University announces internal Salomon, Seed funding awards for researchers

The Salomon Faculty Research Awards fund research projects with exceptional merit up to $15,000 for one year (or $30,000 for arts, humanities, and humanistic social sciences). Salomon Awards were presented across disciplines including arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, public health, and biological and life sciences.

Professor of Engineering and Physics Jay Tang was among those awarded for his project titled, “Fingerlike protrusions in bacterial swarm front caused by fracture mechanics.”

The goal of the study is twofold: to identify and quantitatively assess cracks and fingerlike protrusions that occur and develop at the swarm edge of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a human pathogen, in its spread over agar surface; and to interpret experimental findings based on applying theories in fracture mechanics. The work builds upon the extensive experience of Professor Tang with experimental studies on bacterial growth, spread, and motility, in consultation with Associate Professor Haneesh Kesari, an expert on solid mechanics. The outcome of the initial effort is to generate the first publication on the findings, and a fully developed proposal to seek funding from the NSF Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI) under the biomechanics and mechanobiology program. The long-term outcome is a generalizable model on bacterial expansion mechanics with biomedical applications.

The 2026 Division of Research Seed Program, the university’s flagship support for transformative ideas, funded three distinct tracks supporting research resiliency, the development of bold ideas for the future, and the traditional seed funding opportunity. In 2026, 53 Seed Awards were presented across a range of disciplines including biological and life sciences, humanities and social sciences, physical sciences, and public health. These expanded seed awards demonstrate Brown’s continuing support for ambitious ideas and programs. They provide critical early support for testing ideas, gathering pilot data, team building, and preparing successful external proposals. 

Principal investigators from the School of Engineering include: Kenneth Breuer for a project titled, “Dynamics of Offshore Wind Turbines”; Daniel Harris for a project titled, “Impact of Non-Newtonian Droplets: Spreading and Rebound”; Feng Lin, for the project titled, “ExoTherm-X: Clean Heat Chemistry for a Circular Metal Economy and Sustainable Energy”; Brian Sheldon who is researching “Advancing EV-grade Si Anodes: New Electrolyte Chemistries to Enable Mechanically Robust Interphases”; Anita Shukla, for the project “Nanoengineered Platforms for Next-Generation Antifungal Therapeutics”; Kimani Toussaint, for the project titled, “AI-Assisted Aging-in-Place Sensor Testbed”; two projects from Axel van de Walle, “Enhancing NASA’s refractory alloy design capabilities through high-dimensional phase diagrams calculations,” and “Exothermic carbon capture thermodynamics”; and Joy Zeng, for the project “Electrochemical destruction of sorbent-captured PFAS.”

Dynamics of Offshore Wind Turbines

Off-shore wind turbines are located in the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL), yet the MABL has been little studied from the point of view of generating wind energy. The proposed project brings together a team of researchers in Brown Physical Sciences to address key aspects of the fluid mechanics of offshore wind farms. The team members have complementary expertise in modeling of fluids and laboratory experimentation. This collective expertise will be brought to bear on the development of an innovative and forward-looking basic research capability for the multiscale and direct statistical simulation of MABL turbulent flow in and around floating offshore wind farms enabling the optimized extraction of energy.   
PI: Kenneth Breuer, Professor of Engineering
Co-PIs: Baylor Fox-Kemper, Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Science; Brad Marston, Professor of Physics 

Impact of Non-Newtonian Droplets: Spreading and Rebound 

A drop impacting a substrate is a fundamental and iconic problem in fluid mechanics, with widespread relevance to both natural processes and industrial applications. While the dynamics of drop impact are well understood for Newtonian fluids, which exhibit constant viscosity and negligible elasticity, many fluids encountered in real-world scenarios are non-Newtonian. In the proposed work, researchers will investigate the spreading and rebound of shear-thinning and viscoelastic drops on non-wetting surfaces. The research will examine non-Newtonian effects on drop spreading and rebound in the most sensitive yet previously unexplored parameter space, namely small drop sizes and low impact velocities. The use of non-wetting surfaces will allow them to directly isolate the liquid dynamics without confounding effects of the substrate. Droplets will be generated from a custom droplet-on-demand generator, suitably adapted as part of this effort to a broader range of working fluids. The pertinent droplet dynamics will be tracked using high-speed videography, and reduced-order models developed to rationalize the observed trends. Beyond being of broad interest to the fluid dynamics community, these results will have widespread practical implications in agriculture, disease transmission, forensics, and emerging technologies. 
PI: Daniel Harris, Associate Professor of Engineering
Co-PI: Chase Gabbard, Hope Street Postdoctoral Fellow

ExoTherm-X: Clean Heat Chemistry for a Circular Metal Economy and Sustainable Energy 

Functional oxide ceramics underpin technologies spanning energy storage, catalysis, and electronic systems, yet their manufacturing remains dominated by furnace-based solid-state synthesis that is energy-intensive, slow, and poorly suited for distributed or sustainable processing. These limitations are especially severe for alkali-containing and multicomponent oxides, where high-temperature equilibration restricts reaction-pathway control, defect engineering, and scalability. ExoTherm-X proposes a new manufacturing paradigm that harnesses chemical energy stored in reactive metals to internally drive oxide formation, enabling furnace-free, energy-efficient ceramic synthesis. ExoTherm-X–derived oxides exhibit promising electrochemical performance as sodium-ion battery cathodes relevant to grid storage, data centers, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and electric vehicles. Through integrated experiments and modeling, this project will establish a mechanistic framework linking activation chemistry, combustion-stage oxidation, and functional phase evolution. By advancing a pathway-engineering approach to oxide synthesis, ExoTherm-X establishes the scientific basis for a transformative shift in ceramic powder manufacturing toward energetically autonomous and distributed oxide formation, positioning Brown to lead in clean heat chemistry and sustainable manufacturing innovation.   
PI: Feng Lin, Brown Professor of Engineering
Co-PIs: Yue Qi, Joan Wernig Sorensen Professor of Engineering; Xiaowen Xhan, Senior Research Associate in Engineering
 

Advancing EV-grade Si Anodes: New Electrolyte Chemistries to Enable Mechanically Robust Interphases

This project is based on the complementary expertise of two investigators. Feng Lin, who recently joined the Brown faculty, has over 15 years of experience in electrode design, electrolyte formulation, and advanced structural and chemical characterization of interphases in batteries. His group has worked on Si technologies for over five years and the newly designed electrolytes were initially developed by his group at Virginia Tech. Sheldon has extensively studied the chemo-mechanical properties of Solid Electrolyte Interphase (SEI) films and recently developed unique in-situ methods to determine the properties of SEI in silicon (Si) anodes at the nanoscale. The overarching goal of the proposed research is to create robust interphases in Si-based anodes through mechanics informed novel electrolytes design and surface diagnosis of SEI, to ultimately engineer composite electrodes – electrolyte systems with vastly improved performance. 
PI: Brian Sheldon, Professor of Engineering

Nanoengineered Platforms for Next-Generation Antifungal Therapeutics

Fungal infections caused by Candida albicans remain a major and growing threat to human health, driven by high mortality rates, limited therapeutic options, and rising antifungal resistance. Existing antifungal drugs primarily target fungal growth, yet disease severity is largely governed by fungal virulence mechanisms. The transition to invasive hyphal forms and secretion of the peptide toxin, candidalysin, are among the key virulence mechanisms of C. albicans, and are not a target for existing antifungal therapies. This project proposes a paradigm shift in antifungal treatment by developing liposomal nanoparticle treatments that target these C. albicans virulence mechanisms. 

The two-phase project will position Brown as a leader in virulence-targeted antimicrobial strategies and generate foundational data for competitive federal center-level funding. 

