The National Science Foundation recently awarded Dartmouth computer science professor Devin Balkcom with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which is given to young scholar-teachers who show promise of becoming leaders in their fields of study. Recipients of the award "effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization," according to the NSF website.
Assistant professors around the country apply each year for the CAREER Award. It is worth at least $400,000, depending on NSF spending capacity.
According to Balkcom, the money he received from the CAREER Award will help support the salary of one graduate student for the next five years, in addition to supplementing his own salary, and research and laboratory expenses that he laid out in his grant proposal.
Balkcom applied for the grant in July 2006, assembling a proposal that explained the research work he had been doing, and how he plans to continue his research over the next five years.
His research focuses on robotics and optimal trajectories, which he described as a mixture of practical and theoretical science. Optimal trajectory is the science of determining the fastest way for an object to move from one location and arrangement in space to another location and arrangement in space.
He said that his work with optimal trajectory relates to his robotics research, though the two subjects differ in practicality.
"It's all motion planning," he said. "Almost any task can be seen as moving from one place to another if you describe the task space right."
Balkcom has worked to develop a robot that can fold simple origami shapes, and hopes that the money from the NSF award will help to fund his research exploring the manipulation of flexible materials, such as paper and cloth. Although seemingly theoretical, Balkcom said his robotics work implies many practical applications.
"You know if you want to put together something in a factory, if you can describe the configuration of the final product, that's some point you want to get to," he said. "You want to plan motions to achieve the goal," Balkcom said.
In addition to funding his research, the money from the CAREER award will also allow more undergraduates to participate in his robotics research.
"It's an integration of research and education," Balkcom said.
Because of the NSF award, he explained, more graduate and undergraduate students will recieve funding to write papers and attend meetings about robotics.
Currently, Balkcom's lab contains a $30,000 industrial robot arm and several mobile robots. Balkcom hopes that his lab will expand with the additional funding.
Balkcom received his Ph.D. from the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and has taught computer science at Dartmouth for two and a half years. He teaches undergraduate courses on robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as introductory computer science.
According to the College's Office of Public Affairs, nine other Dartmouth faculty members have recently been honored with NSF awards.
Balkcom said he was pleased to have received the NSF nod.
"This award is prestigious," Balkcom said. "It's typically the first big NSF award that a person would win in his career."
