Troy, N.Y. — Carlos Varela, assistant professor of computer science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Varela will use the projected five-year, $400,000 grant to design and implement computer programming technology for use in solving complex scientific problems through high-performance grid computing.

Varela is collaborating with researchers in varied scientific disciplines on computational grids and associated software to address the growing research need for increased computational power.

“Advances in real-world scientific applications, such as sensor networks and virtual surgery, are dependent on the development of computer programming technology that allows data to be accessed and analyzed in real-time,” said Wolf von Maltzahn, acting vice president for research at Rensselaer. “Professor Varela’s work in this area will provide opportunities to better utilize high-performance computing capabilities and offer his students significant educational opportunities.”

Varela’s research will be incorporated into the classroom at Rensselaer through a combination of internet computing course materials, hands-on experiences in computing technologies and open source software, and educational outreach.

The CAREER Award is given to faculty members at the beginning of their careers and is one of NSF's most competitive and prestigious awards, placing emphasis on high-quality research and novel education initiatives.

Varela joined the Rensselaer faculty in 2001. He created and directs the Worldwide Computing Laboratory, based at Rensselaer and working in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Pierre and Marie Curie University in France, and IBM Research. He is also a collaborator on research associated with Rensselaer’s Center for Pervasive Computing and Networking and serves as the information director of ACM Computing Surveys, a computer science journal. He received the 2003 and 2004 IBM Eclipse Innovation Awards for his work on dynamic visualization of Java-based distribution systems. Varela earned a doctorate, master’s, and bachelor’s in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining Rensselaer, Varela was a research staff member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center.

Computer Science at Rensselaer
Rensselaer's Computer Science Department provides a comprehensive program in software systems, programming languages, computer hardware systems, data structures and algorithms, and computation. Research conducted by faculty and graduate students includes work in bioinformatics, computer vision, data science, database systems, robotics, software engineering, pervasive computing and networking, theoretical computer science, grid computing, and computational science and engineering.

Contact: Tiffany Lohwater
Phone: (518) 276-6542
E-mail: lohwat@rpi.edu