The National Science Foundation has awarded two Viterbi assistant professors with 2010 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards.
Andrea Hodge and Rahul Jain received these multi-year awards in recognition of their exemplary research, leadership and education.
Hodge, of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, was awarded a five-year, $500,000 grant fore “Exploring Nanoscale Growth Twins for the Development of Grain Boundary Engineering at the Nanoscale."
Andrea Hodge
The research project aims to further the field of materials development by studying how to improve nanostructured materials in terms of thermal stability and ductility.
A native of Medellin, Colombia, Hodge also received a two-year, $175,000 BRIGE award in 2008 to study magnetron sputtering and the processing of metallic thin films. Her general research focus is processing and mechanical behavior at the nano- and micro-scale of engineered materials.
Hodge received her Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University and her B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Jain, of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, received a five-year, $425,000 grant to study the role economic incentives play in the efficient and reliable operation of the Internet and Wireless infrastructure.
Entitled "Network Economics: Theory and Architectures for Incentive-Engineered Networks," his project aims to develop a methodology for systematic network architecture design, taking user and network provider incentives into account. The end goal is to potentially benefit existing wireless networks and the Internet by improving their quality of service, increasing their capacity and efficiency, and enhancing their reliability and commercial viability.
The research will combine ideas from mathematical economics, game theory, information and queueing theories.
Rahul Jain
Alexander A. (Sandy) Sawchuk, Systems Chair of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering congratulated Jain on his selection as a NSF CAREER awardee. “This award recognizes his research accomplishments in network architectures, modeling and analysis,” Sawchuk says.
A native of Chandigarh, India, Jain also received a three-year, $442,500 network science and engineering grant to study how best to enable sharing of wireless spectrum, such as the "white space" in TV broadcast bands among primary and secondary users. His general research focus is on analysis of communication networks and stochastic models that arise therein.
Jain received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences and an M.A. in statistics from UC Berkeley; an M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University; and a B.Tech in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He holds a courtesy appointment with the Viterbi School's Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
