AFOSR awards grants to 56 scientists and engineers through Young Investigator Research Program

by Air Force Office of Scientific Research Staff

1/14/2016 - ARLINGTON, VA -- The Air Force Office of Scientific Research today Jan. 14, 2016, that it will award approximately $20.6 million in grants to 56 scientists and engineers from 41 research institutions and small businesses who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program (YIP).

The YIP is open to scientists and engineers at research institutions across the United States who received Ph.D. or equivalent degrees in the last five years and who show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research.

The objective of this program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering.

AFOSR received more than 265 proposals in response to the AFOSR YIP broad agency announcement solicitation in Engineering and Information Science and Physical and Biological Science research areas. These areas include: Engineering and Complex Systems, Information and Networks, Physical Sciences and Biological and Chemical Sciences. AFOSR officials select proposals based on the evaluation criteria listed in the broad agency announcement. Those selected will receive the grants over a three year period.

The award recipients and their anticipated research areas are:

· Dr. Adel Alaeddini, University of Texas - San Antonio, An Active Learning Methodology for Design and Optimization of Complex Expensive Tests

· Dr. Steven Anton, Tennessee Tech University, Continuous Real-Time State Monitoring in Highly Dynamic Environments

· Dr. Scott Baalrud, University of Iowa, Theory of Magnetized Ultracold Neutral Plasmas

· Dr. Xiaoli Bai, Rutgers University, Advanced Orbit Prediction for Resident Space Objects through Physics-based Learning

· Dr. Waseem Bakr, Princeton University, Single-atom Microscopy Of Dipolar Fermi Gases

· Dr. Sally Bane, Purdue University, Plasma-Enhanced Flames at Elevated Pressure

· Dr. Can Bayram, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Investigating Heteroepitaxy Principles and Transport Characteristics of Vertically-Integrated GaN-on-Graphene Heterostructures

· Dr. Nicholas Boechler, University of Washington, Materials with Designed Nonlinearities: Enabling A New Generation of Stress Wave Transformation

· Dr. Denys Bondar, Princeton University, Operational Dynamical Modelling: Towards Efficient Model-Building and Simulation of Complex Systems

· Dr. Philip Bradford, North Carolina State University, Multifunctional Ultralow Density Structures Based on Aligned Carbon Nanotube Sheets

· Dr. James Burns, University of Virginia, The Effect of High Altitude Environments on the Dislocation Structure Evolution During Fatigue Cracking of Legacy and Next Generation Aerospace Aluminum Alloys

· Dr. Venkat Chandrasekaran, California Institute of Technology, Latent Variable Graphical Modeling for High-Dimensional Data Analysis

· Dr. Lunjin Chen, University of Texas - Dallas, Investigation of Wave Particle Interaction in the Earth's Magnetosphere using Conjugated Observations

· Dr. Michael Chini, University of Central Florida, High-order Harmonic and Attosecond Spectroscopy in Materials

· Dr. Hugh Churchill, University of Arkansas - Fayetteville, Quantum Devices Based on Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

· Dr. Raghvendra Cowlagi, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Multiscale Dynamic Data-Driven Guidance and Control for Autonomous Vehicle Networks

· Dr. Neil Dasgupta, University of Michigan, Atomically-Precise Interfacial Modification of Low-Density Nanostructured Composites

· Dr. Jillian Dempsey, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Controlled Assembly of Quantum Dot Heterostructures

· Dr. Yousong Ding, University of Florida, Engineering Biosystems for Aromatic Nitration

· Dr. Vivian Ferry, University of Minnesota, Tunable Chiroptical Response In Metamaterial-nanocrystal Hybrid Systems

· Dr. Jessica Fox, Case Western Reserve University, Mechanosensory And Visual Integration For Fly Takeoff And Flight

· Dr. Hadi Ghasemi, University of Houston, Toward Bio-Inspired Smart Thermal Spreaders (BSTS)

· Dr. Ebenezer Gnanamanickam, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Exploiting the Non-linear Interactions within Wall Turbulence for Flow Control

· Dr. Ximin He, Arizona State University, Bioinspired Artificial Homeostatic Multifunctional Material Microsystems (AHM3) based on Self-sustaining Autonomic Adaptive Structures

