Kulis receives five-year NSF CAREER award

Brian Kulis, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has received a five-year, $486,255 NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for his research in data analysis and machine learning.

The CAREER award is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of both.

Kulis’ work aims to design and analyze new methods for large-scale data analysis based on Bayesian nonparametric models. As part of the project, he is developing algorithms for problems such as analyzing the evolution of communities in large networks, image classification and automatic determination of topics in document collections.

Part of the grant funding will support the further integration of coursework in computer science and statistics to continue to bridge the gap between the fields. It will also be used to introduce undergraduate and high school students to research. Ultimately, the project will result in new software for nonparametric problems that can be applied by practitioners outside the machine learning field.

Kulis earned a PhD in computer science in 2008 from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining the Ohio State faculty in 2012, he spent three years working as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkley.