Two University of Colorado at Boulder professors have been awarded Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowships for 2007 and a third has received a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship.
The Guggenheim recipients are Professor Paul Kroll of the East Asian languages and civilizations department and Professor Mark Winey of the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department. Kroll and Winey were among 189 fellows nationwide selected from more than 2,800 applicants.
The winning scholars, scientists and artists will receive awards totaling $7.6 million from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for achievement and exceptional promise.
Kroll is pursuing a study and translation of a mid-eighth-century Chinese poetry anthology called "Heyue yingling ji." It is considered the most important verse anthology compiled during the Tang dynasty, which lasted from 618 to 907, and the earliest such work to be preserved in nearly complete form.
Winey and his research group are analyzing the assembly and function of a cellular structure known as a microtubule organizing center that has implications for human health issues ranging from genetic defects and cancer to eye disease. Winey's Guggenheim fellowship will allow him to further explore human diseases arising from inherited defects in microtubule organizing centers by working in the Institute of Child Health at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London.
Assistant Professor Heather Lewandowski of the physics department, who is an associate fellow of JILA, was among 116 young scientists and scholars in the United States and Canada selected to receive a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2007. The two-year awards for $45,000 each are designed to stimulate research by early career scientists who show outstanding promise.
Lewandowski and her research group are cooling molecules and atoms to near absolute zero by using sophisticated lasers and electric fields, slowing their motion dramatically. Research on such "super-cooled' molecules is expected to lead to new improvements in areas ranging from atmospheric chemistry to quantum computers.