Four Purdue Researchers Earn NSF Early Career Recognition

Four Purdue University assistant professors received National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards between August 2024 and the end of December 2024 to fund their research.

CAREER awards recognize faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. The five-year grants are NSF’s most prestigious award in support of early career faculty.

NSF announces CAREER awards throughout the year. Faculty listed below received awards with an NSF project start date between August 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024. Faculty awards within that date range are:

Aravind Machiry, assistant professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “Securing Deeply Embedded Software.” Machiry will address security vulnerabilities in software used to control a large and diverse set of software-intensive systems such as those used in homes, and for transportation, food, and energy systems. Software security techniques and tools developed as part of the project may apply to billions of embedded devices.

Joseph Makin, assistant professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “Brain-Machine Interfaces for Speech.” Makin will use the award to improve programs that decode speech by analyzing electrical signals recorded directly from the brain. By using a combination of machine learning, efficient experimental design, a large data set to improve speech decoders, his work has transformative potential to restore the ability to communicate through speech to those who have lost it.

Junjie Qin, assistant professor in the Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (College of Engineering), for a project titled “Towards Grid-Responsive Electrified Transportation Systems: Modeling, Aggregation, and Market Integration,” Qin will use the award to establish the conceptual and algorithmic bedrock for grid-responsive electrified transportation systems, which could unlock significant economic value given the systems’ flexibility.  The research will facilitate transportation electrification, support renewable integration, and speed up the decarbonization of both transportation and electricity systems.

Yexiang Xue, assistant professor of computer science (College of Science), for a project titled “Solving Beyond-NP Satisfiability Modulo Counting Problems with Guarantees Using NP Oracles.” Xue is working on AI approaches for real-world complex problems that require planning and decision-making in areas such as disaster preparation, bio-diversity protection and secure energy supply. His work will develop algorithms that incorporate a symbolic reasoning tool known as for Satisfiability Modulo Counting, creating useful diagnosis tools for explainable AI and having the potential to accelerate the learning of physics models in AI for science.

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