Engineering faculty recognized for research

The Tufts Faculty Research Awards Committee (FRAC) has awarded grants for publishing and research to seven engineering professors and associate professors. Faculty Research Fund (FRF) awards are granted to tenure-track faculty and professors of the practice for use in specific research projects, while Grant-in-Aid (GIA) awards are given to tenure-track faculty and full-time professors for seed money or extra research costs. Open Access publishing awards are given to tenure-track faculty members and full-time professors of the practice, to support publication in open-access journals.

Professor Irene Georgakoudi of the Department of Biomedical Engineering received a FRF award for her proposal “Connecting obesity and breast cancer through the extracellular matrix.” Associate Professor Valencia Koomson of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering also received a FRF award for her proposal “Biological Electricity Analysis Using Biocompatible Recording Devices.”

FRAC awarded Open Access publishing grants to three engineering faculty members: Professor Igor Sokolov of Mechanical Engineering received an award for his proposal “Nanoscale compositional mapping of cells, tissues, and polymers with ringing mode of atomic force microscopy,” Professor David Gute of Civil and Environmental Engineering won an award for his proposal “Longitudinal Associations of Exposure to Ultrafine Particles with Blood Pressure and Systemic Inflammation in Puerto Rican Adults,” and Professor Sameer Sonkusale of Electrical and Computer Engineering received a grant for his proposal “Low cost metamaterial on paper chemical sensor.”

Grant-in-aid awards were given to Professor Soha Hassoun of the Department of Computer Science, for her proposal “Exploratory Research in Metabolite Identification,” and Associate Professor Mai Vu of Electrical and Computer Engineering for her proposal “Interference Modeling for Cellular Networks Under Beamforming Transmission.”