Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
STEM

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor Sucheta Soundarajan Receives NSF CAREER Award

Friday, September 24, 2021, By Chris Barbera
Share
College of Engineering and Computer SciencegrantNational Science FoundationResearch and Creative

Large networks such as social media platforms, highway systems and even our genes contain vast amounts of data hiding in plain sight. However, the techniques scientists design to learn about the nonlinear relationships within these structures often result in unintentional discrimination against historically disadvantaged groups. These biased outcomes are what electrical engineering and computer science professor Sucheta Soundarajan is working to prevent by bringing fairness to network algorithms.

Soundarajan has received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her research on algorithms for network analysis. The grant is a single investigator award intended to support Soundarajan’s professional development. In addition to providing funding for research, it will support a number of non-research service projects.

“Anytime I get a grant it feels great because it is validation from the larger scientific community,” says Soundarajan. “This one especially because it is tied to me as an individual and not just the project. It feels like I am being validated as a scientist. It means a lot.”

Sucheta Soundarajan

Sucheta Soundarajan

Although the award is an individual accomplishment, it is supporting research that has potential to benefit communities around the world. Increasingly, information is becoming acquired from network analysis and what scientists are finding is that despite algorithms not having access to protected attributes like age, disability, gender identification, religion and national origin, they still end up discriminating against these groups.

“What we’re seeing is that people from these minority and disadvantaged groups are being wrongfully discriminated against at a higher rate,” says Soundarajan. “We want to create algorithms that automatically find people central within a network but do it in a way that is fair.”

Soundarajan says criminal sentencing and lending are two examples of areas where algorithms are used to make crucial decisions and where scientists have detected potential wrongful discrimination. Another example of a fairness issue is the way we connect with each other on social platforms. Friendship recommendation algorithms can exacerbate a tendency for people to seek out those who are similar to themselves.

“Taken to an extreme, if people follow these recommendations, people end up in silos where they only connect to people who are like them and that is how you end up with echo chambers,” Soundarajan says.

Outside of her research, Soundarajan will have the opportunity to hire a graduate student to help develop ethics-based modules that can become part of computer science courses with the hope it will help students develop ethics-focused thinking.

“We’re going to design these labs where we will give students a data set and they will apply some algorithms to it and then they will look at the results and they will have to think about if these results are fair,” says Soundarajan.

Soundarajan will also look into developing continuing education for lawyers. She hopes to create classes that focus on explaining how algorithms can cause discriminatory issues.

Committing her time and talent to something societally meaningful is important to Soundarajan. She credits the support she has received throughout her life as a factor in choosing her research area, and she recognizes the help she has received from members of her department contributed to her latest achievement.

“There has been so much invested in me as a scientist, I feel like I have the moral obligation to do something that benefits everybody,” Soundarajan says. “I have been really fortunate to be surrounded by people who really want to see me succeed and that’s been true at Syracuse University as well. People have given me their time, spending hours reading the proposal that got me this award, and that means a lot to me.”

  • Author

Chris Barbera

  • Recent
  • Former Orange Point Guard and Maxwell Alumna ‘Roxi’ Nurse McNabb Still Driving for an Assist
    Tuesday, July 8, 2025, By Jessica Smith
  • Empowering Learners With Personalized Microcredentials, Stackable Badges
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Hope Alvarez
  • WISE Women’s Business Center Awarded Grant From Empire State Development, Celebrates Entrepreneur of the Year Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Dawn McWilliams
  • Rose Tardiff ’15: Sparking Innovation With Data, Mapping and More
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By News Staff
  • Law Professor Receives 2025 Onondaga County NAACP Freedom Fund Award
    Thursday, July 3, 2025, By Robert Conrad

More In STEM

6 A&S Physicists Awarded Breakthrough Prize

Our universe is dominated by matter and contains hardly any antimatter, a notion which still perplexes top scientists researching at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but now nearly everything—solid, liquid, gas or plasma—is…

Setting the Standard and Ensuring Justice

Everyone knows DNA plays a crucial role in solving crimes—but what happens when the evidence is of low quantity, degraded or comes from multiple individuals? One of the major challenges for forensic laboratories is interpreting this type of DNA data…

Student Innovations Shine at 2025 Invent@SU Presentations

Eight teams of engineering students presented designs for original devices to industry experts and investors at Invent@SU Final Presentations. This six-week summer program allows students to design, prototype and pitch their inventions to judges. During the program, students learn about…

WiSE Hosts the 2025 Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Undergraduate Research Prize Award Ceremony

This spring, Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) held its annual Norma Slepecky Memorial Lecture and Award Ceremony. WiSE was honored to host distinguished guest speaker Joan-Emma Shea, who presented “Self-Assembly of the Tau Protein: Computational Insights Into Neurodegeneration.” Shea…

Endowed Professorship Recognizes Impact of a Professor, Mentor and Advisor

Bao-Ding “Bob” Cheng’s journey to Syracuse University in pursuit of graduate education in the 1960s was long and arduous. He didn’t have the means for air travel, so he voyaged more than 5,000 nautical miles by boat from his home…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.