The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the class of 2025 Laboratory-University Collaboration Initiative (LUCI) fellows today, naming Brown University’s Charles Pitts Robinson and John Palmer Barstow Professor of Applied Mathematics and Engineering George Karniadakis as an academic researcher to work with Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake’s Paula Chen, Ph.D. ’23.
This is the second time Karniadakis has been named an academic collaborator with a LUCI fellow, as he worked with Corey Trahan and Mark Loveland of the Army Research Laboratory, also on the topic of networks/artificial intelligence, in 2023. Chen, who was awarded a Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship from the DoD while studying at Brown University, earned her Ph.D. in applied mathematics in 2023.
The LUCI fellows partner with prominent DoD-funded academic researchers – either recipients of the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship or principal/co-principal investigators under the Multi-Disciplinary University Research Initiative – on projects eligible to receive up to $200,000 per year for three years. Karniadakis was named a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow in 2022.
The LUCI program, administered out of the basic research office, fosters collaboration between DoD laboratory scientists and top university scientists funded by the DoD in priority defense research areas including applied mathematics, cognitive neuroscience, engineering biology, novel materials, quantum information science, and manufacturing science.
“The LUCI fellowship is an investment that empowers our scientists to push the boundaries of discovery while building strong ties with the academic community,” said Dr. Jean-Luc Cambier, director of technical research programs in the Basic Research Office. “It provides our researchers with a unique opportunity to engage in exploratory research, pursuing transformative ideas that strengthen the department’s scientific foundation and drive future innovation.”
The selection process for the fellowship involved program officers from the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, senior leadership from the Basic Research Office within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and technical experts from partnering defense contractors. Out of 59 initial white papers, evaluators short-listed 22 proposals demonstrating strong potential for innovative, high-impact research.
Following a rigorous interview phase, the Basic Research Office selected 14 projects, represented by 20 principal and co-principal investigators from the military service laboratories, as the department’s 2025 LUCI cohort. The project’s title is “Physics-Informed Machine Learning for Multi-Agent Differential Games.”
Karniadakis, who joined the Brown faculty in 1994, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2022, one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. He is also a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), Fellow of the American Physical (APS), Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).