Amanda Randles and Tania Roy Receive Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers

Two engineering faculty members at Duke University have received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Biden.

Amanda Randles, the Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences, and Tania Roy, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, are among nearly 400 researchers to receive the award.

Established by President Clinton in 1996, PECASE is intended to award scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers. PECASE recognizes innovative and far-reaching developments in science and technology, expands awareness of careers in science and engineering, recognizes the scientific missions of participating agencies, enhances connections between research and impacts on society, and highlights the importance of science and technology for our nation’s future.

Randles’ pioneering work has led to computational advancements that allow researchers to optimize the use of supercomputers and cloud computing resources, enabling them to create detailed multiscale models while still significantly reducing computational demands. One of her most widely recognized projects is a massively parallel fluid dynamics simulation, known as HARVEY. Named after William Harvey, the scientist who discovered the circulation of blood, Randles first used the software to perform the first ever full-body scale simulation of 3D blood flow at the cellular level.

In addition to this work, Randles and her team developed a computational approach called Adaptive Physics Refinement (APR) that captures detailed cellular interactions and their effects on cellular trajectory. Working with teams at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Randles was able to use APR to enhance the capabilities of a computational model to stimulate the movement of individual cancer cells across the human body, essentially creating a window that could track how cancer cells collide and interact with blood cells as they move through the vasculature. 

Randles has received numerous awards and recognition for her pioneering work, including the Association for Computing Machinery Prize in Computing, the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award, the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the ACM, and is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Roy’s work focuses on developing hardware for artificial intelligence applications using novel functional materials including two-dimensional materials. By modeling computer architecture after the basic structure of synapses and neurons – known as neuromorphic hardware – it can be manufactured to be better adapted to pattern recognition algorithms.

She also focuses on high-power electronics made with gallium nitride and other wide bandgap semiconductors. Gallium nitride is a semiconductor that is poised to replace silicon in certain areas of computer hardware. Because of its physical characteristics, the material is well suited for high-energy and high-radiation applications, such as those found outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Roy is currently working on investigating the defects produced by ionizing radiation in gallium nitride (GaN) devices. She is particularly interested in studying the reliability of emerging devices and materials systems using electrical characterization techniques.

Roy is part of a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) project led by Pennsylvania State University to investigate just how well suited GaN is for extreme environments and how it might be improved. Roy’s role in the project specifically deals with how resistant GaN is to the damaging effects of the various forms of harsh radiation found in space.