IRVINE : 2 UCI Professors Win Research Funds
Two UC Irvine professors will receive special awards from the National Science Foundation to support their research, university officials announced Wednesday.
Rina Dechter and Steven P. Ruden are among 219 young scientists nationwide to receive the prestigious Presidential Young Investigator Awards. Recipients receive $25,000 a year for five years, plus the NSF will match up to $37,500 a year in funds or equipment donated by private industry.
Dechter, an assistant professor in the department of information and computer science, conducts research on artificial intelligence. She is working on ways to program computers to solve problems in such fields as design, diagnosis and reasoning.
Ruden, an assistant professor in physics, is using computers to help determine how stars and planets formed from clouds of interstellar dust. He uses computer simulation to calculate the features of young solar systems.
The Young Investigator awards were first given in 1974 in an effort to reverse a growing shortage of engineering and science faculty in the United States. The program also aims to give a boost to young scientists who must compete for hard-to-get grants with older, more established researchers. To be eligible, faculty members must be “academically young”--those who have received their doctorates within the previous seven years.
