Dear Colleagues,
We are happy to share this Winter 2017 edition of COE Research Focus with you, including research highlights, news, and introducing six new faculty hires who started this January.
Amongst our new faculty include three new additions to our Electrical and Computer Engineering department (Pau Closas, Xue Lin, and Devesh Tiwari), two in Bioengineering (Hari Parameswaran and Ambika Bajpayee), and one addition to Civil and Environmental Engineering (Michael Kane). Please check out their research interests in their profiles below, and make sure to welcome them to campus and explore potential fruitful collaborations with them!
With 23 new faculty hires joining COE since August, the research team has organized numerous Junior Faculty Mentoring Events that we hope have been (and will continue to be) useful in learning about what resources are available to faculty. A list of upcoming events can be found in this newsletter. We want to reiterate to all faculty that between the ARC team (pre- and post-award), COE and university research development, and ORAF, there are myriad staff and resources devoted to helping you all achieve success! To learn about additional resources and support available to you, check out the Support Functions site on Sharepoint. We appreciate your ideas and suggestions to continually improve and expand how we can enable and facilitate your ambitious research proposals and projects.
A brief update on the latest research numbers: from July to December, the college received $36.6M in awards, up 64% from the same time last year, and requested $139M in funding, up 24%. These are amazing numbers and a testament to your hard work and dedication to creating programs with clear impact. We look forward to making this quarter another successful one!
Nadine Aubry & Akram Alshawabkeh
COE Dean Associate Dean for Research
Selected Research Highlights
Ambika Bajpayee receives Department of Defense Discovery Award
BioE Assistant Professor Ambika Bajpayee (PI) and MIE/BioE Associate Professor Sandra Shefelbine (Collaborator) awarded a $310K DOD Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program Discovery Award. Read More
NU's New Institute to Advance Robotics in Manufacturing
ECE Associate Professor Taskin Padir has been selected to partner with a private-public consortium to launch a new robotics institute for the Department of Defense’s national manufacturing network. Read More
Amirabadi Receives ARPA-E Grant
ECE Assistant Professor Mahshid Amirabadi was awarded a $240K grant from ARPA-E to develop "A New Class of Soft-Switching Capacitive-Link Universal Converters for Photovoltaic Application". Read More
Professor Fu Named IAPR Fellow
ECE/CCIS Associate Professor Yun Raymond Fu has been selected as a fellow of the International Association for Pattern Recognition. Read More
Professor Chowdhury Named Presidential Early Career Award Winner
ECE Associate Professor Kaushik Chowdhury is one of 102 scientists and researchers being awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Read More
Liu Awarded NSF CAREER Award
MIE/ECE Assistant Professor Yongmin Liu was awarded a $500K NSF CAREER award for "Spin Plasmonics for Ultrafast All-Optical Manipulation of Magnetization in Hybrid Metal-Ferromagnet Structures". Read More
ECE Professors Receive Award From DARPA MTO
ECE Assistant Professor Matteo Rinaldi (with Co-PI Professor Nicol McGruer) received a $2.7M award from DARPA MTO to develop a magnetic-free “Microelectromechanical Resonant Circulator (MIRC)” orders of magnitude smaller than any existing implementation of circulators available to date. Read More
Dr. Vilas Mujumdar Donates $1 million for Urban Infrastructure Resilience Research
Dr. Vilas Mujumdar, our newest Executive in Residence for Civil and Environmental Engineering, recently pledged $1M to the COE to create the Vilas Mujumdar Strategic Resilience Fund. Read More
Keyvani and Sasani Win 2016 BSCES Clemens Herschel Award
Assistant Teaching Professor Leila Keyvani Someh and CEE Associate Professor Mehrdad Sasani won the 2016 ASCE Clemens Herschel Award in recognition of their paper "Analytical and Experimental Evaluation of Progressive Collapse Resistance of a Flat-Slab Posttensioned Parking Garage". Read More
Behroozi Places 2nd in Nicholson Paper Competition
MIE Assistant Professor Mehdi Behroozi won 2nd prize at the INFORMS George Nicholson Paper Competition. Read More
Su Featured in DOD Lung Cancer Research Annual Report
ChE Associate Professor Ming Su's research on cancer biomarker detection using phase change nanoparticles was highlighted in the recent annual report of Lung Cancer Research Program of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program of Department of Defense.. Read More
