Gao awarded research fellowship

Lixin Gao

ixin Gao, associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded a two-year, $40,000 research fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

     She is among 117 young scientists and economists from 50 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada selected as Sloan Fellows this year. More than 500 researchers were nominated for the awards.

     The fellowships, which this year total $4.68 million, support research activities. Recipients are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them.

     Gao joined the faculty in 2000 after teaching computer science at Smith College for four years. Her research involves multimedia networking and Internet routing and security.

     She earned her bachel-or's degree in computer science from the University of Science and Technology of China, her master's degree in computer engineering from Florida Atlantic University, and her doctoral degree in Computer Science here in 1997.

     In the area of multimedia streaming over the Internet, Gao studies how to allocate resources to the server and client so that data is streamed quickly and efficiently. In the area of Internet routing, Gao explores how to get data, such as an e-mail, from one site to another using dynamic routing protocols.

     Gao earned a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation in 1999. She has received several grants from NSF, and worked with AT&T on sabbatical last year to study Internet routing.

     Established in 1955, the Sloan Research Fellowship Program has awarded more than $99 million to outstanding researchers early in their careers. Twenty-eight Sloan Fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.