Nir Navon, YQI Member and Assistant Professor of Physics, and four other Yale faculty members have been awarded a $70,000 Sloan Research Fellowship to advance their work. This year 126 U.S. and Canadian early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars were selected.
Yale’s representation among Sloan Research Fellows has been particularly strong in recent years, with five new fellows this year and five in 2018. The fellowships are awarded in eight scientific and technical fields: mathematics, neuroscience, physics, economics, chemistry, computer science, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, and ocean sciences.
Fellow scientists nominate candidates for the Sloan Research Fellowships, and the winners are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s independent research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in their field.
Yale 2019 Sloan Research Fellows
Meng Cheng, assistant professor of physics
Cheng’s main field of research is quantum condensed matter theory with a particular focus on the topological phases of matter.
Nir Navon, assistant professor of physics
Navon’s work is focused on probing the behaviors of interacting quantum particle assemblies by using highly-controllable ultra-cold quantum matter.
Hailiang Wang, assistant professor of chemistry
Wang tackles the question of energy storage and conversion by employing chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology and surface science.
Yang Cai, assistant professor of computer science and economics
Cai’s research is broad and varied spanning theoretical computer science, economics, statistics, probability and learning.
philipp strack, incoming associate professor of economics
Strack, who will join the Department of Economics in the fall of 2019 from the University of California, Berkeley, is a microeconomic theorist whose work on human behavior includes topics such as learning under overconfidence, revenue maximizing the sale of airline tickets, and the effect of competition on individual motivation.
For a complete list of winners, visit the Sloan Foundation website.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit, grant-making institution based in New York City. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of the General Motors Corporation, the foundation makes grants in support of original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics.