Three Science Faculty Among 2009 NSF CAREER Award Winners

COLLEGE STATION -- Three College of Science faculty have been selected as 2009 recipients of the National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development Award, better known as the NSF CAREER Award.

Dr. Ranier J. Fries, assistant professor of physics; Dr. Christian B. Hilty, assistant professor of chemistry; and Dr. Dong Hee Son, assistant professor of chemistry are among the 15 Texas A&M professors to receive the prestigious honor to date this year, announced Interim President R. Bowen Loftin.

The number of Texas A&M faculty members receiving the prestigious NSF award thus far in 2009 is among the highest ever for a single year, university officials note.

Fries' CAREER Award will support his ongoing research on the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), from its formation to its properties and the role each plays in the Universe. Hilty will concentrate on research in biochemical reaction mechanisms and hyper-polarization techniques to enhance membrane protein studies. Son's research will investigate ultrafast electronic and magnetic properties of transition metal oxide nanocrystals.

NSF established the CAREER program to support junior faculty within the context of their overall career development, combining in a single program the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense, explained a foundation spokesperson.

Through this program, the NSF emphasizes the importance on the early development of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning, the spokesperson added.

"We are delighted to see so many of our young faculty being recognized in such a meaningful manner early in their professorial careers, and we are grateful indeed to the National Science Foundation for providing them invaluable support," Loftin said. "Most, if not all, of them came to Texas A&M as part of the recent Faculty Reinvestment Program, and they certainly serve to enhance the long-standing high caliber of our overall faculty."

All of the NSF CAREER Award recipients are Ph.D.-holding assistant professors who have joined the Texas A&M faculty recently with outstanding academic credentials, officials note.

Fries, who has been a member of the Texas A&M faculty and the Cyclotron Institute since 2006, is recognized for his research in theoretical particle and nuclear physics. His seminal contributions toward understanding both relativistic heavy-ion collisions and the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) have earned him many awards, including the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) Young Scientist Prize in Nuclear Physics in 2007. Fries earned his doctorate from the University of Regensburg in 2001 and was a Feodor Lynen Fellow at Duke University from 2002-03. Prior to coming to Texas A&M, he spent three years at the University of Minnesota as both a research associate (2003-05) and an assistant professor (2005-06).

In conjunction with his Texas A&M position, Fries also carries out research with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), located at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in New York. Since 2006, he has served as an RHIC Fellow with the RIKEN BNL Research Center, which is dedicated to the study of strong interactions, including spin physics, lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) and RHIC physics, and to nurturing a new generation of young physicists.

Hilty, who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2006, is recognized for his expertise and creativity in studying membrane proteins at the atomic level using revolutionary nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Specifically, he is a pioneer in the relatively new technology of dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), a critical step in elucidating the structural dynamics of proteins in biological membranes as well as drug discovery.

Hilty received both his undergraduate degree and doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, studying membrane proteins using NMR and earning the Groupement AMPERE's 2005 Raymond Andrew Prize in recognition of his outstanding doctoral thesis in magnetic resonance. Prior to coming to Texas A&M, he completed a postdoctoral research appointment at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he used hyper-polarization techniques to enhance NMR and imaging. In 2006, he earned selection as one of only 12 recipients nationwide of the highly competitive Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award on the basis of his early accomplishments and future potential in NMR and hyper-polarization techniques.

Son, who has been a member of the Texas A&M faculty since 2005, studies dynamic optical, electronic and magnetic properties in structurally complex nanoscale materials -- specifically inorganic nanocrystals. His research, which focuses on controlling these structures by tuning their chemical and structural parameters, has many practical applications, including the design of nanoscale electronic devices and light energy-harvesting machines.

Son earned his doctorate from The University of Texas at Austin in 2002 and spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California-Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory before coming to Texas A&M. He received both his bachelor‘s (1992) and master‘s of science (1994) degrees from Seoul National University in Korea.

In addition to Fries, Hilty and Son, five additional College of Science faculty also hold current NSF CAREER grants.

Additional Texas A&M faculty members receiving the award to date this year, with notations regarding their departments and areas in which they plan to focus their NSF-supported research, are (listed alphabetically):

Ulisses Braga-Neto, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the prestigious award for his proposal, "Theory and Application of Small-Sample Error Estimation in Genomic Signal Processing;"

Zachary Grasley, Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, for his research into improving concrete materials;

Gregory Huff, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,for his proposal titled "Biologically Inspired Concepts for Reconfigurable Antennas and Multifunctional Smart Skins;"

Jaakko Jarvi, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, for his research in methods for increasing software reusability;

Arul Jayaraman, Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, for his research aimed at developing an integrated research and educational program in molecular systems biology;

Eun Jung Kim, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, for her research in high-performance computing;

Tamas Kalmar-Nagy, Deparment of Aerospace Engineering, for his proposal titled "Stability and Performance of Systems with Network-Induced Delays;"

Lin Shao, Department of Nuclear Engineering, for his proposal, "Radiation Response and Stability of Nanostructured Materials;"

Tie Liu, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for his proposal, "Information Theory and Coding for Wireless Broadcast Networks;"

Bridget Wade, Department of Geology & Geophysics, to study the implications for taxonomy, paleobiology, and tropical marine temperatures in Oligocene planktonic foraminifera;

Haiyan Wang, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for her proposal, "Novel Ceramic Nanocomposites with Smart Interface Design;" and

Sy-Bor Wen, Department of Mechanical Engineering, for his research in optically-induced nanoscale heat transfer with an emphasis on nano-optical devices.

To learn more about the National Science Foundation or the CAREER Award program, visit http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=503214.

-aTm-

Contact: Shana K. Hutchins, (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@science.tamu.edu

Hutchins Shana

2009-07-28 00:00:00