outreach: Materials Engineering, Technology and Science (COMETS) and consults with TriQuint, and is also a former member of the McDermott Faculty, Materials Research society, TMS, as well as the founder and former CTO of Syzygy Memory Plastics. His research interests focus on shape memory polymers, polymer manufacturing, ionizing radiation, thermomechanical properties, and biopolymer mechanics.

Dr. Fabiano Da Silveira Rodrigues – US Air Force Office of Scientific Research – YIP: Comprehensive study of low-latitude inospheric F-region irregularities. Dr. Rodrigues is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and in the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences, a research center in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. He has conducted research at some of the largest and most sensitive radio observatories in the world, including theArecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and the Jicamarca Radio Observatory in Peru. His research focuses on physics of the upper atmosphere, ionospheric electrodynamics and irregularities, development and application of remote sensing techniques for fundamental and applied studies of the upper atmosphere, numerical modeling studies of the thermosphere and ionosphere, and studies of ionospheric irregularity effects on signals used by global navigation satellite systems (GNSS).

Dr. Min Chen – National Institutes of Health –K25: Mapping Expression Quantitative Trait Loci with Next Generation Sequencing in SLE. Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, as well as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Quantitative Biomedical Research Center, Department of Clinical Sciences, and UT Southwestern Medical Center. His research interests focus on statistical genomics and bioinformatics, Bayesian methods, and sampling.

Dr. Siavash Pourkamali Anaraki – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Thermally Actuated Nanomechanical Resonators and Self-Sustained Oscillators. Dr. Anaraki is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He holds several issued patents and pending patent applications in the areas of silicon micro/nanomechanical resonators and filters and nanofabrication technologies, some of which have been licensed to major players in the semiconductor industry. His research focuses on electro-thermal nanomechanical actuation, M/NEMS resonators and filters, nanomechanical resonant sensors, integrated silicon-based MEMS and microsystems, and micromachining and nanofabrication technologies.

Dr. Ronald Smaldone – American Chemical Society – Dynamic Synthesis and Assembly of Nanoporous Materials. Dr. Smaldone is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research focuses on developing new methods for the synthesis and processing of porous materials and polymers for the storage of hydrogen, natural gas and electrical power; the design and synthesis of novel polycyclic aromatic building blocks for the development of electrically-active and highly-ordered solid state materials; and using synthetically functionalized biomolecules (i.e., DNA and peptides) to direct the formation of nanostructured devices and soft-materials.

2012

Dr. Kelli L. Palmer – National Institutes of Health – K22: CRISPR defense and acquired antibiotic resistance in Enterococcus faecalis. Dr. Palmer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. Her research focuses on microorganisms contributing to significant mortality and cost burdens in the health care industry

Dr. Kristin M. Kennedy – National Institutes of Health – K99R00: Role of White Matter Integrity in Age-Related Functional Reorganization. Dr. Kennedy is an Assistant Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. She currently serves as an editor for the journal NeuroImage. Her research focuses include the normal aging of human brain structure and function (using neuroimaging tools) and their cognitive consequences (using neuropsychological/cognitive assessments); health, lifestyle and genetic modifiers of these age-related changes in brain and cognition.

Dr. Xiaohu Guo – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Spectral Deformable Models: Theory and Applications. Dr. Guo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He is currently on the journal editorial board for Graphical Models and has participated in several conferences as a chair, co-chair, or member level. His research focuses on mesh generation, centroidal voronoi tessellation, spectral geometric analysis, deformable models, GPU algorithms, 3D and 4D medical image analysis.

2011

Dr. Kevin W. Hamlen – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Language-based Security for Polymorphic Malware Protection. Dr. Hamlen is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department. He is also a Senior Technical Advisor of UTD’s Cyber Security Research and Education Institute. His research focus concerns the field of language-based security, which leverages techniques from programming language theory and compilers to enforce software security.

Dr. Hoi Lee – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Capacitor-Assisted Design Paradigm for Future Generations of High-Power-Density High-Power-Efficiency Power Management and Delivery. Dr. Lee is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I (TCAS-I). He serves as the Chair of Power Management Technical Sub-Committee of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference and the technical program committee members of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and the IEEE International Symposium on Power Semiconductors and ICs (ISPSD). His research focus includes analog integrated circuits and power management integrated circuits.

2010

Dr. Karen Michelle Rodrigue – National Institutes of Health – K99: Vascular Effects on Normal Neural and Cognitive Aging. Dr. Rodrigue is an Assistant Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and Center for Vital Longevity. Her research focuses on mapping the changes that the healthy human brain undergoes with aging and understanding how these changes affect behavior.

Dr. Dongsheng Brian Ma – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Analog Computation Based Real-Time Global Power Management: From Devices to Multi-Core Systems. Dr. Ma is the Erik Jonsson Distinguished Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He serves on the Technical Committee of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor (ITRS), as well as an Executive Committee and Thrust Leader in Energy Efficiency at SRC TxACE Center. His research focuses on integrated power electronics, analog and mixed signal circuit design, and renewable energy harvesting and management.

Dr. Wenchuang Hu – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Molecular Scale Electronic Biosensor for Single Molecule Sensitivity & High Specificity. Dr. Hu is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is an active reviewer for prestigious journals and national funding programs. His current research aims to develop CMOS based nano-sensor chips to detect biochemical molecules and miniature diagnostic system using mobile phones.

Dr. Mihaela Corina Stefan – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Rational Design of Semiconducting Polymers with Tunable Opto-Electronic Properties: An Interdisciplinary Program for Research and Education. Dr. Stefan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. She is a member of the American Chemical Society and Materials Research Society. My research interests encompass the synthesis and characterization of novel polymeric materials for applications in organic electronics and medicine.

2009

Dr. Yang Liu – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Using Rich Information from Speech and Text for Meeting Summarization. Dr. Liu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. She has served as an Associate Editor for several publications, including her current position of ACM Transactions on Asian Language Information Processing. Her research interests focus on spoken language processing, speech recognition and understanding, natural language processing, identification of speech and language disorder, and machine learning in speech/language processing.

Dr. Murat Kantarcioglu – National Science Foundation – CAREER: An Integrated Approach for Efficient Privacy Preserving Distributed Data Analytics. Dr. Kantarcioglu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering. Most recently, he has participated as a Program Committee Co-chair or Committee Member in several conferences. His research focuses on creating technologies that can efficiently extract useful information from any data without sacrificing privacy or security.

2005

Dr. Mike W. Peng – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Strategic Choices During Institutional Transitions. Dr. Peng is an Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Sciences & Mathematics. His research interests divide into three areas: statistical genomics and bioinformatics, bayesian methods, and sampling.

2003

Dr. Balakrishnan Prabhakaran – National Science Foundation – CAREER: Animation Databases. Dr. Prabhakaran is a Professor of Computer Science in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering. Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Special Interest Group on Multimedia (SIGMM) web magazine, member of the editorial board of Multimedia Systems Journal (Springer) and Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal (Springer). His research focuses on video and healthcare data analytics, streaming 3D video, animations, deformable 3D models, content protection and authentication of multimedia objects, Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for streaming multimedia data in wireless ad hoc and mesh networks, and collaborative virtual environments.