Troy, N.Y. — Koushik Kar, assistant professor of electrical, computer, and systems engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Kar will use the projected five-year, $409,939 grant to research methods to improve the flow of information through large-scale wireless sensor networks.

According to Kar, bandwidth and energy constraints seriously hinder performance in wireless sensor networks. These networks typically span over vast areas and are dynamic in nature, which make network-wide control, coordination, and measurement operations difficult. With this grant, Kar will work on developing energy and bandwidth management algorithms that operate only on the basis of locally available information, yet maximize the performance of the entire network. He describes it as using local information to reach global objectives.

“Professor Kar is examining how large-scale sensor systems can be managed and operated more effectively at lower cost,” said Wolf von Maltzahn, acting vice president for research at Rensselaer. “A better understanding of these systems could lead to improved efficiency and performance of a diverse group of critical systems and networks with applications in environmental and health monitoring, disaster relief operations, and military surveillance.”

Kar will engage Rensselaer graduate and undergraduate students in his research by involving them in theoretical development, and the creation of simulation software to implement the algorithms being developed during the project.  His research will be integrated into a graduate level course at Rensselaer, as well as an education outreach program.

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

Kar joined the Rensselaer faculty in 2002 and is a member of Rensselaer’s Networks Lab where research projects cover a wide range of theoretical and experimental areas with an emphasis on high-speed and wireless networks and the delivery of multimedia data over various types of networks. He earned a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering in 2002 and a master’s in electrical engineering in 1999 from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor’s in electrical engineering in 1997 from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India.

Contact: Mary Cimo
Phone: (518) 687-7174
E-mail: cimom@rpi.edu