Two EECS Assistant Professors Win Prestigious NSF CAREER Awards
Written by Amy Blakely
Tickle College of Engineering Assistant Professors Sai Swaminathan and Ahmedullah Aziz have received Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards from the National Science Foundation. The program recognizes the early career work of teacher-scholars who are likely to become academic leaders in research and education.
Swaminathan will receive $638,341 to work with resource-constrained communities in Appalachian Tennessee to co-design low-cost, portable Edge Artificial Intelligence (EdgeAI) devices to address real-world local needs.
Aziz will receive $550,000 to reimagine superconducting logic systems to keep up with the growing prevalence of cryogenic and quantum computing platforms.
AI Devices for Appalachia
Swaminathan, an expert in human-centered computing, said it is critical for communities to play a role in shaping artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
“AI is going to impact the communities where we live and work whether we have a seat at the table or not,” he said. “By designing these technologies together, we can ensure who gets access and how the technology can address real local challenges and positively impact people’s livelihoods.”
Swaminathan said he’s working with a group of organizations in Appalachian Tennessee that are dedicated to addressing pressing local challenges. Together, they will design EdgeAI devices that community members can use to monitor and respond to concerns about water safety, soil health, and food production.
These organizations include: Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development (SEEED), which provides pathways out of poverty through career training, environmental education, and community engagement; Clean Water Expected in East Tennessee (CWEET), which helps to ensure clean water and environments; Appalachian Justice Research Center, a joint effort of UT’s College of Arts and Sciences and Winston College of Law focused on “urgent, protracted, and historically under-addressed issues;” UT’s Institute for a Secure & Sustainable Environment (ISSE), which develops policies, technologies, and educational programs to respond to environmental and security issues; and the Tennessee Water Resources Research Center (TWRRC) which serves water resource experts in academia, government, and the private sector.
“By designing these technologies together, we can ensure who gets access and how the technology can address real local challenges and positively impact people’s livelihoods.”
Sai Swaminathan | Assistant Professor, Tickle College of Engineering
In time, Swaminathan hopes to deploy hundreds of EdgeAI devices at community gardens, water monitoring sites, and rural locations throughout Appalachia. These devices, costing as little as a few dollars, can be equipped with a variety of sensors, including cameras, sound, and vibration, and operate without internet access or specialized equipment. Although
these tiny devices have as little as 256 kilobytes of memory—smaller than the size of a single photo on a smartphone—Swaminathan plans to make them powerful enough to run AI models. Community members will then be able to build and train their own AI models to monitor local conditions.
“We want to democratize these types of AI devices,” he said. “By placing practical EdgeAI tools in the hands of community members, the project strengthens local capacity to detect and respond to concerns about issues such as water safety, soil health, and food production. This supports the health and economic welfare of communities that currently lack access to advanced technology.”
Swaminathan also will create educational materials for undergraduates and K-12 students. He’s working with colleagues from Appalachian A.I. Corps, a UT initiative that brings together faculty, staff, and students from various UT colleges, to create a program for high school students across rural Appalachian that embeds EdgeAI devices into buoys to study water quality in streams.
Low-Temp Computing Systems
The rapid growth of AI and quantum computing is creating an urgent need for more powerful and energy-efficient computing hardware.
“Most cutting-edge quantum computers operate at extremely low temperatures, but the control electronics used to operate them are still located at room temperature,” Aziz said. “This creates major challenges in wiring complexity, energy efficiency, and system scalability.”
Aziz’s project aims to address these challenges by developing new superconducting logic circuits that can operate efficiently at cryogenic temperatures, so they can be positioned closer to quantum processors. superconductors are materials that can carry electrical current with nearly zero resistance when cooled to extremely low temperatures, making them promising for future energy-efficient computing systems.
“By using superconducting electronics closer to the quantum processor, we can begin to rethink how future quantum computing systems are built,” Aziz said. “In the long term, this work could help make quantum computers more scalable and practical, while also contributing to future energy-efficient computing systems for AI and high-performance computing.”
Aziz said benefits of this work could eventually reach many areas of society.
“Better computing hardware can support faster drug discovery, improved materials design, more efficient AI tools, stronger cybersecurity, advanced sensing, and more powerful scientific simulations,” he said.
“In the long term, this work could help make quantum computers more scalable and practical, while also contributing to future energy-efficient computing systems for AI and high-performance computing.”
Contact
Melissa Callahan (tce@utk.edu)