Three MIT faculty are among the 26 researchers awarded 2002 Young Investigator Program awards by the Office of Naval Research.
ONR's Young Investigator Program supports basic research by exceptional faculty at US universities who received a Ph.D. or equivalent degree within the last five years. Grants to their institutions provide up to $100,000 per year for three years; additional funds may be available for purchasing equipment related to the research.
Young Investigators are selected on the basis of prior professional achievement, the submission of a meritorious research proposal and evidence of strong support by their respective universities. This year there were a total of 260 proposals.
Faculty from MIT winning awards this year are:
Assistant Professor James A. Hansen of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences. Hansen will investigate the use of multi-model ensemble methods and their application to weather and climate predictions. According to the ONR, the research will lead to more accurate weather predictions with enormous savings in computer time.
Assistant Professor David J. Perreault of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems will investigate new design techniques for electrical filters and components and will explore the design of new components having greatly improved characteristics. The research will lead to reduced filter size, weight and cost for future electric distribution systems.
Assistant Professor Rahul Sarpeshkar of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Rahul is also affiliated with the Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Artificial Intelligence Lab. He will investigate biologically inspired electronics in order to create building blocks for future hybrid analog-digital computing. The research will provide neuroscientists with important new insights into the nature of neural computation.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 24, 2002.
