Innovation and Collaboration: RCSA’s 2019 Awards Summary
In 2019, Research Corporation for Science Advancement supported early-career scientists at American colleges and universities through two major efforts, the Cottrell Scholar Program and Scialog.
The Cottrell Scholar Program is designed to develop outstanding teacher-scholars recognized by their scientific communities for the quality of their research programs, innovation in education, and potential for academic leadership. In 2019, Cottrell Scholar Program funding included $2.4 million for initial Cottrell Scholar Awards, which provide subsequent eligibility for competitive Cottrell Plus Awards ($470,000 in 2019) and Cottrell Scholars Collaborative Awards ($100,000 in 2019).
Scialog promotes dialogue and community-building to catalyze transformational science through collaborative, interdisciplinary research. In 2019, RCSA awarded $825,000 to early-career faculty for scientific research through the Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards. The contributions of partner philanthropies toward Scialog awards brought this total to $2.9 million.
Cottrell Scholar Program
Nurturing an interdisciplinary community of outstanding teacher-scholars, the CS program fosters synergy among faculty at major American research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions. Cottrell Scholars engage in an annual networking event to share insights and expertise, and can develop initiatives to enhance science education and scientist career development through the Cottrell Scholar Collaborative. Outstanding candidates in chemistry, physics and astronomy are admitted to the ranks of Cottrell Scholars through a stringent peer-review process based on their innovative research and education proposals. Once designated a Cottrell Scholar, several levels of competitive funding to promote career growth become available under the Cottrell Plus Awards Program. Ultimately, post-tenure Cottrell Scholars may compete for the prestigious FRED Award supporting potentially transformative research.
2019 Cottrell Scholar Awards
($100,000 each)
Victor M. Acosta, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico – Hyperpolarization and Detection of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Using Nitrogen Vacancy Centers in Diamond
Robbyn K. Anand, Department of Chemistry, Iowa State University – Extracting Kinetic Rate Constants from Bipolar Electrochemistry: AC Voltammetry of Electrically Coupled Faradaic Reactions
Gordon J. Berman, Department of Biology and Physics Graduate Program, Emory University – Information Bottlenecks and the Neural Control of Behavior in Fruit Flies
Dennis D. Cao, Department of Chemistry, Macalester College – Cationically Supercharged Electron Acceptors
Caitlin M. Casey,* Department of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin – Diverse Perspectives: The Impact of Dust and Gas on Cosmic History and Equity-Minded Inquiry-based Astronomy
Jonathan J. Foley, Department of Chemistry, William Paterson University – Polaritonic Chemistry with Hybrid Nanoparticles
Benjamin M. Hunt, Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University – Broken Symmetry and Spin-Triplet Pairing in Two- Dimensional Superconductors
Chenfeng Ke, Department of Chemistry, Dartmouth College – Smart Supramolecular 3D Printing Materials with Synchronized Molecular Motions
Emily Levesque, Department of Astronomy, University of Washington – New Perspectives on Dying Stars
Laura A. Lopez, Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University – Assessing Stellar Feedback in Massive Star-Forming Regions
Ellen M. Matson, Department of Chemistry, University of Rochester – Metal Oxide Clusters as Models for Investigating the Role of Oxygen Vacancies in Small Molecule Activation
Charles C. L. McCrory, Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan – Selective Electrocatalysis by Polymer-Encapsulated Catalysts: the Role of Charge and Substrate Transport on Catalytic Efficiency
Ryan McGorty, Department of Physics and Biophysics, University of San Diego – Optical Microscopy of Sheared Phase-Separating Soft Matter Systems
Katherine A. Mirica, Department of Chemistry, Dartmouth College – Multifunctional Porous Scaffolds for Monitoring Neurochemicals
Alison R. H. Narayan, Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan – Biocatalytic Reactions for Selective, Sustainable Synthesis and Engaging Graduate Student Instructors for Improved Outcomes in Organic Chemistry
Kerstin M. Perez, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Closing in on Sterile Neutrino Dark Matter with NuSTAR
Paul L. Raston, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, James Madison University – Laser Spectroscopic Investigation of Atmospherically Important Complexes at Ultra Low Temperature
