FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
National Science Foundation Recognizes NYU-Poly Professors Hai Li and
Oded Nov with CAREER Awards
NEW YORK, March 12, 2012 – Two more members of the Polytechnic Institute of New York
University (NYU-Poly) faculty have joined the prestigious ranks of those honored with the
National Science Foundation's CAREER Award. Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering Hai Li and Assistant Professor of Technology Management Oded Nov both received
awards this month.
The CAREER Award is the National Science Foundation's top accolade in support of junior
faculty who stand to assume significant leadership roles in their fields.
“We congratulate Professors Li and Nov for being selected by the NSF as among the most
promising young teachers and scholars in the nation,” said NYU-Poly Provost Katepalli
Sreenivasan. “Their awards mean that roughly one-third of NYU-Poly’s eligible faculty
members are conducting research under these prestigious grants – a testament to the energy and
intellectual climate at NYU-Poly.”
Li will receive $450,000 over a five-year period to fund the optimization of a new method of onchip memory storage applicable to everyday devices like cell phones and computers, as well as
large-scale data centers and servers used by major corporations.
Her research addresses an ongoing design challenge in consumer electronics products: how to
balance the demand for increased memory capacity with the desire for ever-smaller, faster
devices. Li's work will focus on developing a highly efficient emerging memory technology
called spin-transfer torque random access memory, or STT-RAM, as a replacement for
traditional flash memory, which requires an electrical charge to store data.
“STT-RAM offer several advantages to today’s memory storage,” explained Li. “Because static
random access memory, or SRAM, uses electrical charges, it is power-intensive and easily
disturbed, making it a less stable method of memory storage. STT-RAM uses stable magnetic
energy to store memory directly on the chip, so we’ll be able to create high-density, high-speed
memory with low power requirements.”
Nov's research aims to transform technology-mediated social participation — the ways in which
humans use social technologies for collaboration and collective action.
- more -
Just as information about a person’s genetic profile can aid in the development of targeted
medical treatments, an understanding of users’ motivations and personality traits can be used to
develop individually-tailored, theory-driven system and interface design aimed at increasing
participation in technology-mediated social efforts. Nov’s research will focus on online citizen
science projects, which tap the participation of everyday individuals to contribute to scientific
research.
“Web-based citizen science projects have shed light on everything from the migration patterns of
butterflies to objects in our solar system,” said Nov. “Our work will apply tenets of social
psychology to develop and test methods of enhancing participation in citizen science research
and making it more effective.” Nov will receive a $500,000 award to conduct his research over
the next five years.
Other NYU-Poly faculty members who are conducting research with CAREER Award grants are
Yong Liu, associate professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and
Maurizio Porfiri, associate professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department.
About Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly Polytechnic University), an affiliate of
New York University, is a comprehensive school of engineering, applied sciences, technology
and research, and is rooted in a 158-year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship:
i2e. The institution, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second-oldest private engineering school. In
addition to its main campus in New York City at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, it
also offers programs at sites throughout the region and around the globe. Globally, NYU-Poly
has programs in Israel, China and is an integral part of NYU's campus in Abu Dhabi. For more
information, visit www.poly.edu.
# # #
Note to Editors:
To download photos: http://research.poly.edu/~resourcespace/?c=613&k=846fbad2f4
Contact:
Kathleen Hamilton
718-260-3792 office
347-843-9782 mobile
hamilton@poly.edu