Inanc Senocak and Wan Kuang, CAREER award recipients, will be present to answer questions regarding their experiences with the submission, the NSF review process and the relationship of the PI with NSF and the program officer after awarding.

Registration is not required. The session is from 10-11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 17, in the Student Union Hatch C Ballroom. If you have any questions, contact Linda Georgiev at 426-1427.

Engineering professor Inanc Senocak has received the National Science Foundation’s highest honor for early career faculty. Pictured here with the College of Engineering’s visualization cluster display, Senocak will use the $400,000 CAREER Award to support research aimed at increasing utilization of wind energy resources for electricity production.

Inanc Senocak, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, has received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for early career faculty. The $400,000 CAREER Award recognizes individuals who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Senocak is the seventh professor ever to receive a CAREER Award while at Boise State, along with Susan Burkett (electrical and computer engineering), John Lusth (computer science), Elisa Barney Smith (electrical and computer engineering), Alex Punnoose (physics), Megan Frary (materials science and engineering) and Wan Kuang (electrical and computer engineering).

“Dr. Senocak is an exemplary faculty member, combining impressive work in the lab with engagement of students and community members in technical subjects that affect our lives and will shape the future,” said College of Engineering Interim Dean Amy Moll. “The CAREER Award is a fitting acknowledgement of his outstanding qualities and growing reputation in the field.”

Senocak completed his undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at the Middle East Technical University in Turkey and earned his master’s and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Florida. Before joining the Boise State faculty in 2007, he held postdoctoral research positions at the Center for Turbulence Research (jointly operated by NASA and Stanford University) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Senocak’s research long has been focused on the atmosphere, from using supercomputers to simulate the physical processes that take place in its boundary layer to reconstructing the dispersion of airborne threats. With the CAREER Award funding, Senocak will apply his expertise to increasing the utilization of wind energy resources for electricity production. This issue is especially relevant in Idaho, which lacks the short-term forecasting and grid integration capabilities that would allow residents and neighboring states to take full advantage of vast wind energy potential.

“Increasing the percentage of wind energy in overall electricity generation is much more sophisticated than simply installing wind farms in windy areas with complex terrain,” Senocak said. “The overall goal of this research is to better understand the characteristics of turbulent flows through complex terrain under different atmospheric conditions so that available wind power can be reliably forecast and integrated onto the grid.”

The supercomputing and 3D visualization aspects of the project will be used to motivate student interest in the computational sciences and bolster laboratory resources in fluid mechanics courses at Boise State. In addition, a supercomputing booth will be developed for use in K-12 outreach programs, with hands-on exercises for modeling and simulation of wind and visualization of scientific data and high-resolution imagery from Earth and space sciences.

Wan Kuang

Boise State assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Wan Kuang has been honored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a $400,000 CAREER grant. It is the NSF’s most prestigious award for early career faculty, given annually to individuals who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through the integration of outstanding research and education.

Kuang received a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the Chongqing University of Post and Telecom in China and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. This is his fifth year on the faculty of Boise State’s College of Engineering.

Kuang’s winning proposal concerns nanophotonics, the purpose of which is to scale optical devices and components down to their ultimate size limits. He is developing numerical models to simulate photonic devices on the nanometer scale and lab experiments to verify these models. The broad aim of the project is to enable carefully engineered patterns of nanoparticles, creating what Kuang calls a wave guide.

“A nanoparticle optic wave guide exists, but the understanding of it is relatively rudimentary and doesn’t take into account many electron transport properties. I will develop a theory to bridge the gaps in understanding so we can manipulate optical properties in more than one way,” Kuang said.

While real-world applications will require a lot more research, Kuang’s work has the potential to contribute to dramatic increases in the efficiency and quality of communication devices, from the speed of Internet connections to the clarity of television and computer displays.

“There has been some pretty explosive research in this area in the last 10 years,” Kuang said, “but in Idaho, there is relatively little research going on in optical devices and the optical properties of materials. This is our opportunity to establish this kind of research as a strength of Boise State.”

On the education side, Kuang already advises graduate and undergraduate students in his research lab, and the CAREER grant will allow him to expand such opportunities. He hopes to develop classes for Boise State’s doctoral program in electrical and computer engineering and more lab facilities for undergraduate courses, and he is developing an outreach program for students in grades 8-12 focused on energy conservation. The recipient of many grants, Kuang also received a $627,185 grant from the NSF’s Major Research Instrumentation program for acquisition of a femtosecond laser source and measurement system.