The fellowship is one of the highest honors for an early career researcher
Two assistant professors at UCLA Samueli School of Engineering – Yongjie Hu and Aaswath Raman – were among 126 outstanding young researchers selected to receive a 2019 Sloan Research Fellowship, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced today.
Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships honor early career scholars who are among the most promising researchers in their respective fields. Hu and Raman are two of UCLA’s three Sloan Fellows this year.
Hu, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, studies nanoscale transport processes and advanced materials for energy science and micro- and nanoscale sensor systems. His group’s recent work, discovering the world’s most efficient semiconductor material for thermal management, was published in Science in August.
Hu’s research has been recognized with a National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, U.S. Air Force Young Investigator Award, and Doctoral New Investigator Award from the American Chemical Society. Hu and colleagues also received a UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge grant, a program made possible by the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation.
Raman, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, investigates how to control light and heat at the nanoscale. His laboratory brings together a multi-disciplinary computational and experimental perspective to design, fabricate and study metamaterials and new complex optical materials that can shape, absorb and emit light in highly unusual and useful ways over a broad range of wavelengths. He has pioneered the development of radiative sky cooling as a new energy technology, showing how a natural phenomenon where heat dissipates into the sky and space can, among other things, cool buildings without using electricity, and generate electricity at night. In 2018, Raman gave a widely viewed TED talk on his research.
Raman’s honors include being named to MIT Technology Review’s annual Innovators Under 35 (TR35) list. He is a recipient of the Sir James Lougheed Award of Distinction from the Government of Alberta, Canada; the SPIE Green Photonics Award; and the inaugural Nelson “Buck” Robinson Science and Technology Award for Renewable Energy from the Materials Research Society, which recognizes an early-career professional for the development of novel sustainable solutions for the realization of renewable sources of energy.
Also receiving a Sloan Research Fellowship this year was alumna Veronica Augustyn PhD ’13, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University.
Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded to scholars in chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences, and physics. Candidates are nominated by fellow scientists and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity, and potential to become a leader in his or her field. Winners receive a two-year, $70,000 fellowship to further their research.