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E ARL Y C AREER INVE S TIGA T OR A W ARDS

DAVID SCHUSTER ESHAN KHATAMI

Assistant Professor Ehsan Khatami from the Further, Dr. Schuster has made tremendous
Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of contributions to his students’ research productivity. He
Science, and Assistant Professor David Schuster from the serves on thesis committees and has an active research
Department of Psychology, College of Social Sciences, lab of undergraduate and graduate students. He is highly
were chosen to receive the Early Career Investigator committed to providing SJSU students with top-notch
Awards for 2017. educational opportunities and research training.
The Research Foundation Early Career Since he joined the Physics & Astronomy faculty,
Investigator Award recognizes tenure-track faculty who Ehsan Khatami has made remarkable contributions to
have excelled in research, scholarship or creative activity the computational infrastructure and capabilities in the
(RSCA) as evidenced by their success in securing funds for department and college; published extensively in the
RSCA, publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and carrying highest-ranked science journals, including one paper
out other important scholarly and creative activities at an in Nature and two in Science, with co-authors from
early or beginning point in their careers at SJSU. institutions like MIT, Harvard, and Princeton; and served
David Schuster joined SJSU’s faculty in 2013 as research mentor for seven undergraduate and six
and established himself early on as a highly productive graduate students.
grant writer and scholar. His research is designed to Dr. Khatami was hired to help expand the
increase understanding of individual and shared cognition department’s offerings in computational physics
in complex environments and is applicable to areas such throughout the curriculum. The first project he undertook
as the cognitive aspects of cybersecurity and perceptual was to build the department’s first modern high-
training for real-world pattern recognition in such performance computational cluster, teal.physics.sjsu.edu,
domains as aviation, transportation security training and which is used extensively by students enrolled in big-data
military human-robot interaction. courses and undertaking computational research.
Dr. Schuster’s grant activity and success have Because of his computational expertise, Dr.
been remarkable. He was granted the NSF’s most Khatami joined Dr. Sen Chiao as Co-PI on the successful
prestigious award for early career faculty, the CAREER National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research
Award, in 2016. Additionally, he serves as Co-PI with an Instrumentation proposal that funded the $900K
SJSU colleague on a collaborative research NSF grant. supercomputer now installed at the Research Foundation.
He was also awarded a supplemental grant by NSF in He also was awarded a three-year NSF Research at
support of undergraduate research training at SJSU. Dr. Undergraduate Institutions grant for his project on
Schuster has been successful in his pursuit of internal “Disorder in Strongly Correlated Systems.”
grant funding as well, earning a number of awards in Dr. Khatami and his students have also
support of his research and the research of SJSU students. expanded their research focus to apply machine learning
Dr. Schuster has also been a productive scholar. techniques to the solution of complex quantum problems,
He has authored four peer-reviewed articles in his and one of his graduate students has been the lead
short time at SJSU, as well as multiple peer-reviewed author on two papers, one already published in Physical
proceedings papers, two book chapters and a number of Review X.
invited research presentations.

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