Recipients of this year's Sloan Research Fellowships - prestigious, two-year fellowships awarded to some of the most promising early-career researchers in the United States and Canada - include a trio of Yale faculty members.
The Yale honorees, John Eric Humphries, an assistant professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Liang Liang, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), and Diana Y. Qiu, an assistant professor of materials science at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS), will each receive a $75,000 fellowship.
There are 126 recipients this year. Since the first Sloan fellowships were awarded in 1955, 146 faculty from Yale have received a fellowship, including this year's winners.
Humphries, who joined the Yale faculty in 2018, was awarded a fellowship in economics. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research and an affiliate of the Cowles Foundation and the CESifo Research Network.
Humphries is a labor economist who studies how public policy shapes economic opportunity for children, families, and young adults. Three themes unite his work: the dynamics of human capital accumulation, novel measurement strategies through data linkages, and quasi-experimental methods guided by economic frameworks. His research provides causal evidence on policy questions spanning education, housing, and criminal justice.
Liang, who joined the Yale faculty in 2020 and is a member of the Wu Tsai Institute, received a fellowship in neuroscience.
Liang's research aims to uncover how neurons and neural circuits progressively process visual information and how they remain adaptable. Her lab focuses on early visual centers, using innovative techniques to map neural connectivity and track neural activity in real time.
Qiu received her fellowship in physics. She joined the Yale faculty in 2020 and is a member of the Materials Science Department at SEAS and the Energy Sciences Institute at Yale West Campus.
Qiu's research seeks to discover novel properties and phenomena in new materials by developing theoretical and computational tools to understand and tune light-matter interactions and many-electron correlations of materials at the quantum level.
Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded in seven fields: chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics.
Other scientists nominate candidates for the fellowships. Winners are selected by an independent panel of senior scholars based on the candidates' research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become leaders in their field.
