This Year's Awards - Of $75,000 Each - Recognize 11 Outstanding Scientist-Educators and Admit Them To An Exclusive Community of Scholars
Research Corporation for Science Advancement, America's first foundation dedicated wholly to science, announced today the 11 recipients of its Fall 2010 Cottrell Scholar Awards. These Awards provide $75,000 to each recipient and represent admission to an exclusive community of scholars.
The Awards recognize leaders in integrating science teaching and research at America's leading U.S. research universities. They also represent admission to an exclusive group of scholars - now about 240 in total - who have been singled out for leadership in combining teaching and research: a pressing priority for a nation that seeks to perpetuate its extraordinary history of scientific preeminence in the face of ever-increasing global competition.
The 11 Award-winners are all early career scientists - assistant professors in chemistry, physics or astronomy. They are from 10 universities - with two from the University of Virginia - and seven states - with three from New York and two each from California and Virginia. They are:
Sarbajit Banerjee - Assistant Professor of Chemistry
SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY
Dr. Banerjee's research will focus on understanding the influence of finite size on phase transitions and intercalation processes in vanadium oxides.
Alberto Daniel Bolatto - Assistant Professor of Astronomy
University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Dr. Bolatto will study the drivers of galaxy evolution: gas reservoirs, molecular Fractions, and star formation.
Duncan A. Brown - Assistant Professor of Physics
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
Dr. Brown is exploring the universe with gravitational waves: a new frontier in 21st-century astronomy and astrophysics.
Richard Leo Brutchey - Assistant Professor of Chemistry
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Dr. Brutchey is researching a generalized synthetic route to nontoxic semiconductor nanocrystals for use in inexpensive solar cells.
Mark Anthony Caprio - Assistant Professor of Physics
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
Dr. Caprio is researching symmetries in the nuclear many-body problem: conquering the computational scale explosion.
Linda Columbus - Assistant Professor of Chemistry
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Dr. Columbus' work, titled "Hijacking the Hijackers", takes advantage of the chemistry of bacterial pathogens.
Christopher J. Douglas - Assistant Professor of Chemistry
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN
Dr. Douglas is studying catalytic methods in functionalizing single bonds to carbon.
Joshua S. Figueroa - Assistant Professor of Chemistry
University of California, San Diego, CA
Dr. Figueroa is researching isocyanide analogues of the unsaturated metal carbonyls.
Austen Lamacraft - Assistant Professor of Physics
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
Dr. Lamacraft is researching collective phenomena in ultracold atomic gases.
Jennifer Lynn Ross - Assistant Professor of Physics
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
Dr. Ross is studying microtubule intracellular highways: building bridges between physics and biology.
Kyle Shen - Assistant Professor of Physics
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Dr. Shen is shedding light on quantum interactions in new correlated electronic states of matter.
Originality, feasibility, and the prospect for significant fundamental advances to science are the main criteria for judging the candidates' research, while contributions to education, especially at the undergraduate level, aspirations for teaching, and the candidates' proposed strategies to achieve educational objectives, are factors in assessing their teaching plans. The Awards are named for science visionary Frederick Gardner Cottrell, whose generosity made Research Corporation for Science Advancement possible and whose invention of the electrostatic precipitator was an early environmental innovation that reduced pollution from smokestacks.
