College faculty secure three CAREER awards
By Grant Guggisberg
Three faculty members in the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering each secured Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, awards from the National Science Foundation this spring.
These significant milestone grants designed to reward young and promising researchers typically involve more than $500,000 in research funding. Below are brief summaries of each faculty member’s ongoing projects awarded through this prestigious NSF grant process.
Quantifying nitrous oxide emissions
Jeongdae Im, Jeffrey and Joy Lessman Keystone research scholar and assistant professor of civil engineering, is investigating the nitrous oxide emissions from forage conservation, which is the practice of stockpiling plants or parts of plants that serve as food for livestock. This process often relies on fermentation, as the lactic acid produced works as a natural preservative for forage crops. But microorganisms that produce greenhouse gases also thrive in this environment.
The five-year, $600,000 project aims to provide an understanding of the conserved forage biome and open up a new avenue toward eco-friendly forage management and a sustainable cattle industry.
Im will carry out an integrated laboratory and field research program to quantify nitrous oxide emissions in forage conservations while also investigating the microbial processes that control such emissions. His prior research has already identified a potential solution to this issue that reduces nitrous oxide emissions by 95%. Im has filed a provisional patent and is collaborating with Corteva AgriScience to develop a novel inoculant.
“The outcome of this research will also address one of NSF’s 14 grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century, in this case, managing the nitrogen cycle,” Im said. “It should accelerate our ability to design and implement safe, effective and sustainable agricultural resource management strategies going forward.”
Atomically thin material architectures
Inventing field-effect transistors that achieve high-performance signals with ultra-low electronic noise and laying the foundation for emerging biosensor technologies is the research focus of Suprem Das, Jeffrey and Joy Lessman — Carl and Mary Ice Keystone research scholar and assistant professor in the industrial and manufacturing systems engineering department.
Das’ five-year, $500,000 project is investigating the science and technology of atomically thin materials and their nano-engineered structure, including field-effect transistors, a fundamental building block of future bioelectronics. A field-effect transistor uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor.
The project aims to study field-effect transistors with two-dimensional atomically thin materials with unique one-dimensional metal contacts designed with high-performance and low-noise characteristics.
Das is investigating the use of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride and transition metal di-chalcogenides to form atomically thin field-effect transistors.
“Given their unprecedented physics and chemistry at the atomic level, these devices will revolutionize their use in electronics, communication and cyber systems, as well as in health care and environmental sensing,” Das said.
Power grid defense
A robust defense of our nation’s power grid is as important as ever as cyber-data attacks become more sophisticated and common. Enhancing the resiliency of cyber-physical power grids under such attacks and providing system operators the tools they need to enhance situational awareness is essential.
This is the research focus of Hongyu Wu, Michelle Munson- Serban Simu Keystone research scholar and associate professor in the Mike Wiegers Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
His five-year, $500,000 project aims to provide tools to power system operators while also promoting public awareness and understanding of smart grid cybersecurity, contributing to power engineering education, and preparing a diverse learning community with requisite knowledge and skillsets to tackle the security challenges of future power grids.
“This CAREER project aims to provide a theoretical foundation and design guiding principles that will unlock the full potential of moving-target-defense approaches and significantly enhance the resiliency of cyber-physical power grids under cyber-data attacks,” said Wu, who also holds the Lucas-Rathbone professorship in engineering. “This project will develop novel optimization, graph theory, low-rank matrix theory and machine learning methods for optimal planning and operation of moving-target-defense devices, rapid detection, accurate identification and robust mitigation of cyber-data attacks.”
Additionally, Wu said this project will transform existing bulk transmission system operations that rely on limited cyber-layer security mechanisms to proactive approaches using widely deployed smart devices.