Personal Mention

B. Reeja Jayan, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, is part of a project that was recently awarded a $7.5 million Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. The five-year project will study the effects of radiation damage on the performance of wide-bandgap electronics. Jayan will lead the Carnegie Mellon team to learn about the effects of various types of energy radiation on electronic materials to potentially identify ways to engineer radiation hardened materials for use in space exploration vehicles. The team includes the University of Iowa, the University of Central Florida and Pennsylvania State University. “The data we collect will integrate with spectroscopy, electron microscopy and computational modeling to arrive at a holistic understanding of radiation damage," Jayan said. Jayan also holds courtesy appointments in the Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Electrical & Computer Engineering departments. She has earned numerous honors and awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, Army Research Office Young Investigator Award, Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award and the George Tallman Ladd Research Award. She was named to Pittsburgh Magazine’s 40 Under 40. Learn more about the project.

Gabriel Gomes, an assistant professor of chemistry, has been named to Chemical & Engineering News’ “Talented 12” of rising stars in chemistry. Presented by Thermo Fisher Scientific, the “Talented 12” highlights early-career researchers in the chemical sciences who are fearlessly tackling difficult global problems. Gomes is a machine learning expert who trains computers to develop intuition for chemical reactions. His research areas also include catalysis and reaction design, artificial intelligence and computer science for chemistry, organic materials, automated chemical synthesis and physical organic chemistry. He recently joined CMU from the University of Toronto where he was a postdoctoral fellow. He earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in chemistry from Florida State University, and his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. See the list of “Talented 12.”

Stephen Smith, a research professor in the School of Computer Science's Robotics Institute, was voted president-elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Smith's research focuses broadly on the theory and practice of next-generation technologies for automated planning, scheduling and control of large multiactor systems. He pioneered the development and use of constraint-based search and optimization models for solving planning and scheduling problems, and has successfully fielded AI-based planning and scheduling systems in a range of application domains. An AAAI Fellow, Smith has won several best paper awards and received AAAI's 2018 Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award. Find out more.