The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation announced the selection of its 2023 class of Beckman Young Investigator Awardees from U.S. colleges and universities. This class of awardees includes Illinois chemistry Professor Mikael Backlund.
Backlund's research focuses on development and application of advanced optical microscopy techniques in order to resolve nanoscale heterogeneity in systems relevant to chemistry, materials, and biology. In addition to chemistry, he is also a member of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST) and the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology (CBQB).
According to the Beckman Foundation announcement, the 2023 awardees exemplify the Foundation’s mission of supporting the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences, particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments, and materials that will open new avenues of research in science. They were selected from a pool of nearly 200 applicants after a three-part review led by a panel of scientific experts. This year’s award offers $600,000 in funding over four years to each of the following researchers:
Mikael Backlund, Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Steven Banik, Ph.D., Stanford University
Zachary Calamari, Ph.D., Baruch College, City of New York (CUNY)
David Hershey, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
Timothy Johnstone, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz
Laure Kayser, Ph.D., University of Delaware
Christina Kim, Ph.D., University of California, Davis
Yayuan Liu, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University
Andrew Modzelewski, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Abdoulaye Ndao, Ph.D., Boston University
Thao Tran, Ph.D., Clemson University
“We are excited to welcome this new group of young researchers, and to support their outstanding work, amazing creativity, and future potential. Throughout the next four years, our 2023 class of Beckman Young Investigators will be tackling a broad range of problems, from exploring the use of Earth-abundant main group elements to sustainably mediate the chemical reactions that currently rely on precious metals, to developing a new molecular toolkit for identifying and quantifying protein expression in the brain, to fabricating small devices that can produce touch sensation in assistive robots and displays. We are eager to be part of these incredible projects and to see our researchers’ results,” shared Dr. Anne Hultgren, Executive Director of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
About the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation
Located in Irvine, California, the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation supports researchers and nonprofit research institutions in making the next generation of breakthroughs in chemistry and the life sciences. Founded in 1977 by 20th century scientific instrumentation pioneer Dr. Arnold O. Beckman, the Foundation supports United States institutions and young scientists whose creative, high-risk, and interdisciplinary research will lead to innovations and new tools and methods for scientific discovery. For more information, visit beckman-foundation.org.