Emily Rauscher, Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan – Exo-Cartography: Resolving Three-Dimensional Images of Extrasolar Worlds
Shahir S. Rizk, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Indiana University at South Bend – Reversible Self-assembly of Bio-responsive Nanostructures
Tristan L. Smith, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Swarthmore College – Fundamental Tests of Gravity across Time, Space and Mass
Kana Takematsu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bowdoin College – Moving Multiple Charges with Light in Derivatized Naphthalene Photoacids
Weichao Tu, Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia –Understanding the Rapid Dropout of Killer Electrons in Earth’s Radiation Belt with a New and Comprehensive Model
Christina Vizcarra, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College – Small Molecule Inhibition of Formin Proteins: Specificity and Mechanisms of Action
Justin J. Wilson, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell – Capturing the Heavy Alkaline Earth Elements: Ligand Design to Sequester Radioactive Strontium, Barium, and Radium
* Funded by Lyda Hill Philanthropies
Total: $2,400,000
Cottrell Scholars Collaborative
At the annual Cottrell Scholar Conference, faculty are encouraged to devise collaborative projects to enhance science education and scientist career development. Through this Cottrell Scholars Collaborative program, RCSA funded four projects in 2019 at $25,000 each:
Communicating Science: 12 Profound Scientific Breakthroughs
Lead Cottrell Scholar: Kathryn Haas, Department of Chemistry, Saint Mary’s College
Collaboration with additional Cottrell Scholars: Olalla Vázquez, Department of Chemical Biology, Philipps-Universtät Marburg; Carla Frohlich, Department of Physics, North Carolina State University; Amanda Hargrove, Department of Chemistry, Duke University; Rigoberto Hernandez, Department of Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University; Adam Leibovich, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pitsburgh; Ryan McGorty, Department of Physics and Biophysics, University of San Diego; Scott Shaw, Department of Chemistry, University of Iowa; Rory Waterman, Department of Chemistry, University of Vermont.
Also with: Krista Hoeffel, Saint Mary’s College; Yana Vaynzof, Universität Heidelberg; Ute Hellmich, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz; Hongbin Zhang, Technische Universität Darmstadt; Dominik Munz, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg; Brandon Echter, Science Friday; Ashley Donovan, American Chemical Society.
Establishing a Network for Effective Interventions in STEM Classrooms: Fanning the FLAMES
Lead Cottrell Scholar: Thomas Solomon, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Bucknell University
Collaboration with additional Cottrell Scholars: Louise Charkoudian, Department of Chemistry, Haverford College; Michael Dennin, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Irvine; David Forbes, Department of Chemistry, University of South Alabama; Carla Frolich, Department of Physics, North Carolina State University; Jennifer Heemstra, Department of Chemistry, Emory University; Michael Hildreth, Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame; Shahir Rizk, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Indiana University, South Bend; Jennifer Ross, Department of Physics, Syracuse University; Tristan Smith, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Swarthmore College; Kana Takematsu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Bowdoin College.
The Cottrell Emerging Scholars Program: Enhancing the Successful Transition of Underrepresented Postdoctoral Scholars into the Professoriate
Lead Cottrell Scholar: Keivan Stassun, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University
Collaboration with additional Cottrell Scholars: Darren Johnson, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Oregon; Adam Leibovich, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh; Grace Stokes, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Santa Clara University.
Development of the “Enhancing Science Courses by Integrating Python (ESCIP)” Network
Lead Cottrell scholar: Grace Stokes, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Santa Clara University
Collaboration with additional Cottrell Scholars: Jonathan Foley, Department of Chemistry, William Patterson University; Claude-André Faucher-Giguére, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University; Dusan Keres, Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego; Tyler Luchko, Department of Physics and Astronomy, California State University, Northridge; Chad Risko, Department of Chemistry, University of Kentucky; Christine Vizcarra, Department of Chemistry, Barnard College.
