By Grace Sferrazza (CAS’26, COM’26)
Assistant Professors of Computer Science Vasiliki (Vasia) Kalavri, Sabrina Neuman, Nathan Klein have received awards from the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program.
The CAREER award is the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award to support early-career faculty. The award “supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization,” according to the NSF’s website.
“We are incredibly proud of these outstanding assistant professors receiving the prestigious NSF CAREER Award,” said George Kollios, professor and chair of Computer Science. “This award not only recognizes their exceptional impact on research and education but also underscores their creativity and commitment to excellence. We eagerly anticipate the incredible achievements they will continue to bring to their fields.”
Kalavri’s project focuses on a new system named “HoloStream,” which analyzes continuous data transfers on different computing platforms. With funding from the NSF, Kalavri hopes to make stream processing technology more easily accessible—potentially lowering costs of data stream technology—and to build a foundation for future research on automatic management policies for long-term applications.
In addition to research, the award will also support funded summer internship projects for BU students in collaboration with BU Spark! and the City of Boston to “deploy streaming analytics for social good,” Kalavri said.
“We believe it will bring us one step closer to realizing our goal of making stream processing technology easily accessible to non-expert users and a core component of the higher computer science education curriculum,” said Kalavri, co-leads the Complex Analytics & Scalable Processing (CASP) research lab. “It is really great news for me and the students in my lab.”
Neuman’s project seeks to increase the capabilities of autonomous robotic systems and support the design of processors that can handle these characteristics. Neuman directs the Robomorphic Computing Laboratory at BU.
Klein’s project seeks to develop new tools to solve difficult graphing tasks and improve scientists’ understanding of graphing techniques using computer science methods. The project also seeks to bring understanding to a larger academic audience through support from undergraduate researchers, an educational website, and a course on the subject.
“I feel very lucky to have received the award and am excited to use the grant to study my favorite problems with undergraduate and graduate researchers at BU,” Klein said.
Kira Goldner, a member of the Center for Data Science faculty affiliated with Department of Computer Science, also received an NSF CAREER award. Goldner’s project investigates methods of resource allocation that maximize “consumer utility.”