The College of Engineering has 18 faculty members who are NSF CAREER Award recipients.
Active NSF CAREER Award Projects
Yicheng Tu, Computer Science & Engineering
"Enabling high-throughput data management in scientific domains"
The project is expected to provide a highly efficient solution to satisfy the data management needs of a wide range of scientific fields. To deliver comparable performance, the proposed architecture requires only a fraction of the hardware and energy costs needed by existing systems. As a result, it has the potential to make scientific studies that are regarded as difficult or infeasible a reality. Integration of proposed research into educational endeavors that contribute to broadening the influence of computer science, nurturing the next generation of multidisciplinary scientists, and boosting the success of minority and women students in the computer science and engineering field are other broader impact activities planned.
Nathan Gallant, Mechanical & Engineering
"Combinatorial Biomaterials for Endothelial Cell Mechanobiology"
A combinatorial approach is uniquely able to accurately recapitulate the range of natural physiology and rapidly analyze the interactions of multiple matrix-mediated mechanical and chemical signals in endothelial cell mechanobiology. Endothelial cells organize on a thin protein matrix and form the lining of every blood vessel in the body. The present proposal integrates research and education activities designed to investigate the complex set of signals that direct the regulation and disease progression of these specialized tissues. Furthermore, the findings of work will enable the design of materials that template the structure and guide the organization of engineered tissues for repair and replacement.
Craig Lusk, Mechanical & Engineering "Design for Integrity in Shape-Shifting Surfaces"
Shape-shifting Surfaces are surfaces that retain their effectiveness as a physical barrier while undergoing changes in shape. These shape changes could be motions like expanding, shrinking, twisting, encircling, wiggling, swallowing or constricting that make the surface more effective at performing its function. The SSSs are a novel concept, and are composed of tiled arrays of polygonal cells, each cell consisting of specifically-designed compliant flexures attached to specifically-shaped overlapping thin plates or shells.
Anda Iamnitchi, Computer Science & Engineering
“Socially Aware Distributed Systems”
This project investigates the potential of including social knowledge in the design of community-enabled peer-to-peer distributed infrastructures. It will design, prototype, and evaluate a community-oriented peer-to-peer infrastructure that exploits social knowledge for services such as data and computing management, while protecting social data privacy seen as contextual integrity.
Andrés Tejada-Martínez, Civil & Environmental Engineering“Parameterizations of Langmuir Turbulence in Shallow Water”
Tejada-Martínez’s integrated research and educational program will promote environmental fluid mechanics and computational science. A citizen science network will be established to record surface characteristics of foam and flotsam patterns associated with wave-, wind- and tidal-driven turbulent flows throughout Tampa Bay. This network will increase public awareness of turbulent mixing and its influence on processes such as gas transfer across the air-water interface, mixing of pollutants and harmful algal blooms (red tides).
Amy Stuart, Civil & Environmental Engineering “Multi-scale interactions of air pollution, urban growth, and equity - integrated research methods and informal science teaching”
The objectives of this project are to (1) build an integrated toolset for investigation of air quality equity in developing urban areas, (2) advance knowledge on air quality equity and the impacts of growth on equity in the Tampa area, and (3) design a science museum exhibit that enhances interest of girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
Jay Ligatti, Computer Science & Engineering “Foundational Theories and Enforcement Tools for Secure Software Systems”
This project addresses the problem that, to be trustworthy yet practical, mechanisms for enforcing software security must (1) undergo rigorous analysis that provides formal security guarantees and (2) be developed quickly.
Hao Zheng, Computer Science & Engineering“Methodologies and Tools for Large Real-Time Concurrent System Verification”
In today's concurrent system designs, finding and fixing logical bugs early is of the highest priority because it is very costly when bugs are found late in the design stage. Bugs left undetected in systems can cause huge losses to the economy and human society.
Ryan Toomey, Chemical & Biomedical Engineering “Responsive, Surface-Attached Networks with Built-in Logic - An Integrated Research and Education Plan”
Toomey’s research will allow us to translate the same interactions that control the folding of proteins into a new class of synthetic materials that can be programmed to respond intelligently to their environment.
Sanjukta Bhanja, Electrical Engineering“Error Power and Reliability for Nano-Silicon and Beyond”
Over the years, the underlying design philosophy of electronic design and analysis tools has undergone paradigm shifts from area optimization to timing optimization to power optimization and now is shifting to reliability-centric design optimization. Understanding of the interplay between errors, power dissipation in a chip with its associated side effects, and reliability problems will be the key to commercial success of sub-30nm silicon and nonsilicon technologies.
