Awards & Grants

Awards while at the Naval Postgraduate School

  • 2024 - Schieffelin Award recipient for Excellence in Teaching beyond the classroom. This is an annual award recognizing NPS' most outstanding instructor for an excellent job in and outside of the classroom as evidenced by the current and recent graduates.  
  • 2023 - Alumni Achievement Award (Alma Mater)
  • 2018 - Full Professor
  • 2016 - Hamming Teaching Award for Instruction and Advising.  The award annually recognizes the Naval Postgraduate School faculty member who does excellent job in classroom teaching, whose theses' supervision is recognized as excellent, and whose contribution to NPS' students' education extends beyond the classroom.
  • 2012 - Applied Mathematics Teaching Department Award
  • 2011 - Tenure 
  • 2011 - Professor Promotion
  • 2010 - Excellence in Teaching (Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences)
  • 2008 - Early career Award (SIAM Conference on Discrete Mathematics)

Awards at Western Michigan University

  • 1998 - Putnam Exam Honors
  • 1998 - Robert Meagher Memorial Scholarship Award
  • 1998, 1999, 2000 - Undergraduate Research Award
  • 1998, 1999 - Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities Award, College of Arts and Sciences, ("Units in Rings of Algebraic and Finite Group Rings" with Professor Joseph Buckley.)
  • 1998 - Fred A. Beeler Memorial Scholarship
  • 1999 - Phi Beta Kappa Honors (senior in college)
  • 1999 - Bruce Clarke Senior Award
  • 1999 - Graduation with Honors in Mathematics
  • 2000, 2003, 2004 - Pi Mu Epsilon Honors
  • 2000 - Putnam Exam Honors
  • 2000 - Research Travel Award, College of Arts and Sciences
  • 2001 - Graduate Research Award, Arts and Science College
  • 2001 - Who's Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges
  • 2002 - Charles H. Butler Excellence in Teaching Award
  • 2003 - Graduate Student Teaching Effectiveness Award
  • 2003 - Graduate Research and Creative Scholars Award

Current Grants

  • ASPIRE (2021- present): Education Lead: Ralucca Gera

Former Grants:

  • Future of Learning (2023-2024), PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Campus of the Future (2022-2023): PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Robustness in NonOrthogonal  Multiple Access points (2021-2022).  PIs: Ralucca Gera, Alex Bordeski and Ben Pimentel.
  • CHUNK Learning (2020). PI: Ralucca Gera
  • PLEASE: Personalized Learning Environment (2019-2020) PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Classroom of the Future (2018-2020): PI: Ralucca Gera
  • CHUNK Learning: Curated Heuristic Using a Network of Knowledge (2018-2019): PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Digital Forensics: Matching and Classification Strategies for Large Scale Forensic Analysis (2017-2018).  PI Michael McCarrin, Co-PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Identifying POI in Evolving Networks: Update or Recreate (2017-2018). PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Sabbatical : NICER at NPS: Networks in Classroom Education and Research at the Naval Postgraduate School (2016-2017).  PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Network Models to Identify Opportunity and Risk from Capability Mismatches in the Operating Environment (2016-2017).  PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Quantifying the Influence of Nodes on Structure (2015-2017).  PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • NiCE: Networks in Classroom & Education (2016).  Co-PIs: Ralucca Gera, Jon Roginski, Hiroki Sayama, Lori Sheetz.
  • Price analysis on Defense Logistics Agency contracts (2015-2016).  PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Price analysis on DoD contracts (2014-2015). PI: Ralucca Gera (co-PI Janie Maddox).
  • Cutting-edge tools promoting effectiveness of teaching and learning of a compacted curriculum for discrete mathematics (2013). PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Price analysis on commercial items purchases within DoD (2012-2013).  PI: Ralucca Gera (co-PI Janie Maddox
  • Tools promoting  effectiveness of teaching and learning of a compacted curriculum for discrete mathematics (2013). PI: Ralucca Gera
  • Innovative graphical tools to teach discrete mathematics. (2012-2013). PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Masterless distributed computing over mobile devices (2011-2012). PI: Craig Martell.
  • Data visualization module (2011). PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Topic and author detection (2010-2011). PI: Craig Martell.
  • ReSEARCH: A requirements search engine (2008-2009).  PI: Craig Martell.
  • Starting a Research Project in Graph Theory, AMS Visiting Researcher for the Honors Math Camp (2007). PI: Ralucca Gera.
  • Security in ad hoc networks (2005-2008). PI: Ralucca Gera.