Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the Fall 2017 edition of Research Focus. Our faculty continue to be recognized with grants, awards, patents, and published works, showcasing the depth and breadth of their innovative research capabilities. Congratulations to all and thank you for your ongoing efforts. In August, five new tenured/tenure-track faculty joined our College: Samuel Chung and Heather Clark (BioE), Joshua Gallaway (ChE), Safa Jamali (MIE), and Samuel Munoz (CEE). Welcome! We are excited to have you on board and look forward to seeing the new collaborations, projects, and breakthrough results that come of your research.

We are always looking for additional ways to support your research efforts to expand and enhance our program and make an impact. If you have suggestions for information resources or workshops to be provided next semester, please let us know. We also hope you will join us for our annual COE State of the Research meeting on Monday, November 13. RSVP today and mark your calendars. At the event, you will learn about our recent accomplishments and progress toward our research goals, and we will discuss your ideas on what makes a successful research program.

With very best wishes,

Nadine Aubry & Akram Alshawabkeh
COE Dean          Associate Dean for Research
 

Selected Research Highlights

Fu's AI Startup Acquired by Global Cosmetics Company Shiseido
ECE/CCIS Associate Professor Raymond Fu's spin-out company Giaran Inc., which specializes in using AI to allow consumers to test cosmetics products, was acquired by the leading global cosmetics company Shiseido Americas Corporation.

Harris Receives $8M DARPA Grant for MAGNETS
ECE Professor Vincent Harris received, in collaboration with Quorvo, a $8M DARPA grant (2017-2019) for the project “MAgnetics on GaN for Next GEneration T/R Systems (MAGNETS),” which involves the integration of active and passive elements in GaN-based transmit and receive modules.

Interdisciplinary Team Awarded $2.5M NSF CRISP Grant
COS Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (PI) and Co-PIs Kathryn Coronges (CCIS), Stephen Flynn (CSSH/KRI), ECE Professor Edmund Yeh and CEE Professor Auroop Ganguly, were awarded a $2.5M NSF CRISP grant for "Interdependent Network-based Quantification of Infrastructure Resilience (INQUIRE)."

Annabi Receives First NIH R01 Grant
ChE Assistant Professor Nasim Annabi received a $2M R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health for "Engineering a Naturally Derived and Highly Adhesive Surgical Sealant."

Ioannidis Leading $2M BIGDATA Research Effort
ECE Assistant Professor Stratis Ioannidis is leading a BIGDATA collaborative research effort for the “Design and Computation of Scalable Graph Distances in Metric Spaces: A Unified Multiscale Interpretable Perspective.”

ECE Team to Develop Testbed for Underwater Communication
ECE Associate Professor Tommaso Melodia is leading a three-year $1.57M NSF MRI grant with Associate Professors Stefano Basagni, Matteo Rinaldi, and Professor Milica Stojanovic for the "Development of a Software-Defined Networking Testbed for the Internet of Underwater Things."

Lin & Kaeli to Work on $800K NSF Grant Collaboration
ECE Assistant Professor Xue Lin and Professor David Kaeli in collaboration with CUNY City College received an $800K NSF grant to develop "A Framework of Simultaneous Acceleration and Storage Reduction on Deep Neural Networks Using Structured Matrices."

Research to Help Add Solar to the Grid
ECE Professor Ali Abur was awarded a $792K grant from the Enabling Extreme Real-time Grid Integration of Solar Energy (ENERGISE) funding program.

Ratilal-Makris Receives $710K NSF Grant
ECE Associate Professor Purnima Ratilal-Makris received a $710K NSF award for the "Development of a Large-Aperture Coherent Hydrophone Array, Data Processing and Analysis Software System for Instantaneous Wide-Area Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Marine Mammals."

Martinez-Lorenzo Awarded $546K DOE Grant
MIE/ECE Assistant Professor Jose Martinez-Lorenzo was awarded a $546K Department of Energy grant for "Fusing Thermoacoustic, Electromagnetic and Acoustic/Seismic Wave Fields for Subsurface Characterization and Imaging of Flow Transport."

Erdogmus Given $500K for Immersive Virtual Reality Research Project
ECE Professor Deniz Erdogmus, along with co-principal Investigators Murat Akcakaya and Doug Weber of the University of Pittsburgh, has been awarded a grant for $500K over three years for an "EEG-Guided Electrical Stimulation for Immersive Virtual Reality" project.

Fernandez Receives Grant from the EPA
The pilot study by CEE/COS Assistant Professor Loretta Fernandez, entitled “Laboratory and field pilot study on using polyethylene passive samplers to monitor potential PCB transport across the engineered cap at the Grasse River Superfund site,” has received a $405K grant in collaboration with the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Pinto Awarded First NSF Grant
CEE Assistant Professor Ameet Pinto was awarded a $330K NSF grant for "Deciphering the Role of Comammox Bacteria in Nitrogen Removal Systems."

Hidrovo Awarded $309K NSF Grant
MIE Assistant Professor Carlos Hidrovo Chavez was awarded a $309K NSF grant for "Elucidating the True Role of Surface Microtexturing in Friction Reduction and Enhanced Convective Heat Transfer."

Su Awarded $300K Grant from Department of Justice
ChE Associate Professor Ming Su received a $300K grant from National Institute of Justice to work on new nanoparticle barcodes which would have astronomically large coding space, comparable to those of printed barcodes, but completely invisible to naked eyes.

Fu Awarded $250K from the Department of Defense
ECE/CCIS Associate Professor Yun Raymond Fu was awarded $250K in funding from DoD’s Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) to buy powerful GPU Clusters for his research project, “Large-Scale Video Translation by Deep Learning and Knowledge Graph."

Onabajo is Recipient of ARO Young Investigator Program Award
ECE Assistant Professor Marvin Onabajo has received a $205K Young Investigator Award from the Army Research Office (ARO). The grant supports Onabajo’s efforts to develop security solutions for the global semiconductor industry—specifically, an on-chip thermal sensing system that detects hardware hacking attempts.

Jung, Kar, & MIE Alumnus Win Gold at the MassChallenge and $550K CASIS-Boeing Research Grant
Professor Yung Joon Jung (MIE) and Associate Professor Swastik Kar (COS), along with COE Alumnus Dan Esposito, E’08 mechanical engineering, were awarded the gold medal with a $50,000 prize at the 2017 MassChallenge for their start-up company, Guardion, which uses nanotechnology to create highly sensitive, low-cost, networked detectors of radioactivity and nuclear radiation.