Fall 2024 In the News
Ilic wins Prestigious DARPA Young Faculty Award
Ognjen Ilic, faculty member in Mechanical Engineering, is a recipient of this year's Young Faculty Award (YFA) from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The YFA provides "high-impact funding to elite researchers early in their careers to develop innovative new research directions in the context of enabling transformative DoD capabilities.” Ilic's project (up to $1,000,000 over the course of three years) focuses on "Deployable Radiators for Small, High Power, Low Earth Orbit Spacecraft”, where he will develop new materials and structures for highly efficient heat rejection in space.
Varatharajah wins Prestigious NSF CAREER Award
Yogatheesan Varatharajah, faculty member in Computer Science & Engineering, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his project, “Trust-EEG: A Trustworthy Machine Learning Framework for Augmenting Clinical Review of Electroencephalograms”. This prestigious award provides support to early-career 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 award provides $600,000 in funding over five years. Varatharajah is broadly interested in leveraging the recent advances in machine learning (ML) to improve the healthcare system. For his research studies, he works very closely with clinical experts to develop novel domain-guided ML applications that reduce physician burden, augment their capabilities, and enhance the overall patient experience while ensuring reliability, scalability, and trust.
Sattar wins IonE Impact Goal Grant
Junaed Sattar, faculty member in Computer Science and Engineering, is a co-Principal Investigator on an interdisciplinary team that won a $200K grant from the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment (IonE). The two-year project titled, “Technology & Education to Address Natural Resource Management Challenges: Phase 2”, will explore invasive species modeling using autonomous underwater robots. This is the second round of funding for the project through IonE. The team is led by co-PIs assistant professor Amy Kinsley from the Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, Professor Ingrid Schneider from the Department of Forest Resources, and Sattar.
Transportation Research Recognitions
Rajesh Rajamani, faculty member in Mechanical Engineering, is a recipient of two transportation-research-related recognitions. He has been selected as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society for the period September 2024 - September 2027. His research team also received AASHTO’s Region 3 High-Value Research Award from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in June 2024. This award is for the team of Andre Espindola, Lee Alexander and Rajesh Rajamani for their project "Influence of Autonomous and Partially Autonomous Vehicles on Minnesota Roads ". The award recognizes the nation’s top high-value research projects as chosen by state DOT research directors in each of the four AASHTO regions.
Maria Gini Wins IJCAI Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award
Maria Gini, faculty member in Computer Science and Engineering, has earned the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence Organization (IJCAI) Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award. She was recognized for her substantial contributions, as well as her extensive service to the field of artificial intelligence (AI) throughout her career.