Faculty highlights
- Four faculty members earn NSF CAREER awards
- Augustyn named Sloan Research Fellow
- Kim receives RJ Reynolds Award
- Hsiao receives AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award
- Escuti named Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors
Four faculty members earn NSF CAREER awards
Four young faculty members in the College have been chosen to receive Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation.
The NSF CAREER award is one of the most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.
The recipients, who will each receive $500,000 in funding over five years, are:
Dr. Ashley Brown, assistant professor in the UNC/NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), for her project, “Dynamic microgels that mimic platelet behavior to promote healing.”
Dr. Matthew Bryant, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, for his project, “Muscle-Inspired Load-Adaptive Actuation for Compliant Robotics.”
Dr. Xiaogang Hu, assistant professor in BME, for his project, “Robust Decoding of Neural Command for Real Time Human Machine Interactions.”
Dr. Michael Daniele, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in BME, for his project, “Reconfigurable Microfluidic-Microbalance Sensors to Monitor and Optimize the Performance of Microphysiological Models.
Augustyn named Sloan Research Fellow
Dr. Veronica Augustyn, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, has been awarded a 2019 Sloan Research Fellowship in Chemistry. Augustyn’s research focuses on the electrochemistry of materials. This research has important implications regarding how energy is converted and stored in devices such as batteries, electrochemical capacitors and fuel cells.
Open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields — chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics — the two-year Sloan Research Fellowships are given to U.S. and Canadian researchers whose achievements mark them as among the very best scientific minds working today. Fellows receive $70,000 for research-related expenses from the foundation.
Augustyn is the fifth NC State faculty member to receive the prestigious award and the second from the College of Engineering.
Kim receives RJ Reynolds Award
Dr. Youngsoo “Richard” Kim, Jimmy D. Clark Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering (CCEE), was named the thirty-fourth recipient of the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension.
The annual award was established in 1981 to honor a College of Engineering faculty member who has demonstrated superiority in several areas of activity that relate to NC State’s three-fold mission of teaching, research and extension.
One of the world’s leading scholars on asphalt materials, Kim’s research has helped change industry standards for asphalt materials specifications, and he developed widely used predictive tests and models to show how asphalt pavements and materials will perform under varying traffic and climatic conditions. Kim’s work has influenced asphalt materials research worldwide and has been instrumental in developing safer, longer-lasting asphalt materials and structures.
Kim is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers and a Fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology, which is similar to The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the United States.
Hsiao receives AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Award
Dr. Lilian Hsiao, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has received the 2019 Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences.
Hsiao is one of only five winners of the 2019 award, given by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
First awarded in 2015 and funded by the Marion Milligan Mason Fund, the award is designed to kick start the research efforts of early-career women researchers in the chemical sciences. The 2019 awardees have made extraordinary contributions through their research programs and demonstrate a commitment to move their fields forward.
Hsiao’s research interests are in the areas of soft materials and complex fluids — specifically on the use of shaped colloids and functionalized polymer surfaces. She specializes in using microscopy and rheology to identify the frameworks used to engineer the mechanical properties of soft surfaces.
Escuti named Senior Member of National Academy of Inventors
Dr. Michael Escuti, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been elected to the inaugural class of Senior Members of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).
The inaugural class is comprised of 66 accomplished academic inventors representing 37 research universities and governmental and non-profit research institutes worldwide. They are named inventors on over 1,100 issued U.S. patents.
Escuti is a leading photonics and electro-optic materials expert pioneering the development of polarization-independent devices and transformational diffractive optics. He currently directs applied and fundamental research for applications including ultra-efficient /portable liquid crystal displays, opto-fluidics, ultra-efficient beam steering for high energy applications and laser communications, IR / MIR polarimetry imaging and novel diffractive lenses.
Return to contents or download the Spring/Summer 2019 NC State Engineering magazine (PDF, 13.7MB).
- Categories:
