Early career success
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Four UIC Engineering professors have received Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation, the most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty.
Matthew Daly, assistant professor of materials engineering, aims to expand understanding related to the strengthening of alloys, which are critical elements in a diverse set of industries such as civil infrastructure, automotive and aerospace. His project will develop new nanomechanical testing techniques and computational models to look at how the atomic-scale organization of additives influences the processes by which alloys deform.
Mesrob Ohannessian, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science, aims to understand the limits of what is possible with data and how to achieve this potential fairly.
“When we adopt data-driven algorithms, we tend to be very optimistic. We expect them to match the best current scientific and engineering solutions. My project frames this optimism in terms of competitive learning, that is individual algorithms that perform as well as a family of bespoke algorithms, each for a specific true nature,” he said. With this award, Ohannessian and his students will explore key principles that enable competitive performance, especially methods that help gracefully
extrapolate predictions to rare data regions. By doing so, they will streamline the design of competitive algorithms that simultaneously find the truth of nature and adapt to it.
Jae-Won Shin, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, will use his grant to pioneer new approaches to understanding how stem cells can be precisely guided to regenerate tissues. According to Shin, “The approach developed here can potentially be integrated with other existing biomanufacturing
approaches to fabricate new tissues by providing gel-coated cells with locally defined properties as building blocks. The tools could then aid in the continued future development of effective stem-cell based therapies and approaches for tissue regeneration.”
Jason Polakis, assistant professor of computer science, will use his award for his research on understanding the security limitations of web browsers and the privacy threats faced by users. He is designing countermeasures to combat these security threats, as well as developing other privacy-preserving measures.