Professor Receives National Science Foundation Career Award

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
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Posted: Jun 1, 2001

University of Hawai'i assistant professor Daniel Suthers of the Information Computer Science (ICS) Department has received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award. The NSF is honoring 409 outstanding junior faculty members in science and engineering nationwide with the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) awards.

Suthers is the only faculty member in Hawai'i to receive the CAREER award in 2000. He is also the first person from the ICS department to receive this award.

"CAREER awards support exceptionally promising college and university junior faculty who are committed to the integration of research and education," said NSF director Rita Colwell. "We recognize these faculty members, new in their careers, as most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century."

In 1998, Suthers developed Belvedere, a software program delivered to US military bases in Germany and Italy where students visualize their reasoning by graphing relationships between data and hypotheses. He later received a grant from NSF for their competitive Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence program to conduct studies aimed at determining which visual representations best serve the intended purpose. While working on this grant he collaborated with other researchers and organized workshops on the topic of research.

Suthers said that he wants to improve the quality of software available for online learning, both at K-13 and university levels. "I am focusing on providing better support for 'knowledge-building discourse,' the interactions between learners and their mentors by which they arrive at an understanding of a topic of study."

NSF established the CAREER program in 1995 to help top performing junior faculty scientists and engineers simultaneously develop their contributions and commitment to research and education. The CAREER award is NSF's most prestigious award for junior faculty members. Awards range from $200,000 to $500,000 and are in duration from four to five years.