In supporting the next generation of researchers in defense-related disciplines, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has named three Cornell faculty members among its Young Faculty Award winners this year.

Chris Batten, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; Hadas Kress-Gazit, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering; and Julius Lucks, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, are among the 51 early-career faculty awarded $300,000 DARPA research grants for 2012.

Batten is exploring a new approach to designing hardware accelerators called complexity-effective vector specialization. This is based on a novel combination of the single-instruction multiple-threads architectural design pattern often used in graphics-processing units and scalar instruction specialization.

Kress-Gazit, co-director of the Cornell Autonomous Systems Lab, will continue her research into explaining failures and boosting success of high-level tasks in autonomous robotics.

Lucks leads research into cutting-edge RNA structure measurement technology for a platform for engineering RNA regulatory switches that can be used to create complex genetic networks inside living cells.