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2021 Young Investigator Award Recipients
- Dr. Michael Bartlett, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Bio-Inspired Distributed Sensing Networks for Wearable Situational Awareness Enhancement
Program Officer: Dr. Reginald Beach, Littoral Geosciences and Optics
- Dr. David Burghoff, University of Notre Dame
Frequency Comb Ptychoscopy: Imaging Beyond the Resolution-Delay Limit
Program Officer: Dr. Benjamin Conley, EO/IR Sensors and Sensor Processing
- Dr. Xiang Chen, University of California, Los Angeles
Knowledge Extraction from Human Interaction with AI
Program Officer: Dr. Jeffrey Morrison, Command Decision Making (CDM)
- Dr. Alvin Cheung, University of California, Berkeley
A Framework for Automatic Leveraging of Trusted Execution Environments
Program Officer: Dr. Sam Weber, Cyber Security and Complex Software Systems
- Dr. Chelsea Finn, Stanford University
Flexible Vision-Based Robotic Manipulation via Meta-Learning and Deep Reinforcement Learning
Program Officer: Mr. Marc Steinberg, Science of Autonomy
- Dr. Yao Fu, University of Cincinnati
Microstructural Effects on the Environmental-Assisted Cracking of Advanced Manufactured Stainless Steels in Marine Environment
Program Officer: Dr. Airan Perez, Corrosion Control Science and Technology
- Dr. Wei Gao, California Institute of Technology
Investigation of Sweatomics in Stress Response Using Wearable Biosensors
Program Officer: Dr. Laura Kienker, Stress Response
- Dr. Stephanie Gil, Harvard University
Decision Making in Heterogenous Multi-Agent Systems with Misinformation and Sparse Communication
Program Officer: Mr. Marc Steinberg, Science of Autonomy
- Dr. Ashutosh Giri, University of Rhode Island
Unraveling the Microscopic Dynamics of Coupled Energy States in Nanostructures
Program Officer: Dr. Mark Spector, Thermal Sciences
- Dr. Negin Golrezaei, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Finding a Needle in a Haystack: Utilizing Structures and Predictive Information in Online Optimization
Program Officer: Dr. David Phillips III, Mathematical and Resource Optimization
- Dr. Grace Gu, University of California, Berkeley
Machine Learning for Rational Design of Impact Resistant Composites
Program Officer: Dr. Anisur Rahman, Aerospace Structures and Materials
- Dr. Carmen Guerra-Garcia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Transient Corona Discharges for Ignition and Flameholding in an Afterburner Environment
Program Officer: Dr. Steven Martens, Power, Propulsion and Thermal Management
- Dr. Kentaro Hara, Stanford University
Surface Breakdown and Plasma Formation in Cross-Field High Power Microwave Sources
Program Officer: Mr. Ryan Hoffman, Directed Energy Weapons: High Power Microwaves
- Dr. Eric Jacques, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Spatiotemporal Characterization of Large-scale Detonation Based Combustion of Reactive Metal-Gas Mixtures
Program Officer: Dr. Chad Stoltz, Energetic Materials (EM)
- Dr. Joseph Jewell, Purdue University
Detailed Investigation of Hypersonic Instability, Breakdown, and Natural Transition Under Quiet Flow with Simulated Ablation-Gas I
Program Officer: Dr. Eric Marineau, Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics, High-Speed Propulsion and Materials
- Dr. Rehan Kapadia, University of Southern California
Direct Generation of Electromagnetic Radiation with a Compact, Air-Stable, Optically Modulated Electron Emitter
Program Officer: Mr. Ryan Hoffman, Directed Energy Weapons: High Power Microwaves
- Dr. Jason Lee, Princeton University
Foundations of Deep Learning: Stochastic Gradient Descent and Beyond
Program Officer: Dr. Predrag Neskovic, Mathematical Data Science
- Dr. Eli Levenson-Falk, University of Southern California
Creating an Open Quantum Systems Engineering Toolkit with Superconducting Qubits
Program Officer: Dr. Roberto Diener, Quantum Information Science
- Dr. Sophia Merrifield, University of California San Diego
Collaborative Sensing of the Ocean-Atmosphere Interface
Program Office: Dr. Daniel Eleuterio, Marine Meteorology and Space
