Two Warren B. Nelms Institute faculty members from two different colleges at University of Florida received the Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors this spring. Matthew Hale, assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Yan Wang, assistant professor in the College of Design, Construction and Planning are among the winners. The prestigious award is only given to ten assistant professors each year, from 20 nominations across 17 colleges at UF.

Excellence Awards for Assistant Professors is a one-time allocation of $5,000 in support of research. The award can be used to fund travel, equipment, books, graduate student stipends, and other research-related expenses. Academic deans from each college at the University of Florida are invited to submit 1-2 nominations within their college. The deans from both the College of Design, Construction and Planning and the College of Engineering were able to nominate just one professor each.

Dr. Hale’s research focuses on multi-agent systems, distributed and decentralized decision-making, robotics, and cyber-physical systems. Dr. Wang’s research focuses on sustainability (Built Environment Resilience, Smart Buildings/Cities), building sustainability through resilient built environment research and better infrastructure planning for emerging technologies to reduce GHG emission.