Huskers earn additional early career honors
Nebraska pre-tenure faculty continued to receive support from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Program, one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for rising scholars.
- Joe Louis, Harold and Esther Edgerton Assistant Professor of Entomology, received a $1.5 million award to study ways to help sorghum naturally resist sugarcane aphids, one of the crop’s most damaging pests.
- Toshihiro Obata, assistant professor of biochemistry, earned a nearly $750,000 award to study an enzyme that affects metabolism and improve scientific understanding of this process.
- Rebecca Roston, assistant professor of biochemistry, earned a nearly $850,000 award to identify why the plant Arabidopsis thaliana bounces back from cold temperatures, which could provide clues about how to make crops more tolerant of subzero temperatures.
- Michael Sealy, assistant professor of mechanical and materials engineering, received a $500,000 award to improve 3D additive metal printing for dissolvable medical implants, which could improve patient recovery and reduce the need for later surgeries to remove the implants.
- Bonita Sharif, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has a $432,000 award to use eye-tracking software to develop a set of algorithms that show software programmers’ work patterns. This knowledge could help developers create tools that help them write code more quickly and accurately. Sharif originally received her CAREER award as a faculty member at Youngstown State University.
- Rebecca Wachs, assistant professor of biological systems engineering, is using her $510,400 award to develop targeted, biomaterials-based treatment for low back pain, which could reduce the use of opioids in alleviating pain.
