The University of California’s Office of the President and the Office of the Chief Investment Officer today (March 12) announced the inaugural class of the UC President’s Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings Fellows, an extraordinary group of 20 young scientists, scholars and economists selected from nine UC campuses.
The fellows will travel this summer to attend one of two weeks of invitation-only lectures and small seminars with some 40 Nobel laureates gathered in Lindau, Germany, a town on Lake Constance in the state of Bavaria. They will join about 600 university students and postdoctoral fellows from around the world.
“This first class of UC fellows to the Lindau meetings embodies the academic rigor and endless intellectual curiosity that is a hallmark of our university,” said President Janet Napolitano. “I anticipate that this rare opportunity to directly engage not only with Nobel laureates, but with global peers, will spark ideas and forge lasting connections. The fellows benefit, and so does UC.”
During the week of June 28, 2020, the meetings will concentrate on the fields of medicine, physics, chemistry and physiology, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research. A second week of the program, August 25-29, 2020, will center on economic sciences.
Said UC Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher, who conceived of the fellowships after having attended the Lindau meetings himself, “There is no better investment than in the promise of young minds intent on making our world better. Our office hopes to sponsor this fellowship for many years to come and to continue to be inspired by the accomplishments and caliber of UC students and postdoc researchers who may one day win a Nobel Prize themselves.”
The fellows were chosen in a multi-step process that required an essay, letters of recommendation, an evaluation of their research accomplishments, and approval by the Lindau meetings organization in Germany. A work group of UC administrators and faculty winnowed down the list of candidates, which was then approved by Napolitano and Bachher.
Work group member Randy Schekman, the UC Berkeley professor awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2013, called the Lindau meetings a “wonderful opportunity for students and postdoctoral fellows to mingle with Nobel laureates in a relaxing environment where one-on-one dialogue is greatly encouraged and facilitated.
“I am so pleased that the president’s office has allocated funds to make this a possibility for many diverse young scholars throughout the UC system,” he said.
Attending the interdisciplinary meeting in June will be:
David Boyer (UCLA)
Kevin J. Bruemmer (Berkeley)
Priya Crosby, Ph.D. (Santa Cruz)
Tomas Gonzalez Fernandez, Ph.D. (Davis)
Samantha Marie Grist, Ph.D. (Berkeley)
Yuki Kobayashi, Ph.D. (Berkeley)
Dequina A. Nicholas, Ph.D. (San Diego)
Michelle M. Nuño (Irvine)
Jonas Oppenheimer (Santa Cruz)
Akshay Paropkari (Merced)
Andrew J.E. Rowberg (Santa Barbara)
Nicole S. Michenfelder-Schauser (Santa Barbara)
Bryan Scott (Riverside)
Lauren M. Sheehan, Ph.D. (Irvine)
Leslie Allyn Simms (Davis)
Sarah M. Tashjian, Ph.D. (UCLA)
Xinting Yu, Ph.D. (Santa Cruz)
Attending the economic sciences week are:
Neil Bennett (Irvine)
Will Gorman (Berkeley)
Diana Van Patten Rivera (UCLA)