Radhika Nagpal Wins Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - April 16, 2007 - Radhika Nagpal, Assistant Professor of Computer Science in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (HSEAS), has won a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The honor is considered one of the most prestigious ways to recognize rising stars in science and engineering.

Nagpal,whose work bridges computer science and biology, plans to use the $400,000 award (paid over five years) to further her research onself-organizing systems. In particular, she in interested in learning how to better engineer self-organizing, self-repairing distributing computing systems. She also wants to gain a fuller understanding of robust collective behavior in biological systems.

“Many areas in computer science depend on the ability to easily program robust collective behavior from massively-parallel substrates, from traditional computer networks to modular robotics,” says Nagpal. “Advances could significantly improve the ability to design computing systems that self-organize, self-heal, and adapt. This research can also influence biology by providing novel insights into tissue development and disease.”

For example, designing a robust algorithm could ensure that vast numbers of decentralized digital components, as in the case of a sensor network, could learn to ‘communicate’ on their own and recover if one or several nodes, for example, shut down. Likewise, one day such recovery technology could even be applied to a multiceullular organism like the heart so it could “heal” itself when damaged. 

In addition to her research, Nagpal has been actively involved with various aspects of undergraduate life at Harvard College. She teaches the popular introductory course Computer Science 51; serves as an advisor for the Harvard College Engineering Society’s RoboCup soccer team; and provides support to students across campus participating in the Intercollegiate Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM).

“I am extremely pleased that the NSF has chosen to acknowledge Radhika forher compelling research,” said Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti, Dean ofthe Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. “As important, Radhika finds the time to bring her research, from robotics to genetic machines, directly to undergraduates through teaching and competitions. She’s a model academic.”

Nagpal, who earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees form MIT, joined Harvard in the fall of 2004. Before her arrival at HSEAS, she spent a year as a Research Fellow in the recently formed Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. Previously, she was a postdoctoral lecturer and graduate student at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and a member of the Amorphous Computing Group. She was also a recipient of the 2005 Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship Award.

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About the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program 
The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization. Such activities should build a firm foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education. NSF encourages submission of CAREER proposals from junior faculty members at all CAREER-eligible organizations and especially encourages women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities to apply.