Oregon State University

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Earth’s surface is composed of numerous rigid ‘plates’ that move with the flow of a highly viscous interior mantle. Individual plate movements can be determined if their past motions are compared to a fixed source on Earth, such as so-called “mantle hotspots”. These hotspots are generated by mantle plumes, large thermo-chemical uprisings of material that originate on or near the core-mantle boundary. These upwellings of hot material can produce volcanism on Earth’s surface that remains relatively stationary while plates move over them, generating chains of compositionally distinct volcanoes that are progressively older the further they are from the hotspot. This work, through tracing ages, compositions, and morphologies of several poorly-documented volcanic chains, seeks to better understand the timing and drivers of global scale plate reorganization events that took place in the Mid-Cretaceous (120-80 Ma). The target locations include the Liliuokalani Ridge, Hess Rise and Mid-Pacific Mountains in the Central Pacific region. The team will be able to test whether the features were built by mantle plumes that are currently underlying the Northern French Polynesia region. The combined age and chemistry results will then be used to constrain the timing of a major plate reorganization event at ca. 100 Ma. This project supports three early-career scientists, two PhD, and one MSc student. In addition, the seagoing expedition will include eight undergraduate research participants from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and California State University, Long Beach. The project involves a 31-day seagoing expedition to dredge seamounts, ridges and rises within and near Hess Rise and the Mid-Pacific Mountains. In addition, the team will analyze basalts recovered on NOAA-Ocean Exploration and Research expeditions from Karin Ridge and samples from an upcoming E/V Nautilus expedition to the Liliuokalani Seamounts. Onshore work will include obtaining 40Ar/39Ar age determinations and geochemical tracers (major and trace elements; Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf isotopes) from representative lava flows. These new samples and comprehensive datasets will allow for the testing of the following hypotheses: H1) The Liliuokalani Seamounts and Hess Rise were formed by the Marquesas Mantle Plume. H2) The Pitcairn Mantle Plume is the primary source of the Karin Ridge and Mid-Pacific Mountains. H3) The Mid-Pacific Mountains record the timing and orientation of Cretaceous plate motion changes. H4) The structure of the Mid-Pacific Mountains and Hess Rise are controlled by plume – (distal) ridge interaction through the generation of asthenospheric melt channels. Testing these hypotheses will lead to an improved understanding of mantle plume dynamics and ‘bottom-up’ controls on oceanic geomorphology and large igneous province construction. Furthermore, mapping the long-lived expressions of mantle plumes allows for unparalleled insight into the mantle source reservoirs that feed hotspot volcanism. The combination of geo-chronology, chemistry and morphology will allow for a significantly improved Pacific absolute plate motion model during the Cretaceous Normal Superchron (122-83 Ma). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

The project supports a workshop addressing the rigor and reproducibility of research conducted in the area of electrocatalysis. Electrocatalysis research has ramped up significantly in recent years as related to energy-efficient manufacture of fuels and chemicals. The workshop is led by Dr. Eric Stuve of the University of Washington, with co-organizers Ezra Clark (Pennsylvania State University) and Liney Arnadottir (Oregon State University). More than 50 experts from the academic community will convene at the University of Washington campus in Seattle on July 8-10, 2025 to determine how research in electrocatalysis can meet the highest standards of scientific inquiry. The participants will include senior, junior, and student researchers from both large and small research groups. Workshop outcomes will be widely disseminated within the research community via a report to NSF and an article in a high-impact catalysis journal. Electrocatalysis is a broad research area of fundamental importance in developing new technologies in clean energy and electrosynthesis. Two key examples are production of green hydrogen by using renewable electricity for electrolysis of water, and electroreduction of CO2 into valuable chemicals and fuels. To support researchers in these critical areas, there is a need for better standards for water oxidation and oxygen evolution, CO2 reduction, hydrogen oxidation, general electrochemical experimental procedures,and analysis of results. The Workshop on Rigor and Reproducibility in Electrocatalysis will examine how research in electrocatalysis can meet the highest standards of scientific inquiry. The primary goals of the Workshop are: 1. Identify, evaluate, and codify practices and expectations for conducting and reporting rigorous and reproducible research in electrocatalysis, 2. Strengthen the caliber of electrocatalysis research through exchange of scientific ideas among researchers, and 3. Foster relationships that promote professional development of current researchers and recruiting of new students to the field. The planned topics of discussion are: (1) electrocatalyst preparation and characterization; (2) electrochemical kinetics; (3) best practices, education, and professional development, (4) spectroscopies and operando analysis; and (5) microkinetics, theory, and benchmarking. The workshop will be conducted over two and one-half days, consisting of four half-day sessions devoted to each topic and a final half-day session to prepare recommendations related to technical challenges and workforce development. The Workshop promises to make a substantial impact on electrocatalysis research, both in strengthening the findings of current and near-future research efforts and by laying the groundwork for coordinated longer-term research to address the concomitant needs of science and technology. The final report will provide guidelines for experiment design, measurements, and benchmarks, recommendations for comprehensive data analysis, and standards for preparing and reviewing publications. Well-defined concepts in electrocatalysis rigor and reproducibility will also inform preparation of research proposals and their review by funding agencies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

