AFOSR awards grants to 42 scientists, engineers through Young Investigator Research Program

Air Force Office of Scientific Research Published May 27, 2020

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Air Force Office of Scientific Research, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory, today announced it will award approximately $19.2 million in grants to 42 scientists and engineers from 31 research institutions and businesses who submitted winning research proposals through the Air Force’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP). Seven of the 42 YIPs were awarded to Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) institutions, four funded by AFOSR and three funded by the Office of Under Secretary of Defense (OSD) Basic Research Office. The remaining 35 non DEPSCoR institution YIPs were funded by AFOSR.

The YIP is open to United States citizens and/or permanent residents’ who are scientists and engineers at United States research institutions who received Ph.D. or equivalent degrees in the last seven years and show exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research of military interests.

The objective of this program is to foster creative basic research in science and engineering, enhance early career development of outstanding young investigators, and increase opportunities for the young investigators to recognize the Air Force mission and the related challenges in science and engineering.

This year, AFOSR received over 220 proposals in response to the AFOSR YIP funding opportunity announcement (FOA) solicitation, FOA-AFRL-AFOSR-2019-0003. Forty-two YIPs were awarded in these research areas: Aerospace Materials for Extreme Environments, Agile Science for Test and Evaluation, Atomic and Molecular Physics, Biophysics, Complex Networks, Computational Mathematics, Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems, Dynamics Materials and Interactions, Dynamics and Control, Electromagnetics, Energy Combustion and Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics, GHz-THz Electronics and Materials, High Speed Aerodynamics, Human Performance and Biosystems, Laser and Optical Physics, Low Density Materials, Mechanics of Multifunctional Materials and Microsystems, Molecular Dynamics and Theoretical Chemistry, Multi-Scale Structural Mechanics and Prognosis, Natural Materials and Systems, Optimization and Discrete Mathematics, Optoelectronics and Physics, Organic Materials Chemistry, Quantum Electronic Solids, Quantum Information Sciences, Science of Information, Computation and Fusion, Space Power and Propulsion, Space Science, Trust and Influence, Ultrashort Pulse Laser-Matter Interactions, and Unsteady Aerodynamics and Turbulence Flows.

YIP recipients receive a three year grant totaling $450,000.

The following YIP recipients and their anticipated research areas are:

