Eight University of Michigan researchers have received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor the U.S. government bestows on scientists and engineers beginning their independent research careers.

They are among nearly 400 researchers whose work is funded by a range of federal agencies who were announced as PECASE winners by the White House.

Amy Bohnert, Scott Hummel and Lewei Allison Lin of the Medical School; Danai Koutra, Ashwin Shahani, Kevin Field and Karin Jensen of the College of Engineering; and Liuyan Zhao of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts join a range of U-M faculty who have won PECASEs since the program began in 1996.

PECASE awards acknowledge the contributions scientists and engineers have made to the advancement of science, technology, education and mathematics education, and to community service as demonstrated through scientific leadership, public education and community outreach.

More about this year’s U-M honorees:

Amy Bohnert is a professor in the Medical School’s departments of Anesthesiology and Psychiatry and the School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology, and a research investigator at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. She is co-director of the U-M Opioid Research Institute and of the Overdose Prevention Engagement Network. Her research focuses include epidemiology and brief interventions regarding chronic pain, opioid misuse, overdose, substance use and related disorders. She has led a number of projects related to overdose and prescription drug safety, with many aimed at improving care in substance use disorder treatment settings. She is a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.

Kevin Field, associate professor of nuclear engineering and radiological science at the College of Engineering, was nominated by the Department of Energy. He is best known for using advanced characterization methods and accelerated analysis techniques to understand radiation effects in materials for fission and fusion energy systems. His Early Career Award from the DOE is enabling his group to explore the complex changes that steels undergo in fusion energy devices. They are working to improve the understanding of how helium alters defects that arise in steel structures due to neutrons from fusion, helping pave the way for durable structural components in future clean energy systems.

Scott Hummel is a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. He directs the clinical and research program in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) at the Frankel Cardiovascular Center and is the section chief of cardiology at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. In these roles, he serves as site principal investigator for numerous clinical trials, and conducts research to improve quality of life and clinical outcomes in older adults with heart failure, with a particular focus on understanding the role of diet and nutrition. He leads an upcoming large multicenter VA trial to test whether medically tailored meals and remotely delivered dietary education can improve quality of life and reduce hospital readmissions in patients discharged from heart failure hospitalization.

Karin Jensen is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint department of the College of Engineering and Medical School. Her work in engineering education research explores mental health and well-being, producing evidence-based guidance for supporting well-being and a positive, healthy culture more broadly. Her Faculty Early Career Award from the National Science Foundation focused on undergraduate students, and a subsequent grant investigates faculty mental health and well-being. Jensen also studies broadening participation in engineering. She is an associate editor of the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering and an associate editor for Biomedical Engineering Education.

Danai Koutra is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the College of Engineering. She has made key contributions to the development of efficient and interpretable computational methods for discovering and summarizing unknown patterns in large, complex data. Her work leverages the inherent connections and dependencies in real-world data, which form networks or graphs, and it has had numerous practical applications, including neuroscience, precision health, recommender systems and deep neural networks. For example, one line of work focuses on advancing precision health and mental health diagnostics by developing sophisticated techniques that learn from and summarize patterns in brain activity.

Lewei Allison Lin is an addiction psychiatrist and health care researcher who is an associate professor in the Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry, a staff psychiatrist and research investigator at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. Her research on substance use disorders, including opioid overdose and treatment, has included work on the use of telehealth in addiction treatment. Her overall goal is to deliver high quality care to the 90% of people struggling with substance use disorders who are not being reached by traditional models of treatment. Lin directs the U-M addiction psychiatry fellowship, serves as president of the Michigan Society of Addiction Medicine, and co-directs the Michigan Innovations in Addiction Care through Research & Education Program She is a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.

Ashwin Shahani, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the College of Engineering, was nominated by the Department of Defense. He uses X-ray imaging techniques to observe in 3D how solid materials behave under changing conditions in real time, which can help improve materials manufacturing. With his lab’s imaging techniques, Shahani studies how certain microscopic boundaries within metals evolve over time. These internal interfaces separate the crystalline “building blocks” of a material and play a major role in determining a metal’s overall strength. Manipulation of the boundaries could result in stronger metals for load-bearing applications. Shahani aims to determine the character and connectivity of the interfaces, providing one-of-a-kind insight to manufacturers to create novel microstructures optimized for specific uses or repair defects.

Liuyan Zhao is an experimental condensed matter physicist and associate professor of physics at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, whose research focuses on understanding and, ultimately, harnessing emergent behaviors in quantum materials. She serves on the editorial board for Physical Review X and as an associate editor of Progress in Quantum Electronics. She is the recipient of a 2018 National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a 2019 Bryan R. Coles Prize, a 2020 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program Award, a 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a 2022 Henry Russel Award and a 2023 Mildred Dresselhaus Guest Professorship, among others. She is also an inaugural LSA-LEAD (Leading for Equity and Advancing Diversity) Fellow of LSA in 2024.