Farewell frost!
October 30, 2024
Two Northwestern University promising young faculty members — Jie Gu and Julia Kalow — have received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the foundation’s most prestigious honor for junior faculty members.
Gu is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering. He will receive $566,880 over five years from NSF’s Division of Computing and Communication Foundations to develop a systematic design approach for time-domain computing.
Kalow is an assistant professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. She will receive $700,000 over five years from NSF’s Division of Chemistry to study how light can be used to control the formation and breakage of reversible chemical bonds in polymer networks.
The CAREER Award is designed to support promising young faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through the combination of outstanding research and education.
Gu’s research group develops novel computing methods that combine digital and mixed-signal circuit technology to enable ultra-low power, ultra-efficient computing. His technologies have potential applications in real-time machine learning, artificial intelligence or Internet-of-things devices.
Before joining Northwestern in 2015, Gu was a researcher and developer at Texas Instruments.
Kalow’s laboratory develops new ways to synthesize and control polymers, which are ubiquitous in daily life and essential to many emerging technologies. In particular, her group is interested in synthesizing and controlling polymers with light, a source of energy that can be delivered externally and precisely. Potential applications for this work include optoelectronic and magneto-optic devices, sustainable polymers and responsive hydrogels for biomedicine.
Before joining Northwestern in 2016, she was a Ruth L. Kirschstein NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
