COLLEGE STATION -- Five faculty in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University have received the prestigious NSF CAREER Award for career development. Dr. Michael Bevan, assistant professor of chemical engineering; Dr. Yu Ding, assistant professor of industrial engineering; Dr. Andreas Klappenecker, assistant professor of computer science; Dr. Scott Socolofsky, assistant professor of civil engineering; and Dr. Xi Zhang, assistant professor of electrical engineering all received CAREER grants totaling $2 million. In addition, Dr. Sam Brody, an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning in the Texas A&M College of Architecture, received a CAREER Award for research to be conducted through the Texas Engineering Experiment Station. Each grant was for $400,000 and will continue through 2009. The NSF CAREER awards are given to junior faculty members for their career-development and teaching activities, highlighting them as upcoming academic leaders in the 21st century. Awardees must include plans for teaching and research in their applications for CAREER grants. "The National Science Foundation CAREER Award is prestigious recognition for young faculty members, and we are very pleased to have not one, but five being recognized in the Look College this year," said Dr. G. Kemble Bennett, Texas A&M vice chancellor and dean of engineering. "This reflects very positively on the quality of our academic programs and indicates a bright future, as well." Bevan joined the Texas A&M Department of Chemical Engineering in August 2002. Bevan’s research involves measurement of colloidal interactions, dynamics and structure relevant to a variety of complex phenomena. To probe a broad range of length, time and energy scales, Bevan’s research group uses microscopy techniques to directly measure interactions in colloidal systems near interfaces, and scattering methods to study phase behavior and structure. Bevan holds bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry from Lehigh University and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Ding came to Texas A&M in August 2001. His research focuses on the optimal utilization of complex sensing systems for improving the quality of products, processes and services. Ding received a bachelor’s degree in precision engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (Hefei, China); a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University; a second master’s degree in precision instruments from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China); and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. Klappenecker came to Texas A&M University in 1999 as a visiting assistant professor of mathematics and joined the Department of Computer Science in 2000. His research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, particularly quantum algorithms; signal and image processing; and cryptography. Klappenecker was named fellow-at-large of the Santa Fe Institute in 2000. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Karlsruhe in Germany in 1998. Socolofsky joined the Texas A&M civil engineering faculty in January 2003. His research interests are in the areas of environmental fluid mechanics, multiphase flow, direct ocean carbon sequestration and shallow flow stability. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil, environmental and architectural engineering from the University of Colorado and master’s and Ph.D. degrees in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For more, see Zhang’s current research interests are in the design, modeling and performance analysis of protocols and systems for multicast and unicast computer communications over wired and wireless networks supporting quality-of-service guarantees; information theory; statistical communication theory; random signal processing; and distributed computer-control systems. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the Association for Computing Machinery. Zhang received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Xidian University (Xi’an, China); a master’s degree from Lehigh University, all in electrical engineering and computer science; and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, in electrical engineering and computer science (EE-Systems). Brody’s research interests are in the areas of environmental planning, coastal sustainability, ecosystem management, and geographic information systems. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College, a master’s degree from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