· Dr. Marcus Hultmark, Princeton University, Theoretical and Experimental Characterization of Turbulent Heat Transfer in Compressible Flows

· Dr. Bharat Jalan, University of Minnesota, Ultra High-Density Complex Oxide Quantum Wells for Emerging THz Plasmonic Effects and Devices

· Dr. Sumit Jha, University of Central Florida, Faster: Formal Methods Based Computer-Aided Synthesis of STochastic inExact in-memoRy Computing Systems

· Dr. Thomas Juliano, University of Notre Dame, Plasma-Actuated Flow Control of Hypersonic Crossflow-Induced Boundary-Layer Transition in a Quiet Tunnel

· Dr. Rehan Kapadia, University of Southern California, Optical Cavity Enhanced Electron Emitters

· Dr. Christina Lee, University of California - Berkeley, The Role of the Background Solar Wind on SEP Events

· Dr. Somin Eunice Lee, University of Michigan, Sub-Diffraction Temperature Mapping of Protein Interconversions

· Dr. Daniel Licata, Wesleyan University, Software Verification with Directed Type Theory

· Dr. John Licato, Purdue University, Active Formalization Through Analogico-Deductive Reasoning

· Dr. Kin Fai Mak, Pennsylvania State University, Exploring Atomically Thin van der Waals Metals for Spintronics

· Dr. Tijana Milenkovic, University of Notre Dame, Efficient Comparison of Multiple Complex Networks

· Dr. SungWoo Nam, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Reconfigurable, Corrugated Graphene Plasmonics

· Dr. Venkateswaran Narayanaswamy, North Carolina State University, Investigation of shock Boundary Layer Interactions to Unravel the Physics of Unstart in Axisymmetric Inlets

· Dr. Nicholaus Parziale, Stevens Institute of Technology, Instantaneous Velocity Profiles of Wall-Bounded Shear Flows in Thermochemical Non-Equilibrium

· Dr. Philip Richerme, Indiana University, Programmable 2D Arrays of Interacting Quantum Spins Using Trapped Ions

· Dr. Laurel Riek, University of Notre Dame, Trust Affordances in Human-Automation Teaming

· Dr. Alessandro Salandrino, University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc., Time-varying Metamaterials: Dynamic Transformation Optics and Parametric Phenomena

· Dr. Themistoklis Sapsis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Complementing Dynamical Equations with Data in Adaptive Reduced-order Subspaces

· Dr. Vishal Saxena, Boise State University, Realizing Large-Scale Integrated RF Photonic Signal Processing Systems

· Dr. Joseph Scott, Clemson University, Rapid and Accurate Uncertainty Propagation for Nonlinear Dynamic Systems By Exploiting Model Redundancy

· Dr. Javad Shabani, City University of New York, Epitaxial Superconductor-semiconductor Materials Systems for Quantum Computation

· Dr. Matthew Sheldon, Texas A&M University, Hot Electron Enhanced Thermionic Emission (HEETE) Converters for All-Metal Optical Power Generation

· Dr. Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Arizona State University, Peptide-DNA Tiles as Building Blocks for Complex Nanostructures

· Dr. Wenting Sun, Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Explosive Ozonolysis Reactions for Combustion Control

· Dr. Behrouz Touri, University of Colorado - Boulder, Structural Approach to Distributed Optimization

· Dr. Thomas Vidick, California Institute of Technology, Towards a secure quantum network

· Dr. Dashun Wang, Pennsylvania State University, Modeling and Predicting Individual Scientific Impact

· Dr. Yue Wang, Clemson University, Trust-based Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) for High-Level Distributed Multi-Robot Motion Planning with Temporal Logic Constraints

· Dr. Justin Wilkerson, University of Texas - San Antonio, A Multifunctional Materials-by-Design Approach to Ignition Desensitization

· Dr. Yu Yao, Arizona State University, Mid-Infrared Laser Frequency Comb Generation Based on Ultrafast All-Optical Graphene-metasurface Modulators

· Dr. Andrea Young, University of California - Santa Barbara, Scanning Magnetometry of Low Dimensional Electronic Systems

· Dr. Zhibin Yu, Florida State University, Engineering Organometallic Hybrid Perovskite/Polymer Composites for New Generation Electro-Optics Manufacturing