Two UA Faculty Earn NSF Career Awards

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The National Science Foundation has awarded two University of Alabama faculty with CAREER Awards, NSF’s most prestigious awards for top performing scientists and engineers who are early in their careers.

Dr. Guy Caldwell, assistant professor of biological sciences, has been awarded a five-year, $628,000 grant to advance his studies into possible genetic causes of epilepsy. Dr. Tonya Klein, a Reichhold-Shumaker Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering, has been awarded a five-year, $570,000 grant, to further explore ways of producing smaller and less expensive computer chips.

Both awards are courtesy of NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. NSF established the CAREER program in 1995 to help top performers early in their careers to develop simultaneously their contributions and commitment to research and to education. According to the NSF web site, the CAREER program supports the activities of those teacher-scholars who are “most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.” CAREER awardees are selected on the basis of creative, career-development plans that effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their institution.

Klein will investigate “atomic layer deposition.” This is a method for depositing thin films — only several molecules thick — one atomic layer at a time, as a process for forming materials used in electronic and magnetic devices, including computer chips.

Caldwell uses a microscopic worm, known as C. elegans, to gain a better understanding of epilepsy at the molecular level. Caldwell and his colleagues have discovered how to produce worms that have epileptic seizures using genes linked to human epilepsy. Expanded efforts could lead them to genetic or chemical methods that would halt the seizures or identify novel genetic factors influencing epilepsy. All the typical hallmarks of the human nervous system, including key neurotransmitters, are present in the worm.

Both Caldwell and Klein integrate their research within their classroom teaching. Klein joined UA’s College of Engineering in 1999, the same year Caldwell joined UA’s College of Arts and Sciences.