Honors & Awards
FERYAL ERHUN
GUNTER NIEMEYER
MICHAEL TOMZ
FERYAL ERHUN, assistant professor of management science and engineering, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation. Erhun will receive $400,000 over five years to support her research on supply chain management. Erhun is studying how risks at different phases of a product's life cycle affect the product and its supply chain and is developing technologies that could aid decision makers in effectively managing and mitigating these risks. GUNTER NIEMEYER, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and, by courtesy, of electrical engineering, was awarded a CAREER grant of $111,298 over one year to develop a testbed for telerobotic surgery that incorporates novel sensors and control algorithms to provide high-fidelity haptic, or sense-of-touch, feedback. The use of telerobotic technology in minimally invasive surgery has reduced both trauma to patients and recovery time. Seated at a console next to the patient, the surgeon guides tiny dexterous robotic instruments with natural hand motions. But current technology is hindered by the surgeon's inability to touch and feel the surgical site. Niemeyer's work could imbue telerobotics with the sense of touch needed for tasks such as palpation and suturing.
MICHAEL TOMZ, assistant professor of political science, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant by the National Science Foundation. The $400,000, five-year grant has been given to only three other political scientists since the program was established in 1994. Tomz's CAREER project is titled "Credible Commitments in International Relations." Every day, Tomz notes, leaders make threats and promises to other countries. When are these commitments believable, and how do they affect foreign policy? Tomz proposes to address these questions with experimental methods that have not been widely used in international relations research. His experiments, embedded in interviews, will show how politicians and voters think about making—and breaking—international commitments. The findings could help leaders to understand and predict, for example, the effects of treaties, summit declarations and military threats. Tomz also will develop survey software that could be used by teachers and researchers and the private sector. His project will give Stanford students new opportunities to conduct scholarly research and will supply them with data for undergraduate and graduate theses.
