RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Eight researchers from the University of California, Riverside have been awarded Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The CAREER award is one of NSF’s most prestigious awards. It supports promising assistant professors as they pursue outstanding research, excellence in education, and the integration of these activities.

Faculty members from UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering received five awards and faculty from the College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences received three. The 2017 projects and awardees are:

• Rational Design of Magnetic Materials Featuring Low-dimensional Subunits, by Boniface Fokwa, assistant professor of chemistry. Award amount: $604,000.
• Optoelectronic Probes of Interlayer Electron-hole Pair Multiplication in Atomic Layer Semiconductor Heterostructures, by Nathaniel Gabor, assistant professor of physics and astronomy. Award amount: $542,000.
• Beyond Conventional Drinking Water Management: Control of Redox-driven in situ Release of Accumulated Inorganic Contaminants from Water Distribution Infrastructure, by Haizhou Liu, assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering. Award amount: $512,000.
• Advanced Optical and Electrical Characterization of Novel Van der Waals Heterostructure Materials, by Ming Liu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. Award amount: $460,000.
• Empowering Attacker-centric Security Analysis of Network Protocols, by Zhiyun Qian, assistant professor of computer science and engineering. Award amount: $500,000.
• Printable and Injectable Chromatic Nanosensor for One-step, Naked-eye Detection, by Hideaki Tsutsui, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. Award amount: $500,000.
• High Order Structure-preserving Numerical Methods for Hyperbolic Conservation Laws, by Yulong Xing, assistant professor of mathematics. Award amount: $400,000.
• Development of Novel-scheme Nano-optical Chemical Imaging Spectroscopy, by Ruoxue Yan, assistant professor of chemical & environmental engineering. Award amount: $430,000.

Michael Pazzani, vice chancellor for research and economic development at UCR, said the awards demonstrate the caliber of research by junior faculty and their commitment to the educational mission of UCR. The university now has more active CAREER awards than any other public university in California, with 35 active awards.

“These researchers exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through their exceptional research, commitment to education, and integration of research and education in a way that supports UCR’s commitment to offering hands-on research experiences to undergraduate students. We are very proud of these scholars and we look forward to seeing how their projects develop over the coming years,” Pazzani said.