UCF Researchers Receive NSF CAREER Awards for Engineering Research on Intelligent Systems

Highlights

• UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science researchers Chinwendu Enyioha and Mohiuddin Quadir have received U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Awards, one of the nation's top honors for early-career faculty.

• Enyioha's work advances resilience in teams of autonomous systems by enabling them to operate under communication constraints.

• Quadir's research designs intelligent nanomaterials that respond to biological signals.

Two UCF researchers have received U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards supporting separate engineering research projects focused on how complex systems sense, adapt and respond to changing environments.

The awards were presented to Chinwendu Enyioha, an assistant professor in UCF's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mohiuddin Quadir, an associate professor in UCF's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Among NSF's most prestigious recognitions for early-career faculty, the CAREER Award supports researchers who show strong potential as academic leaders while integrating research, education and student development.

Recognizing Emerging Research Leaders

While Enyioha and Quadir work in different engineering fields, both researchers are developing systems designed to respond under complex conditions - including autonomous systems coordinating under limited communication and nanoparticles interacting with biological signals in complex environments.

Enyioha says the award will enable his group to build on years of prior work, including early doctoral students who helped lay the foundation for the project.

"It gives us the opportunity to study these problems and acknowledges the effort that has gone into making important findings in this area," Enyioha says. "It will enable us to continue training doctoral students and make contributions to the broader cyber-physical systems research community."

For Quadir, the award will help support the long-term development of ideas his research group has been pursuing for years for engineering 'smart' materials with programmable form and function.

"This recognition means a very significant impact for our research group and for the progression of our ideas," Quadir says. "This is a core idea that we want to develop over time, and for that, you need logistic support, intellectual support, collaborations, and of course, newer ideas."

Designing Autonomous Systems Under Communication Constraints

Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Chinwendu Enyioha has received a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award to advance research in intelligent autonomous systems while expanding STEM education opportunities. (Photo by Antoine Hart)

Enyioha's CAREER project, "Limited-Communication Control of Teams of Autonomous Systems" focuses on developing mathematical frameworks and distributed algorithms that allow teams of autonomous systems to coordinate effectively under bandwidth-limited communication constraints.

The research examines how spatially distributed systems - including robotic networks, wireless sensors and autonomous infrastructure systems - can continue operating cooperatively even when communication bandwidth becomes constrained or unreliable.

"One way to think about it is if you have a bunch of robots that need to solve a particular task. Clearly they have to talk and agree and coordinate," Enyioha says. "The question we are interested in is how can they solve that problem when they are not able to talk freely with one another?"

Communication constraints are common in real-world environments, including disaster zones, underwater systems and crowded networks where many devices compete for limited bandwidth.

"Our focus isn't on situations where we have no communication, but on being efficient in how we use limited communication resources down to single bits," Enyioha says.

To explain the concept, Enyioha compares the challenge to compressing navigation instructions.

"If you want to go from Orlando to Houston, Google Maps gives you a long list of instructions," he says. "But if you only had two pieces of information to give someone, you might say, 'Go north. Then go west.'"

The project also studies resilient systems capable of continuing to operate even when communication channels fail or individual components become compromised, an important challenge in areas such as disaster response, autonomous infrastructure and large-scale robotic systems.

"In the community we call this designing autonomous systems that gracefully degrade," Enyioha says.

Engineering Materials That Respond to Biological Signals

Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Mohiuddin Quadir has received a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award to advance research in sustainable materials while expanding STEM education opportunities. (Photo by Antoine Hart)

Quadir's CAREER project, "Nanoscale Interactions of Stimuli-responsive Nanoparticles with Enzymes," investigates how engineered nanoparticles can be designed to recognize and respond to biological signals in ways that mimic certain characteristics found in living systems.

"As you know, in [human] physiology, in the physiology of the plants, in the physiology of any living materials around the world, there is a very basic paradigm that goes on, which is selective responsiveness to a particular stimulus within the myriad of noises," Quadir says. "This sensitivity means a system can register and isolate signals from a complex external environment and translate them into an action."

Quadir says his research group is trying to translate that biological principle into the materials world by engineering nanoparticles capable of recognizing specific molecular signals and producing targeted responses.

The research focuses on enzyme-responsive nanomaterials - particles capable of interacting with enzymes at the molecular level. Quadir says his research group designs and engineers the molecular building blocks of nanoparticles so they can recognize specific enzyme signals and respond accordingly.

Potential applications could include medicine, aging research, environmental science, and adaptive materials capable of responding to dynamic biological environments.

Supporting Long-Term Research and Education

Both CAREER projects include education and outreach components designed to train students and expand engagement with emerging areas of engineering.

Education and workforce development are central components of Enyioha's CAREER Award, he says. His research group includes doctoral, master's and undergraduate students who participate in research on autonomy, machine learning, and distributed optimization theory, with applications to networked cyber-physical systems. Beyond the university, he also introduces younger students to these fields through programs such as UCF Camp Connect, where K-12 participants are introduced to decision-making algorithms and autonomy during a week-long summer program.

"Seeing real demonstrations helped them understand how core concepts from math and physics apply to real problems," Enyioha says.

Quadir acknowledges the work done by the graduate students and postdocs towards the research goal. He is grateful to his mentors, collaborators and colleagues at the department and college for their guidance and inspiration, and the National Science Foundation for research support.

Quadir says scientific and engineering research ultimately aims to improve the lives of others.

Together, the awards highlight how UCF researchers are advancing engineering systems capable of adapting to increasingly complex biological, computational and real-world environments.

Enyioha's CAREER Award project, "Limited-Communication Control of Teams of Autonomous Systems," is supported under NSF award GR110760. Quadir's CAREER Award project, "Nanoscale Interactions of Stimuli-responsive Nanoparticles with Enzymes," is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under awards GR111180 and GR111181 (Award number - 2609681)

More Topics

College of Engineering and Computer Science Research Faculty Excellence Department of Materials Science and Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering