Purdue News
Purdue News
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December 8, 2000 Six junior faculty at Purdue honored by NSFWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Six Purdue University scientists and engineers were among 409 honored by the National Science Foundation with this year's Faculty Early Career Development Awards. The award is the NSF's most prestigious honor for junior faculty members. Awards for 2000 range from $200,000 to $500,000 in research funding over four or five years.
Purdue's recipients are Rashid Bashir, Babak Falsafi, Cheng-Kok Koh, Sunil Prabhakar, David Sanders and Hong Tan. Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation, said the awards support exceptionally promising college and university junior faculty who are committed to the integration of research and education. "We recognize these faculty members, new in their careers, as most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century," Colwell said. Here are details about the 2000 Purdue awardees and their research: •Bashir, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is working on various aspects of "nano-biotechnology," research that deals with structures measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. One nanometer is only about 10 atoms wide. Some of his work in that area focuses on developing "biochips," a technology aimed at making diagnostic devices that could be implanted in the body or used to quickly analyze food and laboratory samples with high sensitivity. His group also is working on developing new micro- and nano-fabrication techniques to glue DNA to silicon devices that "self-assemble," or essentially form themselves once the process is begun, similar to the way in which organic structures grow in living things. That work could result in displays for diagnostic devices. Bashir's group also is working on tiny micro-mechanical structures made out of silicon that might be used as sensitive chemical sensors and detectors for a wide variety of applications. • Falsafi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, specializes in computer memory systems. He cofounded a project at Purdue called ICALP, for Integrated Circuit/Architecture Approach to Low Power, formed to develop innovative computer microprocessors that save energy by using less power to run memory circuits. Energy-saving designs promise many potential benefits, including portable devices that run longer on a single charge and use lighter-weight batteries. Recent ICALP work has resulted in a circuit shown to dramatically reduce the amount of energy needed to run a computer's memory. The new circuit is designed to continually monitor how much memory is needed – depending on the programs that are running at any given time – and then strategically shut down unneeded memory circuits automatically. The design also reduces the amount of electricity that is normally "leaked" from memory circuits in a computer's microprocessor chip. • Koh, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is working on ways to improve the design of high-performance electronic circuits that have "very large-scale integration," which is commonly referred to as VLSI. These are circuits containing features so small that transistors might be measured in nanometers. Specifically, Koh's work concerns the interconnections between transistors and other features in such circuits. Improving the layout of those interconnections will increase the performance of electronic circuits and computer microchips. • Prabhakar, an assistant professor of computer science, is involved in research to improve the storage and manipulation of computer data. His work strives to develop a broad class of innovative techniques for enhancing the performance of conventional "input/output" devices, such as computer hard disks. The devices represent a sort of bottleneck in computer processing speed and efficiency. His research focuses on ways to improve performance for software applications handling multi-media and multi-dimensional data, such as graphics. One way to do this might be to develop "declustering schemes," in which data are distributed more efficiently among several hard disks. • Sanders, an assistant professor of biological sciences, has led researchers in discovering that acetate kinase, which is critical to the environmental production of methane, apparently is a primordial enzyme from which others evolved. His research group was the first to determine, through X-ray crystallography, the enzyme's three-dimensional structure, which they had previously predicted by analysis of its sequence of amino acids. They also have determined that acetate kinase apparently is the oldest member of a family of proteins that includes such important members as actin, which enables muscle and cell movement, and Hsp70, an enzyme that is critical to allowing proteins to fold so that they can function properly. Because acetate kinase is thought to be so ancient, the research could uncover secrets about the evolution of the earliest protein-based life on Earth. Sanders' work also has focused on how the Ebola virus, and "retroviruses" that cause leukemia, enter and infect cells. AIDS also is a retrovirus. That work has led to the design of novel delivery agents for gene therapies for diseases such as cystic fibrosis. • Tan, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, specializes in research focusing on the "haptic human-machine interface," or how machines and people interact through the sense of touch. Examples of her work include development of a "sensing chair" and a "tactile-feedback" vest. The sensing chair is designed to determine a person's sitting posture, an innovation that could lead to numerous applications, from computer-security systems to making furniture more comfortable. Special software enables a computer to interpret a person's posture by analyzing pressure patterns, which are represented by thousands of numbers fed to a computer by numerous sensing elements, or "sensels," in the chair. In the tactile vest, vibrating devices simulate the feeling of someone drawing directional lines on the user's back. The directional lines could be used to tell disoriented pilots and astronauts which way they are facing, which may help reduce aircraft accidents and space sickness. Sources: Rashid Bashir, (765) 496-6229, bashir@ecn.purdue.edu Babak Falsafi, (765) 494-9064, babak@ecn.purdue.edu Cheng-Kok Koh, (765) 496-3683, chengkoh@ecn.purdue.edu Sunil Prabhakar, (765) 494-6008, sunil@purdue.edu David Sanders (765) 494-6453, retrovir@bragg.bio.purdue.edu Hong Tan, (765) 494-6416, hongtan@ecn.purdue.edu Writer: Emil Venere, (765) 494-4709, evenere@purdue.edu Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu PHOTO CAPTION:
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