National Science Foundation CAREER Awards

National Science Foundation (NSF) Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards are among the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education in their work.

The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a National Science Foundation-wide program that offers awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

The following Clark School faculty have been recognized with National Science Foundation Faculty Young Investigator/Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards:

2026 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Lin Cheng Mechanical Engineering	Enabling single-step Additive manufacturing of ceramics via laser-triggered flash sintering and scientific artificial intelligence-based multiscale modeling

Winner

Award

Lin Cheng

Mechanical Engineering

Enabling single-step Additive manufacturing of ceramics via laser-triggered flash sintering and scientific artificial intelligence-based multiscale modeling

2025 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Hannah Zierdan Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Using bacterial vesicles to improve women’s reproductive health
	Huertas Cerdeira Mechanical Enginneering	Biomimetic caudal fins for elucidating flow mechanics that lead to optimal engineered propeller performance
	Kaiqing Zhang Electrical & Computer Engineering	Theoretical Foundations of Multi-agent Learning in Dynamic Environments

Winner

Award

2024 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Avik Dutt Mechanical Engineering	Nanophotonic synthetic dimensions for scalable analog Hamiltonian simulators and sensing
	Jenna Mueller Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Studying biophysical properties of the cervix to engineer models of cervical dysplasia
	Sahil Shah Electrical and Computer Engineering	Exploring Mixed-Signal Computation for Energy-Efficient and Robust Brain-Machine Interfaces
	Sanghamitra Dutta Electrical and Computer Engineering	Information-Theoretic Measures for Fairness and Explainability in High-Stakes Applications
	Cheng Gong Electrical and Computer Engineering	Multiferroicity in van der Waals Heterostructures

2023 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Erika Moore Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Engineering Extracellular Matrix Ligands for Macrophage Control
	Eleonora Tubaldi Mechanical Engineering	Reconfigurable Dynamic Metamaterials Interacting with Flowing Fluids

Winner

Award

Erika Moore

Fischell Department of Bioengineering

Engineering Extracellular Matrix Ligands for Macrophage Control

Eleonora Tubaldi

Mechanical Engineering

Reconfigurable Dynamic Metamaterials Interacting with Flowing Fluids

2022 Winners

	Winner	Award
	You Zhou Materials Science and Engineering	Crystalizing electrons in coupled atomically thin semiconductors
	Kevin Daniels Electrical and Computer Engineering	Real-Time, Selective Gas Sensing in Complex Gas Compositions by Molecular Sieving via Robust Two-Dimensional Heterostructures
	Christoph Brehm Aerospace Engineering	High-Speed Boundary Layer Transition on Realistic Non-Smooth Surfaces
	Allison Reilly Civil and Environmental Engineering	Strengthening US Infrastructure and Communities through Science-Informed Disaster Policy and Engineering Civic Engagement

2021 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Taylor Woehl Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Single Particle Visualization of Chemical Processes During Multimetallic Nanocrystal Synthesis
	Chen Zhang Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	A New Paradigm for Creating Silica Membranes from Polymer Hollow Fiber Templates
	Katharina Maisel Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Deciphering the nanoparticle-lymphatic vessel interface for modulating immunity
	Katrina Groth Mechanical Engineering	Modernizing Risk Assessment Through Systematic Integration of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) and Prognostics and Health Management (PHM)
	Shelby Bensi Civil and Environmental Engineering	Transcending Barriers between Natural Hazard Researchers, Educators, and Practitioners - An Integrative Approach to Multi-Hazard Probabilistic Assessment
	Gregg Duncan Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Extracellular Barriers to Adeno-Associated Viral Gene Therapy

2020 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Ryan Sochol Mechanical Engineering, Fischell Department of Bioengineering	High-Aspect-Ratio Multi-Material Three-Dimensional Microstructures via Microfluidic Direct Laser Writing
	Mark Fuge Mechanical Engineering, Institute for Systems Research	Learning Design Representations: The Effect of Differential Geometric Manifolds on the Inference of Design Structure
	Kimberly Stroka Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Form, Function, and Mechanics of Cell-Cell Junctions in the Heterogeneous Vascular Endothelium
	Giuliano Scarcelli Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Light-sheet Brillouin microscopy for mechanical analysis of tissue morphogenesis

2019 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Yasser Shoukry†	Decision Procedures for High-Assurance, AI-Controlled, Cyber-Physical Systems

2018 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Steven M. Jay Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Mechanistic Investigations to Enable Rationally Designed Biomanufacturing of Mesenchymal Stem Cell Exosomes
	Jin-Oh Hahn Mechanical Engineering, Institute for Systems Research	Enabling "White-Box" Autonomy in Medical Cyber-Physical Systems
	Stuart Laurence Aerospace Engineering	Effects of thermal nonequilibrium on the acoustic noise radiated by a compressible turbulent boundary layer
	Hosam Fathy Mechanical Engineering	Identifiability Optimization in Electrochemical Battery Systems

2017 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Akua A. Asa-Awuku Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Toward an Understanding of Secondary Aerosol Formation, Particle ageing in Droplets, and Cloud Processing
	Charalampos Papamanthou Electrical and Computer Engineering	Towards Practical Systems for Trustworthy Cloud Computing

