The Air Force Office of Scientific Research will award approximately $15 million in grants to 40 scientists and engineers who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program.
The YIP is open to scientists and engineers at research institutions across the United States who received Ph.D. or equivalent degrees in the last five years and show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research.
The objective of this program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering.
This year AFOSR received 192 proposals in response to the AFOSR broad agency announcement solicitation in major areas of interest to the Air Force. These areas include: aerospace, chemical and material sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics, information and life sciences. AFOSR officials select proposals based on the evaluation criteria listed in the broad agency announcement. Those selected will receive the grants over a 3 to 5-year period.
The recipients and their anticipated research areas are:
- Thomas Allison, SUNY – Binghamton, Precision Characterization of High-Harmonic Spectroscopy and Strong-Field Attosecond Physics
- Guofei Gu, Texas Engineering Experiment Station, Go Ahead of Malwares Infections and Controls: Towards New Techniques for Proactive Cyber Defense
- Kunihiko Taira, Florida State University, Understanding the Fundamental Roles of Momentum and Vorticity Injections in Flow Control
- Patrick Hopkins, University of Virginia, Electron Dynamics During High-Power, Short-Pulsed Laser Interactions with Solids and Interfaces
- Lek-Heng Lim, University of Chicago, Multilinear Computing and Multilinear Algebraic Geometry
- Bo Chen, University of Central Florida, Synergic investigation of the self-assembly structure and mechanism of retroviral capsid proteins by solid state NMR, transmission electron microscopy and multiscale simulation
- Kiran Solanki, Arizona State University, Hierarchically-Driven Approach for Quantifying Fatigue Crack Initiation and Short Crack Growth Behavior in Aerospace Materials
- Li Qiao, Purdue University, Combustion Chemistry and Dynamics in Nanoscale Confined Environments
- Fabiano Rodrigues, University of Texas at Dallas, Advancing our understanding of equatorial spread F: Atypical F-region irregularities
- Wesley Campbell, University of California – Los Angeles, Mode-Locked Deceleration of Molecular Beams: Physics with Ultracold Molecules
- Devesh Ranjan, Texas Engineering Experiment Station, Breaking with Tradition: Turbulence with Memory
- Juan Wachs, Purdue University, Embodied Interactions in Human-Machine Decision Making for Situation Awareness Enhancement Systems
- Stephanie Dornschneider, Artis Research and Risk Modeling, Towards a Theory of Mobilization for the Arab Spring: A Cognitive Analysis Mapping Pathways of Social Influence Underlying the Unexpected Outbreaks of the Protests in 2011
- Jeffrey Moses, MIT, High-Energy, Multi-Octave-Spanning Mid-IR Sources via Adiabatic Difference Frequency Generation
- Robert Wang, Arizona State University, Elucidating the Wavelength Dependence of Phonon Scattering in Nanoparticle-Matrix Composites using Phonon Spectroscopy
- Liangbing Hu, University of Maryland – College Park, Manipulation of Electrons, Ions and Photons in Lightweight, Multifunctional Nanostructured Paper
- Ping Li, Cornell University, Compact Information Representations
- Daniel Onofrei, University of Houston, Control of Electromagnetic Fields
- Jahan Dawlaty, University of Southern California, Ultrafast Spectroscopy of Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer (PCET) in Photocatalysis
- Vikram Gavini, University of Michigan, Quasi-continuum reduction of field theories: A route to seamlessly bridge quantum and atomistic length-scales with continuum
- Bing Ouyang, Florida Atlantic University, Airborne Compressive Sensing Topographic Lidar
- Darren Lipomi, University of California – San Diego, Molecular Engineering for Mechanically Resilient and Stretchable Electronic Polymers and Composites
- Sayeef Salahuddin, University of California – Berkeley, Fundamental Electron Transport Properties in Heterostructures of Correlated Oxides and Two Dimensional Semiconductors
- Marina Blanton, University of Notre Dame, A Comprehensive Toolset for General-Purpose Private Computing and Outsourcing
- Jonathan Simon, University of Chicago, Quantum Manybody Physics with Rydberg Polaritons
- Jon Schuller, University of California – Santa Barbara, Infrared Semiconductor Materials
- Jeremy Gulley, Kennesaw State University, Multi-Chromatic Ultrashort Pulse Filamentation and Bulk Modification in Dielectrics
- Haitao Liu, University of Pittsburgh, DNA-Templated Fabrication of Arbitrary-Structured Porous Carbon Materials
- Jodie Lutkenhaus, Texas Engineering Experiment Station, Organic Electrodes for Structural Energy and Power
- Sudeep Pasricha, Colorado State University, Integrated Optoelectronic Networks for Application-Driven Multicore Computing
- Rachel Ward, University of Texas at Austin, Reliable Function Approximation and Estimation
- Ian Wheeldon, University of California – Riverside, Understanding Nanostructured Reaction Pathways for Multi-Step Oxidation in Enzymatic Electrodes
- Nurcin Celik, University of Miami, DDDAMS-based Real-time Assessment and Control of Air Force Base Microgrids
- Yang Wang, Georgia Tech, Multi-Physics Coupled Wireless Antenna Sensor for Structural Health Monitoring
- Carmel Majidi, Carnegie Mellon University, Energy Harvesting for Soft-Matter Machines and Electronics
- Alan Wagner, Georgia Tech, Trust and Trustworthiness in Human-Robot Interaction: A formal conceptualization
- Nader Motee, Lehigh University, Compressive Feedback Control Design for Spatially Distributed Systems
- John Foster, University of Texas at San Antonio, Predictive simulation of material failure using peridynamics-advanced constitutive modeling, verification, and validation
- Lydia Contreras, University of Texas at Austin, Understanding Natural Response Mechanisms of Radiation-activated RNA Switches for Novel Sensing Technologies
- Kerri Cahoy, MIT, GEO Satellites as Space Weather Sensors