Dr. Kumar is Co-investigator of the NSF Centers for Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) grant titled “Center for Nanobiotechnology Research” of $4.9 M that has been awarded to the Alabama State University, in Montgomery. The USF along with University of Louisville, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Tulane University are part of the five year CREST grant with the goal of strengthening interdisciplinary and intra-institutional collaborative research in nanotechnology and biotechnology. As part of this grant, the USF will receive approximately $409,000 to investigate applications of nanoparticles and nanowires for sensor and drug delivery applications.

Dr. Ashok Kumar, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and also a faculty affiliate with the Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Research Center (NNRC) and the Clean Energy Research Center (CERC).  He has received multiple grants (PI and Co-PI) from the National Science Foundation, including the prestigious CAREER Award.

Dr. Kumar is the Principal Investigator of the NSF GOALI grant “Study of Reliability and Modeling for Process Optimization and Yield Improvements in Chemical Mechanical Planarization”. The $300,000 three year NSF grant with Cabot Microelectronics (Aurora, IL) will investigate optimization of pad design and material selection of low-k dielectric and copper to improve the yield without compromising the throughput of CMP process for next generation IC manufacturing.

Dr. Kumar is also the Co-Investigator (PI: Dr. Qiang Huang) of the NSF funded $350,000 grant titled “In-situ Nanomanufacturing Process Control Through Multiscale Nanostructured Growth Modeling”. This interdisciplinary grant will be devoted to modeling the nanofabrication process using statistical quality control (SQC) approach. Novel metal-oxide nanowires will be synthesized and multiscale modeling will be used to optimize the in-situ process control.