Eduardo Blanco, an assistant professor in UNT's College of Engineering, intends to use a five-year, $500,000 NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program grant to teach computers the intricacies of negation.

"To a computer trying to understand human language, the word never can be perplexing. What computers don't seem to understand is that never doesn't always mean no," says Blanco, one of 13 UNT faculty to receive the prestigious award that supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.

Alum Joe Louis ('11 Ph.D.), entomologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, also was awarded a five-year, $1.5 million CAREER grant to fund his investigation of ways to help sorghum naturally resist sugarcane aphids.