Eleven MIT faculty, including nine from the School of Engineering and two from the School of Science, were awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Fifteen additional MIT alumni were also honored.
Established in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, the PECASE is awarded to scientists and engineers “who show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers.” The latest recipients were announced by the White House on Jan. 14 under President Joe Biden. Fourteen government agencies recommended researchers for the award.
The MIT faculty and alumni honorees are among 400 scientists and engineers recognized for innovation and scientific contributions. Those from the School of Engineering and School of Science who were honored are:
Tamara Broderick, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), was nominated by the Office of Naval Research for her project advancing “Lightweight representations for decentralized learning in data-rich environments.”
Michael James Carbin SM ’09, PhD ’15, associate professor in the Department of EECS, was nominated by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for his CAREER award, a project that developed techniques to execute programs reliably on approximate and unreliable computation substrates.
Christina Delimitrou, the KDD Career Development Professor in Communications and Technology and associate Professor in the Department of EECS, was nominated by the NSF for her group’s work on redesigning the cloud system stack given new cloud programming frameworks like microservices and serverless compute, as well as designing hardware acceleration techniques that make cloud data centers more predictable and resource-efficient.
Netta Engelhardt, the Biedenharn Career Development Associate Professor of Physics, was nominated by the Department of Energy for her research on the black hole information paradox and its implications for the fundamental quantum structure of space and time.
Robert Gilliard Jr., the Novartis Associate Professor of Chemistry, was selected based the results generated from his 2020 National Science Foundation CAREER award entitled: “CAREER: Boracycles with Unusual Bonding as Creative Strategies for Main-Group Functional Materials.”
Heather Janine Kulik PD ’09, PhD ’09, the Lammot du Pont Professor of Chemical Engineering, was nominated by the NSF for her 2019 proposal entitled “CAREER: Revealing spin-state-dependent reactivity in open-shell single atom catalysts with systematically-improvable computational tools.”
Nuno Loureiro, professor in the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Physics, was nominated by the NSF for his work on the generation and amplification of magnetic fields in the universe.
Robert Macfarlane, associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was nominated by the Department of Defense (DoD)’s Air Force Office of Scientific Research. His research focuses on making new materials using molecular and nanoscale building blocks.
Ritu Raman, the Eugene Bell Career Development Professor of Tissue Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was nominated by the DoD for her ARO-funded research that explored leveraging biological actuators in next-generation robots that can sense and adapt to their environments.
Ellen Roche, the Latham Family Career Development Professor and associate department head in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was nominated by the NSF for her CAREER award, a project that aims to create a cutting-edge benchtop model combining soft robotics and organic tissue to accurately simulate the motions of the heart and diaphragm.
Justin Wilkerson, a visiting associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was nominated by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for his research primarily related to the design and optimization of novel multifunctional composite materials that can survive extreme environments.
Additional MIT alumni who were honored include: Ambika Bajpayee MNG ’07, PhD ’15; Katherine Bouman SM ’13, PhD ’17; Walter Cheng-Wan Lee ’95, MNG ’95, PhD ’05; Ismaila Dabo PhD ’08; Ying Diao SM ’10, PhD ’12; Eno Ebong ’99; Soheil Feizi- Khankandi SM ’10, PhD ’16; Mark Finlayson SM ’01, PhD ’12; Chelsea B. Finn ’14; Grace Xiang Gu SM ’14, PhD ’18; David Michael Isaacson PhD ’06, AF ’16; Lewei Lin ’05; Michelle Sander PhD ’12; Kevin Solomon SM ’08, PhD ’12; and Zhiting Tian PhD ’14.
