Research Corporation for Science Advancement, America's first foundation dedicated wholly to science, has named 16 early career scholars in chemistry, physics, and astronomy as recipients of its 2025 Cottrell Scholar Awards, including Illinois chemistry faculty member Nicholas E. Jackson, an assistant professor of chemistry and Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors (LEAP) Scholar.

“These distinguished awardees join a multidisciplinary, multigenerational force of more than 500 Cottrell Scholars from colleges and universities across the United States and Canada,” said Daniel Linzer, President & CEO of RCSA. “In their own classrooms and labs, and together through projects with national impact, Cottrell Scholars are innovators in science and teaching at their own institutions and beyond.”

Each Cottrell Scholar receives $120,000, and they are chosen through a rigorous peer-review process of applications from public and private research universities and primarily undergraduate institutions. Their award proposals incorporate both research and science education.

Jackson's award proposal: Electronic Dynamics Using Coarse-Grained Molecular Representations

According to Jackson, "this research will leverage machine learning to describe electronic dynamics in large molecular systems from a computationally cheaper coarse-grained molecular representation. This will enable simulations of electronic dynamics at unprecedented length and timescales for disordered molecular systems. This research is coupled with a targeted effort to get the essentials of statistics, programming, and machine learning into the chemistry curriculum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for early-stage undergraduates, and to reinforce it in subsequent years.”

At Illinois, Jackson is also the group leader of the AI for Materials Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and an affiliate faculty member in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University in 2016, working with Prof. Mark Ratner and Prof. Lin Chen. He was subsequently a Named Fellow and Assistant Scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, working with Prof. Juan de Pablo, before joining the Illinois chemistry faculty. His research group works on problems at the interface of soft materials, quantum mechanics, and machine learning, with specific interests in the development of coarse-grained electronic structure methods, conjugated materials theory, and sustainable polymer design.