The California Borderlands is a submerged region directly west of Southern California and Baja Mexico. The region is unusual for its multiple basins (500-200 m deep) and ridges (some reach the surface and form the Channel Islands). It has experienced faulting, rotation, and volcanism over the past 30 million years while the approximate 1200 km tectonic boundary along the western limit of the North American tectonic plate transitioned from a subduction to a strike-slip orientation. It is not well understood why significant faulting, rotation, volcanism, and the formation of a new triple junction are localized to the region off southern California and northern Baja. This project seeks to understand what caused the California Borderlands volcanism and how it is related to a change from subduction to strike-slip. Broader impacts include research opportunities for multiple graduate and undergraduate students, collaborations with world-class analytical facilities, and outreach to K-12 schools. The goals of the project are to (1) investigate volcanic and tectonic processes not readily explained by standard plate boundary or hotspot dynamics. (2) Mentor and train California State University Long Beach undergraduate and graduate students in ocean and geosciences. (3) Inspire and motivate a new generation of STEM professionals in the K-12 Norwalk School District. The PI proposes to define the timing and geochemical character of volcanic activity associated with processes uniquely recorded in the Borderland area off the coast of southern California that include the subduction of spreading centers and the transitioning from a subduction to transform boundary. While the unique geology of this submerged region records these rarely observed events, the limited temporal and geochemical constraints currently available lack coverage required to characterize these complex tectonic events via their resulting volcanic feedbacks. Here the PI presents a new regional tectonic model based on modern kinematics that indicate the Borderland region would have been affected by ridge-trench interaction at 30 Ma and 18 Ma. This proposal seeks to analyze previously retrieved seafloor volcanic samples to test the predictive consequences of the new tectonic model. This project will make use of these and other valuable samples from this area to answer transformative questions about the volcanic response prior to, during and after a plate boundary transition. The project will also train undergraduate student scientists from California State University Long Beach. The scientific work is ideal for supporting multiple undergraduate and graduate researchers because it scales from observations and detailed characterization of igneous rocks to more advanced procedures of chemical analyses. The program is designed to increase retention through the implementation of a longer term (one and half years as compared to a typical summer research experience) intensive mentorship program utilizing the cohort model. The proposed research and education activities are synergetic because they will (1) use the entirety of the proposed research as both undergraduate and graduate research projects (2) recruit graduate students from the undergraduate research program (3) incorporate weekly lab meetings to discuss research progress while also building a support network and providing mentorship. The undergraduate researchers supported by the PI will visit several local K-12 schools as community scientists to engage students and serve as role models striving for STEM careers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

Nearly one-third of the global population experiences unreliable electricity access, and a U.S. Department of Energy report estimated that the total cost of power outages to American businesses is around $150 billion every year. As power grid simulations grow in complexity and scale, there is an urgent need for more efficient computational models to meet real-time decision-making demands. Traditional simulation approaches struggle to parallelize efficiently, especially for large systems like the Eastern Interconnection with over 70,000 buses. The emergence of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and artificial intelligence (AI) models offers promising alternatives for accelerating complex simulations. The main idea is to train neural network surrogates of numerical models, and once pre-trained, the networks can generate simulations with much faster speed and efficient scaling. This project develops a novel AI-surrogate enhanced cyberinfrastructure for accelerating power grid simulations. The resulting framework will lower barriers for power grid engineers to adopt AI surrogates, enabling interdisciplinary research and education between power systems and computer science domains. The project will deliver three key innovations: (1) program-behavior analysis to identify optimal code regions for AI surrogate replacement; (2) semi-automatic AI surrogate construction that incorporates domain-specific physical knowledge; and (3) heterogeneous computing with multi-fidelity modeling that dynamically balances AI surrogates and traditional models across computing resources. The methodological approach combines static and dynamic code analysis, neural network training with physical constraints, and adaptive scheduling algorithms for CPU/GPU resources. The project aims to transform AI surrogates from auxiliary tools into essential elements for power grid planning. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

Plastics are everywhere in our daily lives, but disposing of them responsibly is a huge challenge. Making new plastics and fuels from petroleum uses large amounts of energy and generates greenhouse gases. A promising solution to both problems is to convert waste plastics or renewable materials into useful chemicals using a special kind of chemical reaction called olefin metathesis. Olefin metathesis is a catalytic reaction that takes two molecules, cuts them each in half, and stitches them back together so that the two new molecules are made from half of each of the starting molecules. For olefins such as ethylene and propylene, this is an important pathway to make precursor molecules that are incorporated in to polymers and plastics that everyone uses. Metathesis reactions are enabled solid catalysts containing W and Mo metals; however, while these materials work well, how they function during the reaction is not well understood. This collaborative project between Oregon State University and Tulane University aims to better understand and improve these catalysts. Efforts will focus on how the catalytic active sites, the place where the chemical reaction occurs, are created. The research team will use a combination of experiments and computer simulations to study how different chemicals, called “soft reductants,” can convert the catalysts from inactive to activate form by changing the oxidation state of metal atoms on their surface. Understanding this process could lead to more effective and reusable catalysts for turning plastic waste or renewable materials into valuable products. This project will discover specific ways to control the process of creating active sites through the lens of reductive chemistry. Preliminary work shows how the activity of a catalyst can be increased several thousand fold, with tunable populations based on the structure of a reducing agent. Techniques and tools like custom gas phase reactors, temperature programmed studies, in-situ and operando spectroscopy using DRIFTS, Raman, UV-Vis, ambient-pressure x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (AP-XPS) will be closely integrated with computation. These tools will help identify the features of the reductant and the mechanistic steps needed to create and maintain the activity of these catalysts. The results of this research will not only improve olefin metathesis but also benefit other chemical processes that depend on similar catalysts, such as creating renewable plastics, fuels, and other materials. The project will support training of future scientists and engineers and develop innovative educational tools, including virtual reality experiences and methods to 3D-print educational models of catalysts, to make this complex science more accessible and engaging for students and researchers alike. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-04

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving teaching and assessment methods used for team projects in undergraduate computing education. By requiring students to collaborate in the development of a software product, team projects provide students with authentic learning experiences that prepare them for careers in the computing profession. In undergraduate education, a key challenge is to assess individual contributions to team projects. This project plans to develop a novel teaching and assessment approach in which students compile individual portfolios documenting and reflecting on their completed project tasks relative to the outcomes they address. Instructional staff and peers then assess a sample of each student’s portfolio entries against appropriate performance indicators associated with the learning outcomes targeted by the team project. Since the framework will be readily adaptable to any team project, the approach can be used for team projects in any STEM degree program. This Level 2 Engaged Student Learning project will thus help advance undergraduate STEM education by improving the ability to assess students engaged in team projects. Using a rigorous empirical approach that involves computing instructors at multiple institutions, computing students, software professionals, and a learning scientist, this project will iteratively develop and validate (a) an assessment framework to gauge attainment of student learning outcomes targeted by collaborative software development projects; and (b) a pedagogical approach that integrates the assessment framework into computing courses. By aiming to improve assessment methods for team projects, the framework will contribute to the development of exemplary practices in undergraduate STEM education. Through their participation in the framework, students will enter the workforce with better self-knowledge and documentation of their skills, thus helping employers to integrate new hires into positions that align with those skills. The framework will be designed to be flexible enough to facilitate its adoption across a broad range of STEM courses. Moreover, the framework aims to assess students' attainment of a variety of learning outcomes in addition to those captured by traditional assessments. In so doing, it aims to help broaden the participation of STEM students from different backgrounds. By documenting, reflecting on, and receiving feedback on their individual attainment of learning outcomes in team projects, students will be better prepared for employment in the professional workforce, where team projects are a central activity. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-04