Also with Hongbin Zhang, Technische Universität Darmstadt.
Total: $100,000
Cottrell Plus Awards
As their faculty careers advance, Cottrell Scholars are eligible to apply for Cottrell Plus Awards to support their research and teaching, and are eligible for recognition through Cottrell Plus prizes.
The FRED Award of $250,000 is for a high-risk, high-reward project with the potential to transform a significant area of research. The 2019 FRED Award was made to Sarah E. Reisman, Professor of Chemistry, Division of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, for her pioneering efforts to advance new methods to optimize catalytic reactions. Her research proposal calls for using the emerging concept of “input design machine learning” (an approach to artificial intelligence) to develop new chemical reactions that can be catalyzed by metals, in particular by nickel.
SEED Awards are competitive grants to launch new projects in research (at $50,000 each) or education (at $25,000 each). In 2019, SEED Award winners were:
Herbert A. Fertig, Department of Physics, Indiana University
Disorder and Interactions in Moire Butterflies
Boyd M. Goodson, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Southern Illinois University
Investigating Hyperpolarized 131Xe as a Potential Neutron Scattering Target in Searches for New Physics Beyond the Standard Model
Thomas Vojta, Department of Physics, Missouri University of Science & Technology
Fractional Random Walk Approach to Serotonergic Fibers
Erica W. Carlson, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Purdue University
Understanding Surface Probe Images in Strongly Correlated Quantum Matter via Machine Learning
2019 was the first year for two new awards: STAR (excellence in Science Teaching And Research) and IMPACT (recognizing the work of Cottrell Scholars who have had a national impact in science through their leadership and service activities).
STAR Awards of $5,000 went to:
Stephen E. Bradforth, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California
Sarah L. Keller, Department of Chemistry, University of Washington
Andrew D. Ellington, Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin
The IMPACT Award of $5,000 went to:
Keivan G. Stassun, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University
Total: $470,000
Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards
Through the 2019 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards program, RCSA along with partner foundations provided a total of $2.9 million in seed funding for cutting-edge research on four topics: Advanced Energy Storage, Chemical Machinery of the Cell, Time Domain Astrophysics, and Molecules Come to Life.
The Scialog program was created in 2010 by RCSA, which oversees its administration. Scialog – short for "science + dialog" – funds early-career scientists to pursue transformative research with their fellow grantees on crucial issues of scientific inquiry. In 2019, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and the Heisings-Simons Foundation served as co-sponsors. Additional support was provided by the Kavli Foundation and the Flinn Foundation.
Scialog initiatives are a multi-year thematic investment, in which 50 early-career Scialog Fellows, facilitated by 10 leading scientists, convene annually to discuss cutting-edge multidisciplinary themes and propose high-risk collaborative projects.
Here is a breakdown of 2019 Scialog funding by conference theme:
Advanced Energy Storage (Year 3)
Goal: To catalyze theorists, computational scientists and experimentalists across multiple disciplines to collaborate on developing new and innovative projects to accelerate fundamental science driving advances in energy storage.
