Five baby直播app members within the College of Engineering and Applied Science have received
CAREER Awards provide approximately $500,000 over five years for those 鈥渨ho 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.鈥� The college has a long tradition of success in the award, with more than 50听winners serving as current and past baby直播app members.
Here鈥檚 a look at the projects from the winners in our college this year:
2019 NSF CAREER Award Winners
Assistant Professor Taylor Barton, Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering
Project title: Analog-Assisted Transceivers for Next-Generation Millimeter-Wave Systems
Barton, who earned her PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been a baby直播app member at CU Boulder since 2016 in the Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Department. Her project explores new signal-processing techniques that could be used in a variety of applications. 听 听
With the growing need for increased radio spectral access, many wireless systems are moving to millimeter-wave carrier frequencies. In addition to reducing physical size and weight, this frequency scaling is beneficial because it enables higher-bandwidth signals which, in turn, produce higher data rates. Such high-performance wireless systems are needed in many applications, including 5G communications, internet of things, autonomous vehicles, national security and health care applications.
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Assistant Professor Peter Hamlington, Mechanical Engineering
Project title: Structure and Dynamics of Highly Turbulent Premixed Combustion
Hamlington, who earned his PhD from the University of Michigan, has been a baby直播app member in CU Boulder鈥檚 Department of Mechanical Engineering since 2012. His project will allow for more accurate simulations of energy systems. The idea, he said, is to understand combustion more completely so that we can also understand how to improve efficiency, reduce emissions and achieve better control in propulsion systems.
Hamlington and his research group will apply a dynamic modeling technique developed by computer scientists and mathematicians known as adaptive mesh refinement to their research, something that hasn鈥檛 been done before in highly turbulent configurations. In addition to refining theories, the group will share data, statistics, analysis codes and diagnostic tools with scientists in the combustion community.
Assistant Professor Tomoko Matsuo, Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences
Project title: Predictability of the Whole Atmosphere from the Ground to Geospace
Matsuo, who earned her PhD from Stony Brook University, New York, has been a baby直播app member since 2017 in Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences.
Her project would allow for accurate forecasting of the conditions of near-Earth space, which low-Earth-orbit satellites travel through. Those conditions are affected by both ground-level activity, such as hurricanes and tornadoes, and activity on the surface of the sun. This necessitates a better understanding of the entire sun-Earth system to make accurate predictions. Her research will integrate large volumes of atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere observations with a high-dimensional computer model of the whole atmosphere and geospace using an approach called data assimilation.
Forecasting near-Earth space conditions is critical to radio communication, navigation, positioning and satellite tracking. Accurate prediction of the region's conditions will enable better protection of important space assets and related systems here on Earth.
Assistant Professor Tam Vu, Computer Science
Project title: Earable Systems: Enabling Ear-worn Sensing and Actuating Systems for Health Care and Brain-Computer Interactions
Vu, who earned his PhD from Rutgers University, has been a baby直播app member in CU Boulder鈥檚 Department of Computer Science since 2017.
His project builds on his work enabling a new type of computers called earable computers. These small devices are worn on, in or near a user's ears. That puts them next to the source of many physiological signals, such as the brain, eyes and facial muscles. Because of their location and size, these sensors would be ideal for monitoring things like cognitive load, stress or sleep quality in a less intrusive way. In addition, the ear area serves as an ideal body part for applying non-invasive brain stimulations.
Vu and his team will use the CAREER Award to work on听a听modular computing platform to simultaneously sense head-based physiological signals and stimulate the brain from inside and around the ears among other topics.
Associate Professor Alexandra Kolla, Computer Science
Project title: Overcoming limitations to approximating combinatorial optimization problems
Kolla, who earned her PhD at the University of California Berkeley, joined the CU Boulder computer science baby直播app in 2018.
Her project is focused on developing a comprehensive understanding of the limitations of approximation algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems, which are important in areas such as machine learning, computational biology and statistical physics. Combinatorial optimization seeks to find the optimal object from a finite set of objects, especially when exhaustive search isn't possible. The task of finding algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems arises in countless applications, from routing airline flights and delivering packages, to making online search faster.听听听听
听will study the limitations of approximation algorithms posed by the Unique Games Conjecture and the limitations posed by the presence of unlikely worst-case instances. Kolla aims to design a methodology to partially or fully overcome such limitations by addressing both of those factors.