University of Rochester
01/16/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 01/16/2025 15:58
Two Rochester faculty members receive the nation’s highest honor for early-career investigators
Ehsan Hoque and Petros Tzeferacos have been named Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) winners.
The White House announced that two University of Rochester faculty members received the highest honor bestowed by the US government for outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers. President Biden named Professor Ehsan Hoque and Associate Professor Petros Tzeferacos recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
PECASE recognizes scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers. The award recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology, expands awareness of careers in science and engineering, recognizes the scientific missions of participating agencies, enhances connections between research and impacts on society, and highlights the importance of science and technology for our nation's future.
A full list of this year's PECASE award winners is available on the White House website.
Ehsan Hoque: Advancing human-computer interaction with AI
Hoque, a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science, is an expert in human-computer interaction and artificial intelligence. His previous accolades include being named an "emerging leader" by the National Academy of Medicine, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award winner, one of Science News's "10 Scientists to Watch" in 2017, and one of MIT Technology Review's "Innovators Under 35" in 2016.
He was nominated for the PECASE award for his work with the Army Research Office developing advanced multimodal AI systems that understand how different forms of human communication-from facial expressions and speech to body language and verbal content-interact, complement, and sometimes contradict each other. This research aimed to develop practical and ethical applications that benefit society while carefully preserving individual privacy and civil rights. He says that while the project was particularly challenging, he feels gratified to engage in such impactful work with exceptional research partners.
"I am incredibly fortunate to work with students who embraced this vision, persisting through countless rejections and setbacks before achieving our breakthrough," says Hoque. "This award reinforces an important lesson: pursuing quick wins rarely leads to distinction. The real breakthroughs come when you aim high and persevere through the storms of rejection, self-doubt, and skepticism."
Petros Tzeferacos: Leveraging FLASH code to investigate astrophysics
A faculty member with the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a senior scientist at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Tzeferacos combines numerical modeling and laser-driven laboratory experiments to study high-energy-density (HED) science, plasma physics, and fundamental astrophysical processes. He is the director of the Flash Center for Computational Science that develops the FLASH code, which is used by more than 4,600 scientists around the world. Tzeferacos received the American Physical Society's John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research in 2019 and has served the high-energy-density science community in several roles, including chair of the High Energy Density Science Association, chair of the National Ignition Facility Users Group, chair of the simulations committee of LaserNetUS, and lead of the simulations working group at ZNetUS.
Tzeferacos was nominated for the PECASE award for his research funded by the Early Career Research program of the Department of Energy to holistically study high-energy-density magnetized plasma turbulence, a key process in astrophysical phenomenology. The work leverages high-performance computing simulations with the FLASH code and experiments on our nation's laser facilities to establish a basis for laboratory astrophysics investigations on the nature of magnetized HED turbulence and fluctuation dynamo.
"I'm thrilled and humbled by this exceptional honor," says Tzeferacos regarding receiving a PECASE award. "The unwavering support I have received from the University of Rochester and the US Department of Energy, as well as the unique research that the Laboratory for Laser Energetics enables, have allowed me incredible opportunities at the intersection of computational plasma physics, astrophysics, fusion energy, and stockpile stewardship. I can't wait to see what we'll be able to do next."