As a new assistant professor launching her research program six years ago, Olga Russakovsky was eager to advance the ability of computers to identify objects and activities in pictures or video. At the same time, she was concerned about the growing role of artificial intelligence (AI) in human decision making, given the biases of race, gender and geography that pervade the visual data sets used to train AI systems.
In 2018, Russakovsky, now an associate professor of computer science, received an Innovation Research Grant from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. With her colleague, computer science professor Arvind Narayanan, the funding allowed Russakovsky and her team to develop an open-source tool that uncovers biases in visual data sets, as well as techniques for mitigating biases during the training of AI models.
Princeton Engineering’s innovation grants began in 2008 with Project X, established by Lynn Shostack in memory of her husband David Gardner, a 1969 Princeton graduate. Since then, more than a dozen alumni, parents and other donors have established additional innovation funds, some with special focuses on machine learning, health or the environment. To date, the program has provided over $26 million in funding for more than 200 research projects.
The grants support engineering faculty members in the pursuit of new ideas that push the boundaries of their disciplines and often involve collaborations with researchers in other fields. In a spirit of “creativity, tinkering and risk-taking,” these innovation grants fill a gap in funding for promising but unproven avenues of research.
The innovation grant from the Yang Family Fund was “instrumental in starting my lab’s work in AI fairness,” said Russakovsky, who in 2022 received a National Science Foundation CAREER award to build on her initial success. Russakovsky has also been recognized with several awards for her contributions in research, education and outreach.
Angelina Wang, who completed her Ph.D. work in Russakovsky’s group this year, has become “a leader in the space” of AI fairness, said Russakovsky. “So much of her Ph.D. work has been enabled and shaped by that original support,” and Wang is going on to postdoctoral research at Stanford University and a faculty position at Cornell Tech, she added.
While innovation grants are open to faculty at any career stage, vice dean of engineering Antoine Kahn noted that the awards are especially valuable for junior faculty members. “These awards have helped quite a few junior faculty get going. It gives them confidence and allows them to start projects that are a bit risky, for which they would not be able to get outside funding,” said Kahn, who administers the innovation grant program. Like Russakovsky, many grant recipients have used the funding to establish a line of research that then attracts much larger federally funded grants.
The program also places a special focus on teams of two or three researchers — often from different departments and sometimes from outside the engineering school. “That has helped engineering link to fields like neuroscience, psychology and the humanities,” said Kahn, the Stephen C. Macaleer ’63 Professor in Engineering and Applied Science.
This year’s 22 awards, totaling more than $3 million, include:
Addy Fund for Excellence in Engineering
The Addy Fund for Excellence in Engineering was established in 2017 by Lydia B. Addy and William M. Addy, a 1982 Princeton alumnus. These funds were awarded to:
Parastoo Abtahi, assistant professor of computer science, for the projects “Intelligent multimodal disambiguation for remote interactions in augmented reality” and “Adaptive situated visualizations and user-guided counterfactual search for troubleshooting autonomous robots” (also supported by the Maxine and Seymour M. Katzson Fund for Innovation in Engineering, established by Andrew C. Right ’97, Jonathan M. Right ’00, and their parents, Richard and Michele Right);
Jia Deng, associate professor of computer science, for the project “Reproducible benchmarking of zero-shot complex robotic assembly”;
and Radhika Nagpal, the Norman R. Augustine ’57 *59 Professor in Engineering, for the project “A miniaturized underwater robotic platform for revealing hydrodynamic synergies in fish schooling.”
J. Insley Blair Pyne Fund
Established in memory of physics and electrical engineering professor and Princeton graduate J. Insley Blair Pyne, this fund supports research at the intersection of engineering and neuroscience. Blair Pyne funds were awarded to:
Boris Hanin, assistant professor of operations research and financial engineering, for the project “Principles for Graph and Equivariant Neural Networks”;
Prateek Mittal, professor of electrical and computer engineering, for the project “Durable safety: ensuring safety alignment in post-fine-tuning LLMs”;
and H. Vincent Poor, the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, for the project “Holistic AI-enabled power grid management” (also supported by the Yang Family Fund).
