Two researchers from the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering have been honored with CAREER grants from the National Science Foundation.
Vikram Jadhao, an assistant professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering, and Feng Qian, an assistant professor of computer science, were both selected for the prestigious award, which supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education while leading advances in the mission of their department or organization. The CAREER program provides five years of federal funding for proposals, which are among the most highly competitive in the NSF.
“We’re thrilled that Vikram and Feng have been selected for CAREER grants,” said Raj Acharya, dean of SICE. “Innovative research is being conducted every day in our school, and the fact they were awarded the grants is another sign of the importance of the work they are doing to shape tomorrow. Their vision and drive are part of what makes SICE a leader in so many fields.”
Jadhao’s proposal, “Designing Surface Patterns for Adaptive Shape Control of Soft-Matter-Based Nanoparticles,” aims to design patterns for adaptive shape control of nanoparticles made from soft materials by establishing the connections between the surface patterns of nanoparticles and their mechanistic behavior using multiscale simulations powered by high-performance computing.
“I am grateful and honored to receive this support from the nanoengineering and the materials research community, and the NSF,” Jadhao said. “These connections will guide the development of deformable nanocontainers into smart drug-delivery carriers and will help reveal the mechanisms to design shape-changing nanoparticles that can act as building blocks for next-generation materials. The project also involves an integrated education and outreach component, which includes a simulation-to-3D-printing workshop for high-school students, and the development of web-based platforms to engage students and educators in nanotechnology and computational methods.”
Qian earned his honor for his proposal, “Improving Mobile Video Delivery for Emerging Contents and Networks.” His research features three interconnected components. One component involves a new application of video streaming, a 360-degree immersive video stream in virtual reality, that can have applications in military training, education, medical remote operation, and many other areas. Qian also will look at ways to leverage multiple network interfaces on mobile devices to stream video, such as using both Wi-Fi and cellular interfaces simultaneously while also prioritizing the interfaces to optimize their efficiency. Finally, Qian hopes to develop a new wireless technology using millimeter waves that can provide dramatically increased bandwidth while also creating new transmission protocols that use our current network infrastructure.
“This CAREER award, I hope, will help me transform the video streaming ecosystem,” Qian said. “I want to make these new technologies available to everyone through commodity mobile devices. People watch videos on their smart phones and tablets. Everyone has used YouTube, Amazon Video, and those kinds of services on their mobile devices. The proposal is about thinking of new applications of mobile video streaming and improving performance.”
Jadhao joined the ISE department at SICE in 2016, and Qian arrived in Bloomington as part of the computer science faculty at IU in 2015. For more information on both programs, visit our website.