Growing up in rural Iowa, Carey E. Priebe said, he knew early on that he wanted a career in mathematics.
"I was clearly going to be a failure at farming," joked Priebe, 45, a professor of applied mathematics and statistics at the Johns Hopkins University.
Priebe, who calls himself "just a math guy," won a $3 million federal grant last week as one of the first six university professors to be named National Security Science and Engineering Fellows.
The new fellowship program provides the first unrestricted grants of such magnitude that the Department of Defense has awarded to university faculty members. Scientists say it's an attempt to identify and encourage researchers with novel ideas.
Unlike many defense projects, the work these scientists do with the money is not classified; it is basic research into core scientific and engineering subjects of interest to the department, said Deputy Under Secretary William Rees Jr.
"The research is fundamental, and awardees are encouraged to publish their results," Rees said.
Priebe, who was nominated by Hopkins' president, Dr. William R. Brody, was selected from 500 applicants.
The mathematician graduated from Purdue University and was a researcher for the Navy, where he developed an interest in mass information synthesis.
"A major problem in the military is how to predict what's going to happen," said Priebe, who has taught at Hopkins since 1994. "It plays a major role in who wins and who loses."
One concern, scientists say, is information overload. People can collect far more data than they can process. So, for example, instead of manually reading through millions of scientific journals, scientists can try to teach a computer to sift through the data and draw conclusions using an elaborate mesh of statistical pattern-recognition algorithms.
Priebe said the research plan he submitted to the Department of Defense contained 20 pages of unproved but well-thought-out mathematical conjectures along those lines. With the money from the Pentagon, he said, he plans to turn conjecture into a mathematical theory that others can apply.
Hopkins will receive the grant, but Priebe will determine how the money is spent. Other winners might need labs and complex machinery, Priebe said, but his requirements are simpler.
"They need lasers. I need pencils," he said.
The $3 million will pay for graduate students to conduct research and for travel expenses for his academic collaborators at other universities.
