2023 CAREER awards

Two 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.

Protein biomaterials engineering

Won Min Park, assistant professor in the Tim Taylor Department of Chemical Engineering, has received a $550,000 CAREER award to develop a simple, modular and versatile technology to direct the folding and assembly of protein biomaterials using a molecular version of origami.

The five-year project, "CAREER: Modular Protein Origami to Building Genetically Programmable Biomaterials," will study the genetic programming of complex functionalities into the biomaterials created from this process and assess their capabilities in solving challenging and unique engineering problems.

Park said the project also aims to produce educational activities that will train students in protein biomaterials engineering.

Elastic wave energy transfer dynamics in molecules

Raj Kumar Pal, assistant professor in the Alan Levin Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, has received a $500 CAREER award to study the vibration response of architected plates for novel wave phenomena.

The five-year project, "CAREER: Guiding and Confining Nonlinear Elastic Waves in Moiré Metastructures," will examine how these plates — called metastructures — can exhibit unique physical properties, such as negative density and stiffness, defect immune transport, and wave confinement in small regions.

The findings from this study could lead to the next generation of wave-based signal processing devices for applications in mobile phones and structural health monitoring.