PI: Anita Shukla, Elaine I. Savage Professor of Engineering
Co-PI: Richard Bennett, Charles A. and Helen B. Stuart Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Chair of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology

AI-Assisted Aging-in-Place Sensor Testbed

Unique barriers will be faced in developing and administering digital health technologies (DHTs) for seniors in built environments such as the home or elderly living facility. Current remote health technologies are severely limited in type, and in their capability to provide health practitioners with accurate diagnostic data that can replace traditional, in-person medical visits. Thus, the formidable technological and implementation challenges to address include the development of health-monitoring technologies that are inconspicuous, semi-autonomous, secure, accurate, accessible for all demographics, and maintain privacy. These technologies will need to be co-designed with community partners to facilitate adoption and effectiveness. Therefore, the vision of the proposed research is to advance the development, deployment, and adoption of AI-enhanced DHTs within the built environment to promote aging in place. 

PI: Kimani Toussaint, Thomas J. Watson, Sr. Professor of Science, School of Engineering
Co-PIs: Rebecca Hubbard, Professor of Public Health; Haneesh Kesari, Associate Professor of Engineering; Peipei Zhou, Assistant Professor of Engineering; Diana Freed, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science

Enhancing NASA’s refractory alloy design capabilities through high-dimensional phase diagrams calculations

This project demonstrates the effectiveness of a proposed software framework in providing the temperature- and composition-dependent thermodynamic data needed to guide the design of high-performance refractory alloys. These materials play a key role in propulsion systems (nozzles, turbines), hypersonic structures or space nuclear power systems that are of special interest to NASA. This demonstration begins with the known chemistry of a recently proposed 3D-printable Ni-Cr-Co alloy to offer validation opportunities, but then expands into lesser-known composition spaces by considering non-dilute additions to this alloy. The approach circumvents expensive experimental synthesis and characterization of alloys of various chemistries, by leveraging high-throughput quantum-mechanical electronic structure calculations, combined with efficient statistical mechanical techniques. Unlike traditional Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) based solely on standard materials design software (such as Thermo-calc), this approach offers the ability to explore novel chemistries that significantly depart from known alloys. While other electronic-structure-based high-throughput computational efforts have demonstrated the exploration of novel chemistries (e.g. Materials Project, AFLOW), this software workflow is unique in its ability to handle alloys with tunable compositions and to generate thermodynamic databases directly compatible with industry-standard ICME software.
PI: Axel van de Walle, Professor of Engineering

Exothermic carbon capture thermodynamics

Human activity produces large amounts of waste organic matter. Since composting can generate significant amounts of greenhouse gases, this option represents a missed opportunity for carbon capture on a large scale. The researchers propose that organic matter can instead be burned under controlled conditions such that water vapor production is favored over carbon dioxide production. Not only can the combustion heat be harvested for energy production, but having the residual carbon in the form of graphite renders it fairly resistant to further transformation into greenhouse gases via biological processes, thus avoiding the need for costly burial or encapsulation.This project aims to demonstrate via realistic computer simulations that the proposed idealized process is exothermic and remains thermodynamically favorable when important practical considerations (e.g., the presence of atmospheric nitrogen, other combustion products, etc.) are taken into account. It sets the stage for a subsequent, larger, multidisciplinary project also addressing implementation and scaling considerations. 
PI: Axel van de Walle, Professor of Engineering

Electrochemical destruction of sorbent-captured PFAS

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent environmental contaminants and a growing human health concern. Carbon sorbents can remove PFAS from water, but the exceptional chemical stability of PFAS complicates the treatment and disposal of saturated sorbents. To address this challenge, the researchers will develop new materials and processes that integrate PFAS adsorption with electrochemical PFAS destruction. They will synthesize materials comprising carbonaceous sorbents decorated with catalytic metal nanoparticles, and envision this will allow PFAS to be captured from contaminated water and subsequently destroyed in an electrochemical regeneration step. This strategy advances sorbent technologies by enabling regeneration under mild electrochemical conditions. It also advances PFAS destruction strategies by pre-concentrating PFAS at reactive interfaces, which may improve performance under environmentally relevant conditions with low PFAS concentrations and competing co-contaminants. The work will establish the efficacy of this integrated design principle while developing fundamental understanding of the phenomena that govern performance. 
PI: Joy Zeng, Assistant Professor of Engineering
Co-PI: Kurt Pennell, 250th Anniversary Professor of Engineering

Learn more about the 2026 Seed Awardees.