Faculty win Tufts research awards
Tufts University’s Engineering Faculty Research Awards Committee (EFRAC) recognizes School of Engineering faculty members who have achieved outstanding scholarship. Every year, one junior faculty member is presented with the Sunrise Award, and every two years, one faculty member receives the Bright Light Award. Professor Qiaobing Xu and Assistant Professor Michael Hughes were recognized with the 2024 Bright Light and Sunrise Awards, respectively.
Members of the overall engineering community and of the Engineering Dean’s Council make up the awarding committee, alongside Professor and Dean of Research Matt Panzer of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Academic departments in the School of Engineering put forth one nominee from the department for each award. Nomination speaks to the exemplary research of candidates, and to their respect among their peers.
The Sunrise Award recognizes the outstanding scholarly accomplishments of one junior faculty member for research in their discipline. Michael Hughes, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, received the 2024 Sunrise Award. Hughes’ research interests include optimization algorithms and variational methods, Bayesian hierarchical models, and learning from labeled datasets of limited size. He recently received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in support of his work in predictive modeling and machine learning.
The Bright Light Award recognizes the sustained and distinguished research and scholarly accomplishments of one faculty member over the past 5-10 years. Professor Qiaobing Xu of the Department of Biomedical Engineering received the 2024 Bright Light Award. Xu’s work focuses on biomedical applications of material science engineering. He develops new synthetic materials for delivering therapeutic biomacromolecules and investigates drug delivery for gene editing and cancer therapy. He was recently named a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors.
Learn more about: Assistant Professor Michael Hughes, Professor Qiaobing Xu, and Tufts’ EFRAC awards.