Early and Emerging Investigator Awardees

National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development Award

One of the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of early-career 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.

Asst. mechanical engineering professor earns NSF CAREER Award

7/16/24 4:30 PM

Brendon Allen has some exoskeletons in his closet, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) wants to find out more about them. The NSF recently tapped the assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering for a five-year $588,408, NSF CAREER Award aimed at increasing access to rehabilitation for individuals with movement disorders through a deep learning control framework for home-based hybrid exoskeletons.

Vinamra Agrawal, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, shows his research that helped earn him a NSF CAREER award to study stable nanocrystalline alloys and their performance in harsh environments.

Aerospace Engineering assistant professor earns NSF CAREER award

4/3/24 8:00 AM

Vinamra Agrawal, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, is studying stable nanocrystalline alloys and their performance in harsh environments — typical of space missions — to determine whether they are viable candidates for materials for structural components.

Peter Liu, left, recently received an NSF CAREER award to support his research into deep learning's application in predicting fatigue performance in additive manufacturing.

ISE assistant professor earns NSF CAREER Award for AM deep learning

6/23/23 4:42 PM

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is turning to assistant industrial and systems engineering professor Peter Liu in the form of a $500,000 CAREER Award meant to generate new insight into defect formation relevant to fatigue performance of parts manufactured through laser powder-bed fusion (LPBF) and uncover the synergistic impacts of multi-scale factors on fatigue fractures.

Professor Yin Sun with graduate students, from left, Thomas Orrison, Md Kamran Chowdhury Shisher, and Tasmeen Zaman Ornee.

Assistant professor in ECE wins NSF CAREER Award

5/3/23 1:00 PM

Yin Sun's project, "Semantic and Goal-oriented Status Updating for Real-time Inference, Monitoring, and Decision-Making," finds measures for operators to receive fresh and important, accurate data simultaneously

ME professor earns NSF CAREER award for material response research

3/2/23 12:00 PM

Through a highly competitive program under its Division of Materials Research, the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently awarded Siyuan Dai, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, $720,000 for a CAREER project aimed at developing innovative methods for material response modification benefitting a variety of applications from computer science to biomedicine.

ME professor earns NSF CAREER Award for low-temperature plasma research

2/23/23 9:00 AM

Mitigating the environmental impact of meeting the world's rapidly increasing transportation energy demands is a problem. The National Science Foundation thinks Nick Tsolas may have a solution. The assistant professor of mechanical engineering recently received a $518,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to investigate low-temperature plasma-assisted combustion of oxygenated fuels as a potential alternative to achieving a cleaner and sustainable future for the transportation sector.

Professor in electrical engineering earns $500,000 NSF CAREER Award

6/9/22 8:10 AM

Xiaowen Gong was awarded for his study, "Towards Efficient and Fast Hierarchical Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Wireless Edge Networks."

Anh Nguyen's five-year project is titled, "Harnessing external knowledge to improve computer vision robustness, explainability, and user accuracy."

AI research leads CSSE assistant professor to NSF CAREER Award

3/30/22 10:15 AM

Anh Nguyen awarded $460,736 to explore new means of improving artificial intelligence and open state's first K-6 AI club.

Assistant professor in aerospace engineering earns NSF CAREER Award

1/11/22 9:55 AM

Vrishank Raghav, who directs the university's Applied Fluids Research Group, is the Department of Aerospace Engineering's first recipient of the award.

Assistant civil and environmental professor earns NSF Early Career Award

2/2/21 12:00 AM

Assistant civil and environmental engineering professor Jack Montgomery has been selected for the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program.

Three engineering faculty members receive NSF Early Career awards

3/5/20 9:00 AM

Three more Auburn Engineering faculty have been selected for the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program.

Civil engineering assistant professor receives NSF Early Career award

8/29/19 3:50 PM

Lauren Beckingham, assistant professor of civil engineering, has been named a recipient of a National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Development award for her work in environmental engineering.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program

This program supports the individual research programs of outstanding scientists early in their careers and stimulates research careers in the disciplines supported by the DOE Office of Science: Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR), Biological and Environmental Research (BER), Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES), High Energy Physics (HEP), Isotope R&D and Production (IP), and Nuclear Physics (NP).

Assistant CEE professor earns DOE Early Career Award

6/13/22 12:00 PM

Last week, Lauren Beckingham went from Early Career Award winner to Early Career Awards winner. The assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering received her latest Early Career honor from the Department of Energy (DOE), which awarded $749,999 toward her research into subsurface hydrogen storage — a promising means of large-scale, long-term energy storage that could boost renewable energy and reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions.

Assistant professor Bryan Beckingham, right.

Assistant professor wins college’s first DOE Early Career Award

9/4/20 9:25 AM

Bryan Beckingham has become the first faculty member from the Auburn University Samuel Ginn College of Engineering to receive an award through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Early Career Research Program.

National Institute of General Medical Sciences Maximizing Investigators' Research Award

The NIGMS MIRA award is designed to provide long-term funding, allowing investigators greater stability and flexibility, with the goal of enhancing scientific productivity and the chances for important research breakthroughs.

CHEN professor earns $1.87M NIH award to further vaccine research

8/29/22 1:15 PM

Assistant professor Chris Kieslich became the third faculty member in two years from the Department of Chemical Engineering to earn the Maximizing Investigators' Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

CHEN professor earns $1.87M NIH grant to expand cellular process research

8/15/22 12:08 PM

Assistant chemical engineering professor Panagiotis Mistriotis was recently awarded a $1.87M Maximizing Investigators' Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

Robert Pantazes (second from left) with graduate students Ritankar Bhattacharya (left), Varun Chauhan (center) and Sumaiya Islam (right).

Assistant professor wins major NIH award to develop therapeutic proteins

9/10/20 2:05 PM

Robert Pantazes will further his research in developing and experimentally testing computational methods to design therapeutic proteins with a $1.75 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Auburn researcher receives $1.9M grant for rapid immune diagnostics

12/5/19 1:54 PM

Assistant professor Pengyu Chen will use a $1.9 million National Institutes of Health grant to develop next-generation, rapid diagnostic tools for the health care industry.

National Institutes of Health Trailblazer R21 Award

The Trailblazer R21 Award is an opportunity for New and Early Stage Investigators to pursue research programs of high interest to the NIBIB at the interface of the life sciences with engineering and the physical sciences.

Assistant professor Vrishank Raghav, Auburn University Department of Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace engineering assistant professor receives NIH Trailblazer award

3/6/20 11:02 AM

Vrishank Raghav, assistant professor in Auburn University’s Department of Aerospace Engineering, was recently awarded the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Trailblazer R21 award for a project designed to help doctors identify and treat patients who have a particular lung disease known as Expiratory Central Airway Collapse (ECAC).

NASA Early Career Faculty Award

The Early Career Faculty (ECF) component of the Space Technology Research Grants Program awards grants to accredited U.S. universities on behalf of outstanding faculty researchers early in their careers. ECF challenges early career faculty to examine the theoretical feasibility of ideas and approaches that are critical to

Davide Guzzetti, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, poses for a photo on Auburn University’s campus.

Aerospace engineering assistant professor earns NASA Early Career Award

4/3/24 1:30 PM

Davide Guzzetti, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, has earned a NASA Early Career Faculty award to research how to remediate the accumulation of smaller pieces of orbital debris that are hard to track due to their size.