Three Cornell faculty members have recently received National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Awards.
Andrew Myers, computer science, Anna Scaglinone, electrical and computer engineering and Johannes Gehrke, computer science, have received the NSF “Early Career Award” for their previous research, which provides each recipient with five year grants of about $350,000 to continue to their research.
The award is presented to new faculty members who have shown great promise in their early careers and who are likely to succeed in the future.
Myers has worked at Cornell since January 1999 and his research aims at “looking for ways to use the analysis of computer programs [to increase] protection.” Myers said that his research will benefit the government, military, private businesses and the everyday user by “keeping important information secret.”
“We are looking to provide not only stronger protection but also provable protection,” Myers noted.
Myers says that he is honored to win the award and be researching at Cornell. He will use the grant awarded by the NSF to continue research in this area as well as to develop new programs in Java programming language to improve security.
Scaglinone came to Cornell last July. She received her undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Rome in 1999.
Before coming to Cornell, Scaglinone worked as a researcher at University of Minnesota and an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico.
Her research deals with finding and maximizing solutions to the current problems associated with broadband wireless access.
“I proposed a new design [of a modem] to optimize broadband access and a new way of dealing with distortion and interference in wireless communication,” she explained.
Scaglione’s research has attracted attention of several companies interested in her design. “Wireless access should perform at the same level as an ethernet connection,” she said.
Yet, she noted that this is often not the case. “More sophisticated modems are needed to reach optimal efficiency,” Scaglione stated.
Scaglione will continue research in this area with the money she was awarded by the NSF. “I was thrilled [at receiving] this award,” she said.
Lastly, Johannes Gehrke, assistant professor of computer science, was awarded for his research on “data mining.” His research focuses on “the mechanisms by which computers can scan through large databases to note trends or oddities and present statistics about them or collect data on specific subcategories,” as reported by the Cornell Chronicle. Gehrke has been teaching at Cornell since August 1999.
Archived article by Jamie Yonks