Five University of Texas at Dallas faculty members received 2026 Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation to support research aimed at making computer networks more resilient, developing next-generation electronics, strengthening software security and advancing mathematical understanding of complex systems.
The recipients of the five-year awards are Dr. Waseem Abbas , assistant professor of systems engineering ; Dr. Sourav Dutta , assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering ; Dr. Kirill Lazebnik , assistant professor of mathematical sciences ; Dr. Kyle McCall , assistant professor of materials science and engineering ; and Dr. Xinda Wang , assistant professor of computer science .
Abbas, Dutta, McCall and Wang are faculty members in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science . Lazebnik is a faculty member in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics .
“From resilient networks and advanced semiconductors to artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity and fundamental mathematics, these researchers are tackling complex challenges with the potential to shape the technologies and systems of the future,” said Dr. Joseph Pancrazio , vice president for research and innovation and professor of bioengineering . “These awards also recognize the researchers’ commitment to integrating research and education, giving students opportunities to learn through discovery and helping develop the next generation of researchers and innovators.”
Abbas’ $514,916 CAREER award supports his work to improve the resilience of networked systems such as robot teams, infrastructure networks and systems in which computing tasks are shared across multiple devices.
Networked systems often are designed to tolerate a certain level of disruption, but their performance can deteriorate rapidly if an attack or failure exceeds that threshold.
Through his research, Abbas aims to develop systems that can adapt as conditions worsen, allowing performance to decline rather than collapse unexpectedly, while identifying the most important connections and components to protect so that systems can maintain essential functions without costly redundancy.
Dutta was awarded a $501,234 grant to develop a new type of semiconductor technology that could help produce faster, more energy-efficient computer chips.
As AI and autonomous systems generate enormous amounts of data, conventional chips increasingly struggle to process information efficiently because data must travel between different components.
Dutta will investigate ultrathin oxide semiconductor transistors that can be manufactured at low temperatures and stacked vertically on conventional silicon electronics, potentially shortening the distance data travels and reducing energy use. He also will use AI and computer models to predict how the transistors will perform and to accelerate the design and optimization processes.
Lazebnik’s $450,000 CAREER grant supports his research on rational functions, which help mathematicians, scientists and engineers model and understand complex systems. The study of rational functions is key to advancing many fields, including signal processing, dynamical systems and scientific computing.
The goal of Lazebnik’s project is to gain a better understanding of the structure of the space of rational functions and how they might be applied to additional areas of analysis and dynamics. The project also will help train future mathematicians through undergraduate research opportunities and community outreach programs.
McCall received a $796,646 award to investigate how the local atomic structure of emerging semiconductor materials influences their properties and potential applications in electronics and energy technologies.
McCall studies materials that have unusual properties arising from deviations of atoms from their expected positions within their crystal structure. Scientists do not yet fully understand how such deviations can be tuned by composition and arrangement of the constituent atoms. These local deviations also are invisible to conventional characterization techniques, limiting understanding of the exact atomic structure.
McCall and his team will use total X-ray scattering, a technique that reveals how atoms are locally bonded within a material, to study the relationship between composition, atomic structure deviations and the material’s properties.
The researchers will use this knowledge to develop design principles for creating new semiconductor materials with desirable properties, while also providing undergraduate students with hands-on research experiences and developing educational resources for teachers and students in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Wang’s $617,397 grant supports research to develop AI tools that can help open-source software communities identify security vulnerabilities earlier, as developers make changes to code. Open-source software is built from publicly available code that any developers can contribute to or use.
Because open-source software is widely used in commercial, government and critical infrastructure systems, vulnerabilities can spread to systems that incorporate the original source code.
Wang’s team will train AI to recognize patterns in how code changes are made and how those changes affect other parts of a software project. The researchers also will develop AI models that can explain why a particular code change may pose a security risk, making the tools more useful to developers and security teams with limited time and resources.