The National Science Foundation (NSF) has offered its most prestigious award for young scientists, the CAREER Award, to two University of Rochester researchers: Paul Ampadu and Justin Ramsey.

The NSF CAREER award is given to promising scientists early in their careers and is selected on the basis of creative proposals that effectively integrate research and education. Paul Ampadu, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, won his CAREER award for research to efficiently and reliably create networks of heterogeneous technologies on a single chip. He will receive $400,000 over five years.

Ampadu is working to address the critical reliability problem of integrating deep nanometer CMOS and emerging nanoelectronics processors and memories on a chip. These dissimilar blocks communicate with one another over closely spaced, unreliable links, requiring effective error control to improve link reliability at reduced energy and performance costs.

"Paul's research in networks-on-chip is an exciting area at the frontiers of electrical and computer engineering that surely will be important in future integrated circuits, especially those that combine a lot of different functions such as computing, communications, memory, signal processing and others," said Mark Bocko, chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "As more functionality is packed onto a single integrated circuit the possibilities are endless, such as an iPhone on a single chip; however, the challenges are huge."

Ampadu was born in Ghana and educated in China and Taiwan before coming to the United States. He earned his doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University in 2004, and was appointed an assistant professor at the University of Rochester that same year.

In addition to his research, he is deeply involved in several community outreach efforts that seek to mentor underrepresented students in order to inspire, recruit, and retain them in the field of engineering. For his contributions to mentoring students, Ampadu recently received a national Black Engineer of the Year Special Recognition Award and has been selected to receive a University of Rochester Charles Drew Professors Choice Award.

Justin Ramsey, assistant professor of biology, won his CAREER award for combining basic research of plant evolution with educational and community outreach efforts related to Rochester-area forest habitats. He will receive $800,000 over five years.

Contact: Alan Blank alan.blank@rochester.edu 585-275-2671