Three Cornell faculty members -- Salman Avestimehr, Peter Frazier and Kyle Shen -- are among this year's 38 winners of the Air Force Young Investigator Research Program.

The program, administered by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is open to U.S. scientists and engineers who have received a Ph.D. or equivalent in the last five years and have shown "exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research."

Avestimehr, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has been awarded $360,000 over three years to support his research on the impacts of local network-state information on the design of distributed communication networks for military applications. He plans to develop a unified framework to mathematically model local network views and investigate their impacts on information transfer in networks.

Frazier, assistant professor of operations research (OR) and information engineering, has received $360,000 over three years to explore decision-theoretic methods in simulation optimization. This OR field involves testing different courses of action by simulating them on a computer. For example, Frazier's research could identify which configuration of a hospital emergency room would be able to treat patients most effectively and efficiently.

Shen, assistant professor of physics, has received $700,000 over five years for a project on developing new superconductors in artificially engineered correlated materials. The approach will combine cutting-edge materials science through state-of-the-art oxide molecular beam epitaxy synthesis with advanced new tools.

This year the Air Force received 202 proposals in such areas as aerospace, chemical and materials sciences; physics and electronics; and mathematics, information and life sciences.