- Dr. Tanushree Mitra, University of Washington
Influencing Communities and Narratives: New Techniques for Understanding Adversarial Influence Online
Program Officer: Dr. Rebecca Goolsby, Social Networks and Computational Social Science
- Dr. Aeriel Murphy-Leonard, Ohio State University
Systematic Study on Slip Activity and Plastic Strain Accumulation in Wire-Arc Additive Manufactured Nickel-Aluminum-Bronze Alloys
Program Officer: Dr. William Mullins, Computer-Aided Materials Design (CAMD)
- Dr. Robert Nawrocki, Purdue University
Flexible and Biocompatible, Organic Electronics Spiking Neuromorphic Computing
Program Officer: Dr. Thomas McKenna, Cognitive Science for Human Machine Teaming
- Dr. Andy Nieto, Naval Post Graduate School
Functionally Graded Cold Sprayed Hybrid Coatings for Multi-Material Structural Repair and Wear Protection
Program Officer: Dr. Anisur Rahman, Aerospace Structures and Materials
- Dr. Cameron Nowzari, George Mason University
The Cycle of Emergence: Structure, Agency, and the Environment
Program Officer: Dr. Michael Qin, Expeditionary Robotics: Automation, Autonomic, and Autonomy
- Dr. Derek Olson, Naval Postgraduate School
The Structure of Complex Seafloor Environments: Acoustic Remote Sensing and Inference
Program Officer: Dr. Kyle Becker, Ocean Acoustics
- Dr. Brennan Phillips, University of Rhode Island
Ultralight, Economical, and Adaptable Solutions for Deep-Sea UUVs And Distributed Sensing Using Fiber-Optic Tethers Program Officer: Dr. Michael Traweek, Maritime Sensing
- Dr. Brett Savoie, Purdue University
Understanding the Atomic to Mesoscale Gap in Li-Ion Battery Failure with Reactive Coarse-Graining Methodologies
Program Officer: Dr. Michele Anderson, Electrochemical Materials
- Dr. Theresa Saxton-Fox, University of Illinois
Measurements of Turbulent Boundary Layers with Adverse Pressure Gradients and Curvature
Program Officer: Dr. Peter Chang, Hydrodynamics Related to Ships/Submarines
- Dr. Leslie Schoop, Princeton University
New Functionalities in New 2D Materials: Chemically Exfoliated 2D Crystals
Program Officer: Dr. Ian Appelbaum, Nanoscale Computing Devices and Systems
- Dr. Jonathan Singer, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Microporous Nanocomposite Multifunctional Carbon Fiber Composites
Program Officer: Dr. Anisur Rahman, Aerospace Structures and Materials
- Dr. Zachary Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Molecularly Precise Gas Separations through Site-Specific Membrane Design
Program Officer: Dr. Sandra Chapman, Undersea Medicine & Performance
- Dr. Somayeh Sojoudi, University of California, Berkeley
High-performance Computational Methods for Nonlinear Machine Learning Problems
Program Officer: Dr. Behzad Kamgar-Parsi, Machine Learning, Reasoning and Intelligence
- Dr. Mohamed Soliman, Oklahoma State University
A Fragility-Based Approach Supporting Enhanced Resilience of Manned and Unmanned Surface Vessels Under Uncertain Demand
Program Officer: Dr. Paul Hess, Ship System Reliability and Resiliency
- Dr. Qiming Wang, University of Southern California
Harnessing Microorganisms to Synthesize Bionic Composites with Ordered Microstructures
Program Officer: Dr. Laura Kienker, Biomaterials and Bionanotechnology
- Dr. Sihong Wang, University of Chicago
Rubbery, Multimodal-Sensorized and Neuromorphic-Computing E-Skin for Intelligent Soft Robots
Program Officer: Dr. Thomas McKenna, Cognitive Science for Human Machine Teaming
- Dr. Meagan Wengrove, Oregon State University
Bottom-mounted Fiber-Optic Sensing of Nearshore Hydrodynamics
Program Officer: Dr. Fletcher Blackmon, Maritime Sensing
- Dr. Sanfeng Wu, Princeton University
Charge-Neutral Quantum Excitations and Devices Based on 2D Topological Crystals
Program Officer: Dr. Ian Appelbaum, Nanoscale Computing Devices and Systems
- Dr. Saeed Zeinolabedinzadeh, Arizona State University
Distributed Millimeter-wave Cooperative Beam Forming Arrays
Program Officer: Dr. Tommy Willis, Precision Navigation and Timekeeping
- Dr. Bo Zhen, University of Pennsylvania
Nonlinear Topological Photonics
Program Officer: Dr. Antti Makinen, Nano-engineered Materials
