Four UChicago-affiliated scientists have been selected for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program. The awardees will receive five-year grants to investigate everything from the structure of molecules to the formation of the cosmos.
“Maintaining our nation’s braintrust of world-class scientists and researchers is one of the Department of Energy’s top priorities—and that means we need to give them the resources they need to succeed early on in their careers,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “These awardees show exceptional potential to help us tackle America’s toughest challenges and secure our economic competitiveness for decades to come.”
Lindsey Bleem, senior associate at UChicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics and assistant physicist at Argonne National Laboratory, will receive $2.5 million to pursue research on constraining dark energy in the next generation of cosmic microwave background cluster surveys.
Chihway Chang, one of the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professors of Astronomy and Astrophysics, will receive $750,000 to pursue research on inferring information about the physics of the universe from the large-scale structures probed by current and future galaxy surveys.
Sarah King, a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Chemistry, will receive $750,000 to pursue research on tailoring the nanoscale electronic structure of materials using molecules.
Brian Nord, Fermilab Scientist and a Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering Associate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, will receive $2.5 million to pursue research on using statistics and AI techniques to measure and discover cosmological phenomena.
A full list of the 83 awardees, their institutions, and titles of research projects is available on the Early Career Research Program webpage.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
