13 Purdue Researchers Earn NSF Early Career Recognition

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Thirteen Purdue University assistant and associate professors received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards thus far in fiscal year 2023 to fund their research.

CAREER awards recognize faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. The five-year grants are NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early career faculty.

Four Purdue faculty members – Zeynel Celik, Christos Psomas, Neera Jain and David Yu – who won CAREER awards in fiscal year 2023 were recognized in an August 2022 announcement.

The nine faculty members who have since received a fiscal year 2023 CAREER award are:

Simina Branzei, assistant professor of computer science (College of Science), for a project titled “Dynamics of Searching for Equilibria.” Branzei will use the award to study new fundamental questions in the space of dynamics, games and learning in systems with multiple interacting players, each with their own incentives. The research is inspired by applications such as designing efficient and equitable markets on online platforms and devising mechanisms for allocating waste.

Murat Kocaoglu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “Optimism in Causal Reasoning via Information-theoretic Methods.” Kocaoglu will use the award to extend the theory of causation to a much wider set of real-world instances than is possible with existing algorithms. His work will expand the applicability of causality theory by identifying simple causal explanations in the data that are unlikely to occur by chance. 

Sam Nariman, assistant professor of math (College of Science), for a project titled “New Directions in Foliation Theory and Diffeomorphism Groups.” Nariman will use the award to utilize foliation theory to extract information about diffeomorphism, or symmetry groups of manifolds, and to apply recently developed techniques around the study of diffeomorphism groups to generate new results on the structure of foliations. 

Philip E. Paré, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (College of Engineering) for a project titled “Learning, Estimation, and Control of Networked Epidemic Processes.” Pare will use the award to establish a set of fundamental theories, tools and algorithms to model, learn and control real-time epidemic spreading processes by leveraging multiple live data streams while evaluating the trade-off between model-based and data-driven approaches. 

Elizabeth Parkinson, assistant professor organic chemistry (College of Science), for a project titled “A Multidisciplinary Approach for the Discovery and Characterization of Hormone Inducers of Natural Product Biosynthetic Gene Clusters.” Parkinson will use the award to research chemical signals that regulate the production of natural products of streptomyces. Parkinson hopes to maximize the natural product potential of the soil-dwelling bacteria, which is a bountiful source of medicines, agricultural products and chemical tools for manipulating and studying biological processes.

Brandon J Pitts, assistant professor of industrial engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “With Age Comes Wisdom: Leveraging Older Adults' Crystallized Decision-Making Abilities to Develop Adaptive Human-Automation Interfaces for Dynamic Environments.” Pitts will use the award to explore ways in which the prior knowledge and experiences of older adults can be assessed and incorporated into the (re)design of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.

Michael Reppert, assistant professor of chemistry (College of Science), for a project titled “From Quantum to Classical and Back: Bringing 2D Spectroscopy Insights into Focus.” Reppert will use the award to explore the interplay between quantum and classical coherence in two-dimensional spectroscopy.

Vishal Shrivastav, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “Designing Next-Generation Programmable Switches for Stateful In-Network Computing.” Shrivastav will use the award to scale the capabilities of a recent networking technology, namely a programmable switch, that allows users to do custom processing at ultrahigh speeds over the data going through the network. This will put unprecedented intelligence inside our networks and, ultimately, inside the entire internet, thus making them faster, more reliable and more secure. 

Xiaoqian Wang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “Advancing Fair Data Mining via New Robust and Explainable Algorithms and Human-Centered Approaches.” Wang will use the award in a project that focuses on undertaking fundamental research activities to advance fairness in data mining and machine learning and to enable efficient human-machine interaction in human-centered and wellness-focused real-world problems. 

NSF announces CAREER awards throughout the year, and additional faculty may receive awards for fiscal year 2023. Faculty listed above received awards with an NSF project start date between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023.

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Writer/Media contact: Mary Martialay, mmartial@purdue.edu 

Source: Sponsored Program Services