Date: Mar 08, 2011

Computer Science Professor wins $450,000 Faculty Early Career Development Grant from National Science Foundation

Grant is second NSF award given to Dr. Habib Ammari since 2009

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY –   Dr. Habib M. Ammari, assistant professor of Computer Science, has been awarded a five-year, $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his research of wireless sensor networks.

The grant from the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development program is Dr. Ammari’s second NSF award in as many years; in 2009, he won a three-year, $400,000 NSF grant to support his work developing more energy efficient wireless sensor networks that can be used in real-world applications.

Wireless sensor networks are a series of independent, battery-operated devices which communicate with a central base station that collects data. The networks can be used in a wide range of military and civilian applications, if the networks can be developed on smaller scale that is more energy efficient while still handling large amounts of data.

Dr. Ammari’s project aims to design a new theoretical framework for scalable, sustainable three-dimensional wireless network sensor deployments. “There are several major challenges that should be addressed to develop this general framework to achieve scalability and sustainability in real-scenario deployments,” Ammari said. "This project will allow me to recruit and mentor graduate and undergraduate students and help wireless sensor network designers develop energy-efficient sensing applications, where each event that occurs in a deployment field is detected by at least k sensors, and the collected data is forwarded to a central gathering point in timely manner.”The new NSF grant will also fund graduate research assistants to work on the project.

The NSF Faculty Early Career Development program recognizes and supports junior faculty who successfully combine their roles as educators and scholars. Dr. Ammari, who joined Hofstra in 2008, is the first Hofstra professor to win a grant through this program.

Hofstra University is a dynamic private institution where students can choose from about 140 undergraduate and more than 150 graduate programs in liberal arts and sciences, business; engineering; communication; education, health and human services;  and honors studies, as well as a School of Law and the Hofstra-North Shore LIJ School of Medicine at Hofstra University.