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 2007 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 nineteen years, the Fellowship Program has awarded 404 fellowships, totaling over $232 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 2007 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.
The recipients of the 2007 Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering are:
Boaz Barak
Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
Computer Sciences; to study cryptography with a focus on obtaining protocols that can be proven to provide security guarantees such as confidentiality and integrity.
Magdalena Bezanilla
Biology Department, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Biological Sciences; to understand how proteins within the cell direct and regulate plant cell growth and morphogenesis, with a particular emphasis on the role of regulators of the filamentous actin cytoskeletal network.
Daniel Bolnick
Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin
Ecology, Evolutionary Biology; to incorporate individual variation into population and community ecology and to improve our understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes and conservation.
Jason Burdick
Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania
Biological Engineering, Materials Science, Nanotechnology; to design water-swollen hydrogels that have controlled and "triggered" material properties, both spatially and temporally, to direct cellular function at the single cell scale.
Nicolas Dauphas
Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago
Geosciences; to study the natural distribution of elements and isotopes using various instruments designed for separating nuclides according to their masses.
Nathaniel Dominy
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz
Ecology, Evolutionary Biology; to conduct field- and lab-based research aimed at understanding the ecology, evolution, and underlying molecular mechanisms at work during human evolution.
Kevin Dorfman
Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, University of Minnesota
Chemical Engineering; to use stochastic analysis of single-molecule dynamical data and bottom-up fabrication methods to facilitate the transition of DNA electrophoresis to routine use in biology and medicine.
Alexey Fedorov
Department of Geology and Geophysics, Yale University
Geosciences; to explore the physical processes that determine the thermal structure of the ocean and large-scale interactions between tropical oceans and the atmosphere.
Andrew Jacobson
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Northwestern University
Geosciences; to use calcium isotope geochemistry to study Earth's ancient and modern carbon cycle and the chemical evolution of Earth's atmosphere and oceans, while creating tools for monitoring the impact of human activity on the global environment.
Kelsey Johnson
Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia
Astronomy; to use a cross-disciplinary approach enabled by panchromatic strategy to investigate the formation of the most ancient objects known in the universe: globular clusters.
Arash Komeili
Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California, Berkeley
Biological Sciences; to elucidate the molecular mechanisms behind the formation of nanometer-sized magnetite crystals within the magnetosome organelles of magnetotactic bacteria.
Jeremy Reiter
Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco
Biological Sciences; to use mouse developmental genetics to explore how organelles detect and interpret intercellular signals and to reveal how cytoarchitecture determines the way a cell collects and digests information about its world.
Shu-ou Shan
Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology
Biochemistry; to advance our understanding of the process of protein sorting and localization in the cell, and to lead a new paradigm for the principles of molecular recognition and regulation by noncanonical GTPases.
Adam Siepel
Department of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology, Cornell University
Biological Sciences, Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, Computer Sciences; to use comparative genomics, statistical models of molecular evolution, and novel algorithms to identify previously unannotated "functional elements" in mammalian genomes.
Yi Tang
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles
Chemical and Biological Engineering; to understand extensive protein-protein interactions required for catalysis and to develop new tools for combinatorial biosynthesis.
Tommaso Treu
Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara
Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology; to test galaxy formation models by measuring the cosmic evolution of the three main components of spheroids: black holes, stars, and dark matter.
Sinisa Urban
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Johns Hopkins University
Biochemistry, Biological Sciences; to deduce the engineering principles that allow rhomboid enzymes to function within membranes and to study how its properties were changed to regulate different processes.
Akshay Venkatesh
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University
Mathematics; to study number theory, the arithmetic of whole numbers, and to develop techniques to study L-functions, which encode the behavior of prime numbers.
Mehmet Yanik
Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Electrical Engineering, Physics, Neuroscience, Biotechnology; to understand the structure and function of our nervous system and its degeneration and regeneration by manipulating neural systems at the sub-cellular level.
Emil Yuzbashyan
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Physics; to study novel types of correlated states that arise in new physical systems, such as ultra-cold atomic gases, disordered superconductors, quantum machines and qubits employing nanometer scale superconductors and semiconductor quantum dots.
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The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a private family foundation created in 1964 by David Packard (1912–1996), cofounder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, and Lucile Salter Packard (1914–1987). The Foundation provides grants to nonprofit organizations in the following program areas: Conservation and Science; Population; and Children, Families, and Communities. The Foundation makes national and international grants and also has a special focus on the Northern California Counties of San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey. Foundation grantmaking includes support for a wide variety of activities including direct services, research and policy development, and public information and education. The Foundation does not make grants intended to influence legislation or support candidates for political office. The Foundation's endowment was approximately $6.2 billion as of December 31, 2006. General program grant awards totaled approximately $224 million in 2006. The Foundation has a grantmaking budget of approximately $266 million in 2007.
