Ten Cornell researchers have been awarded Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) this year. NSF established the awards to emphasize the importance the foundation places on the early stages of academic careers dedicated to stimulating the discovery process, in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and enthusiastic learning.

Kavita Bala, assistant professor of computer science, received a five-year, $450,000 grant to create a more realistic computer-generated "virtual reality." Bala's approach will take advantage of the limitations of human perception, supplying the features that an observer will notice while ignoring others. The method will produce visually realistic images of scale-complex scenes that include indirect lighting, motion blur and light scattering.

Robert Kleinberg, assistant professor of computer science, received $400,000 over five years to develop algorithms (the underlying strategies on which computer programs are based) that can make the best possible decision in situations where all the variables are not known. Kleinberg's approach aims to discover decision-making procedures with provable performance guarantees, using what he calls the "power of agency", i.e., the decision-maker's ability to go out and collect the information it needs in order to improve its choices.

Aaron Wagner, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, with a grant of $400,000 over five years, will work on the way compression of such audio and video images as JPEGs and mp3 music files is handled in distributed networks, such as peer-to-peer file-sharing or wireless "mesh" networks where several users wirelessly share their Internet connections.

Sunil Bhave, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received $400,000 over five years to study dielectrically transduced MEMS resonators for communication and computation. The project proposal focuses on the key challenges for solid and liquid dielectrically transduced, high-quality factor radio-frequency resonators, including tuning methods, electrode optimization, substrate isolation and large array synchronization behavior.

Juan Hinestroza, assistant professor of fiber science, was awarded $400,000 over five years to explore ways to control the position of particles, with nanoscale precision, to enhance manufacturing and polymer processing industries and to lower costs. Expansion of the efforts could lead to development of anticounterfeiting devices to protect intellectual property and curtailing counterfeit of high-value goods.

Wilkins Aquino, assistant professor of civil engineering, won $465,000 over five years to develop an advanced simulation environment for modeling degradation of structures -- a key challenge that engineers face today. The research will focus on corrosion-induced damage processes in reinforced concrete.

David Putnam, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, received $400,000 over five years to investigate the predictive design of functional biomaterials, with an emphasis on bioadhesion. Putnam aims to create a library of polymer-based bioadhesives to correlate how their microscale composition correlates to their macroscale bioadhesive characteristics.

Adam Siepel, assistant professor of biological statistics and computational biology, won $647,000 over five years to work on new statistical models and algorithms for detecting genes, regulatory elements and other functional sequences in the human genome. Making use of comparative data from other mammals, Siepel will model and analyze both the evolution and function of these genomic sequences. A similar analysis will be performed for the fruitfly genome.

Garnet Chan, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, received $600,000 to expand his work on electronic structure of complex systems, in particular the development of polynomial time algorithms to solve the quantum many-particle problem.

Peng Chen, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, was awarded $550,000 to develop novel single-molecule spectroscopic methods, along with theoretical calculations, to study dynamic processes and chemical and physical properties of bioinorganic systems.