The turnover of organic carbon in the ocean plays an important role in regulating the ocean carbon cycle. The oceanic cycles of iron and carbon are tightly coupled. The supply of dissolved iron regulates ocean biology while organic carbon impacts the solubility and biological availability of iron in seawater. We strive to better understand the mechanisms and linkages between pools of iron and organic carbon in the oceans and to predict their sensitivity to future environmental and climatic changes. In this collaborative project, jointly funded with the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council, scientists from the U.S. and U.K. will combine field data from the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) region and from the Eastern North Atlantic with targeted experimental studies and a state-of-the-art ocean biogeochemical model to better characterize organic carbon - iron linkages and their roles in past, present, and future changes in ocean biology and chemistry. The project will support the education and training of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers, and will connect rural K-12 and undergraduate students with the research through outreach activities. Field observations from the BATS and Cape Verde Ocean Observatory regions will be integrated with experimental studies targeting iron-organic carbon interactions across seasonal and spatial gradients. An ocean biogeochemical model will be used to constrain the processes that modulate interactions of iron with dissolved and particulate organic matter. Specifically, this project will examine the a ‘colloidal shunt’ mechanism, whereby a portion of the dissolved iron pool in the colloidal size range is not stabilized by complexation with organic ligands. This iron instead forms aggregates with organic carbon to form particulate matter that sinks out of the upper water column. The research will focus on the role of dissolved organic carbon and iron-binding organic ligands in mediating the colloidal shunt, the association of organic matter with thus-formed authigenic particulate iron phases, and the dissolution of these phases in the ocean interior as a function of oxygen. Potentially transformative implications of this research are that the colloidal shunt might vary in response to climate driven changes in ocean oxygenation, and that this process may provide a conduit for the vertical export of both particulate iron and organic carbon that augments the biological carbon pump in the subtropical and tropical oceans. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-03

With support from the Chemical Structure and Dynamics (CSD) program in the Division of Chemistry, Professors Ji and Fang of Oregon State University in collaboration with Professor Greaney of the University of California, Riverside will explore the roles of local solvation structures in expanding the stability of water-based electrolytes for energy storage technologies. While previous efforts to improve the water stability against electrolysis have focused on changes to the O–H bond strength, the team will pursue a new approach by considering the impact of changing the hydroxide and proton solvation energies. The team will use a combination of femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations to study electrolytes of varying salt concentrations, cations and anions, and pH values to support their hypothesis that the electrochemical window of aqueous solutions can be expanded by discouraging their solvation of hydroxides and protons, the byproducts of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER), respectively. Their studies will elucidate key factors in chemical environment that dictate HER and OER onset potentials in aqueous electrolytes. Besides three graduate students who will directly perform the project tasks, the three PI’s labs will engage in outreach activities via online videos and in-person chemistry summer camps. This collaborative research project by Ji and Fang Labs at Oregon State University and Greaney Lab at UC Riverside will systematically investigate how solvation environments in aqueous electrolytes affect water’s HER and OER as well as the electrolytes’ resulting electrochemical stability window (ESW). The team will reveal how the local chemical environment with various cations and anions at low temperatures affects the electrolytic properties of aqueous solutions, and identify a richer set of Raman spectrum descriptors and predictors for chemical environments in concentrated aqueous electrolytes via PIs’ complementary expertise in electrochemistry, FSRS, and atomistic modeling. The direct observation of water’s H–O–H bending mode and use of a photoacid will provide deep insights into water’s local environment, bridging kinetics on ultrafast timescales to thermodynamics at equilibrium. The broader impacts of this work involve the development of a powerful experimental and theoretical platform to rationally design aqueous electrolytes with a significantly expanded or suppressed ESW for safe grid-scale storage batteries and green hydrogen production. The project, with cross-disciplinary knowledge and in the context of battery technology, will effectively engage STEM learners with combined science and engineering mindsets and natural curiosity about water in a myriad of applications. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-03

The "Regional Applied Interdisciplinary Numerical (Cascade RAIN) in the Cascade Mountains area" conference will convene on the Oregon State campus on April 26, 2025. The conference will bring together faculty and students from across the Pacific Northwest to facilitate the exchange of scientific advancements in the area of computational mathematics and interdisciplinary applications. Presentations are expected to cover almost all topics within computational mathematics including state-of-the-art methods for numerical partial differential equations and foundational mathematics of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Through the use of travel support, the conference will seek to broaden the participation across this geographic area and reach the broadest possible cohort including graduate students and junior faculty in the region. The conference will also feature mini-tutorials on basic and advanced computational mathematics and the mathematics of data science as a means of engaging both less prepared and more senior participants in research in computational mathematics. Furthermore, this conference will seek to foster future collaborative efforts between participants at all career stages. This conference will provide support for the participants of the conference and aims to bring together researchers across many career stages including senior, junior faculty and other researchers as well as students involved in computational mathematics across its different aspects including numerical analysis and interdisciplinary work. The participants will gain new insights and perspectives in computational mathematics and various application domains from researchers in local universities. The specific minitutorials include hands-on training of advanced finite-difference and finite-volume methods for initial boundary value problems as well as unsupervised and supervised learning methods. The website of the conference is https://sites.google.com/oregonstate.edu/rain2025 This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-03

Flash memory systems are currently among the leading non-volatile memory technologies. To increase storage density, each memory cell in these systems is programmed to hold multiple bits . Errors in these systems tend to be of limited magnitude. This project aims to design efficient codes capable of correcting such limited magnitude errors, thereby enhancing the reliability of these systems. Additionally, in communication and magnetic recording systems, synchronization errors can occur in two forms. The first type is a deletion error, where a transmitted symbol is not received. The second type is an insertion error, where an unexpected spurious symbol is received. The propagation of these errors can greatly reduce the performance of these systems. This project plans to design efficient codes capable of correcting these types of errors, thereby improving the overall performance and robustness of these systems. The proposed research will also serve to advance graduate education through graduate research assistantships and undergraduate education via the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Involving students in the proposed research will give them valuable experience transferable to many industry and career paths. At present, most known codes are designed using the power sums of index sets over a Galois field GF(q). This project proposes a unified approach to designing several new families of efficient error-correcting codes based on the theory of Elementary Symmetric Functions (ESF). The goal is to develop efficient linear and cyclic codes over Zm (integers modulo m) for both L1 and Lee distances using the ESF framework. Additionally, the project will explore the design of insertion/deletion error-correcting codes grounded in ESF theory. A specific focus will be on developing codes capable of handling the insertion or deletion of t zeros in each run (or bucket) of zeros. This problem is closely related to the zero-error capacity codes introduced by Shannon in 1956. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-03

