Reeves receives NSF CAREER Award

Dr. Gregory Reeves, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award, known as the NSF CAREER Award, is one of the highest honors given by NSF to young faculty in science and engineering.

The award will provide funding over five years to finance Reeves’s project, “Engineering Principles within Cell-Cell Communication Networks in Animal Development.” The research is supported by NSF’s Biotechnology, Biochemistry, and Biomass Engineering Program in the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems.

The research focuses on two instances of engineering principles — feedback control and noise-filtering — in biological regulatory mechanisms. These mechanisms work to ensure reliable gene expression — the translation of coded genetic information into the molecular building blocks of life — even in the presence of highly variable intercellular signals that direct translation at different locations. By connecting these biological mechanisms to engineering principles, Reeves will study how genetic expression in fruit flies remains robust despite “noise,” or random variability, and feedback interactions with other signaling pathways.

The outreach elements of the project will include an educational module encouraging high school students to connect the language, methods, and content of biology and engineering. In addition, Reeves will create a graduate-level course about the engineering principles in tissue patterning that will be disseminated through NC State’s distance education programs.

Reeves received a BS in mathematics and a BS in chemical engineering from the University of Florida in 2002 and a PhD in chemical engineering from Princeton University in 2008. He joined the NC State faculty in 2010.