Carnegie Mellon University
March 12, 2013

Press Release: Four Carnegie Mellon Faculty Members Awarded Sloan Fellowships for Pushing Frontiers of Research

Contacts: Chriss Swaney / 412-268-5776 / swaney@andrew.cmu.edu
Jocelyn Duffy / 412-268-9982 / jhduffy@andrew.cmu.edu
Byron Spice / 412-268-9068 / bspice@andrew.cmu.edu

PITTSBURGH—The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has selected four Carnegie Mellon University faculty members to receive prestigious Sloan Research Fellowships. David Brumley, Gautam Iyer, Seyoung Kim and Rachel Mandelbaum were chosen for showing great potential to advance knowledge in their field.

Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded to young researchers from the fields of chemistry, neuroscience, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and physics. Each fellow will receive a two-year, $50,000 grant to pursue his or her research. The Carnegie Mellon recipients are among 124 scientists nationwide receiving the award this year.

“This is a wonderful honor for Carnegie Mellon that four of our young, outstanding faculty members have received this extremely competitive award. As Sloan Research Fellows, these faculty members join an elite group of young researchers who are pushing the frontiers of their respective research endeavors,” said Carnegie Mellon Provost and Executive Vice President Mark S. Kamlet.

David Brumley

David BrumleyDavid Brumley, the Gerard G. Elia Career Development Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was honored for his work in computer science. His pioneering research focuses on the techniques, principles and algorithms for finding flaws in software that hackers use to break into systems. His goal is to make computer software and systems safe, and to push the boundaries to improve cyber security. He is working on techniques to fight against next-generation malware. He was also the recipient of the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) — the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young scientists and engineers.

Brumley earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1998 from the University of Northern Colorado, a master’s degree in computer science in 2003 from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in computer science from CMU in 2008.

Gautam Iyer

Gautam IyerGautam Iyer, an assistant professor of mathematical sciences and a member of the Center for Nonlinear Analysis, studies incompressible fluids, diffusive transport, mixing, liquid crystals and coagulation. His research could help advance the understanding of mathematical models that will allow for the simulation of a variety of phenomena, including physical and chemical processes.

Iyer earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, and his master’s and doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of Chicago. In 2006, he was named the Szego Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Stanford University, and in 2009 he joined the CMU faculty. The National Science Foundation has funded Iyer’s research since 2007.   

Seyoung Kim

Seyoung KimSeyoung Kim, an assistant professor in the Lane Center for Computational Biology, focuses on computational genomics, population genetics and statistical machine learning. She is interested in developing statistical machine learning tools for analyzing large-scale genomic data and investigating biological systems of various organisms and disease processes using these tools. She was a recipient last year of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Kim received her bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Seoul National University in Korea and her Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, Irvine. She was a post-doctoral fellow in CMU’s Machine Learning Department before joining the Lane Center faculty in 2011.

Rachel Mandelbaum

Rachel MandelbaumRachel Mandelbaum, an assistant professor of physics and a member of the Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology, conducts research on weak gravitational lensing, a cosmological tool that can be used to study the distribution of both dark and ordinary matter in the universe. Mandelbaum participates in large astronomical and spectroscopic imaging surveys including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope and the Hyper Suprime-Cam at the Subaru Telescope.  Recently, she was named to the NASA science team that will be working on the European Science Agency’s Euclid survey.

Mandelbaum earned both her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees at Princeton University. She completed a Hubble Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study and then returned to Princeton as an associate research scholar. She joined the CMU faculty in 2011, and was awarded a Department of Energy Early Career Award in 2012.

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