Eight MIT researchers win 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships

Eight MIT researchers from six departments are among the 126 American and Canadian researchers awarded 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today.

New MIT-affiliated Sloan Research Fellows are: Isaiah Andrews, an associate professor of economics; Tamara Broderick, the ITT Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society; Riccardo Comin, an assistant professor of physics; Kevin Esvelt, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences at MIT’s Media Lab; Stefanie Jegelka, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and a member of IDSS and of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Andrei Negut, an assistant professor of mathematics; Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Assistant Professor of Chemistry; and Alex K. Shalek, the Hermann L.F. von Helmholtz Career Development Assistant Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, an assistant professor of chemistry, and a member of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.

Awarded annually since 1955, the Sloan Research Fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars among the next generation of scientific leaders. This year’s recipients are drawn from 53 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada.

“The Sloan Research Fellows represent the very best science has to offer,” said Adam Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, in a press release. “The brightest minds, tackling the hardest problems, and succeeding brilliantly — Fellows are quite literally the future of twenty-first century science.”

Administered and funded by the foundation, the fellowships are awarded in eight scientific fields: chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. To qualify, candidates must first be nominated by fellow scientists and subsequently selected by an independent panel of senior scholars. Fellows receive $65,000 to be used to further their research.

Since the beginning of the program, 45 Sloan Fellows have earned Nobel Prizes, 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science, and 17 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics, including every winner since 2007.

For a complete list of this year’s winners, visit the Sloan Research Fellowships website.

de MIT News http://ift.tt/2EruvrC