Rutgers Electrical and Computer Engineering alumnus, Shunqiao Sun (Ph.D., 2016) has been awarded the 2024 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for the project “CAREER: Towards Fundamentals of Adaptive, Collaborative and Intelligent Radar Sensing and Perception”. The NSF CAREER program fosters the career development of outstanding junior faculty, combining the support of research and education of the highest quality and in the broadest sense. 

Shunqiao is currently an assistant professor at The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL. He was awarded $506,839 for his research in automotive radar sensing and perception for autonomous vehicles. Automotive radar imaging represents a pressing technological need in perception for automotive active safety and autonomous driving. The state-of-the-art automotive radar is prone to mutual interference and multipath issues, and its limited angular resolution – approximately 13 degrees – is inadequate for facilitating perception tasks for fully autonomous driving. This CAREER project aims to innovate the automotive radar perception in service of well-being of individuals in society and reduction of fatal accidents on U.S. highways by exploring adaptive, collaborative sensing and radar imaging physics principles. Through K-12 outreach activities and recruiting underrepresented groups and women in engineering, this project will promote diversity in the STEM research, inspiring them to pursue advanced research in radar field. Shunqiao obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rutgers under supervision of Prof. Athina Petropulu in Jan. 2016.