Ten Princeton faculty members awarded Sloan Research Fellowships

Ten Princeton scientists have been selected to receive 2019 Sloan Research Fellowships, highly competitive grants given to outstanding young scholars working at the frontiers of their fields.

The 10 fellows are among 126 biologists, chemists, computer scientists, economists, mathematicians, neuroscientists, ocean scientists and physicists chosen for the award from 57 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. Princeton earned the most fellowships of any single-campus institution, with at least one winner from each field.

• Will Dobbie, who is an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, the Jonathan Edwards Bicentennial Preceptor, and a faculty associate of the Industrial Relations Section, researches school inputs and student outcomes, peer effects in schools, the impact of voluntary youth service, and the benefits of the consumer bankruptcy system. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2013.
   
• Annegret Falkner, an assistant professor in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, studies neural circuits for social decision-making — the brain nodes that fire when we consider initiating social interactions, reminding us of past encounters, perceived social rank and other factors. She joined the faculty in 2018.
   
• Ralph Kleiner, an assistant professor of chemistry and associated faculty in molecular biology, is working to decipher the chemical complexity of cellular RNA by developing and using novel approaches that integrate chemistry and biology to investigate the significance of RNA modifications and the interplay of RNA chemistry with cellular mechanisms. He graduated from Princeton in 2005 and joined the faculty in 2016.
   
• Gillat Kol, an assistant professor of computer science, studies applied math and data science with a focus on the theoretical aspects of computation, how information theory applies to computational complexity, and interactive compression and coding. She joined the faculty in 2016.
   
• Michal Kolesár, an assistant professor of economics, specializes in econometrics. His research focuses on developing methods for causal inference. He joined the faculty in 2014.
   
• Francesco Lin, an assistant professor of mathematics, researches topics at the intersection of geometry, low-dimensional topology and elliptic partial differential equations. He had a joint Princeton-Institute for Advanced Study position from 2016 to 2018, after which he joined the University faculty.
   
• Wyatt Lloyd, an assistant professor of computer science, studies the theory, design, implementation, evaluation and deployment of large-scale distributed systems. He is interested in a variety of topics including big data, storage, consistency, geo-replication, consensus, concurrency control and fault tolerance. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2013 and joined the faculty in 2017.
   
• Ricardo Mallarino, an assistant professor of molecular biology, focuses on understanding the mechanisms that regulate form and structure in vertebrates, including how those processes have been modified over millions of years to produce the extraordinary diversity of living creatures. He joined the faculty in 2017.
   
• Laure Resplandy, an assistant professor of geosciences and the Princeton Environmental Institute, was awarded a fellowship in the field of ocean sciences. She works in climate science and modeling, geochemistry, paleoclimate studies, and oceanography. She joined the faculty in 2017.
   
• Jeff Thompson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, researches applied physics, photonics and quantum information. His work explores methods to control individual atoms in order to harness their quantum properties for computing, communications and sensing technology. He joined the faculty in 2016.

Sloan Research Fellows are free to pursue any lines of inquiry that interest them, and they are permitted to employ their two-year grant of $70,000 in a wide variety of ways to further their research aims. Since the first awards were created in 1955, some 226 faculty from Princeton University have received a Sloan Research Fellowship. The foundation is a New York City-based philanthropic institution established by Alfred Sloan Jr., then-president and chief executive officer of the General Motors Corp.