Two Virginia Tech engineering faculty were honored at the White House today as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for 2003, the highest national honor for researchers in the early stages of their careers.

Harry Dankowicz, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics, and Sandeep Shukla, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, both of Blacksburg, Va., were among 57 researchers selected nationally as PECASE honorees. The awards were presented in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building by John H. Marburger III, science adviser to President George W. Bush and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Dankowicz and Shukla were among 20 National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers to receive PECASE honors. The 37 remaining recipients represented seven other federally-funded science and engineering programs.

As a Fulbright scholar working on his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics at Cornell University, Dankowicz studied nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. In 1996, as a research associate at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, where he had previously earned his bachelor's and master’s degrees, he turned his attention to models of the human gait.

Dankowicz's development of methods to predict changes in stability and to design against instability in dynamic systems is based in the abstractions of differential equations, but aimed toward practical applications — such as improved ride comfort in automotive suspension systems or wearable devices that could reduce the number of fall-related injuries.

In particular, Dankowicz is interested in the prevention of fall-related injuries, and one innovation he plans as part of his research is a model of scuffing contact between the human foot and the ground during gait. "There are a number of low-impact conditions that can cause enough instability to result in a fall," he said. In determining the role of friction in falling, for example, Dankowicz could use his computer model of the foot to analyze the effects of the composition of shoe soles or the roughness of floors.

This research could lead to the design of prosthetic and orthotic devices that would help reduce instability for people who are at risk of injuries from falls. In addition, Dankowicz hopes to create a predictive methodology that can be applied to a range of mechanical systems, such as automotive systems and industrial machinery.

Dankowicz, who joined the Virginia Tech faculty in 1999, received a $400,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award in 2003 to support his research and educational innovations.

An associate of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Dankowicz has collaborated with faculty in the Wake Forest School of Medicine to develop computer-based tools to assist in corrective surgery for the spinal disorder, scoliosis. He also has worked with researchers in the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine on an exoskeletal device for equine limb disorders and injuries.

Among the numerous scientific publications authored by Dankowicz are two published textbooks. His textbook Multi-Body Mechanics and Visualization is based on a course he created that is taught at both KTH and Virginia Tech. He has received Virginia Tech’s Pete White Award for Innovation in Engineering Education for the course and accompanying textbook.

Shukla, who came to Virginia Tech in 2002, is a leading researcher in designing, analyzing, and predicting performance of electronic systems, particularly systems embedded in automated systems. The research that attracted Shukla’s PECASE award focuses on power/performance trade-off analysis for designing embedded systems, and includes a related educational component.

"The computing world is moving from the desktop and workstation to an arena of embedded and wearable computers," Shukla said.

More and more, embedded computers are becoming the brains behind mechanisms that we rely on in our everyday lives — such as wireless devices, cars, automated elevators, climate control systems, traffic signals, and washing machines. Embedded computers also constitute the backbone of our complex systems, including space mission controls, avionics and weapons systems.

"Power/performance trade-offs are important because most embedded computers are powered by rechargeable batteries," Shukla said.

Space is limited in host devices, so embedded computers typically operate on small, low-power batteries. Two performance factors are critical to embedded computers — speed and quality of service — and if batteries supply too little power, computer performance is reduced.

The trend toward arranging embedded computers in a network also has created a need for research into the optimal balance of power and performance. A high-end automobile, for example, may have a network of 80-100 embedded computers on board. In fact, Shukla said, most innovations in the auto industry today are in the form of embedded electronics, rather than in mechanics.

Using a probabilistic analysis and modeling tool called PRISM, with which he has worked at the University of Birmingham in England, Shukla is devising power usage strategies for embedded computers. His goal is to support the current and future designs of embedded computers by developing a power usage strategy that can guarantee maximum performance while reducing the power usage. This entails analyzing the complex probabilities of when computers will require power and how much power they will use. "It's similar to designing a network of traffic lights for a particular traffic pattern," he said.

In 2003, Shukla and colleagues in electrical and computer engineering, computer science, and mathematics founded the Center for Embedded Systems for Critical Applications with the goal of moving Virginia Tech to the forefront of research and education in the area of embedded systems. Shukla is deputy director of the center, which operates under the umbrella of the university’s Institute for Critical Technologies and Applied Science.

Like Dankowicz, Shukla received a NSF CAREER award in 2003 that supports his research and educational innovations. Shukla has developed both graduate and undergraduate courses in embedded computer systems, as well as a course on the application of economic game theory in computer systems design.

During the past two years, Shukla has published three books and more than 40 peer-reviewed papers in professional journals and conference proceedings.

Shukla received his bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Jadavpur University in India and his master's degree and Ph.D. in computer science from the State University of New York at Albany. He began studying embedded computers while working as an engineer with Verizon and, later, Intel. Before coming to Virginia Tech, he was a member of the research faculty of the Center for Embedded Computer Systems at the University of California-Irvine.

The College of Engineering at Virginia Tech is internationally recognized for its excellence in 14 engineering disciplines and computer science. The college’s 5,600 undergraduates benefit from an innovative curriculum that provides a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to engineering education, complementing classroom instruction with two unique design-and-build facilities and a strong Cooperative Education Program. With more than 50 research centers and numerous laboratories, the college offers its 2,000 graduate students opportunities in advanced fields of study such as biomedical engineering, state-of-the-art microelectronics, and nanotechnology.

Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become among the largest universities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Tech’s eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.

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