LAUREN GARDNER, the Alton and Sandra Cleveland Professor of civil and systems engineering and director of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering, received the Future Insight Prize from Merck, a global life sciences conglomerate based in Germany. The award recognizes her contributions to developing artificial intelligence systems capable of discovering and tracking future pandemics. Gardner led the creation of the COVID-19 dashboard, the pandemic’s most comprehensive public dataset.

Gardner has created predictive models for diseases including Zika, dengue, and MERS-CoV with goals of enhancing outbreak detection, creating an open data repository, and integrating public health policies in the design of these systems.

YUN CHEN, associate professor of mechanical engineering, is one of five recipients of the National Science Foundation’s inaugural Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award. The three-year grant supports her research using quantum mechanics to control cellular behavior. Chen aims to engineer synthetic proteins, called quantum-enabled dials, that can be modulated by magnetic fields to control biochemical reactions. Read more here.

RUI NI, associate professor of mechanical engineering, received a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant to study the impact of background turbulence in storms on lightning formation. By replicating electrified storms in his lab, Ni seeks to understand how turbulence segregates charged particles and how such particles influence geophysical events and industrial processes.