Ahmad Najafi, PhD, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics, and Jörn Venderbos, PhD, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, are recent recipients of National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Grant (NSF CAREER) awards.
Najafi’s grant will support his project “CAREER: A Holistic Framework for Designing Multifunctional Materials and Structures Using Computational Optimization Methods.” The project offers design-themed educational and outreach activities to enhance public knowledge and attract talented students to STEM careers in the design area. The project also targets academically at-risk and underrepresented minority students to reduce school dropout via an out-of-school-time STEM education program.
Venderbos’ grant supports his project “CAREER: Advancing the Many-body Band Inversion Paradigm for Correlated Quantum Materials.” The research will allow his group to lay the theoretical groundwork for better understanding the impacts of strong electronic correlations in materials with band inversion, potentially enabling discovery of new classes of quantum materials.