Tianaderrah Foundation
Grants from the Tianaderrah Foundation were awarded to:
Jonathan Conway, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, for the project “Engineering symbiotic plant-microbe interactions for sustainable agriculture” (also supported by the Morton and Donna Collins Fund for Innovation in Engineering; Morton Collins received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton in 1963);
Jerelle Joseph, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, for the project “BioCon-ModX: A multiscale computational framework for mechanistic discovery of condensate-modifying drugs” (also supported by the Forese and O’Brien funds);
and Ellen Zhong, assistant professor of computer science, and Mohammad Seyedsayamdost, professor of chemistry, for the project “New AI technologies for revolutionizing molecular structure determination” (also supported by the Wilke Fund for Innovation).
Project X Fund
Project X grants were awarded to:
Nathalie de Leon, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Robert Knowles, professor of chemistry, for the project “Developing a new platform for single molecule biophysics with diamond quantum sensors” (also supported by the Samberg Family Fund for Innovative Engineering, established by Deborah and Jeffrey S. Samberg ’88 );
Maria Garlock, and Branko Glišić, professors of civil and environmental engineering, Marcus Hultmark, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Forrest Meggers, associate professor of architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, for the project “A bridge to the future: Sustainable multifunctional bridges for flood and energy resilience” (also supported by the Samberg Family Fund, the Tung Slighton Family Fund and the William W. Haerther Jr. ’42 Fund for Innovation);
Jason Klusowski, assistant professor of operations research and financial engineering, for the project “Improving predictions by combining models”;
Catherine Peters, professor of civil and environmental engineering, Emily A. Carter, Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Satish Myneni, professor of geosciences, for the project “Producing hydrogen naturally while simultaneously mineralizing CO2: A coupled pathway to energy decarbonization”;
Vikram Ramaswamy and Ruth Fong, both lecturers in computer science, for the project “Human-centered, explainable AI for computer vision and multi-modal models” (also supported by funds from an anonymous donor);
and David Wentzlaff, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, for the project “Chiplets for the masses” (also supported by funds from an anonymous donor).
Helen Shipley Hunt Fund
Made possible by Helen Shipley Hunt, who earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Princeton in 1971, this fund supports research aimed at improving human health, with a focus on applied projects. Shipley Hunt funds were awarded to:
Jürgen Hackl, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, for the project “Digital twins for intelligent intersections”;
Peter Henderson, assistant professor of computer science and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, for the project “A law-informed approach for characterizing and evaluating the potential harms of generative AI outputs for new safety standards”;
and Olga Russakovsky, associate professor of computer science, Jonathan Mummolo, associate professor of politics and public affairs, and Brandon Stewart, associate professor of sociology, for the project “Making police-civilian interactions safer: Large-scale computational analysis of visual law enforcement records.”
Additional Engineering Research Funds
Ryne Beeson, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Bartolomeo Stellato, assistant professor of operations research and financial engineering, Adji Bousso Dieng, assistant professor of computer science, and Donald Ellison of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory received support for the project “Unsupervised conditional generative machine learning for global nonlinear optimal control; applications in spaceflight.” This work is supported by the David T. Wilkinson Innovation Fund.
Peter Jaffé, the William L. Knapp ’47 Professor of Civil Engineering, was awarded funds for the project “Effects of PFAS on freshwater ecosystems: Microbial adaptations and alterations of the nitrogen cycle.” His project is funded by the Moore Charitable Foundation’s Science to Action Fund, which supports research aimed at understanding and improving freshwater conservation in the United States that bridges the gap between lab work and practical solutions.
Pramod Viswanath, the Forrest G. Hamrick Professor in Engineering, and Wei Xiong, the John H. Scully ’66 Professor in Finance, will pursue the project “Tokenomics and Ponzis: Economic modeling of cryptocurrency incentives,” with support from Princeton’s Center for the Decentralization of Power Through Blockchain Technology (DeCenter).