After his inaugural year of teaching, Iowa State engineering professor Murti Salapaka received a Faculty Early Career Development Program research grant worth $200,000 from the National Science Foundation.

Salapaka came to ISU after receiving his doctoral degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1997.

“Receiving this prestigious NSF grant during a professor’s first year of teaching is extremely rare,” said Mustafa Khammash, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at ISU, in a press release.

“Naturally, I am very elated at receiving the award. It is a great impetus to my research and the Dynamics and Controls group of the electrical engineering department at ISU,” Salapaka said.

Khammash said receiving the award is a clear indication of Salapaka’s high potential for future success.

Salapaka said he is not worried that an award like this, so early in his career, will hinder his prospects for future awards.

“I will strive my best to stand up to the expectations of such an award. Hopefully, that will translate to future grants,” Salapaka said in an e-mail interview.

Salapaka acknowledged the help his associates have provided him.

“I am grateful to my colleagues in my department who have guided me during the early stages of my career as a faculty member and who have made this award possible,” he said.

Salapaka said his research interests include developing control theory and atomic force microscopy.

According to the press release, Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs) can obtain images of material at the atomic level. These devices have contributed to developments in the semi-conductor area, the biological sciences and to physics.

AFMs can monitor activity in RNA strands (genetics), detect device failures in the silicon industry (computer chips), and may someday be capable of making electronic images of individual atoms.

Salapaka said his research will help the AFM industry by improving operating speeds and the resolution of the images AFMs produce.

Salapaka is currently on a visit to Digital Instruments, a leading manufacturer of Atomic Force Microscopes.

“The work involves modeling and controlling one of the important modes of the operation of AFMs; the Tapping mode. The work done here has a direct bearing on the goals of the NSF grant,” Salapaka said.

In 1991, Salapaka received his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology. He then went to the University of Santa Barbara, where he received his master’s and doctoral degrees in 1993 and 1997, respectively.