SCS Professor Earns NSF CAREER Award

Marylee WilliamsWednesday, August 6, 2025

RI faculty member Zachary Manchester received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program award to develop better modeling, simulation and control algorithms that will improve how robots interact with their environments.

Zachary Manchester, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, received a Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award from the National Science Foundation. This award is the foundation's most prestigious for young faculty researchers.

Manchester's grant, which totals $650,000, aims to develop better modeling, simulation and control algorithms that will help robots interact with their environments more efficiently, reliably and safely. The project specifically emphasizes applications in space and underwater, where scientists cannot easily collect real-world data before they deploy robots and simulation tools are lacking.

"It's difficult to simulate interactions between robots and their environment, both when rigid objects make and break contact and when robots manipulate fluids or flexible objects," said Manchester, a member of CMU's Robotics Institute. His work could result in robots that can swim as efficiently as fish or robots that can repair satellites in space.

Manchester will also use the funds to continue his work in education and to develop a program that allows students in Pittsburgh to launch art into space on small satellites.

Learn more about Manchester's CAREER award on the NSF's website.

For More Information

Aaron Aupperlee | 412-268-9068 | aaupperlee@cmu.edu