AEP Professor Peter McMahon wins 2022 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award

The award includes a share of nearly $17 million in funding to conduct innovative scientific research that will benefit the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. The ONR YIP awards support postdoctoral and graduate student stipends and scholarships, the acquisition of laboratory equipment, and other expenses critical to the planned research. Dr. McMahon researches how physical systems can be engineered to perform computation in new ways that provide benefits over current processors. In his proposed ONR project, his group will explore how to use analog superconducting circuits as neural networks for performing machine learning on radiofrequency signals.

The ONR YIP is a highly competitive early-career award program where prior academic achievement and potential for significant scientific breakthrough are key elements of the evaluation criteria. The 2022 ONR YIP awardees were chosen from more than 220 applicants—all of whom are college and university tenure-track faculty and obtained a Ph.D. on or after Jan. 1, 2014.

“ONR, and the Naval Research Enterprise as a whole, is looking to reimagine naval power,” said Chief of Naval Research Rear Adm. Lorin C. Selby. “To do so, it is critical that we attract the best and brightest scientists and engineers from across academia to tackle warfighting challenges. The Young Investigator Program does just that.”