This project provides funding for the Research Vessel Taani to conduct oceanographic research missions supported by the National Science Foundation. The oceanographic research vessels of the Academic Research Fleet (ARF), operated by the academic institutions within the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) framework are multi-use facilities used to expand knowledge of the ocean environment. The surface work of these ships is complemented by human-occupied, remotely operated, and autonomous undersea vehicles and sensors that provide vital tools to understand the oceans and their resources. Oregon State University (OSU) will support oceanographic technical services on Research Vessel Taani when it is delivered. Until delivery, OSU technicians will support other research vessels in the ARF. These seagoing research and educational facilities enable scientists and students to study natural phenomena and train future scientists while on board state-of-the-art oceanographic research vessels utilizing high-quality instrumentation. The ship operators will also conduct learning activities for students and the general public including hands-on demonstrations of marine science research guided by faculty, students, and ship crew members. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-02

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Earth’s surface is composed of numerous rigid ‘plates’ that move with the flow of a highly viscous interior mantle. Individual plate movements can be determined if their past motions are compared to a fixed source on Earth, such as so-called “mantle hotspots”. These hotspots are generated by mantle plumes, large thermo-chemical uprisings of material that originate on or near the core-mantle boundary. These upwellings of hot material can produce volcanism on Earth’s surface that remains relatively stationary while plates move over them, generating chains of compositionally distinct volcanoes that are progressively older the further they are from the hotspot. This work, through tracing ages, compositions, and morphologies of several poorly-documented volcanic chains, seeks to better understand the timing and drivers of global scale plate reorganization events that took place in the Mid-Cretaceous (120-80 Ma). The target locations include the Liliuokalani Ridge, Hess Rise and Mid-Pacific Mountains in the Central Pacific region. The team will be able to test whether the features were built by mantle plumes that are currently underlying the Northern French Polynesia region. The combined age and chemistry results will then be used to constrain the timing of a major plate reorganization event at ca. 100 Ma. This project supports three early-career scientists, two PhD, and one MSc student. In addition, the seagoing expedition will include eight undergraduate research participants from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and California State University, Long Beach. The project involves a 31-day seagoing expedition to dredge seamounts, ridges and rises within and near Hess Rise and the Mid-Pacific Mountains. In addition, the team will analyze basalts recovered on NOAA-Ocean Exploration and Research expeditions from Karin Ridge and samples from an upcoming E/V Nautilus expedition to the Liliuokalani Seamounts. Onshore work will include obtaining 40Ar/39Ar age determinations and geochemical tracers (major and trace elements; Sr-Nd-Pb-Hf isotopes) from representative lava flows. These new samples and comprehensive datasets will allow for the testing of the following hypotheses: H1) The Liliuokalani Seamounts and Hess Rise were formed by the Marquesas Mantle Plume. H2) The Pitcairn Mantle Plume is the primary source of the Karin Ridge and Mid-Pacific Mountains. H3) The Mid-Pacific Mountains record the timing and orientation of Cretaceous plate motion changes. H4) The structure of the Mid-Pacific Mountains and Hess Rise are controlled by plume – (distal) ridge interaction through the generation of asthenospheric melt channels. Testing these hypotheses will lead to an improved understanding of mantle plume dynamics and ‘bottom-up’ controls on oceanic geomorphology and large igneous province construction. Furthermore, mapping the long-lived expressions of mantle plumes allows for unparalleled insight into the mantle source reservoirs that feed hotspot volcanism. The combination of geo-chronology, chemistry and morphology will allow for a significantly improved Pacific absolute plate motion model during the Cretaceous Normal Superchron (122-83 Ma). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Our magnetic field influences Earth’s habitability, human technology and communications, upper atmospheric dynamics, and more. Recent changes to the field open questions as to how the field will to change in the future, and the impact this will have on the Earth system. Notably, during the historical period when humans have made direct measurements of the field, the geomagnetic field strength has decreased and the rate of North Magnetic Pole movement has accelerated. This project will study geologic archives of geomagnetic change from 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, an era that may have been similar to modern geomagnetic field changes. Specifically, the project strengthens international collaborations to synthesize new and existing reconstructions of direction and intensity changes from Arctic Ocean and lake sediment cores that create a broad longitudinal transect including Northern Alaska, Arctic Canada, Northern Greenland, and Northern Europe. This project will target 22 core samples that meet strict quality requirements and are available to the US research community in NSF supported repositories but have not previously been investigated for geomagnetic reconstructions. Two graduate students will learn methods that will have broad applications to their future careers in geophysical, data analysis, and earth science fields. This project will establish an early to mid-Holocene paleomagnetic transect across the Arctic to test a fundamental, yet somewhat counter intuitive, hypothesis about the nature of the geomagnetic field. The hypothesis, “the decrease in geomagnetic dipole moment observed in the last two centuries represents a transition to a more stable, more geocentric axial dipole like field that could persist for millennia”, is informed by 1) Holocene dipole moment reconstructions, 2) longer-term (100 thousand year) dipole moment reconstructions, 3) reconstructions of global field morphology that demonstrate that high intensities of the late Holocene are associated with a more dynamic field than the more average intensities of the early Holocene, and 4) disagreement between modeling efforts for the early Holocene that stems from limited data coverage. While previous work often discusses two states of the geomagnetic field—one that is strong and stable and one that is week and unstable—this hypothesis suggests that the field may be better described by three states with the greatest stability at intermediate dipole moments. The research team identifies archives for which strong independent radiocarbon chronologies already exist (or can be developed), extend to the early Holocene, and have very high accumulation rates (minimally >50 cm/kyr; ideally >100 cm/kyr). Reproducibility is at the heart of this work and is a critical test of reliability. Expected products will include new full-Holocene, full-vector paleomagnetic reconstructions from three Arctic regions (the Beaufort Sea, Northern Greenland, and the Northern North Atlantic) that will be among the highest quality and highest resolution reconstructions available. When combined with previously published data, this paleomagnetic transect will enable exploration of geomagnetic variations at the right time interval needed to assess this hypothesis. This project will support the education of two graduate students, support an international collaboration, and lead to the development of outreach materials on the Earth’s magnetic field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Tim J. Zuehlsdorff of Oregon State University is supported by an award from the Chemical Theory, Models and Computational Methods program in the Division of Chemistry to develop new computational methods capable of simulating how molecules embedded in complex environments like solvents and proteins interact with light, with applications ranging from understanding the mechanisms of biological light-harvesting to the rational design of fluorescent proteins for biomedical applications. A specific emphasis will be placed on formulating highly computationally efficient approaches that can capture nonadiabatic effects due to the interaction of multiple excited states. These effects are ubiquitous in many systems but are difficult to model with existing quantum chemistry approaches. Additionally, optical properties and energy relaxation in pigments are often strongly tuned by environmental interactions, such as targeted mutations in protein environments of fluorescent proteins. The computational methods developed as part of this project will provide new insights into the origins of these tuning effects and how they can potentially be exploited in the design of novel biosensors. The project will also develop interactive learning materials to enrich the undergraduate Physical Chemistry education at Oregon State and provide training for student researchers to harness high-performance computing (HPC) resources for their research. The goal of this research project is to develop a computational toolset for modeling linear and nonlinear optical spectra of molecules in complex environments due to multiple coupled excited states. Zuehlsdorff will combine mixed quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical dynamics (QM/MM) simulations to sample environmental interactions with powerful numerically exact tensor network approaches to simulate the resulting quantum dynamics. The toolset will be optimized for and tested on modern high-performance computing (HPC) architectures to enable high-throughput calculations. Zuehlsdorff will develop methods that can directly reproduce signals from ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy experiments, such as transient absorption and 2D electronic spectroscopy, and will use exactly solvable model systems to identify the signatures of nonadiabatic effects in computed spectra. A central hypothesis of this work is that unstructured (solvent) and structured (protein) environments can shape ultrafast energy relaxation due to nonadiabatic effects in fundamentally different ways. He will test this hypothesis by uncovering the origins of optical properties of solvated molecules with applications to light-harvesting and fluorescent proteins. Zuehlsdorff’s research team will also design interactive learning materials based on Jupyter Notebooks, to enhance the Physical Chemistry curriculum at OSU and ultimately improve student performance through developing students’ conceptual understanding of Quantum Chemistry. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Vulnerabilities present in software running on shared computing infrastructure (e.g., cloud datacenters) can result in significant economic losses, compromised user data, and weakened national security when such infrastructure does not properly separate programs from one another in secure, isolated compartments. While techniques do exist to ensure such isolation, they typically increase the engineering burden on programmers or trade off performance for security, limiting their effectiveness and reach. Today, programmers are deploying code on shared computing infrastructure in increasingly fine-grained units (e.g., serverless computing), making this trade off more severe over time. The off-the-shelf technologies, such as containers that isolation frameworks are often built on, were not designed for this fine-grained use case. This project thus aims to ensure both performance and security for code running on cloud infrastructure by designing new isolation mechanisms from the ground up using novel operating system, compiler, programming language, and virtualization technologies. The project will help produce more robust cloud computing infrastructure that is less susceptible to attack, less likely to leak sensitive user data, and more productive for programmers. If successful, potential impacts include reduced economic losses from compromised infrastructure, strengthened national security, and increased privacy for the broader public using cloud services. The project will also make contributions in education and broadening participation in the computing profession by enhancing educational content, injecting industry-relevant and applied content into the curriculum, increasing the representation of people from diverse backgrounds in computer systems research, revitalizing the computer systems curriculum at the PI’s institution, and fostering undergraduate research engagement. This project proposes Colony, a new software framework for lightweight, bespoke, virtualized execution contexts. Colony leverages novel execution abstractions customized for individual applications and designed for both performance and isolation. Colony contexts are synthesized using compiler analyses, and are exposed through a rich set of programming abstractions and programming language extensions. Colony builds on a new abstraction for isolated function execution, the virtualized subroutine, or virtine, along with an embeddable hypervisor. The goal of the Colony project is to achieve both high performance and strong isolation for individually isolated function contexts in a variety of applications. The project will explore various mechanisms to enable bespoke contexts, including virtualization mechanisms enhanced for optimized start-up performance, and programming models with novel language/compiler support. These bespoke contexts can be used for lighter-weight isolation than managed languages, giving them broad applicability to areas such as OS kernel drivers, third-party libraries, and database user-defined functions, as well as the more nascent serverless computing paradigm. The proposed work has potential to open up new lines of research in operating systems, virtualization, compilers, and system security. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

