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2026 Young Investigator Award Recipients


Command, Control, Computing, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting (C5ISRT) (Code 31)

Dr. Farimah Farahmandi, University of Florida
Hardware Architectural Enhancements for Proactive Runtime Security in SoCs
Program Officer: Dr. Daniel Koller, Cyber Security and Complex Software Systems

Dr. Qiushi Guo, City University of New York (CUNY)
Integrated Lithium Niobate Nanophotonics for High-Rate, Low-Power RF Sensing and Edge Computing Limit
Program Officer: Dr. Trevor Snow, Electronic Warfare

Dr. Deepak Pathak, Carnegie Mellon University
Learning to Reason via Exploration in the Open World
Program Officer: Dr. Behzad Kamgar-Parsi, Computational Methods for Decision Making – Automated Image Understanding

Dr. Kiyoul Yang, Harvard University
Photonic Integration of Optical Lattice and Ultrafast Laser
Program Officer: Dr. Roberto Diener, Atomic, Molecular and Quantum Physics

Dr. Kenji Yasuda, Cornell University
Superlubric Sliding Ferroelectrics for Ultralow-Power Nonvolatile Memory
Program Officer: Dr. Daniel Gunlycke, Nanoscale Computing Devices and Systems

Ocean Battlespace Sensing (Code 32)

Dr. Wencheng Jin, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
Real-Time Forecasting of Coastal Hydro-morphodynamics During Extreme Events: A Machine Learning-Accelerated Approach
Program Officer: Dr. Reginald Beach, Littoral Geosciences and Optics

Dr. Yongsung Park, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Ocean Acoustic Field Prediction and Source Localization
Program Officer: Dr. Keith Davidson, Undersea Signal Processing

Dr. Lia Siegelman, University of California, San Diego
Impact of Ocean Submesoscales on Air-Sea Fluxes
Program Officer: Dr. Emily Shroyer, Physical Oceanography

Sea Warfare and Weapons (Code 33)

Dr. Natalie Larson, Stanford University
Multimaterial Additive Manufacturing of Helically Architected Metamaterials and Antennas
Program Officer: Dr. Charles Fisher, Materials & Processes for Additive Manufacturing

Dr. Negar Mehr, University of California, Berkeley
Coordinating with Less: Deciding When and What to Communicate via Theory of Mind
Program Officer: Ms. Christine Buzzell, Cooperative Autonomous Swarm Technology (CAST)

Dr. Xiaoyue Ni, Duke University
Digitally Reprogrammable Soft Composites for Adaptive Fluid-Structure Interactions
Program Officer: Dr. Yin Lu (Julie) Young, Hydrodynamics, Hydroacoustics and Complex Flow-Structure Interactions

Dr. Carlos Portela, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Multiphase 3D Micro-Architected Composites for Programmable Extreme Performance
Program Officer: Dr. Chakrapani Varanasi, Extraordinary Materials for Extreme Conditions

Dr. Logan Wright, Yale University
Neural Scaling Laws of Physical Neural Networks and Physical Inverse Design
Program Officer: Ms. Sarwat Chappell, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning for Photonics, Power & Energy, Atmospherics, and Quantum Science

Warfighter Performance (Code 34)

Dr. Erdem Biyik, University of Southern California
Learning Dexterous Robot Hand Behaviors from Multimodal Human Feedback
Program Officer: Dr. Thomas McKenna, Cognitive Science for Human Machine Teaming

Dr. Mark Ho, New York University
Assessing and Optimizing Mental Model Fluency
Program Officer: LCDR Michael Natali, PhD, Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education Information Sciences (MPTE-IS)

Dr. Emma Lejeune, Boston University
Digital Twins of the Brain: Personalized Modeling, Prediction, and Mitigation of Injury
Program Officer: Dr. Timothy Bentley, Naval Force Health Protection

Dr. Shubhra Kanti Karmaker, University of Central Florida
Rapid Holistic Summarization for Decision Superiority in Urgent Scenarios
Program Officer: Ms. Natalie Steinhauser, Naval Strike Group Training and Assessment

Dr. William Stewart, Stony Brook University
Using Anarchistic Science to Elucidate Autogyro Design Principles
Program Officer: Dr. Michael Qin, Naval Cybernetics

Naval Air Warfare and Weapons (Code 35)

Dr. Hisham K. Ali, University of Colorado, Boulder
Magnetoaerodynamically Enhanced Flight Capabilities for Hypersonic Vehicles
Program Officer: Dr. Eric Marineau, Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics, High-Speed Propulsion and Materials Program

Dr. James Braun, North Carolina State University
Characterization and Tuning of the Convective, Conductive, and Radiative Heat Flux in Rotating Detonation Combustors
Program Officer: Dr. David Gonzalez, Power, Propulsion and Thermal Management

Dr. Or Dantsker, Indiana University
A Robust Development Framework for Rapidly Manufacturable, Modular, Multi-Agent, Attritable UAV Systems
Program Officer: Dr. Pranav Shah, Aero S&T of Cost-Efficiency & Capabilities in Naval Domain (ASCEND)

Dr. Md Jahidul Islam, University of Florida
Autonomy Learning from Heterogeneous Experiences (ALEX)
Program Officer: Mr. Marc Steinberg, Science of Autonomy

Dr. Sichen Yuan, University of Alabama
Advancing High Power Microwave Systems with Optimal Structural Development of Lightweight, Deployable and Reconfigurable Cable-Network Mesh Reflector Antennas for Harsh Military Environments
Program Officer: Mr. Ryan Hoffman, Directed Energy Weapons: High Power Microwaves