Two University of Texas at Dallas professors in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science have earned Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity research. Dr. Joseph S. Friedman, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, will receive about $500,000 over five years to develop AI hardware that leverages electron spin in efficient circuits that learn autonomously. NSF CAREER grants are the agency’s most prestigious award for early-career faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars and are likely to become leaders in their fields. Current AI systems are programmed based on a set of training data but do not have the ability to autonomously learn during the course of their operation. By mimicking brain functionality with spintronic circuits (based on electron spin in addition to electron charge), autonomous AI hardware systems can be developed that continually learn from their experiences in an energy-efficient manner.