Ushering in a new era of spectrum sharing requires dynamic spectrum access (DSA) that natively supports both primary and legacy users, while creating new opportunities for spectrum utilization. A comprehensive blend of technical, economic, and policy-based solutions is required to realize this vision, including potential modification to existing cellular standards to ensure that future 6G standards are inherently “sharing native”. Precise, low-latency, and localized spectrum usage monitoring that is aware of and integrated with the cellular Physical (PHY) and upper layers in the networking stack is essential for facilitating effective spectrum utilization and sharing in Spectrum Era 4. However, existing spectrum sharing systems typically rely on a separate monitoring network comprising dedicated, costly, and sparsely deployed spectrum sensors, e.g., the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) networks rely on an environmental sensing capability (ESC) sensor network deployed in coastal areas to detect transmissions from Navy vessels and radars. This project aims to realize a transformative vision for spectrum sensing in Spectrum Era 4, which supports dense and in-situ spectrum sensing with significantly enhanced sensing resolution across the temporal and spatial domains, improved energy efficiency, and cooperative sensing strategies that are aware of the cellular protocols. As such, it has the potential to revolutionize the next generation of cellular technologies (e.g., 6G and beyond) to be sharing native with significantly enhanced spectrum awareness and sensing resolution. This project targets the following scientific contributions from three interdisciplinary and interrelated research thrusts. (i) Development of ultra-efficient, single-shot, analog cross-correlators (X-Corr) capable of computing the cross-correlations between input signals and template waveforms across varying lags, enabling spectrum sensing with ultra-low latency. Using the margin computing paradigm, analog X-Corr with superior energy efficiency and (>1,000 TOPS/W) can be designed and realized in integrated circuit (IC) implementations without compromising the computing speed or precision. (ii) Design of protocol-aware configuration and adaption for X-Corr to enable fine-grained, in-band spectrum sensing. This allows for detailed sensing of spectrum occupancy and detection of interference signals at the symbol or slot level (a few to 10s of microseconds) with both known and unknown features (e.g., for airborne and ground radars) and employ diverse PHY layers (e.g., 5G New Radio and Wi-Fi). (iii) Optimized deployment and configuration of a network of densely deployed X-Corr sensors to facilitate cooperative, in-situ spectrum sensing that is aware of the communication standards. Such a network also enhances the ability to localize and track interference sources with significantly lower latency and cost. Evaluation of the proposed research includes analysis, simulations, IC implementations, circuits-system co-design and integration, as well as field experiments using local and community wireless testbeds. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-01

