Joseph Cox Awarded SMART SEED Grant

In demonstration of his research ability, recent alumnus, Joseph Cox, PhD; was awarded a SMART SEED Grant. This grant is awarded to a subset of PhD SMART Scholars and awards research grants up to $100,000 per year for a maximum of three years to SMART scholars who are transitioning from their PhD programs into DoD civilian researchers. According to the Department of Defense (DoD), "The SMART Scholar SEED Grant Program aims to develop a cadre of future technical subject matter experts within the DoD to conduct high-impact research at SMART sponsoring facilities."

Joseph shared how his mentors prepared him for this opportunity by providing him with the confidence to independently pursue it, saying, "The award shows that my mentors, Prof. Amit Ashok and Dr. Nicholas Morley at AFRL, taught me how to successfully develop and propose a research project, an important outcome of PhD graduates."

After graduating in May 2023, Joseph has continued his work with one of the college's industrial affiliates members, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), as a research engineer, continuing his PhD research in target detection with event-based sensors and extending it to enable autonomous systems. Congratulations, Joseph! We cannot wait to see how far you go.