Communications of the ACM
Grant to Increase TA Doctoral Students in Computer Science and Engineering
A University of Texas at Arlington computer science professor has received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, supplemented with $300,000 in UTA matching funds, that will significantly increase the number of doctoral students, especially among women and minorities.
Ishfaq Ahmad, UTA professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will lead the project. Co-principal investigators are Ramez Elmasri, Leonidas Fegaras, Manfred Huber, and Bahram Khalili, all in CSE.
This grant, when combined with Ahmad's recent $350,000 National Science Foundation grant, will also aid interdisciplinary research efforts to design assistive technologies for people with disabilities.
The grant is part of DOE's Graduate Assistance for Areas of National Need (GAANN) program. The highly competitive GAANN awards will provide fellowships over the next three years to assist doctoral students of superior ability who demonstrate financial need. Women and minorities are particularly encouraged to apply.
"UTA is building a niche in this research area of assistive technologies," Ahmad says. "We are also achieving our goal of graduating more domestic Ph.D. students. With our previous GAANN award, we built a pipeline, which is now full and is beginning to produce Ph.D. graduates."
The GAANN program will aggressively recruit the finest doctoral candidates from across Texas and the United States, Ahmad says.
Some of the assistive technologies—considered a "national need"—involve devices and systems that make life easier for people with disabilities, including: designing smarter sensors, artificial intelligence and data-enabled software, devices, systems, and environments that can improve the quality of life for a disabled person's home and caregivers.
Hong Jiang, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, says Ahmad has led the effort to increase the number of doctoral students in CSE.
"It's important to not only the world of computer science but also society in general," Jiang says. "These new doctoral students will help on so many fronts, including the teaching, research, and corporate worlds. The GAANN award signals that the University's and the CSE Department's research strength in general, and in assistive technologies, in particular, is recognized at the national level. It also signifies the strong track record and capability of CSE's faculty in mentoring and producing high-quality Ph.D. students to meet the national demand for a competitive IT workforce."
says Ishfaq Ahmad, professor in the Department of Computer Science
and Engineering at UT Arlington.
Jiang says Ahmad's work in this area touches on so many of the tenets of UTA's Strategic Plan 2020, including health and the human condition theme and data-driven discovery.
Ahmad also is the director of the Center for Advanced Computing Systems and a fellow of the IEEE.
Besides the Department of Education funding, Ahmad's current research is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Air Force Research Lab, a $50,000 Adobe Inc. grant, and a $140,000 Huawei grant.
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