Awards funded by the Sloan Foundation:
Shoji Hall, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University; Iryna Zenyuk, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Irvine; Zachary Ulissi, Department of Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Data-Driven Discovery of Bifunctional Metal Air Battery Cathodes
Matthew McDowell, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; Partha Mukherjee, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University; Neil Dasgupta, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan
Recharge, Re-liquify, Re-wet (Re3): Self-Healing Interfaces for Solid-State Batteries
Joaquin Rodriguez-Lopez, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Zheng Li, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Institute of Technology; Alexander Urban, Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University
SurPhase: Elucidating a Self-Coating Mechanism for Improved Cathode Performance
Total: $495,000
Awards funded by RCSA:
Yan Yao, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston; Neil Dasgupta, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan; Alexander Urban, Department of Chemical Engineering, Columbia University
A Porosity-free Sodium Glass Electrolyte Formed at Room Temperature: Integrated Experimental and Theoretical Approach
Joaquin Rodriguez-Lopez, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Veronica Augustyn, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University; Jahan Dawlaty, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California
DIRECT: Designer Interfacial Reactivity via Electrostatically-Enhanced Charge Transfer
Yan-Yan Hu, Department of Chemistry, Florida State University; Jordi Cabana, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago; Brent Melot, Department of Chemistry, University of Southern California
Solid Electrolytes with Dual Li-and F-ion Conductivity to Overcome the Tyranny of Gravimetric Capacity
Total: $495,000
Chemical Machinery of the Cell (Year 2)
Goal: To catalyze breakthroughs in our understanding of chemical processes in the living cell that will lead to a new era of advancement in cell biology.
Awards funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation:
Caitlin Davis, Department of Chemistry, Yale University; Elizabeth Read, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Irvine; Kamil Godula, Department of Chemistry, University of California, San Diego
Metabolite Pools: Where are they, who's using them, and can we?
Alice Soragni, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of California, Los Angeles; Matthias Heyden, School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University
ProFIDs: Probes to Fold the Intrinsically Disordered
Bin Zhang, Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Brian Liau, Department of Chemistry, Harvard University; G.W. Gant Luxton, Department of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development, University of Minnesota
Reconstructing Time-resolved Single-cell Genome Organization
Rongsheng (Ross) Wang, Department of Chemistry, Temple University; Abhishek Singharoy, School of Molecular Sciences, Arizona State University; Alison Ondrus, Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology
Seeing the Forces of Life
Maxim Prigozhin, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Department of Applied Physics, Harvard University; Xin Zhang, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University; Jefferson Chan, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Small-Molecule Cathodophores for Multicolor Electron Microscopy
Ronit Freeman, Department of Applied Physical Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Alexis Komor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego; Davide Donadio, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis
Understanding the Dark Side of the Genome
Total: $956,250
Chemical Machinery of the Cell (Year 1 Award Made in 2019)
Award co-funded equally by the Flinn Foundation and RCSA:
Laura Sanchez, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago; Judith Su, Departments of Optical Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, University of Arizona
Identifying and Detecting Diseases Prior to Physical Presentation of Symptoms
Total: $110,000
Time Domain Astrophysics (Year 4)
Goal: To accelerate our understanding of stars and their life-cycles, as well as to promote innovative projects based on new emerging datasets from Gaia and other space-based surveys that are likely to be disruptive for astrophysics.
Awards funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation:
Andrew Mann, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jackie Faherty, Department of Astrophysics, American Museum of Natural History; Siyi Xu, Gemini Observatory, HI
Dancing Degenerates: Ages of Brown Dwarfs from White Dwarfs
Gail Zasowski, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah; Joshua Pepper, Department of Physics, Lehigh University
Inferring Stellar Population Ages from Integrated Light Curves
James Davenport, Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology Institute, University of Washington; Timothy Brandt, Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
A Galactic Census of Eclipsing Binaries
Jennifer van Saders, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii; Keith Hawkins, Department of Astronomy, University of Texas at Austin; Andrew Wetzel, Department of Physics, University of California, Davis
Aging Gracefully: Stellar Ages Across the HR Diagram and Their Implications for Galactic Archaeology
Total: $550,000
Awards funded by RCSA:
Robyn Sanderson, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania; Sukanya Chakrabarti, School of Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology; Daniel Huber, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii
Beyond Gaia: Expanding the Dynamical Map of the Milky Way with Asteroseismic Distances
Simone Scaringi, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas Tech University; Yue Shen, Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Claude-André Faucher-Giguére, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University
Discovering Quiescent Supermassive Black Holes in NGC Galaxies with TESS
Total: $330,000
