Esra Buyuktahtakin Toy attributes her success to her parents.

While in elementary school, her parents got rid of the TV, and her dad, who was an engineer, always helped her with her homework.

“We used to work on problems together, and in that way I started to love mathematics, which brought me to the engineering area,” Toy said.

Last month, Toy received the National Science Foundation Career Award, a $500,000 grant given to junior faculty to help them develop their research and educational goals.

Since 2011, Toy has been an assistant professor at Wichita State in industrial and manufacturing engineering, teaching optimizations courses and running the Systems Optimization and Analytics Lab.

The five-year grant will help Toy support her students, purchase equipment and attract more women to engineering.

“The funding is an important aspect, but the prestige of the award is more than the funding itself,” Toy said.

To apply for the grant, Toy spent a majority of the summer filling out the application and a 15-page proposal that includes a budget, bio-sketch, bibliography and a letter from the department chair.  Of the 81 institutions across 36 states that entered the competition, only 146 engineering faculty across the nation received the grant.  

Toy’s research — titled “CAREER: Dynamic Invasive Species Control Optimization Via Integrated Education and Research” — focuses on designing optimal resource allocation strategies for controlling invasive species with limited resources. Toy said species brought from outside a habitat kills natural species and can take over lands, which can be a threat to humans.

An example is buffalo grass in Arizona, which is flammable and grows fast.

“So, I am trying to achieve to design optimal intervention strategies to control these invasive species with limited resources,” Toy said.

Toy also plans to use the grant to visit high schools and talk about engineering to women and minorities.

“It always feels impossible until you get it,” Toy said. “Once you get it, I felt very happy, very excited.”