The Caltech recipients in the field of chemistry are Paul David Asimow, assistant professor of geology and geochemistry, Linda C. Hsieh-Wilson, Jonas C. Peters, and Brian M. Stoltz, assistant professors of chemistry. In mathematics, a Sloan Fellowship was awarded to Danny Calegari, associate professor of mathematics, and in neuroscience, to Athanassios G. Siapas, assistant professor of computation and neural systems.
Each Sloan Fellow receives a grant of $40,000 for a two-year period. The grants of unrestricted funds are awarded to young researchers in the fields of physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, neuroscience, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, and economics. The grants are given to pursue diverse fields of inquiry and research, and to allow young scientists the freedom to establish their own independent research projects at a pivotal stage in their careers. The Sloan Fellows are selected on the basis of "their exceptional promise to contribute to the advancement of knowledge."
From over 500 nominees, a total of 117 young scientists and economists from 50 different colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, including Caltech's six, were selected to receive a Sloan Research Fellowship.
Twenty-eight former Sloan Fellows have received Nobel prizes.
"It is a terrific honor to receive this award and to be a part of such a tremendous tradition of excellence within the Sloan Foundation," said Stoltz. Asimow commented that he will use his Sloan Fellowship to "support further investigation into the presence of trace concentrations of water in the deep earth... I'm pleased because funds that are unattached to any particular grant are enormously useful for seeding new and high-risk projects that are not quite ready to turn into proposals." On his research, Peters said, "The Sloan award will provide invaluable seed money for work we've initiated in the past few months regarding nitrogen reduction using molecular iron systems."
The Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship program was established in 1955 by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., who was the chief executive officer of General Motors for 23 years. Its objective is to encourage research by young scholars at a time in their careers when other support may be difficult to obtain. It is the oldest program of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and one of the oldest fellowship programs in the country.
Contact: Deborah Williams-Hedges (626) 395-3227 [email protected]
Visit the Caltech Media Relations Web site at: http://pr.caltech.edu/media
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Written by Deborah Williams-Hedges