GOVERNMENT

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced that 116 outstanding young scientists and economists have been selected to receive the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship, the oldest fellows program in the United States. The new Sloan Fellows are engaged in research at the frontiers of physics, chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics and neuroscience, and are faculty members at 54 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. "The Sloan Research Fellowships were created by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. in 1955 to provide crucial and flexible funds to outstanding researchers early in their academic careers," said Ralph E. Gomory, President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "Through the years, these fellowships have helped the research careers of their recipients, and we are very proud to be associated with their achievements." In the 50 years that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has been awarding research fellowships, 32 Sloan Fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes and hundreds have received other prestigious awards and honors. With the current awards, the Foundation has spent over $108 million for support of more than 4000 young researchers. Candidates for the fellowships are nominated by department chairs and other senior scholars familiar with their talents. Grants of $45,000 for a two-year period are administered by each Fellow’s institution. Once chosen, Fellows are free to pursue whatever lines of inquiry are of most interest to them, and they are permitted to employ fellowship funds in a wide variety of ways to further their research aims. The Foundation believes this flexibility is often of great value to young scientists who are at a pivotal stage in establishing their own independent research projects. For a complete listing of winners see http://www.sloan.org/programs/fellowshiplist.shtml.