Every yr, the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Program acknowledges the nation’s most promising early-career faculty with assist for research, instructing excellence and the mixing of the 2.
In 2025 so far, seven faculty members within the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University have earned this honor, reflecting the Fulton Schools dedication to cultivating expertise that may remedy pressing world challenges.
From preventing cybercrime to managing city visitors, bettering bodily rehabilitation, rethinking knowledge storage, advancing space-based synthetic intelligence instruments and extra, these tasks embody the Fulton Schools spirit of innovation and public influence.
Cyberattacks are relentless. The FBI logs more than 2,000 cybercrime complaints every day, with damages exceeding $16 billion annually. With practically 750,000 unfilled cybersecurity jobs within the U.S., defenses want greater than manpower.
Tiffany Bao, an assistant professor within the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, is assembly this problem with SE-bot, an AI-powered software that mimics the instinct of elite safety consultants to discover vulnerabilities in software program earlier than hackers can exploit them.
Her CAREER-funded undertaking focuses on symbolic execution, a robust however advanced bug-hunting method, and teaches AI to make the strategic decisions that seasoned analysts do instinctively.
Bao’s open-source instruments might assist software program builders with out deep safety backgrounds safeguard their code, making safety extra accessible worldwide. Beyond research, she’s contributing to gamified coaching packages like pwn.college and cybersecurity summer season camps to encourage the following era of moral hackers.
The AI growth has fueled an explosion in knowledge and within the massive data centers wanted to retailer it. These services eat enormous quantities of power and water, making their sustainability a urgent subject.
Zhichao Cao, an assistant professor within the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, is tackling this with new strategies for managing persistent key-value shops, or methods that retailer knowledge long run whereas permitting fast retrieval.
His CAREER research optimizes these methods for trendy disaggregated knowledge heart architectures, enabling exact management over computing and storage assets to reduce waste with out sacrificing efficiency.
Cao companions with trade leaders akin to Samsung, Meta, Snowflake and Western Digital to guarantee his options meet real-world wants. He’s additionally creating hands-on research alternatives for college students, from undergraduate pupil camps to Ok–12 outreach, making certain the following era is prepared to handle the world’s rising knowledge footprint.
Not everybody has entry to in-person bodily remedy, particularly older adults or these in rural areas. Heejin Jeong, an assistant professor in The Polytechnic School, is utilizing AI to make self-directed rehabilitation more practical, beginning with hand and finger mobility.
His CAREER undertaking integrates sensors and AI suggestions to detect affected person frustration, present encouragement and guarantee workouts are carried out accurately. Collaborating with surgeons, therapists and ASU Health colleagues, Jeong is constructing instruments that complement — not exchange — human therapists.
He additionally goals to spark interdisciplinary collaboration between engineering and medical college students, promote AI literacy and encourage pupil entrepreneurship. By combining technical innovation with human-centered design, Jeong is creating inexpensive rehab instruments for those that want them most.
When it comes to advancing science, pace issues. Mohamed Houssem Kasbaoui, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering within the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, is tackling one of many greatest bottlenecks in research: fluid dynamics simulations that may take months to run on the world’s largest supercomputers.
With assist from the CAREER Award, Kasbaoui is creating new methods to run fluid simulations that dramatically pace up outcomes from months to simply hours with out dropping accuracy.
These sooner strategies might assist scientists and engineers sort out issues starting from predicting how rivers carry sediment to bettering medical gadgets that work together with blood move to designing extra environment friendly plane and spacecraft.
Kasbaoui’s lab can also be constructing academic instruments, together with a digital actuality platform to assist undergraduates and the general public discover fluid dynamics in an interactive method. By making simulations sooner and extra accessible, his work opens the door to accelerated discovery and innovation.
Satellites generate huge quantities of knowledge about Earth’s landscapes, local weather and agriculture, however utilizing that data successfully stays a problem.
Hannah Kerner, an assistant professor within the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, is closing that hole with AI instruments that may adapt to new areas, circumstances and languages with out intensive retraining.
Her CAREER research contains “zero-shot mapping” algorithms that allow customers to question satellite tv for pc knowledge in plain language and get correct, actionable insights, even for data-scarce areas. Kerner’s work already powers tasks like Fields of The World, which defines cropland globally to enhance meals safety, and the Maui Nui Crop Monitor, which delivers satellite-driven insights to Hawaiian farmers.
Through her “AI for ʻĀina” training program, she’s bringing culturally grounded AI training to Maui County college students, making certain native communities profit from the identical improvements shaping world tendencies.
Dina Verdín: Centering lived pupil experiences in engineering training
Engineering is a demanding area and the way in which college students keep motivated can look completely different from what conventional theories predict.
Dina Verdín, an assistant professor of engineering in The Polytechnic School, is tackling that problem head-on.
With assist from her CAREER Award, she is constructing a brand new framework that helps training researchers higher seize how engineering college students really set objectives, keep engaged and persist by tough packages.
Her undertaking interrogates extensively used motivational theories, many borrowed from psychology, that don’t at all times match the realities of engineering training, particularly for college students from minoritized backgrounds. She is creating instruments which are extra responsive to the lived experiences of engineering college students which are formed by tradition and context, beginning with reimagining achievement goal theory.
Her work not solely advances research but in addition supplies sensible devices, together with new survey instruments, to information future research of pupil success. By giving researchers sharper methods to analyze pupil motivation, Verdín helps make sure that extra college students, together with these from traditionally underserved communities, can persist of their packages, graduate and be part of the nation’s engineering workforce, strengthening state and nationwide innovation for years to come.
Hua Wei: Smarter cities, higher choices
From visitors alerts to energy grids, city methods depend on advanced decision-making.
Hua Wei, an assistant professor within the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, is making these choices smarter and extra clear with AI instruments designed to bridge the “simulation-to-reality” hole, making certain that fashions work not simply in idea, however within the unpredictable actual world.
His CAREER undertaking makes use of reinforcement studying to optimize methods like visitors management, adapting in actual time to altering circumstances whereas preserving human decision-makers within the loop. Wei’s check beds, together with collaborations with the town of Chandler, Arizona, have already proven the potential to shave minutes off commutes.
Wei’s emphasis on explainable AI ensures belief and accountability in high-stakes choices, whether or not in metropolis planning, public well being or power administration. His student-focused lab blends technical rigor with playful engagement, even utilizing rubber geese to signify pedestrians in visitors simulations.