Two Penn professors have been given $500,000 to do whatever they want — academically, that is. These two professors, Rajeev Alur and Randall Kamien, join professor Charles Kane as Simons Investigators.
Simons Investigator is an award founded by a mathematician to support academics in any math-based research. Winners receive $100,000 a year over a period of five years to conduct their work. The award has no strings attached. The Daily Pennsylvanian sat down with the two recent winners to discuss their work.
Physics professor Randall Kamien
Daily Pennsylvanian: What are their criteria for selecting a winner?
Randall Kamien: The head of the Simons Foundation, Jim Simons, is a mathematician … and he became very wealthy doing derivative trading … it sounds like he has this vision of funding long term projects. And he’s a mathematician so I think they are trying to look at scientists specifically for theoretical physics. They want scientists who use mathematics.
DP: What is your long term project?
RK: Well, that’s the thing, I didn’t have to choose a project [when I received the award]. [But] I’m interested in crystals, which have things like vortices in them — we call them topological defects.
If you go to a jeweler, and they show you a diamond, you can look inside, and they’ll call it a flaw. But a flaw is a topological defect; it’s a place where the crystal doesn’t stack right. You see the defect, but the defect tells me all about the crystal, too.
We try to then take those defects and control them, so we can put them where we want. Suppose I wanted to organize these defects in order to make something.
Relation: Engineering professor’s diagram of robotic eye on display at MoMA
DP: So this was a no-strings-attached grant?
RK: Yeah…I mean there are strings attached; I can’t use it to buy a car. It’s money for research, but I can do whatever I want.
Computer and Information Science Professor Rajeev Alur
Daily Pennsylvanian: $500,000 is a lot of money. What are you planning to do with this?
Rajeev Alur: So the nice thing about this is [the] longer period, like 5 years, and you can use it for pursuing any kind of research. I’m planning to recruit some PhD students [for research] and use it for travel conferences and stuff like that.
DP: If the money runs out after five years, what will happen to the PhD students?
RA: Actually, they’re going to continue it for ten years.
DP: You are getting the award for ten years?
RA: Yes, so that’s a good thing. Every year they have a meeting of all the Simons Investigators in New York, people in theoretical physics, theoretical computer science, and math, so it should be an interesting experience, because usually I go to a meeting of computer scientists, and this year there will be an opportunity to see people from all different fields.
DP: Why do you think you got this award?
RA: This award is based on your entire accomplishments. I have been doing research in this area on the reliability of cyberphysical systems for a long time.
DP: What is your research about?
RA: The focus of the work would be on developing some mathematical tools for checking correctness of systems. That’s been the focus of my research for some time. How do you make sure that software is corrected according to specifications … I’ve been looking at things like the collision avoidance systems on cars … military vehicles, how do you model it, specify what it means for it to be correct.
To say meaningfully that the software is working as intended, you have to worry about how the software is reacting. So that’s really mathematical, practical mathematical models. [I’m studying] cyberphysical systems … that integrate computation and communication.
