NEWARK, N.J. Dec. 2, 1996 -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded four New Jersey Institute of Technology professors with Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grants to encourage the integration of their research and teaching efforts.
Kenneth (Beau) Farmer of Dunellen and Haiman Wang of Gillette, both assistant professors in the Department of Physics; Bonnie K. Ray of South Nyack, N.Y., assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics; and Marvin Nakayama of New York City, assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science, were recipients of the CAREER grants.
The NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program was established to help outstanding scientists and engineers develop and integrate their research and instructional activities early in their careers. NSF awarded 346 CAREER grants in fiscal year 1996 totaling $40 million. NSF received 1,865 grant applications for awards which ranged from four to five years and from $200,000 to $500,000 each.
"At the best universities in the U.S., research and education go hand-in-hand," said NSF Acting Deputy Director Joseph Bordogna. "Because of this unique integration, the U.S. educational system is envied worldwide. NSF wants to keep it that way."
"During the past decade, NJIT has added a cadre of bright junior faculty members throughout the university. Their energy and drive has helped build the university's research initiatives and enhanced our instructional program. This NSF award recognizes the critical link between the classroom and the laboratory, and the quality of work performed by these junior faculty members," said University President Saul K. Fenster.
Farmer earned a Ph.D. in 1990 and a master's degree in applied physics in 1986 from Cornell University. He graduated with honors in 1983 as an undergraduate from the University of Virginia. Farmer's research interests include physics in metal-insulator-semiconductor device structures and silicon microfabrication, micromachining and fusion bonding.
He joined the NJIT faculty in 1992 and also is a member of the graduate faculty at Rutgers University. Farmer was a guest scientist in solid state electronics at Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden, from 1990 to 1992, and a research assistant at Cornell from 1983 to 1989.
Farmer will use the grant to develop ultra thin oxides on silicon and thin silicon wafer bonding.
Wang, who earned a B.S. from Nanjing University in China and a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in 1988, plans to take a leadership role in the development of a strong solar physics department at NJIT. Collaborations with Big Bear Solar Observatory, National Solar Observatory and Chinese solar astronomers will be important elements in making the program succeed. His specific research objective is to study the solar atmosphere and magnetic fields for both active and quiet regions of the sun.
Wang's hopes to integrate the research goals into the training of high school, undergraduate and graduate students. Graduate education will be particularly emphasized. A future joint Ph.D. program with Beijing Observatory in China will benefit the training of future leaders in solar physics in both countries.
Ray has been an assistant professor at NJIT since 1992 after completing her work as a Naval Research Council Postdoctorate Fellow. She graduated with a B.S. in mathematics from Baylor University in 1985 and a Ph.D. in statistics from Columbia University in 1991.
Her CAREER project will focus on developing and implementing new statistical methods for modeling complicated features of time series using computationally techniques.
Marvin Nakayama earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics/computer science from the University of California at San Diego in 1986 and a master's degree and doctorate in operations research from Stanford University in 1988 and 1991. After graduation, he completed a two year stint as a post-doctorate research fellow at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and one year as a faculty member in the Rutgers University School of Management. He joined the NJIT faculty in 1994.
Nakayama will use the funds to develop asymptotically valid simulation procedures for comparing the steady state behavior of a small number of different systems (fewer than 20). This is known as the multiple comparison problem and previous work is not applicable to the types of output encountered in steady-state simulations.
Three faculty members at Princeton University and two faculty members at Rutgers University also received CAREER grants from NSF during 1996.
NJIT is a public research university enrolling nearly 7,900 undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students with 67 degree programs through its five colleges: Newark College of Engineering, School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, the School of Industrial Management and the Albert Dorman Honors College, the first such college in New Jersey. Research focus includes a world renown environmental engineering and science center, an award-winning manufacturing center, and initiatives in microelectronics, transportation, computer science, and architecture and building science. U.S. News and World Report's 1997 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT among the second quartile (58-114) of 229 national universities. Money Magazine's Best College Buys Now 1997 rated NJIT as the third best value among U.S. science and technology schools and 59th among the Top 100 U.S. higher education institutions.
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12/2/96
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Release number: 3191