Dr. Fatemah Afghah, Northern Arizona University, Dynamic Data Driven Decision Making, Planning, and Communications in Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Networks for Disaster Management
Dr. Elaheh Ahmadi, University of Michigan, Investigation of Electron Transport in B-(AI, Ga)203 Thin Films and Heterostructures Under Applied High Pressures
Dr. Monica Allen, University of California San Diego, Direct Visualization of Topological Superconducting States in GHz Regime
Dr. Daniel Bediako, University of California Berkeley, Controlling Two-dimensional Spin Textures in Van der Waals Superlattices
Dr. Ryan Berke, Utah State University, High-Throughput Characterization of High Cycle Fatigue for Extreme Temperature Aerospace Applications
Dr. J. Boley, Boston University, 4D Printing Materials with Programmed Responsiveness and Stiffness for Multifunctional Adaptive Architectures
Dr. Katrina Bossert, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Terrestrial Influences on Space Weather due to Gravity Waves in the Arctic
Dr. Laura Bradley, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Processing Particle Assemblies into Functional Thin Films: Elucidating Mechanisms of Defect Formation
Dr. David Burghoff, University of Notre Dame, Microresonator Solitons in Quantum Cascade Lasers*
Dr. Xudong Chen, University of Colorado Boulder, Foundations of Ensemble Estimation Theory
Dr. Christopher Combs, University of Texas San Antonio, Investigation of the effects of ablation-induced distributed roughness on shock-wave/boundary-layer
Dr. Ryan Comes, Auburn University, Metastable Oxides for High-Mobility and Spin-Orbit 2D Electronics
Dr. Zachary Cordero, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shock Propagation through Architectured PrintCast Composites
Dr. Scott Cushing, California Institute of Technology, Ultrafast Ionic Hopping, Electron, and Phonon Correlations in Solid State Electrolytes
Dr. Mohammad Faghfoor Maghrebi, Michigan State University, Driven-dissipative architectures: New routes to Quantum Phases and Technologies
Dr. Mona Ghassemi, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Characterization, Multiphysics Modeling and Mitigation of Insulation Material Degradation and Breakdown
Dr. Hamed Hassani, University of Pennsylvania, Data Acquisition in Dynamic Environments: A Submodular Perspective
Dr. Benjamin Keitz, University of Texas at Austin, Microbial Patterning of Soft Materials
Dr. Ying Li, University of Connecticut, Deep Reinforcement Learning for de novo Thermosetting Polymer Design*
Dr. Justin Little, University of Washington, Rapid Optimization of Non-Equilibrium Plasmas using New Breakthroughs in Data Science
Dr. Alireza Marandi, California Institute of Technology, Simulton Frequency Combs: Quadratic Solitons for Generation of Few-Cycle Pulses in the Mid- and Long-Wave Infrared
Dr. Panagiotis Markopoulos, Rochester Institute of Technology, Theory and Efficient Algorithms for Dynamic and Robust L1-norm Analysis of Tensor Data
Dr. Kathryn Matlack, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Controlling Damage Mechanisms in Metamaterial Composites with Multiscale Interfaces
Dr. Jean-Michel Mongeau, Pennsylvania State University, Flying in an Uncertain World: Decoding Rules of Adaptive Neural Control in Insect Flight
Dr. Galan Moody, University of California Santa Barbara, Topological Data Analysis for Time Varying Image Data
Dr. Scott Niekum, University of Texas at Austin, Robot Learning from Demonstration with Auxiliary Contextual Data
Dr. Pedro Paredes Gonzalez, National Institute of Aerospace, Novel Concepts for Transition Delay in Hypersonic Boundary Layers and their Optimization
Dr. Fabio Pasqualetti, University of California Riverside, Data-Driven Control of Dynamical Networks: Fundamental Limitations, Algorithms, and Robustness Guarantees
Dr. Paris Perdikaris, University of Pennsylvania, Self-supervised Learning for Rapid Forecasting, Generalization, and Judicious Decision-making in Dynamic and Stochastic Environments
Dr. Megan Peters, University of California Riverside, Neural Computations and Information Flow Underlying Uncertainty Evaluation
Dr. Jinglei Ping, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Multiscale Electrical Mapping of Biosystems
Dr. Jedediah Pixley, Rutgers University, Emulating Twistronics and Beyond with Ultra-Cold Atoms
Dr. Brenda Rubenstein, Brown University, Stochastic Methods for Carbon Dioxide Catalysis
Dr. Maryam Shakiba, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, High-Temperature Polymer Matrix Composites Design through Sensitivity Analyses of Microstructures
Dr. Constantine Sideris, University of Southern California, Modeling and Inverse Design of Ultra-compact, Dynamically Programmable and Switchable Photonic Integrated Circuits
Dr. Takashi Tanaka, University of Texas at Austin, Information-geometric Path Planning
Dr. Aaron Towne, University of Michigan, Resolvent-based Estimation for Control of Turbulent Aerodynamic Flows
Dr. Alexandria Walsh, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, Optical Modulation of Cell Redox State
Dr. Meng Wang, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Cyber-resilient High-dimensional Data Analytics with Analytical Guarantees
Dr. Thomas Williams, Colorado School of the Mines, Calibrated Norm Violation Response in Human-Machine Teaming
Dr. Matthew Zahr, University of Notre Dame, Adaptive, Data-Driven Model Reduction and Machine Learning to Enable High-Fidelity, Many-Query Computational Physics*
Dr. Liuyan Zhao, University of Michigan, Realizing and Controlling Unconventional Magnetic Excitations in Non-Bravais Magnets

* OSD Funded YIP recipient formerly announced

+ OSD Funded YIP recipients were recently announced

For additional information on AFOSR YIP, send correspondence to Mrs. Ellen M. Robinson at AFOSRYIP@us.af.mil.