This award supports research to study the transient phase transition behavior of well-graded gravelly soil deposits to reveal the fundamental, coupled fluid-mechanical processes governing liquefaction of gravels. Earthquake-induced soil liquefaction, a phenomenon whereby stable two-phase (solid, liquid) materials transition into a transiently single-phase viscous liquid, can result in the loss of lives, property, and infrastructure. To date, scientists and engineers have relied on post-earthquake reconnaissance and case histories of gravelly soils to empirically bound subsurface conditions prone to liquefaction. Uncertainty in analyses and uncertain estimates of ground shaking intensity cloud the interpretation of liquefaction behavior of gravelly soils since liquefaction can significantly alter pre-earthquake soil fabric (i.e., soil structure) and thus the ability to investigate it. Through an original experimental technique to seismically test a gravelly soil deposit with controlled loading intensity, this award will aim to parameterize all aspects of the in-situ, dynamic constitutive degradation and liquefaction of gravelly soils and the resulting consequences in terms of deformations. Improved understanding of the dynamic and liquefaction responses of gravelly soils will serve to advance fundamental knowledge of these soils, help secure resilience of the nation’s civil infrastructure against earthquake hazards, and train the next generation of scientists and engineers. Specifically, this study will implement a coordinated outreach/education program to broaden participation of underrepresented students, integrate field research with an interdisciplinary experiential course learning activity that will improve the understanding of the local tectonic structure of a densely populated region, and develop comprehensive and unique datasets which will be disseminated to scientific and practitioner communities. Data from this project will be archived and publicly shared in the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Data Depot (https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org). This award will contribute to the NSF role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). There currently exists no direct, controlled, dynamic in-situ measurements of the dynamic properties, and coupled, fluid-mechanical responses and liquefaction, of gravelly soils. This work centers on experiments that target small to large shear strains, by implementing a newly validated controlled blasting experimental approach and coordinated laboratory testing program, allowing for an unprecedented dataset critical for the improving the understanding of the dynamic responses and liquefaction of gravels and uniting observations drawn from earthquake case histories and laboratory element tests. This work will specifically: (1) dynamically load a well-characterized and instrumented gravel deposit under existing and post-reconsolidation stresses and true drainage boundary conditions to provide the first direct observations of the seismic and post-seismic responses of gravels to multidirectional loadings under 1g stress states; (2) determine the fundamental, in-situ threshold shear strains to initiate nonlinearity, shear degradation/inelasticity, and liquefaction; (3) establish the variation of excess pore pressure and shear modulus with shear strain over the linear-elastic to nonlinear-inelastic regimes and for strains greater than 1%; (4) determine the in-situ variation of the cyclic resistance and excess pore pressure with the number of equivalent uniform shear stress cycles; (5) synthesize the field observations with previously-developed experimental data of reconstituted and intact gravelly soil specimens; and (6) provide an impactful and experiential educational component for a diverse, multidisciplinary student body. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-12

In today's rapidly changing environmental landscape, developing a skilled workforce adept at utilizing advanced cyberinfrastructure is critical for sustainable and transdisciplinary environmental science research. The EcoTern project addresses this need by pioneering the training of the next generation cyberinfrastructure workforce to be capable of integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies into environmental and computer science and engineering research. This collaborative effort, involving Florida International University (FIU), North Carolina State University (NCSU), and the NSF-funded Artificial Intelligence for Environmental Sciences (AI2ES) Institute, aims to develop comprehensive training activities, including new degree programs, curriculum enhancements, reusable course content, summer bootcamps, seminars, and interactive hands-on exercises. These activities will provide trainees with the necessary skills to utilize cyberinfrastructure for predicting and mitigating environmental impacts, such as coastal flooding, hurricane disasters, and marine ecological changes. By promoting the progress of science and supporting national health, prosperity, and welfare, this project serves the national interest by preparing a diverse and knowledgeable workforce to address environmental challenges resulting from a changing climate and other causes. EcoTern’s innovative approach involves weaving cyberinfrastructure training into the new undergraduate Data Science program at FIU and integrating cyberinfrastructure, artificial intelligence, and environmental science training into nine existing graduate courses at FIU and NCSU. Course materials will be shared broadly, and the project will cultivate a network of collaborating institutions engaged in the overlap of environmental science, artificial intelligence, and cyberinfrastructure education. The project will host a two-week summer bootcamp, providing intensive instruction and interdisciplinary research opportunities. A series of specialized workshops and invited lectures from cyberinfrastructure and artificial intelligence experts will further enhance the training program. An online platform will be developed to offer personalized hands-on exercises and real-time learning progress tracking. Research objectives include advancing interdisciplinary environmental and computer science and engineering research, preparing a better scientific workforce for cyberinfrastructure-enabled research, and creating a ubiquitous and scalable educational and training ecosystem for online, dynamic, personalized lessons and certifications. By democratizing access to advanced cyberinfrastructure resources and promoting transdisciplinary collaboration, EcoTern aims to cultivate a diverse, knowledgeable, and skilled community capable of driving innovation and addressing emerging environmental science and engineering challenges. This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the National Discovery Cloud for Climate initiative within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-12

This project aims to serve the national interest by refining physics course materials and activities in response to the growth of generative artificial intelligence (gen-AI). This project intends to target the development of creativity among computational physics students at Oregon State University. By updating activities to engage students with gen-AI and carrying out interviews and observations with students in this environment, the project team seeks to generate knowledge about how students leverage gen-AI tools to develop their creativity and build proficiency as the computational scientists of tomorrow. These findings will be used to create guidelines for curriculum development with the goal of leveraging modern tools for doing science that utilize technological advancements in gen-AI. The project will also iteratively develop a suite of classroom activities to support students in using gen-AI to solve computational physics problems. This project seeks to characterize how students use gen-AI in a sequence of computational physics courses, with the overarching goal of developing and disseminating guidelines for updating course content to engage students with gen-AI in support of their creativity and learning. The Oregon State University computational physics curriculum provides a research environment where students focus primarily on computing in a disciplinary setting. The project team seeks to utilize this context to produce a characterization of how students use gen-AI when learning advanced STEM content, which will in turn inform curriculum development. Qualitative research methods such as semi-structured interviews, observational field notes, and analysis of classroom artifacts will be utilized for this investigation. By employing an alternating research design between characterizing student usage and updating the curriculum, the project team also aims to produce and refine a set of guidelines for keeping a computational physics curriculum attuned to the ways students are engaging with gen-AI and the year-to-year changes in gen-AI technological capabilities. Though the scope of these guidelines will apply mainly to computational physics curricula, the team will seek further input and generalization during the dissemination of these guidelines by directly engaging with researcher and practitioner communities who can benefit from and build on this work. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-12

US and global coastlines are densely populated and have tremendous ecological and economic value. These coastal regions are threatened by storm activity compounded by rising sea levels, and effective coastal protection requires knowledge of shoreline changes due to waves. On sandy beaches, waves can move sediment by creating pressure gradients above and within the seafloor. These seabed processes evolve rapidly in both time and space, making it challenging to directly measure and understand the underlying physics. This project will apply new fiber-optic techniques to better understand the relationship between waves, sand movement, and resulting beach shape. Laboratory experiments will be used to examine pressure gradients and provide new insights to fiber-optic sensing as an emerging technology. The new lab data will leverage data collected during a 2021 field experiment to better understand coastal processes and hazards that do not fit neatly within subject-matter boundaries. This project will also increase collaborations between oceanographers and geophysicists through student mentoring across disciplines and the creation of collaborative coding toolboxes. Additionally, an important component of coastal hazard mitigation is providing coastal residents with the best possible information. Interactive outreach activities and educational materials will be designed for erosion awareness and management in coastal Oregon. This project will quantify the horizontal and vertical distribution of wave-driven pressure gradients through the surf zone using three distributed fiber-optic sensing techniques. Localized pressure gradients near the bed and in the shallow subsurface can generate sediment transport and influence the total depth of mobilized sediment. However, little is understood about the role of meter-to-kilometer scale horizontal pressure gradients in mobilizing sediment or the cross-shore variability in these forcings. Distributed fiber-optic sensing is a rapidly expanding suite of techniques with the potential to record nearshore processes at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. Using combined laboratory experiments, geophysical modeling, and field observations from previous experiments, these fiber-based measurements will be integrated with standard instrumentation to simultaneously improve understanding of seafloor sediment dynamics and the signals recorded by each technique. Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and Distributed Strain Sensing (DSS) will be used to records strain on a buried fiber-optic cable, which can be converted to pressure at high spatial and temporal resolutions. Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) will be used to record cable temperature, which can be used to calculate cable burial. From a technological perspective, this project will be the first combined investigation of DAS, DTS, and DSS for oceanographic monitoring, and the first ground-truthed use of DSS for oceanography. With sufficient validation, these fiber-optic techniques can provide a powerful new tool for monitoring the ocean in challenging or remote regions. These detailed measurements will enhance our understanding of gradients in cross-shore sediment transport and coastal evolution. Accurately quantifying sand mobility and bedform migration is fundamental for predicting the future of vulnerable shorelines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

The goal of this project is to broaden graduate student participation at the International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP 2024) conference (to be held in Gotland, Sweden, from August 12th to 15th, 2024 ) by providing travel awards to help pay for travel to and from the conference venue, lodging, and conference registration fees. Funding of this proposal will not only enhance scientific discovery in areas of parallel processing, but also broaden the impact of the parallel processing field by increasing graduate student participation. ICPP has a history of attracting high quality submissions from researchers around the world. Travel awards will provide graduate students the opportunity to engage with leading experts in parallel computing by presenting their results at the conference proceedings, workshop proceedings and poster sessions. In addition, attendance will create opportunities to network with their peers and solicit feedback from senior members of the research community. This networking may lead to future research collaborations and career advancement opportunities. The International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP) is one of the oldest continuously running computer science conferences in parallel computing in the world. ICPP 2024 will be the 53rd year of this conference series and will be soliciting refereed conference papers, posters, and workshops along six tracks, including, Algorithms, Applications, Architecture, Multidisciplinary, Performance and Software. This travel award will prioritize graduate students who are coauthors of an accepted paper or poster, who are members of underrepresented groups, and who do not have alternative funding sources to attend ICPP 2023. We will use travel award application materials to gauge relevance of current and future research work to the conference topics, importance of attending the conference, and career plans related to parallel processing. Each travel award application will be reviewed by a selection committee of at least three members. This selection committee will be led by the ICPP 2024 Poster and Student Program Chairs and will include additional members invited from the ICPP 2023 organizing and program committees and senior members of the parallel processing community. To further broaden participation at the conference, we will engage with societies and institutes which serve and support students from underrepresented groups. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

This EArly-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project focuses on gaining a fundamental understanding of the basic research for creating doped two-dimensional (2D) material inks for printed electronics. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are an upcoming class of promising materials with tunable properties for use in next-generation flexible electronics. Nanoparticle-doped 2D materials can generate low-power, high-speed flexible electronic devices as doping controls the tuning of electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties. Current leading techniques for generating doped 2D materials, such as atomic layer deposition and chemical vapor deposition are incompatible with printed electronics since they cannot provide inks that can be used directly in printers. This research studies ultrafast laser ablation synthesis in solution to create nanoparticle-doped 2D material inks. The project aims to build new knowledge in understanding the underlying mechanisms that control the synthesis of doped 2D materials using LASiS and manufacturing these in large volumes for practical use. In collaboration with Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), this project contributes to the education and training of graduate and undergraduate students from underrepresented minority communities in ultrafast laser science and ink synthesis. The printed devices are used in educational activities to introduce K-12 students to STEM fields. This research obtains a fundamental understanding of laser-based synthesis of nanoparticle-doped 2D material inks and creates a manufacturing technique to generate large volumes of the inks for printed electronics. Utilizing femtosecond laser ablation synthesis in solution (LASiS), the 2D materials are generated from bulk. This is followed by intercalation doping, wherein nanoparticles are inserted in the Van der Waals layers of the 2D materials thus modifying their electrical, magnetic, and mechanical properties. This research focuses on the generation and intercalation of TiO2, gold, and platinum nanoparticles between graphene and MoS2. The effects of laser parameters, such as repetition rate, energy and focal spot size on the chemical composition, size, and generation rate of the doped 2D material inks are investigated. The knowledge gained provides insights into the fundamental mechanisms for the creation and intercalation doping of 2D materials. The project further investigates techniques to increase the production volume of ink through variation of sample stage speed, and use of multiple laser beams. The inks generated are printed using aerosol-jet printing and the quality of the thin films are analyzed by XRD, UV-VIS Raman, and I-V curves. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

