Four ChBE Professors Win Prestigious NSF CAREER Awards

Four assistant professors in ChBE have won 2020 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF): Saad Bhamla, Fani Boukouvala, Lily Cheung, and Andrew J. Medford.

The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, education, and their integration within the context of the mission of their organizations.”

“Having four of our faculty win these awards in a single year is truly remarkable.” - Professor David Sholl, the John F. Brock III School Chair of ChBE

Funded by the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (iOS) at NSF under the Directorate of Biological Sciences.

Saad Bhamla

Bhamla will receive $994,387 over five years to study “Fast, Furious and Fantastic Beasts: Integrative principles, biomechanics and physical limits of impulsive motion in ultrafast organisms.”

This research will focus on understanding ultrafast motion of slingshot spiders native to the Amazon Rainforest.

Fani Boukouvala

Boukouvala will receive $546,789 over five years to study “MachineLearning Assisted Process Systems Engineering: Hybrid modeling for process optimization, design and synthesis.” This research will focus on “opening up the blackboxes” of modern Machine Learning (ML) methods and integrating their training with core chemical engineering principles to achieve “Hybridization.”

Lily Cheung

Funded by the Division of Process Systems, Reaction Engineering, and Molecular Thermodynamics at NSF under the Directorate of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental & Transport Systems.

Cheung will receive $992,174 over five years to study “Understanding the role of sugar transporters in plant growth.” This research will focus on identifying the molecules recognized by plant sugar transporters of the SWEET family. Sugar transporters—the proteins embedded in membranes that enable the uptake and release of sugar from cells or subcellular compartments—are critical determinants of plant yield, and understanding their function will guide future efforts to use these proteins to engineer better crops.

Funded by the Division of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience under the Directorate of Biological Sciences.

Andrew J. Medford

Medford will receive $565,691 over five years to study “Computational discovery of oxide-based photocatalysts to create fertilizer from air.” This research will utilize computational screening approaches to identify new transition-metal compounds that are promising for synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen in air. His team will combine quantummechanical simulations, high-throughput screening accelerated by machine learning, and simple process models to discover new materials and establish target metrics for producing fertilizer from air.

Funded by the Catalysis program under the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems.