Faculty at UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley have won 2015 Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering, which recognize promising early-career researchers with grants of $875,000 over five years.
The awards are intended to further the work of some of the nation's most talented scientists and engineers by giving them the support needed to take risks and explore ideas that they might not otherwise have the resources to pursue.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation named 18 recipients in all for the prestigious research grants. Three were from the University of California.
The UC winners are:
Kristy Jean Kroeker, UC Santa Cruz
Kroeker studies how the accelerating changes in our environment are likely to alter the fundamental ways that ecosystems work in the future. As a community ecologist, she is particularly interested in how the effects of CO2-driven environmental changes on individual organisms scale-up to entire affect entire ecosystems.
Kimberly L. Cooper, UC San Diego
Cooper, an assistant professor of biology in the Division of Biological Sciences, uses an unusual model system, the bipedal jerboa, to understand how evolution has shaped limb form and function. Scientists believe a deeper understanding of how limb structures can be modified may shed light on human birth defects and other disorders in which musculoskeletal development is disrupted. Read more: http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/uc_san_diego_biologist_wins_prestigious_packard_foundation_fellowship
Seth Finnegan, UC Berkeley
Finnegan, an assistant professor in integrative biology, studies fossils of marine organisms to learn more about extinction and survival in times of rapid environmental change. Read more about Seth Finnegan and his work on the integrative biology website and the Finnegan Lab website.
The Packard Foundation established the fellowships program in 1988 to provide early-career scientists with flexible funding and the freedom to take risks and explore new frontiers in their fields.
Each year, the foundation invites 50 universities to nominate two faculty members for consideration. The Packard Fellowships Advisory Panel, a group of 12 internationally-recognized scientists and engineers, evaluates the nominations and recommends fellows for approval by the Packard Foundation Board of Trustees.
In new rankings from the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, all nine undergraduate campuses stood out for how well they prepare graduates for future success.
UCLA and UC Berkeley are No. 1 and No. 2, but that's not all — UC campuses make up half of the top 10 public schools in the country, with all nine undergraduate campuses in the top 45.