Winner

Award

Akua A. Asa-Awuku

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Toward an Understanding of Secondary Aerosol Formation, Particle ageing in Droplets, and Cloud Processing

Charalampos Papamanthou

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Towards Practical Systems for Trustworthy Cloud Computing

2016 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Michael Gollner Fire Protection Engineering, Mechanical Engineering	Understanding the Mechanisms of Wildland Fire Spread (Non-Academic Research Internships for Graduate Students (INTERN) Supplement)
	Anya R. Jones Aerospace Engineering, Maryland Robotics Center	Flow Physics of Aerodynamic Forcing in Unsteady Environments
	Behtash Babadi Electric and Computer Engineering	Deciphering Brain Function Through Dynamic Sparse Signal Processing
	Jeremy Munday†	Integrated Research and Education on Hot Carrier Effects in Plasmonics
	Piya Pal Electrical and Computer Engineering†	Smart-Sampling and Efficient Prior-aware Inference for High Dimensional Signals

2015 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Silvina Matysiak Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Combining Research and Education via the Exploration of Peptide-Lipid
	Johan Larsson Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Non-equilibrium wall-bounded turbulent flows at high Reynolds numbers
	Dana Dachman-Soled Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research	Non-Black-Box Cryptography: Defending Against and Benefiting from Access to Code

Winner

Award

2014 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Dongxia Liu Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Surface Crystallization of Reactive Oxygen Permeable Hydroxyapatite-Based Membranes for Direct Methane Oxidative Conversion
	Baoxia Mi Civil and Environmental Engineering†	Graphene-enabled Synthesis and Surface Modification of Water Separation Membranes
	Christopher Jewell Fischell Department of Bioengineering	Dissecting the Role of Biomaterials in Lymph Nodes to Study and Shape Immunity
	Michael Rotkowitz Electric and Computer Engineering	Decentralization and Parsimony for Implementable Control of Massively Interconnected Systems
	Stanislav I. Stoliarov Fire Protection Engineering	Understanding Flammability of Charring Polymers

2013 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Yu Chen Fischell Department of Bioengineering†	Multi-scale Imaging of Neural Interconnects using MRI-compatible Parallel Photonic Needle Interface

Winner

Award

Yu Chen

Fischell Department of Bioengineering†

Multi-scale Imaging of Neural Interconnects using MRI-compatible Parallel Photonic Needle Interface

2012 Winners

	Winner	Award
	Lei Zhang Civil and Environmental Engineering	Reliability as an Emergent Property of Transportation Networks
	Jeffery Klauda Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering	Secondary Active Membrane Transporters: Determining Protein Structure and Transport Mechanisms with a New Hybrid Simulation
	Oded Rabin Materials Science and Engineering, Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics	Plasmonics with a Twist-Chiral Nanostructures for Advanced Spectroscopy
	Ian White Fischell Department of Bioengineering	PaperBased Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Using Inkjet Fabricated Device

Faculty Awardees in prior years

Pamela Abshire, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Ella Atkins, Aerospace Engineering†
Helim Aranda-Espinoza, Fischell Department of Bioengineering
Ella Atkins, Aerospace Engineering†
Ilias Balaras, Mechanical Engineering
Rajeev Barua, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Jennifer Becker, Biological Resources Engineering
Shuvra Bhattacharyya, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Steven G. Buckley, Mechanical Engineering
John Cumings, Materials Science and Engineering
Michel Cukier, Mechanical Engineering and Institute for Systems Research
Jaydev Desai, Mechanical Engineering
Donald DeVoe, Mechanical Engineering
Sheryl Ehrman, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
John Fisher, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Alison Flatau, Aerospace Engineering
Manoj Franklin, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Reza Ghodssi, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Romel Gomez, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Satyandra Kumar Gupta, Mechanical Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Jeffrey Hollingsworth*
Timothy Horiuchi, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Adam Hsieh, Fischell Department of Bioengineering
Bruce Jacob, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Peter Keleher, Electrical and Computer Engineering**
Richard La, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
K. J. Ray Liu, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Andre Marshall, Aerospace Engineering, Fire Protection Engineering
Nuno Martins, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Thomas E. Murphy, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Derek Paley, Aerospace Engineering
Darryll J. Pines, Aerospace Engineering
Linda Schmidt, Mechanical Engineering
Ray Sedwick, Aerospace Engineering
Joonil Seog, Materials Science and Engineering, Fischell Department of Bioengineering
Benjamin Shapiro, Aerospace Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Elisabeth Smela, Mechanical Engineering
Santiago Solares, Mechanical Engineering
David B. Stewart, Electrical and Computer Engineering**
V. S. Subrahamanian, Institute for Systems Research
Peter Sunderland, Fire Protection Engineering
Ichiro Takeuchi, Materials Science and Engineering
Leandros Tassiulas, Electrical and Computer Engineering**
Sennur Ulukus, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute for Systems Research
Edo Waks, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Norman M. Wereley, Aerospace Engineering
Min Wu, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies
Donald Yeung, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Miao Yu, Mechanical Engineering

*CMPS faculty affiliated with Electrical and Computer Engineering
**no longer affiliated with Electrical and Computer Engineering
†no longer affiliated with UMCP