Sidiropoulos receives five-year $500K NSF CAREER award
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.
Sidiropoulos’ research will look at the use of diverse mathematical tools in the setting of geometric data analysis, forging new connections between mathematics and computer science. His goal is to make the analysis of complex data sets, such as DNA sequences and collections of news articles, faster and more efficient. By resolving some of the main problems inherent in the analysis of such geometric data sets, his work aims to facilitate improved solutions for a variety of computational tasks.
"The analysis of complex data sets is a task of increasing importance for science and engineering,” Sidiropoulos said. “In many applications there is an abundance of raw inputs so being able to extract meaningful information from them is often a major computational challenge.”
Sidiropoulos plans to use the educational component of his project to introduce two undergraduate students to research. In addition, the grant’s outreach funding component will allow him to develop presentations for the STEAM Factory, along with lectures in other venues, to make his work more accessible to the public.
Sidiropoulos received a PhD from MIT and came to Ohio State September 2013 to accept a joint appointment in the College of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Mathematics.