Deep learning techniques have achieved good success in the perception tasks such as image classification, where the correct model output can be obtained and annotated beforehand. For example, when a deep learning model is asked to identify dogs and is trained at the start with a series of images of dogs with annotations identifying dog features (e.g., tails, fur, muzzles etc.), these models do well. However, when the deep learning models are deployed to support decision making tasks such as medical diagnosis, autonomous driving, and conversational systems, only incomplete feedback for training is available. When the correct outputs in decision-making situations are not available to train a system, it is difficult to employ traditional deep learning techniques directly. Bandit learning methods are algorithms that have been developed to deal with incomplete feedback information for learning. This is important because previous work in the perception area, could afford to blindly optimize a model for the best response. For decision-making, this type of optimization may not be optimal, because small mistakes in perception can lead to huge losses in quality of decision making of which the model may not be aware. This project aims to bridge the gap by training the deep neural networks in their natural use context to directly optimize decision making. The goal is to develop a suite of neural bandit learning algorithms, which leverage the most recent advances in deep learning theory for provably efficient neural network model training with bandit feedback. The project consists of three research thrusts. Thrust one develops bandit learning methods in more advanced neural network architectures and studies new deep learning theory with bandit feedback. Thrust two investigates neural bandit learning in decentralized and distributed settings. Thrust three equips the learnt models with privacy and adversarial robustness guarantees. The team of researchers will develop an open-source neural bandit library and teaching materials to disseminate research outcomes and make them publicly available to the broader community to benefit research and education. The project provides unique training opportunities in machine learning and artificial intelligence for undergraduates and graduate students, especially students from underrepresented groups. The researchers will also engage K-12 students, fostering their interest in STEM by educating them on deep learning and AI techniques. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

This project will contribute to the national need for well-educated scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians by supporting the retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students with demonstrated financial need at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and the University of Houston (UH). Both UTEP and UH are members of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities (HSRU), an association of Hispanic-Serving Institutions with high research activity, affordability, strong community engagement, and commitment to serving first-generation and diverse students. UH is also an Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander Serving Institution. Over its one-year duration, this planning project will establish the necessary infrastructure and collaborations to lay the foundation for a future Track 3 S-STEM proposal to award scholarships to talented, low-income students pursuing a graduate degree in biomedical engineering or engineering technology with foci on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Strategies will be developed to support student academic and career pathways, aligned with each institution's contexts and resources. This project will also develop a research plan to investigate the experiences of S-STEM scholars through an asset-based framework meant to recognize and leverage students' individual strengths. The overall goal of this project is to increase STEM degree completion of low-income, high-achieving undergraduates with demonstrated financial need. The project will focus on recruiting and supporting scholars in biomedical engineering (UTEP), computational health informatics (UH), and biotechnology (UH) to meet the national demand for professionals who understand and can apply ML and AI to biomedical problems. The central goal of this planning effort is to develop the basis for a multi-institutional project by: (1) identifying and recruiting faculty to participate in the collaborative partnership; (2) identifying institutional, systemic, and programmatic barriers for potential scholars; and (3) developing an asset-based graduate-level training framework. This project will identify evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities for future scholars; engage the respective collaborating institutions' Financial Aid Offices to determine each institution's definition of low-income status; and establish inter-institutional agreements to benefit scholars at both institutions. Results will be disseminated among Texas minority-serving institutions and the Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Research Universities. This project is funded by NSF's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program, which seeks to increase the number of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who earn degrees in STEM fields. It also aims to improve the education of future STEM workers and to generate knowledge about academic success, retention, transfer, graduation, and academic/career pathways of low-income students. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2024 · 2024-10

Exposure to microgravity during spaceflight is known to lead to cardiac atrophy, which is a reduction in tissue mass of the heart that causes debilitating changes in heart function. Cardiac atrophy can also present itself in patients suffering from cancer and other diseases, including muscular dystrophies, diabetes, sepsis and heart failure. Because cardiac atrophy is not well understood, this project seeks to improve fundamental understanding of cell and tissue function during progression of cardiac atrophy. Undertaking this research is an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional team comprised of biomedical engineers and scientists with complementary expertise in cardiac tissue bioprinting and cellular and molecular biology. Using the micro-gravity environment of the International Space Station (ISS) to induce atrophy, the team will use bioprinted heart tissue to study changes in tissue function. The knowledge gained will support an improved understanding of how and why cardiac atrophy occurs, which may lead to improved treatment strategies. The project will also develop a workshop for K12 students around tissue engineering on the international space station as well as implement a seminar for medical students, interns, and residents about the benefits and challenges of transitioning research from an Earth-based laboratory into space. Two objectives have been established for this project. First, to compare and contrast the morphology, viability, and altered energy metabolism in 3D bioprinted cardiac organoids under microgravity and Earth's gravity. Second, to study the epigenetic changes in 3D bioprinted cardiac organoids under microgravity and assess how these changes may affect the development of cardiac atrophy when compared to Earth's gravity. Specifically, the team will engineer and validate a chip design for culturing of cardiomyocytes, fibroblasts and endothelial cells to investigate underlying biological and signaling mediators responsible for damage to cells during microgravity exposure, leading to possible cardiac atrophy. Findings may suggest that epigenetic events could be one of the mechanistic bases for microgravity‐induced gene expression changes related to cardiac atrophy and may facilitate the development of countermeasures to prevent the adverse effects of microgravity or other atrophy-inducing pathologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.