Features: Feb. 18, 2002

Lvov Honored by NSF and Navy for Research

Yuri Lvov, assistant professor of mathematics, has received two prestigious research awards, a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation and a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Lvov will receive a $350,000 five-year grant from the NSF to improve weak turbulence theory, which predicts how energy in complex systems such as the ocean will behave over time. His $300,000 three-year grant from the ONR will be more specific to ocean research, particularly to surface ocean waves.

Lvov is the fourth Rensselaer faculty member to receive a CAREER Award this year and the 16th in the last three years. His ONR award is only the second ever received by a Rensselaer faculty member. (Margaret Cheney, also in the math department, received the award in 1986.)

"It's rare to receive even one of these prestigious awards, but to be the recipient of two is unprecedented. Yuri is an unusually strong researcher who deserves to be recognized for his hard work and groundbreaking research," said Mark Holmes, chair of mathematical sciences. Lvov, 32, joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1999.

Lvov will focus on deep internal ocean waves to show how their wavelength determines their energy. Understanding these complexities will eventually lead to more accurate weather prediction, which could have implications for such things as the economy, farming, and tourism all over the world.

He will also examine an improvement in semiconductor laser efficiency, which would rely on directing more energy into light and less energy into heat. Excess heat is often the reason behind laser failure.