For Immediate Release
Contact: Stephanie Foster
(650) 917-7142
LOS ALTOS, California—The David and Lucile Packard Foundation has named 20 new promising scientific researchers as the 2006 recipients of Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering. Each Fellow will receive an unrestricted research grant of $625,000 over five years.
The Fellowship Program was established in 1988 and arose out of David Packard's commitment to strengthening university-based science and engineering programs. By supporting unusually creative researchers early in their careers, the Foundation hopes to develop scientific leaders, further the work of promising young scientists and engineers, and support efforts to attract talented graduate students into university research in the United States.
"Each year the Packard Foundation is honored to support a cadre of innovative young scientists and engineers who are attacking some of the most important research questions of our time," said Lynn Orr, Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor at Stanford University, Foundation Trustee and Chairman of the Fellowship Advisory Panel. "Their research, and the talented students who will work in their research groups, will continue to have a profound impact on the scientific community for years to come."
Over the past eighteen years, the Fellowship Program has awarded 383 fellowships, totaling over $220 million, to faculty members at 52 top national universities. It is among the nation's largest nongovernmental program designed to seek out and reward the pursuit of scientific discovery with "no strings attached" support. The Fellowship Program funds Fellows' research in a broad range of disciplines that includes physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering.
The 2006 Fellows were nominated by presidents of 50 universities that participate in the Fellowship program. The 100 nominations were reviewed by the Fellowship Advisory Panel, a group of nationally recognized scientists, which then recommended 20 Fellows for approval by the Packard Foundation Board of Trustees.
"This year, former Packard Fellow Dr. Frances Arnold (1989 Fellow) became the second Fellow to join the Advisory Panel," said Carol S. Larson, President and CEO of the Packard Foundation. "Dr. Arnold’s appointment to the panel is a testament to the Fellowship’s long-term commitment to the continued success and development of its participants."
The recipients of the 2006 Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering are:
Charles Asbury
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington
Reconstituting spindle functions using pure components and applying new tools for manipulating individual molecules.
Jeffrey Bode
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara
Developing new generations of chemical reactions that will greatly expand the possibilities of biomolecular synthesis and engineering and redraw the boundaries between synthetic organic chemistry and molecular biology.
Garnet Chan
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University
Advancing the simulation of complex quantum systems in the modeling of problems with strongly interacting degrees of freedom, and in the description of processes in the non-equilibrium regime.
Christopher Chang
Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
Understanding the chemistry of oxygen and its metabolism in living organisms and in the environment by engineering smart molecular probes that can sense the presence of other molecules of interest and report them by a glow of light.
David Charbonneau
Department of Astronomy, Harvard University
Constructing an array of 10 automated telescopes that will photometrically survey the closest 2000 M-dwarf stars with the goal of making the first detection of an Earth-like extrasolar planet lying within the habitable zone of its parent star.
Cheng Chin
Department of Physics, University of Chicago
Investigating the dynamics of ultracold gases near a quantum phase transition and searching for the Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicted in the evolution of the early universe.
Michael Elowitz
Division of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology
Using time-lapse microscopy to track key transcription factor activities in individual cells and constructing and comparing simpler synthetic genetic circuits designed to replicate natural developmental functions, such as pattern formation, in mammalian cells.
Samer Hattar
Department of Biology, Johns Hopkins University
Assessing whether mice capable of image formation, but selectively engineered to lack light-mediated input to circadian control centers of the brain, exhibit deficits in physiologically monitored sleep patterns and in vision-dependent and -independent cognitive tasks.
Benjamin McCall
Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Using ion optics to pull carbocations from a supersonically expanding plasma into a fast ion beam, which is probed by ultrasensitive direct absorption spectroscopy.
Helene Muller-Landau
Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Understanding what mechanisms maintain the tremendous diversity of species in tropical forests, and how and what mechanisms are being altered by anthropogenic influences, such as global climate change.
Mircea Mustata
Department of Mathematics, University of Michigan
Using techniques such as spaces of arcs, D-modules or positive characteristic techniques to understand questions on invariants of singularities coming from the classification theory of higher dimensional varieties.
Constance Rockosi
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz
Mapping old stellar populations to trace the Galaxy's underlying mass profile and reconstructing its earliest history.
Mary Schweitzer
Department of Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University
Using dinosaur soft tissues and cellular remains to provide direct evidence regarding rate and direction of evolution, both of organisms and of molecules they possess to understand molecular alteration (diagenesis).
Alice Shapley
Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University
Studying the contribution of galaxies to the ionization of the early universe, the assembly of galaxy mass from the early universe into the current era, and the formation and ejection of heavy elements within and around galaxies as a function of cosmic time.
Alexis Templeton
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder
Developing synchrotron-based scattering and spectroscopic techniques capable of characterizing the distribution and speciation of major and trace elements at the interfaces between geological and biological materials.
Troy Van Voorhis
Department of Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Providing insight into the electronic mechanisms that underpin device function in an array of molecular systems, including artificial photosynthesis and molecular electronics, by extending the techniques of electronic structure theory into the relatively uncharted waters of electron dynamics.
Christopher Voigt
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California, San Francisco
Developing a genetic language to program microbial machines for pharmaceutical and industrial applications in which new sensors are built that give bacteria the sense of touch, sight, and smell.
Michael Worobey
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona
Understanding the origins, emergence and control of pathogens, and simultaneously using pathogens to better understand the shared evolutionary processes that shape all organisms on Earth.
Lingchong You
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University
Understanding how cells process information by integrating mathematical modeling and experimentation to investigate characteristics of information processing in the presence of cellular noise.
Li Zhang
Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Southern California
Understanding the neural basis for the powerful computation that the cortex performs and for the emergence and maturation of cortical functions.
