Seven young engineering faculty members from Ohio State University‘s Department of Computer Science and Engineering have earned national career awards for their research projects.
Six of the faculty members received the National Science Foundation‘s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award; a seventh received the U.S. Department of Energy‘s Early Career Principal Investigator award. All are assistant professors of computer science and engineering, a notable accomplishment for the department considering that in 2005, the most recent full year for which records are available, only seven universities received more than six NSF CAREER awards across all departments.
“The seven CAREER awards represent activities in several different research directions, all in significant computer science and engineering areas, such as artificial intelligence, networking, computational geometry, software engineering and databases. This will translate into many new opportunities for students to participate in exciting research projects,” says Xiaodong Zhang, department chair. “These awards also reflect the strong caliber of our young faculty and their promising research.”
Ohio State‘s Department of Computer Science and Engineering has a longstanding tradition of fostering its junior faculty members. Since 1985, faculty members in the department have received three National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator/National Young Investigator Awards, one NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, 17 NSF CAREER Awards, three Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Awards, four Department of Energy Career Awards and two Sloan Foundation Fellowships.
The NSF CAREER award honors teachers and scholars who are likely to become academic leaders in the future. Since 1996, NSF has given the award to faculty who effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their institution. Ohio State has earned 52 NSF CAREER awards since 1996, amounting to more than $15 million in funding.
Begun in 2002, the Department of Energy‘s Early Career award program helps researchers establish careers in applied mathematics, computer science and high-performance networking.
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering award recipients and their projects:
Mikhail “Misha” Belkin
“Geometry and High-Dimensional Inference,” National Science Foundation
Belkin‘s project is aimed at improving artificial intelligence with “semi-supervised machine learning,” a collection of algorithms and methods for learning from both labeled and unlabeled data. Machine learning techniques for high-dimensional inference are becoming progressively more important as many sources of abundant data ranging from MRI, medical imaging and biological data to sensor networks and to more traditional speech and computer vision data become available and require automated processing. This research will address theoretical and algorithmic issues surrounding manifold and geometric methods for high-dimensional inference. Belkin, who joined Ohio State in 2005, received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago.
Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu
“Exploration of Dynamic Sequences in Scientific Databases,” National Science Foundation
Ferhatosmanoglu‘s goal is to develop online structures and algorithms to dynamically maintain and analyze data sequences for scientific discovery and monitoring purposes. The implementation focuses on specific applications from physical and biological sciences that generate vast amounts of multi-dimensional data sequences. Ferhatosmanoglu joined Ohio State in 2001 as an assistant professor after receiving his doctorate in computer science from University of California, Santa Barbara.
Eric Fosler-Lussier
“Breaking the Phonetic Code: Novel Acoustic-Lexical Modeling Techniques for Robust Automatic Speech Recognition,” National Science Foundation
Fosler-Lussier‘s research takes a multidisciplinary approach to integrating linguistic theory with speech recognition technology. He aims to establish a consistent framework to cope with error rates in automatic speech recognition systems resulting from conditions in spontaneous speech, accented speech and speech in noise. Fosler-Lussier joined the department in 2003; he received his doctorate in computer science from University of California, Berkeley.
Atanas (Nasko) Rountev
“Dataflow Analysis for Modern Software Systems,” National Science Foundation
Rountev aims to improve the reliability and performance of large-scale software systems through systematic techniques for software analysis. Such techniques are at the core of sophisticated tools used by software developers in the computing industry to improve programmer productivity and software quality. The ultimate goal of this research is to build powerful software tools that are truly usable and useful in the software industry. An Ohio State faculty member since 2002, Rountev received his doctoral degree in computer science from Rutgers University in 2002.
Prasun Sinha
“On-the-fly Protocols for Data Dissemination in Wireless Mesh Networks,” National Science Foundation
Sinha is working to develop an agile Internet that corrects for signal interference as it happens and reallocates resources to boost high-demand services, such as peer-to-peer applications and TV streaming. He wants to design protocols that observe network quality as it varies and act on it. Ultimately, such an agile system could provide large-scale wireless Internet coverage on a campus-wide � or even citywide � network. Sinha became a faculty member at Ohio State in 2003. He received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 2001.
Yusu Wang
“Feature Extraction, Characterization and Visualization for Protein Interaction Via Geometric and Topological Methods,” Department of Energy
Wang‘s research focuses on feature identification issues arisen in molecular structural biology, recasting them in a generic framework and developing novel techniques within this framework to capture and represent features. She obtained her doctorate from Duke University in 2004 and joined Ohio State in 2005.
Dong Xuan
“Algorithm Design for Optimization Problems in Network Over-Provisioning, National Science Foundation
Xuan‘s research involves uncovering fundamental rules that Internet service providers can use to allocate their resources efficiently for real-time communication without sacrificing security and reliability. Xuan wants to give ISPs the tools they need to selectively place resources and ease Internet congestion. His goals include defining where network hubs should be placed and how they should be connected, as well as determining how much bandwidth should be allocated and optimizing connections to enhance security. He joined Ohio State in 2001 after receiving his doctoral degree in computer engineering from Texas A&M University.
