Joseph Clark, Doowon Kim and Joon Sue Lee join the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program this year. NSF created CAREER to recognize and support early-career faculty who can serve as role models in their institutions while advancing research that benefits their state and the nation.
Two other grants were for work developing molecules that facilitate pharmaceutical drug design and evaluation, and developing new materials for quantum technology.
Kim, an assistant professor of computer science, will use his $597,000 award to identify fundamental characteristics of phishing websites and develop anti-phishing systems to protect against attacks. Moreover, phishing – in which cybercriminals fabricate websites to trick users into revealing sensitive information like user names, passwords, or financial data – is not new. Having said that, mitigation strategies remain ineffective.
Plan to Fix Phishing
“Phishing has existed for decades, but the researchers trying to stop these attacks often focus their efforts on comparing fake websites with real ones,” Kim said. “However, this takes a lot of human effort and time and causes delays between the development of a phishing method and the creation of a defense.”
Furthermore, to help solve the problem, Kim and his team will create new methods to detect phishing websites. They will use JavaScript to identify these sites from their back-end code. Then, by using large language models, they will respond to new attack methods by establishing systems that require less human oversight.
Lee, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, ended up awarded $749,000 for his work using phases of elemental tin to study quantum phenomena. Additionally, alpha-tin exhibits topological properties while beta-tin is a conventional superconductor. However, existing synthesis methods often produce a mixture of the two phases in ways that limit the ability to discover their unique behaviors and quantum applications.
“I propose to grow both forms of tin on the same chip, creating structures with atomically sharp boundaries between the two regions,” Lee said. Furthermore, “this is more challenging than the current methods, but creating phase-pure films with well-defined interfaces will allow us to expand our understanding of how topology and superconductivity work together and potentially develop new approaches to quantum technology and quantum computing.”
Three researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, received National Science Foundation CAREER awards from left to right: Joseph Clark, Doowon Kim and Joon Sue Lee
Source: University of Tennessee
Clark, an assistant professor of chemistry, will receive $650,000 for his research into the use of tritium, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen, for the selective labeling of small molecules and drug candidates.
Safety Testing
Selective tritiation of drugs plays a critical role in determining how animals (including humans) metabolize them. Typically scientists incorporate carbon-14 into the molecular structure of new drugs for FDA-mandated metabolic and safety testing; this isotope of carbon allows researchers to track the pathway and the behavior of drug molecules in the body without harming human subjects.
However, the worldwide supply of C-14 ends up produced primarily at one facility in Russia, and Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine has caused a worldwide shortage.
Moreover, the shortage poses a potential threat to all small-molecule drugs awaiting approval from regulatory authorities in the U.S. and Europe.
Clark and his team will research the use of tritium as a mainstream alternative radiolabeling strategy, thereby reducing the reliance on C-14 for most clinical metabolism studies in humans.