Federal Project Grant Award Summary

Award Overview New Mexico State University received a $565,091 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Engineering (CFDA 47.041) effective September 1, 2026, through August 31, 2031. The award funds integrated research and education activities to develop Adaptive Modular Circuit Metamaterials (AMCMs)—a novel class of engineered materials that integrate sensing, energy harvesting, and digital computation capabilities for secure computation and information-processing systems.

Research Deliverables and Applications The research program will produce four primary outputs: (1) development of next-generation AMCMs with integrated functionality enabled by graph neural network (GNN) and large language model (LLM) technologies for accelerated design and optimization; (2) characterization of the coupled thermal, mechanical, and electrical behaviors of these materials; (3) invention of thermo-mechanical and thermo-mechano-electrical logic mechanisms for information processing and memory applications; and (4) integration of AMCMs into practical systems for real-world deployment. The resulting thermo-mechano-electrical circuitry paradigm will enable modular, reconfigurable device architectures with applications spanning medical devices, robotics, human-machine interfaces, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), and flexible electronics, with deliverables grounded in fundamental research that advances autonomous materials engineering design methodologies across the electronic materials community.