U.C. Davis Feb. 25 announced that 12 of their faculty members were honored with National Science Foundation early career, or CAREER, awards, including Indian American professors Ambarish Kulkarni and Aditya Thakur. Given by the NSFâs Faculty Early Career Development Program, the grants can run up to five years and typically include both research and educational components. Kulkarni, of the Department of Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering, aims to help design better and cheaper catalysts for fuel cell applications. Existing catalysts are made with expensive platinum-based alloys, which are difficult to scale for mass production. His project will focus on metal organic frameworks that act like nanoreactors, according to the U.C. Davis news release.