Elliot Moore has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Two Tech alumni, Elliot Moore and Chekesha Liddell, are among the 20 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers. The award winners were honored at the White House in November.

Moore, EE 98, MS EE 99, PhD EE 03, is an assistant professor at Tech's Savannah, Ga., campus. He teaches electrical and computer engineering and conducts research in applying digital signal processing to speech analysis. Ultimately, Moore's work could provide the means for electronically analyzing speech to detect certain emotions or stress. He could improve existing methods for detecting deception as well as add a useful dimension to human-computer interaction.

Moore was the first Savannah-based Tech faculty member to win a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. He won that award in 2005 for a project titled "Extraction and Integration of Voice Source Features into the Acoustical Analysis of Spoken Affect."

Liddell, MatE 99, PhD MSE 03, is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell University, where she studies how non-spherical particles can be induced to arrange themselves into structures that promise a significantly higher level of control over light waves than traditional optical materials.

Engineering strong light-matter interactions through the design of new structures enables advances in a number of critical technologies. Among them are structuring solar cell component materials and their interfaces at fine scales to improve the efficiency of next-generation solar-to-electric energy conversion devices and structuring porous silver and other metal-ceramic composite materials to increase the sensitivity of chemical and biochemical sensors to target molecules including proteins, DNA or pesticides.